Building Social Capital Through Participatory Research: An Analysis of Collaboration on Tohono O'odham Tribal Rangelands in Arizona

Abstract

On the Tohono O'odham (TO) Nation, an American Indian nation in southern Arizona, where local institutions and community norms govern management of communal rangelands, government interventions in rangeland management have historically overlooked social aspects of management and consequently met with little success. Similarly, past research on the TO Nation has fueled resentment due to a lack of local collaboration. Participatory research offers one way to create power-sharing relationships between researchers and communities and to develop locally appropriate resource management strategies. In partnership with local groups on the TO Nation, we used participatory research to develop, implement, and evaluate a rangeland ecology and management curriculum. The participatory curriculum development and research processes led to increased social capital among participants, creation and adoption of a locally tailored curriculum, and institutionalization of participatory approaches within tribal organizations, demonstrating high levels of quality and validity according to emerging post-positivist criteria for evaluating qualitative research.

Community, Culture and Sustainability in Multilevel Dynamic Systems Intervention Science

“…Participants in these programs were able to initiate efforts to change educational and genderdiscriminatory policies, and to offer new voices to political dialogues related to education, economic development, and social and linguistic integration of new immigrants to Connecticut. PAR and related resources and tools for facilitating indigenous innovation and activism at the local level should be considered in the construction of multilevel interventions (Arnold and Fernandez-Gimenez 2007;Fine and Torre 2006;Freidenberg 1991;Guishard et al 2005;Romani et al 2007).…”

“…An MDSIS approach hypothesizes that change toward a goal will occur faster and more effectively when synchronized and supported across levels in a social system. MDSIS approaches by definition involve ''whole'' communities and cannot be implemented without the establishments of working community partnerships (Arnold and Fernandez-Gimenez 2007;DiClemente et al 2007;Israel et al 1998;Israel et al 2001;Peterson and Randall 2006;Rylko-Bauer et al 2006).…”

Una investigación participativa en la costa uruguaya: características, desafíos y oportunidades para la enseñanza universitaria

“…En relación a sus metas, las IP están diseñadas para involucrar a integrantes de una comunidad en el análisis de su realidad y encauzar la comprensión de los problemas y la discusión de posibles soluciones. Además de este empoderamiento de la comunidad, los resultados positivos de este enfoque incluyen una mayor credibilidad en el proceso de la investigación, mejora de las relaciones entre los actores participantes, aprendizaje mutuo, co-producción de conocimiento mediante diálogo de saberes, resolución de conflictos, y fortalecimiento de capacidades de los participantes (Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995;Brzeski et al, 2001;Arnold & Fernandez-Gimenez, 2007;Johnson, 2010;Trimble & Berkes, 2013;Trimble & Lázaro, 2014).…”

Modeling Socio-Ecological Structure of Local Communities Participation for Managing Livestock Drinking Water Using the Agent-Based Approach

“…A few of researchers have noted the role of social concepts and theories, such as social discrimination, social distance, social influence and social trust as the factors influencing participation in the natural resources sector (e.g. Piran, 2005;Arnold and Gimenez, 2007;Islami and Abdollahian, 2016). For example the Social Network Analysis (SNA) of livestock beneficiaries of yazd province indicate the poor participation of local ranchers, as well as weak stability of the network of these beneficiaries (Islami and Abdollahian, 2016).…”