Berner Humangeographisches Kolloquium

This talk traces a creative methodological journey developed through a collaborative project with Inuit youth climate leaders. Guided by the Inuit concept of unikkausivut – embodied storytelling – this project experiments with nail-art, filmmaking, and community mural work to confront colonial spatial politics, and envision alternative climate futures. I consider how participatory, feminist arts-based methods offer opportunities for practices of repair: unsettling extractive research norms by centring relationality, accountability, and reciprocity. Honouring the National Inuit Strategy on Research and longstanding Inuit holistic ways of knowing, the talk reflects on the pedagogical potential of making together, demonstrating how creative collaboration can cultivate more ethical research.
 

What does it mean when a state simply stops caring? Not when it governs harshly, surveils closely, or withdraws services – but when it severs all pretence of responsibility toward a people and a place? Drawing on Edges of Care and fieldwork across Syria, Colombia, Palestine, and Sudan, this talk explores the political geography of sovereign uncaring – the deliberate abandonment of populations to spaces beyond the reach of the state. It argues that care is not merely a welfare provision but the foundational promise of the sovereign relation, and that its absence constitutes a distinct and devastating form of political violence. At a moment when indifference is increasingly wielded as a tool of power, this talk asks: what can we learn from those who live at the edges of care – and what might their experience tell us about the futures of sovereignty itself?