Welcome back to campus, Aztecs! As the Digital Humanities Center looks forward to another busy fall semester we are excited to highlight an exciting ongoing digital humanities project - Emergent Ecologies: Living with Environmental Change in Brazil.
An initiative of the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University, Emergent Ecologies utilizes ethnography to capture how climate change is impacting traditional communities and people living in low-income urban neighborhoods in Brazil -- especially those who work as fishers. This work contributes to larger conversations on perseverance and innovative climate solutions.
The project's online platform, which is available in both Portuguese and English, features gorgeous photography, critical environmental research, and video interviews. Much of the project centers on artisanal fishers and women fishers, who are especially marginalized.
To learn more about Emergent Ecologies and its goals, the DH Center interviewed Erika Robb Larkins, SDSU Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies.
DH: What inspired the launch of the Emergent Ecologies initiative?
Larkins: The decision to represent research data in this format was driven by several factors. First, all of the researchers on the team were committed to producing something that could be understood, accessed, and used by the population of fishers that collaborated with us on the project. Many people gave their time to patiently teach us about their lives and work. We felt an obligation to consider how our research could be transformative or in solidarity with their struggles. One of the first things that we heard when we initially approached communities about participating was that it was typical for researchers to come, collect data, and then disappear. Or for researchers to only publish things behind paywalls or in languages or academic-speak that were not accessible to them. We wanted to do things differently. So from the start, the initiative was about addressing shortcomings in the research enterprise and with the way in which local communities experience being the subject of academic research.
Furthermore, and this is related, when we first started the project, we heard from so many people, especially the women, that they felt invisible. We wanted our research to contribute to transforming those feelings of invisibility. We wanted to elevate and call attention to the very real struggles (and victories) of traditional fishing communities, who are facing a whole host of environmental, social, and economic challenges.
Lastly, the research team was committed to making something visual and narrative. I think that all of us have become a bit numb to charts and statistics about the climate catastrophe. But people’s stories have the ability to impact us. They motivate. They can move us in different ways.
DH: What are the initiative’s primary goals and objectives?
Larkins: I touched on a little bit of this in the previous question but the initiative is focused on the following questions: How do environmental changes affect those living in rural and urban communities in Brazil? How do people living on the low-income outskirts of cities or in traditional communities experience the impacts of climate change in their everyday lives? How are gentrification and land speculation changing vulnerable communities long-standing access to natural resources? How are large infrastructure projects— hydropower plants, mines, and ports– altering landscapes and compounding environmental change? How do issues of race and gender shape environmental justice? What solutions have local communities found to mitigate and resist environmental changes? The initiative adopts ethnography as both a research methodology and a form of engagement that allows us to address issues related to environmental problems in collaboration with communities whose ways of life are undergoing significant transformation.
DH: How does the initiative connect and collaborate with traditional communities and residents of low-income urban neighborhoods in Brazil?
Larkins: Researchers from various fields of knowledge have shown that climate change has an unequal impact on different social groups. Traditional communities and residents of low-income urban neighborhoods establish particular relationships with the environment, including with animals, water, forest and air. Consequently, these communities have a deep understanding of the patterns, flows, and disruptions that occur in the environments in which they live. These communities are more severely affected by climate change, but at the same time, they are well placed to play a critical and creative role in shaping emerging ecologies. Working equitably with them not only gives us a concrete understanding of the impacts of environmental change, but also elevates awareness of solutions devised by those most directly impacted by environmental change.
DH: Who are “artisanal fishers” and why does the initiative place such great emphasis on researching their practices and changing lifestyles?
Larkins: Artisanal fishers are small-scale fishers who typically use low impact, environmentally-conscious techniques. Many of those we worked with, especially the women in Bahia, fish more for subsistence to feed their families than to sell their catch. Our research with them was developed in collaboration with Oceana, a global non-profit organization which works on ocean conservation and protection. Many of their initiatives in Brazil, which has one of the largest coastlines in the world, have focused on protecting the rights of small-scale fishers, who are consistently threatened by large commercial fishing enterprises and by environmental degradation, which has damaged habitats and led to declining species populations.
DH: Can you speak to how and why the initiative intentionally supports and researches women fishers?
Larkins: I mentioned earlier that women feel especially invisible in fishing. Even the word in English, “fisherman,” invisibilizes their presence and participation. That said, there has been a changing conception of fishing labor from just that which is done on boats or in deep water. It now includes more types of fishing, such as shellfish gathering or mangrove crabbing, the cleaning of fish, processing a catch for sale, cooking, or taking fish to market. In Bahia, much of this extremely hard and critical land-based work is actually performed by women. So it was an objective of ours to focus on women’s contributions in order to address their desire to be included as participants in the fishing world. In the coming year, we are working on a new element of the project which looks specifically at the connection between women’s empowerment and the creation of environmentally protected coastal reserves. So stay tuned for more on that!
DH: Are there upcoming opportunities for SDSU students or faculty to get involved with the Emergent Ecologies initiative?
Larkins: [In June 2024], some of the members of the research team [led] an undergraduate ethnographic field school in the Imperial Valley. The research initiative, undertaken with SDSU-V students, will explore how people from different social classes cope with extreme heat. Later in the year, with funding from the National Science Foundation, some of these same students will go to Rio to conduct fieldwork on heat in low-income communities. The outcomes of this work will be published on the site
We encourage all faculty working on related projects in Brazil to reach out about the possibility of featuring their work on the site.
To learn more and view the Emergent Ecologies website visit www.emergentecologies.net
