Where’s the Love? Recentering Indigenous and Feminist Ethics of Care for Engaged Climate Research

Jamie Haverkamp

doi:10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7782

Abstract

   Across a range of environmental change and crisis-driven research fields, including conservation, climate change and sustainability studies, the rhetoric of participatory and engaged research has become somewhat of a normative and mainstream mantra. Aligning with cautionary tales of participatory approaches, this article suggests that, all too often, ‘engaged’ research is taken up uncritically and without care, often by pragmatist, post-positivist and neoliberal action-oriented researchers, for whom the radical and relational practice of PAR is paradigmatically (ontologically, epistemologically and/or axiologically) incommensurable. Resisting depoliticised and rationalist interpretations of participatory methodologies, I strive in this article to hold space for the political, relational and ethical dimensions of collaboration and engagement. Drawing on four years of collaborative ethnographic climate research in the Peruvian Andes with campesinos of Quilcayhuanca, I argue that resituating Participatory Action Research (PAR) within a feminist and indigenous ethics of care more fully aligns with the radical participatory praxis for culturally appropriate transformation and the liberation of oppressed groups. Thus, I do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, rather this article provides a hopeful reworking of the participatory methodology and, specifically, participatory and community-based adaptation (CBA) practices, in terms of a feminist and indigenous praxis of love-care-response. In so doing, I strive to reclaim the more radical feminist and Indigenous elements – the affective, relational and political origins of collaborative knowledge production – and rethink research in the rupture of climate crises, relationally. The ethico-political frictions and tensions inherent in engaged climate scholarship are drawn into sharp relief, and deep reflection on the responsibility researchers take on when asking questions in spaces and times of ecological loss, trauma and grief is offered.  

Highlights

Drawing on four years of collaborative ethnographic climate research in the Peruvian Andes with campesinos of Quilcayhuanca, I argue that resituating Participatory Action Research (PAR) within a feminist and indigenous ethics of care more fully aligns with the radical participatory praxis for culturally appropriate transformation and the liberation of oppressed groups
I do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, rather this article provides a hopeful reworking of the participatory methodology and, participatory and community-based adaptation (CBA) practices, in terms of a feminist and indigenous praxis of love-care-response
Reflecting on this research program in the wake of devastating climate impacts of rapid glacier melt and ecological devastation and loss, I hope to elucidate the relational, ethical and political dimensions of what it means to be an engaged researcher in the rupture of crisis

Summary

Introduction

‘It makes us sad when you ask us these questions.’ Yovana’s comment stopped me from the bite of my breakfast. I knew that my work and my constant informal interviewing and asking about the loss of the glaciers, the loss of the waters, the loss of the frogs, fish and harvests had imposed upon the people who had invited me into their community a painful exercise in knowledge co-production It was at this moment in the Peruvian Andes when Yovana, a dear friend and community collaborator on this participatory research project, called my attention to the affective and relational dimensions of my research. I argue that collaborative and participatory methodologies taken-up uncritically remain extractive and neo-colonial, even when mobilised through Liberalism’s language of ‘inclusion’ and ‘justice’ Despite this critique, I do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, but provide here a hopeful reworking of the participatory action research (PAR) framework in terms of a feminist and Indigenous praxis of love-care-response. I strive to reclaim PAR for engaged climate research from all too uncritical and rationalist (masculine) interpretations imbued with notions of ‘objectivity’, ‘concern’ and ‘individualism’ – and reclaim the more radical feminist and Indigenous elements, the affective, relational and ethico-political origins of this participatory research tradition

New Ways of Knowing are Needed for Just Climate Action

Conclusion