11:30 - 12:00

Kendra McSweeney -- "The challenge of 'giving back' to research collaborators"

Abstract:

       One of the more daunting responsibilities of conducting fieldwork among highly disadvantaged peoples is the challenge to find meaningful ways to 'give back'. The trick here is to both formally acknowledge collaborators' help, and to contribute concretely to individuals' and/or communities' self-defined goals. By relating my attempts to 'give back' to indigenous collaborators in Honduras and Ecuador, I explore the complexities and unintended consequences of 'giving back'. Ultimately, the lesson is that attempts to balance what are effectively uneven research relationships will always be partial, problematic, and ongoing. I conclude by discussing ways for researchers to think about and negotiate this aspect of fieldwork without falling into the unproductive trap of 'researcher guilt.'

About Kendra McSweeney:

I am a human-environment geographer with interests in cultural ecology, conservation and development, demography, and land use/cover change. Recent work falls in three broad areas: forests and livelihoods, smallholder response to rapid environmental change, indigenous population dynamics. I am interested in how people who live within extremely dynamic landscapes respond to, and shape, environmental change (discursively, economically, or indirectly through demographic behaviors). I have explored these issues primarily in indigenous communities in Honduras and the Ecuadorian Amazon, using ethnography, household surveys, focus groups, archival research, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and visual methodologies to construct qualitative and quantitative data.