[Last modified: November, 13 2024 04:46 PM]
My pilot research project is embedded with political dimensions in its engagements with the politics of knowledge production, epistemic violence and colonial legacies of modern top-down conservation practices. The research will actively challenge power structures, capitalist management systems including those of the government and international organizations, and their colonial legacies. Moreover, it will represent challenges towards modern epistemologies regarding their orientation to nature, the culture-nature separation and ‘control’ of the natural world.
In attempting to unearth the problems of current conservation practices, and give voice to suppressed alternative and indigenous means of living with nature and nature stewardship, the research is rooted in de-colonial and feminist approaches and political positions. I aim to engage with the radical threads anthropology has to offer including in political ontology, for example as articulated in Fergusons ‘Anti-Politics Machine’ (1990).
The interaction of my own positionality with the political dimensions are complex—being part of a contradictory colonial history of Indians in Kenya—which may effect my legitimacy for local peoples in carrying out a de-colonial research project. Moreover, my own personal ecofeminist orientations, means that I have an active hope to uncover other ontologies and ways of doing nature conservation. I must be aware to not let my desires and biases influence my research and interviews—in imposing radical assumptions on the field, and to not devalue those who engage in colonial conservation practices but to humanise them and understand their reasonings.
The potential outcomes of your research findings are that indigenous and local epistemologies and ontologies in relation to nature conservation, protection and social-ecological living are essential in ensuring better long-term conservation practices, true sustainability, in achieving balance with the natural world and ensuring humanities’ survival. The political implications of this research finding is that it challenges the legitimacy and therefor power of ‘business as usual’ top down development and conservation approaches and the institutions and the governments who propel them. It will most probably face pushback, or the work will not be engaged with and have minimal impact. Nonetheless it is important to contribute in building these wider understandings of how things can be done differently.
Given these political dimensions, I aim to adapt my research methods in various ways including in interviews; to be curious and questioning of interlocutors position, instead of combative and assumptious (not productive). Moreover, I aim to focus on stories and life histories to achieve an expansive understanding encompassing all the complexities of real life. Finally, with an understanding that my research engagement will inevitably have a political impact and transform the contexts through which I enter, I aim to creatively co-engage with existing epistemic communities in the field to generate a productive knowledge production for both the communities and research. Thereby co-engaging in world-making through the research project, drawing on Friere and Graebers’ methodologies.