Simon Fraser University

Pamela Stern

Pamela Stern
Contact Information
Adjunct Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Simon Fraser University
Canada
Email: pamela_stern AT sfu dot ca

I am a socio-cultural anthropologist with interests in the ways that individuals and communities respond to and shape the conditions of modern life and in doing so participate in making public policy. I am especially interested in policies and practices related to community development, resource extraction and citizenship.


I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Ontario and in Canada’s Northwest Territories, the latter in the Inuvialuit community of Ulukhaktok (formerly Holman). My research there has concerned human development and life course transitions as well as the development of social institutions. For example, I have looked at generational differences in the reproductive health of Inuit women and in their experiences with the formal health system, at the same examining the disjuncture between government family planning rhetoric and practice. More recent fieldwork in Ulukhaktok concerned work and work lives in order to understand how people's everyday experiences with wage labour, unemployment, and social change affect the ways that Inuvialuit participate in the Canadian nation. My academic publications cover these topics.


Mabel Nigiyok and Sarah Kuptana teaching a traditional game to students the Helen Kalvak Elihakvik School
Mabel Nigiyok and Sarah Kuptana teaching a traditional game to students the Helen Kalvak Elihakvik School
© Pamela Stern 2000


I am currently involved in three research projects:

NGOs on a Northern Frontiertop

Urban Studies professor Peter V. Hall and I are studying the role of citizens groups in economic and community development in Cobalt, Ontario, a former silver mining centre. There has been much academic attention to the role that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play in development in the Third World, but academics have pretty much ignored similar activities in Canada and other post-industrial democracies. Yet, there appear to be many similarities in the development processes here to those in other parts of the world. In this research, which is funded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada (SSHRC), we are investigating the ways that NGOs (usually called non-profits in Canada) go about doing development.Visit the project homepage.


 


Cobalt, Ontario
© Pamela Stern 2000

Significant Others: Anthropological Love Affairs with Particular Culturestop

This project, which I am pursuing with Professor Tom Abler from the University of Waterloo, concerns pedagogy in anthropology. We are exploring how anthropologists as teachers present the variety of human cultures and practices. Using introductory textbooks and other pedagogical materials, we are investigating which peoples and cultures are most commonly employed as ethnographic examples in introductory cultural anthropology classes. We hope to identify how and why some ethnographic examples become iconic. A pilot study was funded by a University of Waterloo research incentive grant.


Alcohol Control Policies and Inuit Citizenshiptop

In Canada and elsewhere alcohol has been regarded as both a dangerous substance and as a privilege of citizenship. Using archival and ethnographic materials, I am tracing the social history of Canada's northern alcohol control policies as they have applied to Inuit. I am interested in the many ways that alcohol control laws and practices have shaped the social conditions of citizenship in the North. This work shows that alcohol control policies have ramifications far beyond the narrow matters of health and safety that the policies are intended to address.


As a secondary aspect of this research, I am looking at Inuit cultural productions - cartoons, documentary and fictional filmmaking, printmaking and sculpture, and memoirs - in which Inuit describe their personal experiences and express their own attitudes toward alcohol and other drugs.




Selected Publicationstop

Books

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

  • (with Peter V. Hall) “The Proposal Economy,” Critique of Anthropology 30(3): 243-264 (2010)
  • (with Peter V. Hall) “Historical Limits: Narrowing Possibilities in Ontario's Most Historic Town,” The Canadian Geographer 54(2): 209-227 (2010)
  • (with Peter V. Hall) “Reluctant Rural Regionalists,” Journal of Rural Studies 25(1): 67-76 (2009)
  • “Hunting for Hydrocarbons: representations of indigeneity in reporting on the new Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline,” American Review of Canadian Studies 37(4): 417-441 (2007)
  • “Places for People to Die” (book review essay of Gray Areas: ethnographic encounters with nursing home care, edited by Philip B. Stafford and Death, Mourning, and Burial, edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben) Anthropology News (2006)
  • “Land Claim, Development, and the Pipeline to Citizenship,” in Pamela Stern and Lisa Stevenson, eds., Critical Inuit Studies: an anthology of contemporary Arctic Ethnography, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln (2006)
  • “From Area Studies to Cultural Studies to a Critical Inuit Studies,” in Pamela Stern and Lisa Stevenson, eds., Critical Inuit Studies: an anthology of contemporary Arctic Ethnography, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln (2006)
  • “Wage Labor, Housing Policy and the Nucleation of Inuit Households in Holman, NWT, Canada,” Arctic Anthropology 42(2):66-81 (2005)
  • “Upside-Down and Backwards: time discipline in a Canadian Inuit town,” Anthropologica 45(1): 147-161 (2003)
  • “Subsistence: work and leisure,” Etudes/Inuit/Studies 24(1): 9-24 (2000)
  • “Learning to Be Smart: an exploration of the culture of intelligence in a Canadian Inuit community,” American Anthropologist 101(3): 502-514 (1999)
  • (with R.G. Condon) “Puberty, Pregnancy, and Menopause: life cycle acculturation in a Copper Inuit community,” Arctic Medical Research 54(1):21-31 (1995)
  • (with R.G. Condon) “A Good Spouse is Hard to Find,” in William Jankowiak, ed., Romantic Passion: a universal experience? Columbia University Press, New York (1995)
  • (with R.G. Condon) “Gender-Role Preference, Gender Identity, and Gender Socialization among Contemporary Inuit Youth,” Ethos 21(4):384-416 (1993)