How many coffees a day does it take for a researcher to bounce off walls?

By Teresa Sarasa Nagore, MFN student

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to conduct research on women’s empowerment through a community-based conservation project in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in Colombia. Being a qualitative researcher, I have been warned about the need to build rapport before collecting data, and how difficult this could be. The costeño women of the communities where I conducted my thesis, however, needed less than ten minutes to welcome me into their midst; before I knew it, I was sitting in their living room, tinto (Colombian black coffee) in hand, braiding their daughter’s hair and being invited to birthday parties. At times, I felt like a research subject myself, my pale skin and blue eyes causing havoc in the village. In this blogpost, I give you a little taste of what I had been up to in the world’s largest coastal mountain range.

Whilst in Colombia, I explored what ’empowerment’ means in the face of gender inequality and conservation challenges. I discovered that empowerment seemingly means something different for every individual. However, complying with the world of academia and the development of theoretical frameworks, I found bits and pieces of three commonly described empowerment types: political empowerment, economic empowerment and socio-psychological empowerment (Sen & Grown, 2013; Periello et al., 2021). I did not feel these facets of empowerment accounted for all that was brewing in my case study in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and propose that we include in the study of empowerment the concept of ‘ecological empowerment’. Skene (2022) first proposed an ecological perspective to the theoretical discussion of empowerment as an acknowledgement of humans’ dependence and play in environmental systems. The women I had the pleasure to meet spoke of nature conservation as a means through which they felt a sense of agency in putting a halt to the ecological destruction they are witnessing and further fostering their connection with ‘Sierra Madre’. At the same time, their work was protecting threatened species such as the endemic and endangered Pyrrhura virdicata. This case study exemplified how ecological empowerment is a vi-directional process (from people to non-humans, and vice-versa). Its regard for the intrinsic values of nature opens up the possibility to include other non-humans into the empowerment framework; How do certain practices empower biodiversity, endangered species, soil health or air quality? How is intraspecies justice being promoted? Are there processes conducive to life, for human and non-human animals to be empowered, supported, or created? Ecological empowerment allows for a conception of empowerment whereby humans are empowered by their surrounding nature; meanwhile, humans themselves can empower processes conducive to life in the more-than-human realm;,a relational process of value creation, for we are nature and cannot be without it (Jax et al., 2018; Skene, 2022).

This was my first trip to South America, and my second trip outside Europe. Doing data collection was also a first for me: a foreign experience in a foreign country. However, two empowerment gifts were bestowed upon me throughout the process of this master’s thesis. First, I discovered that I feel most empowered when conducting research which blends feminism and environmental activism. Second, I discovered that just sitting down and paying overt attention to someone during an interview can be incredibly empowering for those being interviewed too.

As a follow-up, I am now working on a paper based on my thesis to be submitted to academic journals, while also preparing for my upcoming internship in the field of women and environment. For the time being, you can read my thesis, and the summary in Spanish here. You can also check out Women for Conservation here.

_{References:
Sen, G., & Grown, C. (2013). Development crises and alternative visions: Third world women's perspectives. Routledge.
Petriello, M. A., Redmore, L., Sène-Harper, A., & Katju, D. (2021). Terms of empowerment: of conservation or communities?. Oryx , 55 (2), 255-261.
Jax, K., Calestani, M., Chan, K. M., Eser, U., Keune, H., Muraca, B., ... & Wittmer, H. (2018). Caring for nature matters: a relational approach for understanding nature’s contributions to human well-being. Current opinion in environmental sustainability, 35, 22-29.
Skene, K. R. (2022). What is the unit of empowerment? An ecological perspective. The British Journal of Social Work, 52(1), 498-517.}