TY - JOUR
T1 - Reflections on a failed participatory workshop in Northern Chile
T2 - Negotiating boycotts, benefits, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
AU - Jenkins, Katy
AU - Romero Toledo, Hugo
AU - Videla Oyarzo, Angélica
PY - 2020/11/1
Y1 - 2020/11/1
N2 - In this paper, we critically analyse our experiences of initiating participatory research in the challenging context of the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile. We use our experience of organising participatory workshops with Aymara and Quechua women community leaders to reflect on the politics of participation/non-participation, and explore these experiences in light of our multiple and overlapping positionalities as Chilean/British, male/female, white/mestizo. In the light of one workshop being entirely unsuccessful, we discuss the ways in which our empirical and methodological thinking has nevertheless been enriched by this experience. We situate the challenges we faced in relation to negotiating the tensions presented by debates on decolonising research from our positions within the neoliberal academy, exploring the questions raised by indigenous women activists’ research ‘refusal’, and critically reflect upon the emotional responses this situation elicited in each of us. We argue for the importance of embracing such apparent fieldwork ‘failures’ and, recognising the resulting emotional swirl of panic, anxiety and inadequacy that they produce, emphasise these experiences as illustrative of the inherent tensions around decolonising research, as well as an often inevitable element of conducting research with marginalised communities involved in socio-environmental conflicts.
AB - In this paper, we critically analyse our experiences of initiating participatory research in the challenging context of the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile. We use our experience of organising participatory workshops with Aymara and Quechua women community leaders to reflect on the politics of participation/non-participation, and explore these experiences in light of our multiple and overlapping positionalities as Chilean/British, male/female, white/mestizo. In the light of one workshop being entirely unsuccessful, we discuss the ways in which our empirical and methodological thinking has nevertheless been enriched by this experience. We situate the challenges we faced in relation to negotiating the tensions presented by debates on decolonising research from our positions within the neoliberal academy, exploring the questions raised by indigenous women activists’ research ‘refusal’, and critically reflect upon the emotional responses this situation elicited in each of us. We argue for the importance of embracing such apparent fieldwork ‘failures’ and, recognising the resulting emotional swirl of panic, anxiety and inadequacy that they produce, emphasise these experiences as illustrative of the inherent tensions around decolonising research, as well as an often inevitable element of conducting research with marginalised communities involved in socio-environmental conflicts.
KW - Participatory research
KW - indigeneity
KW - gender
KW - extractive industries
KW - Chile
KW - failure
KW - decolonising research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089351598&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.emospa.2020.100721
DO - 10.1016/j.emospa.2020.100721
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85089351598
SN - 1755-4586
VL - 37
JO - Emotion, Space and Society
JF - Emotion, Space and Society
M1 - 100721
ER -