It Is What It Is: Visualizing sustainability collaboratively in western Almería

Abstract

This article addresses situated collaborative representations of sustainability within the context of disturbed industrial ecologies in western Almería’s agricultural cluster. The analysis of workers’ understanding of sustainability as a process of interspecies resurgence guides the research, which relates to the use of multimodal tools, specifically ethnographic film, as a way to collaboratively engage with local farmers to explore meaningful sustainability. Despite the centrality of workers and farmers in sustaining economic growth, social equity and environmental protection, they occupy a subordinate place in the design of the agriculture industry’s sustainability assessments. This article suggests that the exclusion of farmers’ knowledge can be reverted through the meaning production of situated alternative sustainability futures, drawing from local knowledge, peasant movements and agroecological agricultural projects. It provides a critical analysis of sustainability as a process of resurgence, through which to attain ontological, biological, economic and political diversity, and it explores the potential and challenges of the use of collaborative film.