Abstract
Environmental social science research designs have shifted over the past several decades to include an increased commitment to multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary team-based work that have had dual but complementary foci. These address power and equity in the substantive aspects of research, and also to adopt more engaged forms of practice, including decolonial approaches. The fields of political ecology, human geography, and environmental anthropology have been especially open to converge with indigenous scholarship, particularly decolonial and settler colonial theories and research designs, within dominant human-environmental social science paradigms. Scholars at the forefront of this dialogue highlight the ontological (ways of knowing), epistemological (how we know), and institutional (institutions of higher education) transformations that need to occur in order for this to take place. In this article we contribute to this literature in two ways. First, we highlight the synergies between political ecology and decolonial scholarship, particularly focusing on the power dynamics in research programs and historical legacies of human-environmental relationships, including those of researchers. Second, we explore how decolonial research pushes political ecologists and other environmental social scientists to not only consider adopting international and local standards of working with, by and for Indigenous Peoples within research programs but how this work ultimately extends to research and education within their home institutions and organizations. Through integrating decolonized research practices in the environmental social sciences, we argue that synthesizing multiple knowledge practices and transforming institutional structures will enhance team-based environmental social science work to improve collaboration with Indigenous scientists, subsistence practitioners, agency representatives, and sovereign members of Indigenous communities.Keywords: Alaska; collaboration; co-production; decolonial; Indigenous Knowledges; Iñupiaq Peoples
Highlights
Research designs in environmental social science have shifted over the past several decades to include an increased commitment to multi, inter, and trans-disciplinary team-based work that prioritizes knowledge integration (Ens et al 2015; Housty et al 2014; Jamsranjav et al 2019; Petrov et al 2016; Velasquez Runk 2014)
We describe the synergies between political ecology and decolonial scholarship, focusing in particular on how both are instructive in analyzing power dynamics in research programs and the historical legacies of human and more-than-human relationships, including those of researchers
Environmental social science researchers and political ecologists can play a role in adopting decolonial theorizing and practice, to facilitate the co-production of transdisciplinary research that addresses how to sustain well-being and self-determination for future generations
Summary
Research designs in environmental social science have shifted over the past several decades to include an increased commitment to multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary team-based work that prioritizes knowledge integration (Ens et al 2015; Housty et al 2014; Jamsranjav et al 2019; Petrov et al 2016; Velasquez Runk 2014) These changes have led to an attentiveness to power and equity in the substantive aspects of research programs directed toward complex more-than-human political ecologies, and the adoption of more engaged forms of practice, including decolonial approaches (Cote and Nightingale 2012; Schulz 2017; Svarstad, Benjaminsen and Overå 2018). Many individuals and communities may not identify as, or subscribe to, these terms to describe their identities, heritage, and origins (Niezen 2003)
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