Reflexive Research and Education for Sustainable Development with Coastal Fishing Communities in the Azores Islands: A Theatre for Questions

Abstract

Sustainable development (SD) is a controversial concept informed by conflictual narratives which reshape the way we envision the earth, the sea and the stars. Its integration in international policies and national strategy plans for development influences the ways we now know the past, our understanding of the present, and our paths to the future. It influences our lives through policies that regulate daily practices, such as the European Common Fisheries Policy which focuses its strategies for SD in trade and education. However, the problems faced by the ocean require understanding sustainable marine ecosystems through the complex interactions between ecological, social, economic, and political dimensions. Analysing the intersection of those dimensions, while respecting peoples’ voices, allowed us to identify how policies and regulations for SD fail, and opened spaces for an emancipatory reflexive research on SD: responsible, accountable and transformative. This approach inevitably raised questions of environmental justice that challenged us to look critically at research and education norms for SD, as well as question how the deficit-model of research is built on the assumption that the failures of SD are due to lack of knowledge. In this chapter we bring together research experience on education and research practices, overlapping our reflexive and educational practices, with the Azores archipelago in Portugal as our background, in order to explore other possibilities. With the help of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, we explore the potential of multi-directional learning via aesthetic practices and action-based research to enable narrative inquiry to engage people in research, and SD policy development that are environmentally just and sustainable.