Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers?
It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:73e2dc8379cd449a8ab3656ea5894e5e 2023-05-15T18:15:05+02:00 Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? Noémi Gonda Stephanie Leder Marien González-Hidalgo Linley Chiwona-Karltun Arvid Stiernström Flora Hajdu Klara Fischer Ildikó Asztalos Morell Alin Kadfak Anna Arvidsson 2021-07-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968 https://doaj.org/article/73e2dc8379cd449a8ab3656ea5894e5e EN eng Frontiers Media S.A. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968/full https://doaj.org/toc/2673-2726 2673-2726 doi:10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968 https://doaj.org/article/73e2dc8379cd449a8ab3656ea5894e5e Frontiers in Human Dynamics, Vol 3 (2021) reflexivity political ecology COVID-19 vulnerability knowledge politics affect Social Sciences H article 2021 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968 2022-12-31T09:24:08Z It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-usual” academic research that have both contributed to and failed to address the systemic challenges laid bare by the pandemic. Political ecologists tasked with knowledge generation on vulnerabilities and their underlying power processes are particularly well placed to envision such emancipatory processes. While pausing physically due to travel restrictions, as researchers in political ecology and rural development at the same university department, we want to make a stop to radically rethink our intellectual engagements. In this article, we aim to uncover “sanitized” aspects of research encounters, and theorize on the basis of anecdotes, feelings and informal discussions—“data” that is often left behind in fieldwork notes and personal diaries of researchers—, the ways in which our own research practices hamper or can be conducive to emancipation in times of multiple interconnected health, political, social, and environmental crises. We do so through affective autoethnography and resonances on our research encounters during the pandemic: with people living in Swedish Sapmi, with African students in our own “Global North” university department and with research partners in Nepal. We use a threefold focus on interconnectedness, uncertainty and challenging hegemonic knowledge politics as our analytical framework. We argue that acknowledging the roles of emotions and affect can 1) help embrace interconnectedness in research encounters; 2) enable us to work with uncertainty rather than “hard facts” in knowledge production processes; and 3) contribute to challenging hegemonic knowledge production. Opening up for emotions in research helps us to embrace the relational character of vulnerability as a pathway to democratizing ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Sapmi Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Frontiers in Human Dynamics 3 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
reflexivity political ecology COVID-19 vulnerability knowledge politics affect Social Sciences H |
spellingShingle |
reflexivity political ecology COVID-19 vulnerability knowledge politics affect Social Sciences H Noémi Gonda Stephanie Leder Marien González-Hidalgo Linley Chiwona-Karltun Arvid Stiernström Flora Hajdu Klara Fischer Ildikó Asztalos Morell Alin Kadfak Anna Arvidsson Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? |
topic_facet |
reflexivity political ecology COVID-19 vulnerability knowledge politics affect Social Sciences H |
description |
It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-usual” academic research that have both contributed to and failed to address the systemic challenges laid bare by the pandemic. Political ecologists tasked with knowledge generation on vulnerabilities and their underlying power processes are particularly well placed to envision such emancipatory processes. While pausing physically due to travel restrictions, as researchers in political ecology and rural development at the same university department, we want to make a stop to radically rethink our intellectual engagements. In this article, we aim to uncover “sanitized” aspects of research encounters, and theorize on the basis of anecdotes, feelings and informal discussions—“data” that is often left behind in fieldwork notes and personal diaries of researchers—, the ways in which our own research practices hamper or can be conducive to emancipation in times of multiple interconnected health, political, social, and environmental crises. We do so through affective autoethnography and resonances on our research encounters during the pandemic: with people living in Swedish Sapmi, with African students in our own “Global North” university department and with research partners in Nepal. We use a threefold focus on interconnectedness, uncertainty and challenging hegemonic knowledge politics as our analytical framework. We argue that acknowledging the roles of emotions and affect can 1) help embrace interconnectedness in research encounters; 2) enable us to work with uncertainty rather than “hard facts” in knowledge production processes; and 3) contribute to challenging hegemonic knowledge production. Opening up for emotions in research helps us to embrace the relational character of vulnerability as a pathway to democratizing ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Noémi Gonda Stephanie Leder Marien González-Hidalgo Linley Chiwona-Karltun Arvid Stiernström Flora Hajdu Klara Fischer Ildikó Asztalos Morell Alin Kadfak Anna Arvidsson |
author_facet |
Noémi Gonda Stephanie Leder Marien González-Hidalgo Linley Chiwona-Karltun Arvid Stiernström Flora Hajdu Klara Fischer Ildikó Asztalos Morell Alin Kadfak Anna Arvidsson |
author_sort |
Noémi Gonda |
title |
Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? |
title_short |
Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? |
title_full |
Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? |
title_fullStr |
Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? |
title_full_unstemmed |
Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers? |
title_sort |
critical reflexivity in political ecology research: how can the covid-19 pandemic transform us into better researchers? |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968 https://doaj.org/article/73e2dc8379cd449a8ab3656ea5894e5e |
genre |
Sapmi |
genre_facet |
Sapmi |
op_source |
Frontiers in Human Dynamics, Vol 3 (2021) |
op_relation |
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968/full https://doaj.org/toc/2673-2726 2673-2726 doi:10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968 https://doaj.org/article/73e2dc8379cd449a8ab3656ea5894e5e |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.652968 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Human Dynamics |
container_volume |
3 |
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