Shelter Seekers

DEAR SCHOLARSHIP LIAISON OFFICER:

- GEORGINA BEATY

The $4,000 Daniel White Foreign Study Scholarship, administered through the government of Canada, funded three months in Argentina to study how one region is adapting its approach to housing in the interest of sustainability. This research was in support of my MA thesis in sociocultural anthropology. Though unconventional in form, long overdue, and in excess of the stipulated two-page limit, the final report that follows does, as required, account for my Research Activities, Problems Encountered, and Outcomes Achieved.

Leah Powell or Olivia Simon or whichever scholarship liaison officer is now managing this email account (and, if Ms. Powell or Ms. Simon have moved on, please convey my gratitude for their efficient and impersonal correspondence over the course of my tenure as award holder), I failed. The money is gone.

However, Article 3.6 in the Award Holder’s Guide states that, “ despite advance preparations, the researcher may not know where the search will lead.” It is on this basis that I submit the following report. I hope you will deem I have, in a manner, reckoned with shelter in the Anthropocene.

MONTH ONE

I FLEW TO PATAGONIA as planned ($1,297). From the window of the plane, the needle-thin points of mountains punctured the clouds. Somewhere down there was the small community where I was to be a participant-observer. I would join a team of researchers measuring the climatic impact of different building methods. I belted in for landing, the Award Holder’s Guide open on my lap. A monochrome portrait of Daniel White, the promising young anthropologist in whose honour my scholarship had been named, beamed up at me. A confirmation. I flipped a few pages and read: “Because it seeks to understand the unknown, field research often entails risk.”