Confronting the Climate Crisis: Slow Geographies and Relational Approaches to International Research

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise despite domestic and international efforts to mitigate climate change. Recent scholarship has expressed concerns that academic careers require considerable amounts of air travel. These trends raise a series of ethical dilemmas for academic geographers who conduct international field research. Building on work on slow geographies and slow scholarship, we argue for more relational approaches and understandings of the field, which could help to mitigate our travel emissions without requiring a full-scale end to international engagement. We propose four sociospatial iterations of the field as a terrain of interactions: the virtual field, the field at home, the field as a network, and the extended field of routes and journeys. Additionally, we argue that slow geographies of international field research must be paired with a transformation in our institutions, away from individualism and neoliberal metrics of productivity and toward more collective and relational approaches to both research and emissions.