Social Interaction in Arctic Science Diplomacy

There is a duality to Arctic expertise. On the one hand, it is often highly specialized, owing to the specificity of Arctic conditions. On the other hand, it is a transdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge claims from different national and professional contexts and subject-positions. Transnationalism and transprofessionalism—the modes of knowledge that both bridge and transcend national and professional boundaries—are central features of Arctic networks. The scene is not simply one in which experts negotiate from within their national and professional silos; it is also one in which these experts transcend such silos to interact on a more open field.

Arctic networks are highly international much beyond intergovernmental settings. The first step in creating a strong academic project, an Arctic scientist notes, is not to begin with scientific debates but to build trust with the local communities and with scientists from other countries. It is the learning phase before the doing phase. If that learning phase is cut, the quality of the science suffers. The Arctic is like a Rubik’s cube, a businessperson explains along similar lines: when you change anything, you affect everything else. Those who gravitate toward silos don’t stay in the Arctic, yet another interviewee comments. The ones who stay are ‘the wannabe diplomats’ who can wear multiple hats and engage across differences. Scientists learn that it is not enough to state facts, businesspeople learn that it is not enough to state potential profits, and diplomats learn that they need to coordinate their work well beyond their ministry. Even in diplomacy, a profession based on building connections, practitioners comment on how extensively they need to interact beyond foreign ministries.

The group of Arctic professionals good at such boundary-crossing work might be called the Arcticians. Most of them do not live in the region, but their knowledge of the region is central to Arctic governance. The Arcticians’ expertise is at once specialized and synthetic. Because they have often spent time in several Arctic countries and know their foreign counterparts well, their knowledge extends beyond the nation- and profession-specific modes of work that pervade many other settings. The Arcticians, in addition to those who live in the region, remind the outsiders to be humble and ask questions before proposing solutions. Arctic science diplomacy works best when it combines the deep knowledge of Arctic residents, especially Indigenous communities, with the professional and institutional knowledge of the Arcticians.

Given the boundary-transcending character of Arctic science diplomacy, our definitions of professions need to be open-ended and flexible. The scientific endeavor, for example, is about refining discussion and debate as much as any hypothesis-testing. Science, social theorist Andrew Sayer suggests, is best understood as ‘the collective questioning of assumptions’. This is useful because it gets us past stereotyped views of science as a rigid pursuit of proof and attunes us to the qualitative and interpretative practices in the social sciences and humanities. It enables us to better appreciate and analyze the kinds of conversations that actually happen in Arctic networks.

The definition of diplomacy is similarly worth broadening in Arctic contexts. Given that many discussions in the region include a diplomatic component regardless of the participants’ affiliations, one possible definition is that diplomacy is the practice of engaging with differences. That framing gets us past stereotyped views of diplomacy as a pursuit of reason d’état—including the similarly framed settings of Track II diplomacy—and allows us to see diplomacy as an ethos and practice of engagement. Such broader framing enables us to grasp the transnational and transprofessional realities on the ground and to better value the continuous contribution of the Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council in all aspects of Arctic governance. The diplomatic profession is central to Arctic networks and governance processes in part because of the transprofessional character of the scene. Diplomats know people and facilitate dialogue; the quasi-diplomatic accent on dialogue in governance processes, in turn, facilitates compromise-building and engagement.

It is often said that business in the Arctic moves with the speed of trust. The same can be said of Arctic science diplomacy. Expertise in synthesis requires the capacity to listen, learn, and accept the discomfort of being outside one’s own intellectual or social comfort zone. That capacity is enabled by the professional trust generated in long-standing networks of in-person interaction. A protocol can sustain but not substitute for such trust. We thus need to foreground social trust and the interpersonal interaction on which it relies as the essential ingredients of Arctic science diplomacy.

The social atmosphere of Arctic meetings includes a great deal of curiosity. Even at large Arctic conferences like the Arctic Circle Assembly, participants remark on the value of learning something new. In addition to the business as usual, they note, there is also the freshness of encountering something new, even surprising. At their best, such meetings are places of persuasion in addition to declaration.

This applies much beyond science or diplomacy. Many of the stories of professional connections in the Arctic are of specific ad hoc interactions, off-the-cuff remarks and serendipitous encounters outside one’s ‘own’ national or professional circles. These are stories of in-person interaction and many of them are unimaginable without it. At Arctic events, the diplomatically framed signaling from the stage—the references to common challenges, long-term interests, or, in the case of Indigenous groups, their emphasis on the ‘very long term’—is crucially enabled by interactions off stage. There are formal guidelines and procedures and there is also the esprit de corps among the interlocutors. Arctic networks teach one, an interviewee remarks, that the deep political reason behind many negotiations is the need for a long-term relationship: underneath the specifics of what is being negotiated is also imperative to cultivate and maintain long-term relations. The more complex the negotiation and the more nuanced engagement it requires, the more in-person interaction matters. The energy of the room is not quantifiable, but this does not make it unimportant. We need to think about in-person interaction not in terms of the transaction of information but in terms of professional trust.

The social lives of expertise deserve careful consideration especially in this time of conflict and tension, when complexity and compromise are marginalized by soundbites. Compromise-building does not thrive in the realm of video calls; it thrives in the physical space of human interaction. The place-related idioms in everyday language—phrases like meetings ‘taking place’, skilled practitioners having ‘ear to the ground’, or confidential conversations happening ‘in camera’ (rather than ‘on camera’)—tell us something about the effectiveness of in-person interaction. Arctic meetings show, a person representing an Indigenous group comments, that such ‘ancient ways of communicating’ are as important as ever. When circumpolar interaction returns to something resembling pre-2022 levels, a diplomat remarks, ‘it will be your network that gives you the edge’.

The relatively open feel of the Arctic Circle Assembly and similar meetings is inseparable from the in-person format of these meetings. The effect of that format is not measurable, but it is observable. Observing it does not allow us to predict outcomes—a futile task in any event—but it does enable us to better grasp the multiple forces that produce any specific outcome. ‘Diplomacy works best when people can get together’, a diplomat comments. The same can be said of Arctic networks.

The complexities of Arctic governance require discussions beyond traditional scientific and diplomatic processes. The core challenge in such discussions is not about technical expertise but about the habits of mind that simplify the complexities at hand into national and professional slices and thus inhibit the synthetic thinking required for long-term cooperation.

The strength of Arctic networks lies in the possibility of open-ended discussions made possible by in-person interaction in transnational and transprofessional spaces. Such interaction is thus not an optional extra but an essential feature of Arctic science diplomacy. Its value is worth foregrounding. Silos are cheap to maintain in virtual space; nuanced long-term communication requires deliberate effort. It also requires that we broaden our focus from formal institutional processes to the more informal social contexts in which Arctic governance takes place. Intellectual curiosity, engagement, and trust cannot be codified but must be sustained.

None of this reduces the complexities and sensitivities involved in Arctic governance. There are hierarchies and silences and tensions in such networks as in any and every social formation. Many of the vexing choices involved in the set-up of Arctic science diplomacy—the choices between generalist and specialist perspectives, state and non-state representation, deliberation and action, broadening and deepening the conversation, or in-person and virtual settings—are not as much problems to be solved as dilemmas to be pondered. The question is not which side of the above pairings is ‘better’, but which combinations we need in any particular context, how we might create these combinations, and how we might sustain the human interaction that undergirds the entire process. Put differently, the question is not only how Arctic science diplomacy works or ought to work in general, but also how it takes place in the physical spaces of human interaction.

Acknowledgements:
I thank my interlocutors for their engagement with this line of enquiry. All mistakes and misinterpretations are my responsibility. The study is funded by individual grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. An earlier treatment of some of the themes appears in Kuus, M. (2023) ‘The social lives of Arctic expertise, or how to do transnational networks’ (Briefing Note). In Heininen, L., H. Exner-Pirot and J. Barnes (eds.) (2023). Arctic Yearbook 2023: Arctic Indigenous Peoples: Climate, Science, Knowledge and Governance. Akureyri, Iceland: Arctic Portal. Available from https://arcticyearbook.com/.

No. 11/2024, 28th November 2024

This article is a part of the Arctic Circle Journal Series which provides insight, understanding and new information. The material represents the opinions of the author but not those of Arctic Circle.