RES PhD student Sameer Shah was recently awarded the prestigious Governor General’s Gold Medal at the Master’s level for UBC.
Sameer is also the recipient of the UBC Faculty of Science Graduate Prize. This award recognizes the science student whose record, in the opinion of the Faculty, is the best in the graduating class for a Master’s degree with a thesis.
Sameer graduated with a Master of Science in Resource Management and Environmental Studies in November 2015. He continues his PhD in the same program.
Daniel Klein is a PhD student with the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC.
As a 2015 Greenest City Scholar, he has worked with the City of Vancouver’s Park Board on new strategies for reducing potable water use in parks and golf courses by analyzing the city’s water data.
Between metaphor and practice: environmental governance and the decolonial option in the Peruvian Andes
Julian Yates
Abstract:
In this presentation I engage with debates on decolonizing structures of education and environmental governance. In the Peruvian Andes, government and non-government ‘technical extension’ programmes are designed to improve environmental management practices and enhance production techniques in rural communities. Increasingly at the centre of these programmes is a network of kamayoq: Indigenous, peer-to-peer practical educators engaged in projects of farmer-to-farmer knowledge extension on issues such as irrigation, animal husbandry, crop cultivation, etc. With kamayoq practices originating in pre-Hispanic Andean societies, the kamayoq farmer-to-farmer model has been cast as a “culturally appropriate” means to overcoming top-down and Western forms of technical training. However, kamayoq are increasingly being incorporated within the national development programmes of the Peruvian state, which assess kamayoq knowledge according to fixed indicators in order to incorporate this knowledge within a broader environmental governance framework focussed on enhancing rural productivity. I explore this state programme of certification, positioning the kamayoq in between two arguments. The first argument stresses that decolonial discourse cannot simply be grafted onto existing discourses and institutional structures, such as technical extension programmes. The second argument – voiced by Indigenous activists in the Andes – revolves around the Andean notion that (decolonizing) knowledge is practice. In this sense, reorganizing adult environmental education and training around the forms of learning-by-doing that kamayoq embody is decolonizing environmental governance frameworks.
Bio:
Julian is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability and a member of both the Environment, Development, Gender, Equity, and Sustainability (EDGES) research collective and the Program on Water Governance team. Julian’s work focuses on the intersection between the politics of knowledge, environmental justice, and social mobilisation for overcoming poverty and inequality. His current work explores the rollout of small-scale water filtration facilities among BC’s First Nations communities – an approach that gained political expediency due to the recently introduced Water Sustainability Act. This work will focus on the intersections between indigenous conceptions of water in nature, and techno-scientific approaches to delivering ‘clean water’ to First Nations communities. These intersections will be located within political-ecological debates and current contexts of pursuing autonomy and self-governance.
Juanita Sundberg: Associate Professor, Department of Geography at UBC
Please note: A significant portion of this seminar will be discussion based. Therefore, please come prepared with your thoughts, experiences, and questions regarding fieldwork with unknown communities. You are also invited to read Dr. Sundberg’s recent paper on this topic, which she will draw on in her presentation.
Abstract:
Fieldwork in communities framed as “different” and “distant” may spark various research questions along with many ethical dilemmas. Research ethics review boards tend to frame ethics as a set of guidelines to direct behavior towards research subjects. Especially in relation to fieldwork when the researcher is in direct contact with research subjects. In this framing, the primary goal of ethics is to minimize direct harm to research subjects while continuing to pursue research wherever, whenever, with whomever, and about whatever the researcher chooses. Ultimately, this conception of research ethics safeguards the researcher’s position of distance in relation to research subjects. And, home remains safely detached from the ethical dilemmas encountered in the field. In this seminar, I argue for a concept of ethics that shifts from being primarily about fieldwork to one that includes homework or the work one undertakes long before leaving for the field. Homework entails a self-reflexive analysis of one’s own epistemological and ontological assumptions; in other words, an examination of how these have been naturalized in academic practices in relation to the geopolitical and institutional power relations that constitute research. Shifting our focus from ethical behavior in the field to homework obliges us to take a much more explicit stance regarding the why, where, when, and how of our political agendas, research engagements, and practices.
Bio:
I bring the insights of feminist political ecology and the sensibilities of an ethnographer to bear on nature conservation, border security, and militarization. My work seeks to foster conversations between feminist geopolitics, critical race theory, posthumanism, political ecology, and Latin American Studies. My current project examines the environmental dimensions of United States’ border security policies in the United States-Mexico borderlands, with a specific focus on protected areas like national wildlife refuges.
Assessing States, Differentiating Citizens: Perspectives on water services and evolving state-society relations in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract:
This talk considers everyday assessments of state capacity, service quality and notions of citizen responsibility related to water access and governance across several underserved areas of Cape Town, South Africa and Accra, Ghana. Conceptually and methodologically, I argue that everyday citizen perspectives are key for a critical perspective on state building governance processes. Theoretically, the work speaks to broader interests related to differentiated and uneven services and infrastructures as key to both perceptions regarding the role or legitimacy of the state, as well as individuals’ own senses of responsibility as citizens. The analysis reveals a host of interesting insights related to these connections. Among them, that water quality and satisfaction are linked to trust in government in South Africa, but not to the same degree for Ghana. As well, although a number of indicators of water access and quality appear to be very good in South Africa, there is nonetheless deep contestation related to water services, ongoing senses of dis-enfranchisement, and an unequivocal sense that the government should be doing more. For Ghana, we see a complex portrait where access to and quality of water is important for people’s daily lives, but is perhaps less strongly connected to senses of government responsibility and legitimacy. These results cannot be read at face value, as derivative of service quality, but also must be read against other key features of history and context (most notably, the strong focus on equitable service delivery in the context of post-Apartheid South Africa). In addition to analysis of these questions based of a (2012) survey, the presentation will also address other insights and possibilities made possible through our use of participatory video to enrich the discussion. While emphasizing different themes, the arts-based qualitative aspects of the project highlight other important issues related to everyday lived dimensions of water access and quality, while also exploring insights related to citizen subjectivities, and possibilities for participatory water governance.
Trained as a political and socio-cultural geographer (PhD Minnesota), her work examines social, cultural and political-economic dimensions of environmental and resource issues, especially in developing contexts.
Primary Research Areas
Water politics and governance
Nature-society
Developmental and environmental issues in the Global South
Gender, ethnicity, and social difference
Environmental politics/ citizenship/ subjectivity
Nationalism, political ecologies of the state, and gendered citizenship
Turkey and Middle East
South Africa and Ghana
Critical cartography, protected areas, and more-than-human worlds
[Photo Credit: Julian S. Yates]
Please note: For the above video, the audio cuts off during the question & answer period at 41 minutes, 39 seconds.
