Cross-Boundary Listening: Social Expertise in Arctic Governance

Reykjavík’s Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre is a key node of the creation of Arctic expertise. Photo: Marielinder

The core value of Arctic networks and meetings lies in the collective creation of expertise about Arctic affairs. Meetings do more than manage existing knowledge; they also create new knowledge and new capacities to act. They require and reward cross-boundary listening: a practice of knowledge creation that bridges and transcends national and professional boundaries. To grasp the long term of Arctic governance and to be able to shape it, we need to better understand that practice of cross-boundary listening.

This commentary highlights how cross-boundary listening happens and why it matters. Drawing in part on my ethnographic fieldwork at Arctic conferences since 2022, I underscore Arctic professionals’ capacity to shape governance debates in ways that remain largely invisible in traditional state-centered analysis. In today’s context of rapid geopolitical change, focusing primarily on what happens or what is said is not enough: to grasp why events and statements happen, we also need to analyze the unspoken assumptions and unnoticed social practices that animate speech and action.

What is listening for: to understand and to shift the frame

To shape any complex discussion, one needs to first grasp the assumptions that underpin it. Once the underlying assumptions of the discussion are solidified, the terms of engagement have been established. Others then respond within the frame, without the ability to effectively shift its parameters. The longer the discussion continues along the established tracks, the more difficult it is to alter its frame and tone.

When I started attending Arctic meetings, I expected to spend hours listening to clichés: the format of ‘chats’ on the stage tends to fuel that. Although clichés abound at Arctic meetings—as they do anywhere else—I soon learned to listen up. Confrontation is rare, but subtle reframing of what is known, who knows, and who is best placed to act on that knowledge happens regularly. For example, a confidently asserted claim about a particular framing of security (perhaps because that’s what everyone who is anyone says down south) may well be undercut when the speaker is reminded about what Arctic communities experience or worry about. A clichéd advice projected on the screen (perhaps because that’s what was in the glossy report promoted by everyone who is anyone down south) may well be destabilized by a reference to the ecological and social conditions in particular places in the Arctic. One needs to notice elliptical, understated, and implied claims, and one needs to notice the emotional and intellectual resonances created through storytelling. To do so, one needs to understand the histories, situations, and subjectivities in the Arctic. Many a pundit has been politely ‘taken to the cleaners’ when they peddle southern generalities without in-depth knowledge of local perspectives. The more skilled among such southerners learn to modify their talking points slightly once they learn that the claims that fly in the capital my well face push-back in the Arctic.

This framing process is informal. It may not be quantifiable in the final document through measures like word counts, but it is observable in the social process that produces that document. In the social field of Arctic expertise, no one profession, nationality, or subject-position dominates. Everything is international, interdisciplinary, and inter-professional. Those who gravitate toward silos don’t stay in the Arctic, an interviewee points out. The ones who stay are ‘the wannabe diplomats’ who want to engage across difference. 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 the own ministry. Volume and assertiveness without deep knowledge of Arctic issues and sensitivities bring limited benefits.

Those who do the listening: individual skill in geopolitical practice

Such framing capacity requires individual analytical skill. Learning to listen at Arctic meetings involves learning to listen to specific persons: how they frame their comments, how they reframe others’ comments, how they draw from lived experience, and how they use analogies, metaphors, and other heuristic devices. It is not an accident that some of the most effective Arctic governance professionals have been around for years, sometimes decades. They have the institutional knowledge, they know the clichés and can effectively respond to them, and they are respected by their fellow professionals.

In my interviews, which currently number over 30 with mid- and senior-level professionals and exist alongside extensive ethnographic observations, I ask my interlocutors what advice they would give to mid-career newcomers—individuals who have professional credibility in other settings but are new to the Arctic. Curiosity, listening, and learning come up almost always: curiosity about Arctic settings, histories, interests, subjectivities, and sensitivities. The effective newcomers are not those who repeat their talking points, but those who can adjust their talking points to what is happening in the room. Recycling one’s talking points and thus revealing ‘sloppy thinking’ does reputational damage to the speaker and their backer. The effective newcomers are those who begin with cross-boundary listening: who try to understand and persuade rather than project and override.

The instability of recent years has created a paradox. On the one hand, rapid change has diluted any one actor’s voice. The influx of new actors and the growing attention to the region by national governments have increased the role of big and well-funded players of all kinds. On the other hand, increased complexity has enhanced the influence of the most skilled actors: those who know the nuances and can move analytically and stylistically. In the context of narrower options, skills matter more.

I call such individuals Arcticians because their careers, networks, and expertise are grounded in the Arctic. Not all Arcticians live in the Arctic: the distinguishing feature is not their place of residence but their deep contextual knowledge of the region. Although general ignorance of Arctic settings has certainly declined in recent years, Arcticians still the need to provide ‘adult education service[s] for southerners’. Their work requires interdisciplinary knowledge, the intellectual capacity to synthesize, and social competence and social capital in the networks of Arctic expertise. Only those who have such capacities and competencies can subtly shift the frames of the debate while maintaining an open-ended stance and tone.

It is important to not imply clear group positions or over-valorize any group. The scene is complex and dynamic, and no one group has a monopoly on creativity. My point is to highlight the advanced human skills that are cultivated over years of interaction so that we can better recognize and value them.

‘Ancient skills’ and the shaping of change

The importance of Arctic meetings is not about the transaction of arguments; this can be done with much less expense in a written form. The value is in the real-time and real-space collective creation of stories and imaginaries. In that process, the skills of listening, understanding, and storytelling are essential. Calling such skills ‘soft’ is myopic. Listening and understanding are the most valuable skills: the ones capable of creating new frames and paths of action that are unimaginable from the old perspective. It is such ‘ancient skills’, to quote an interviewee, that enable individuals and institutions to transform and not simply transact knowledge and power.

Merje Kuus is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.