Engaged acclimatization: Towards responsible community‐based participatory research in Nunavut

In this article, we consider the formation of responsible research relationships with Inuit communities from an “outsider” researcher perspective. Cautious not to prescribe what counts as responsible, we draw on research experiences in several Nunavut communities to introduce and explain “engaged acclimatization.” This neologism refers to embodied and relational methodological processes for fostering responsible research partnerships, and is inspired by the significance of preliminary fieldwork in orienting the lead author's doctoral thesis. As a complement to community‐based participatory methodologies, engaged acclimatization facilitates endogenous research by enacting ethics as a lived experience, initiating and nurturing relationships as a central component of research, and centring methods on circumstances within participating communities. After we locate engaged acclimatization within resonant literature and details of interrelated research projects, our article sketches out four aspects of engaged acclimatization: crafting relations, learning, immersion, and activism. In our discussion of each, we integrate specific insights derived from field notes, observations, photographs, critical reflections, and literature that have brought us to this understanding. The four aspects provide conceptual and methodological tools for readers to apply in the contexts of their own research programs or in guidelines for establishing partnerships with Inuit or Aboriginal communities. The value of this article lies in the extent to which it encourages readers to situate engaged acclimatization in their own research and further develop it as a process.     

Pearl S. Buck and phenylketonuria (PKU)

In 1921, Pearl S. Buck gave birth to a daughter, Carol, who became severely retarded and was eventually institutionalized at the Vineland Training School in New Jersey. To help pay for her daughter's care, Buck wrote The Good Earth in 1931, and then other novels and biographies about her life in China, for which she was awarded the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, and honored around the world. Years later, she published The Child Who Never Grew, a short piece about her daughter's retardation that also revealed her desperate search for answers and good clinical care. Asbj?rn F?lling distinguished phenylketonuria (PKU) from other forms of childhood retardation in the mid-1930s, and new assays and biochemical findings eventually led to ways to circumvent the devastating effects of PKU. But for Carol Buck, these advances came too late. It was not until the 1960s that physicians confirmed that her severe retardation was caused by PKU.     

European Union External Trade Policy: Multilevel Principal–Agent Relationships

This article examines the potential political influences on European Union (EU) external trade policymaking. Given the EU's volume of international trade and its extensive involvement in bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements, a better understanding of how the EU makes external trade policy is increasingly important. It is an extremely complex process—involving the EU public, the 25 member states' parliaments and governments, and the institutions of the EU, including the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Commission. It is a system of multilevel governance with overlapping jurisdictions with numerous potential access points for societal interests to influence European external trade policy. In this article, we evaluate the probable political channels that societal interests could use to influence EU external trade policy. We employ the principal–agent (P–A) framework to examine five of the more important P–A relationships that are likely to influence EU external trade policymaking. We conclude that EU policymaking as it pertains to external trade is quite insulated from general public pressures. The primary institutions involved in external trade policymaking are the EU Council of Ministers and the Commission—both of which are largely insulated from the public. Future empirical work should focus on this relationship between the Council of Ministers and the Commission.     

Development and Discourse among the Maya of Southern Belize

This article explores the discourse of development in southern Belize, and the appropriateness of post‐development ideas to understand its effects. It investigates a prevailing notion in development texts from the region that population pressure represents an environmental threat, an odd image for a country with so few inhabitants and so many trees. It also examines the consequences of apparent attempts by the government to employ development projects to defuse local contention over plans to privatize Maya land tenure. While post‐developmentalists have opened up fruitful avenues of analysis this study suggests that some of their conclusions are overstated. In particular, it questions the de‐politicizing effect of development discourse, and the notion of grassroots movements searching for alternatives to development, amounting to a ‘rejection of the entire paradigm’.     

Asbj⊘rn F⊘lling and the Discovery of Phenylketonuria

In 1934, the Norwegian biochemist and physician Asbj?rn F?lling described an inherited metabolic disorder characterized by severe intellectual impairment, motor problems, and skin abnormalities. He found that affected individuals could be identified by the abnormal excretion of phenylpyruvic acid in their urine. The disorder, which F?lling initially termed imbecillitas phenylpyrouvica, would later come to be known as phenylketonuria or PKU. The present paper focuses on the story of F?lling's discovery and his subsequent contributions to the area of study. In the years that have followed, research on PKU has continued to play a major role in the neurosciences, shaping our understanding of genetic disorders, human metabolism, and brain development.