Imagining Latin American Social Science from the Global South: Orlando Fals Borda and Participatory Action Research

Lomeli, Jafte Dilean Robles; Rappaport, Joanne

doi:10.25222/larr.164

Cited by 38 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In this light, the position of the organic intellectual allows for an ongoing co-production of knowledges through action grounded on reflection with the Misak community. This process follows the general principles of Participatory Action Research developed by Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda (Kemmis et al, 2014;Robles Lomeli & Rappaport, 2018). Thereby, the research process becomes organic, as it is organised in cycles -or spirals -of reflection-action-reflection and return to action.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipatory Methodologies: Knowledge Production and (Re)existence of the Misak People in Colombia

Velasco

Gruber

2022

pacha

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Indigenous communities such as the Misak people in Colombia continue to struggle against the consequences of colonization and violence, but at the same time, they propose emancipatory methodologies of knowledge production. These practices towards epistemic justice are crucial to assure the (re)existence of indigenous peoples and their wisdom in Abya Yala. In this vein, our article sheds light on research methodologies rooted in Misak cosmogonies and processes to validate ancestral knowledge production. Through ethnographic and participatory action research in the indigenous reserve of Shura Manéla in the Colombian Cauca Department, we got insight into the spiral of persistent existence (espiral de pervivencia) and the law of origin of the Misak people. On this basis, we describe the Latá-Latá methodology reinvented by the community to recover their ancestral knowledge, and the Pachakiwa social cartography applied to depict their territorial relations. Moreover, we explain how collective validation processes work in practice. This serves to open up a transdisciplinary discussion on the potentials and the limitations of such vernacular research methodologies. We observe that healing from the trauma of colonization and inferiorization is a key driver of indigenous research processes. Therefore, developing further emancipatory methodologies based on equal subject-subject relations is an urgent task in the field of decoloniality. Learning from communities like the Misak is an invitation to become aware of the pluriversal complexity, listen to silenced sagacity, and find methods to pursue epistemic equality.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipatory Methodologies: Knowledge Production and (Re)existence of the Misak People in Colombia

Velasco

Gruber

2022

pacha

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“…This approach facilitates participants' increasing awareness of the surrounding situation to foster the stakeholder-defined changes in the socioecosystem. In this process, we all are learners and knowledge are co-created by promoting critical thinking and reflection (Freire, 2000;Lomeli & Rappaport, 2018) Our colleagues have also shown that the use of social media can be used to reach even wider audiences. March Mammal Madness, a yearly game that teaches about mammal ecology, adaptation, and lifeways currently reaches hundreds of thousands of people and engages educators and their students at all educational levels (Amorim et al, 2021;Hinde et al, 2021) As kids growing up in the Global North, many of us do not learn that observational science or natural history are a possibility in our science classes.…”

Section: Conservation Education In Habitat-country Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach facilitates participants' increasing awareness of the surrounding situation to foster the stakeholder‐defined changes in the socioecosystem. In this process, we all are learners and knowledge are co‐created by promoting critical thinking and reflection (Freire, 2000; Lomeli & Rappaport, 2018). A PAR framework allows primate conservation educators to move toward a more horizontal, collaborative, decolonial, context‐specific, and culturally relevant PCEPs (Franquesa‐Soler et al, this issue) in combination with transdisciplinary perspective for the co‐creation of knowledge from different fields, actors to promote mutual learning (Lang et al, 2012).…”

Section: Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Best practices are never best: Evaluating primate conservation education programs (PCEPs) with a decolonial perspective

Bezanson

Franquesa‐Soler

Kowalewski

et al. 2022

American J Primatol

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Who do we aim to educate with primate conservation education programs (PCEPs)? In a commentary published in a recent AJP, Annette Lanjouw suggested that many efforts to “educate” habitat‐country communities can be neocolonial in their approaches. Forest destruction and habitat loss are a result of global consumption and expansion. We therefore need to approach conservation education from many angles including local stakeholders, policy makers, government officials, and the humans living in industrialized nations who are major consumers of the items that shrink primate habitats. In this review, we investigate PCEPs to determine if the conservation education goals, education methods, and assessment processes are proceeding within a neocolonial context. We reviewed the last 20 years of primate conservation literature and looked for publications that were focused on education programs. We found that in 50 of 52 publications published between 2001 and 2021, the education programs take place in habitat‐country local communities. We also reviewed primate field researcher and field site websites, and in most cases, education programs were also focused on educating local communities living near or in nonhuman primate habitats. Exceptions were student clubs, zoo programs, and a high school outreach program. Many PCEP providers presented a list of “lessons learned” and we compiled their wisdom in combination with our experience to provide a framework for moving forward. We conclude that as conservation primatologists, we must think beyond our field sites to create opportunities for educational outreach. We can reach global consumers by linking to zoos, television/motion picture, print media, social media, and working with schools on curricula. Primatologists can engage our undergraduates to establish clubs and create meaningful assignments that reach beyond the classroom. We encourage primatologists from the Global North to consider their positionality and the history of conservation exclusion in their attempts to conserve primates.

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“…Feeling and Thinking the Ethno-territory. The joint research that was undertaken managed to test an alternative way to think about the territory based on the Participative and Active Research [Investigación Acción Participativa] methodology, which tries to blur the distinction between researchers and research subjects and rewrite history from below using novel and controversial formats (Robles & Rappaport, 2018), so that the common people may know more about their vital conditions to defend their interests against those who have monopolized knowledge, resources, techniques, and power itself (Fals Borda, 1999). This perspective allows the generation of a holistic epistemology that conceives researchers and research subjects, not as experts and clients, but as sentient beings whose diverse points of view on cohabitation must be considered side by side in order to balance the production of conscious knowledge since reason is enriched with the feeling, so that the head and the heart work together to co-reason or feel-think (Fals Borda, 1999;Escobar, 2014).…”

Section: Closing Remarks and Conclusion: From Territoriality Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

Indigenous Territoriality: External Discourses and Native Perspectives on the Space Inhabited by Tegria’s U’wa Community

Gamba-Barón

Caguasango

Sánchez

2021

Rev. U.D.C.A Act. & Div. Cient.

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Tegria’s community is part of the U’wa indigenous people, who have inhabited the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy since the pre-Hispanic period, in the jurisdiction of the current municipality of Cubara in Boyaca (Colombia). However, this region known as Sarare has been described from anthropological, ethnohistorical, linguistical, and to a lesser extent, geographical approaches, which have generated representations of territory that ignore the historical process of indigenous people. To account for the present territoriality, it was proposed to contrast these external discourses with the community’s visions on its history of occupation and the transformations of the inhabited space, compiled through participatory methodologies that sought the collaborative construction of knowledge based on joint recognition of the place, the participant observation and the constant dialogue between indigenous and researchers. In this way, it was established that the external discourses show a territory that does not correspond to the processes of appropriation, adaptation, and reconfiguration of the space that the U’wa indigenous community has lived through and are evident in everyday settings such as the cultivation plot and the school. Therefore, it is only possible to recognize indigenous territoriality by exploring other alternatives, expressions, and perspectives that involve directly the communities and are not external to the context of the inquiry itself.

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Imagining Latin American Social Science from the Global South: Orlando Fals Borda and Participatory Action Research

Cited by 38 publications

References 14 publications

Emancipatory Methodologies: Knowledge Production and (Re)existence of the Misak People in Colombia

Emancipatory Methodologies: Knowledge Production and (Re)existence of the Misak People in Colombia

Best practices are never best: Evaluating primate conservation education programs (PCEPs) with a decolonial perspective

Indigenous Territoriality: External Discourses and Native Perspectives on the Space Inhabited by Tegria’s U’wa Community

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