Researcher Positionality in Participatory Action Research for Climate Justice in Indigenous Communities

Being Both Insider–Outsider

Cunliffe and Karunanayake’s first question, ‘is the researcher indigenous to the community being studied’ deems to be tricky. The three researchers’ answers to the question were no, they were not indigenous to the communities they study. In this sense, they are outsiders. At the same time, they are insiders because they are originally from Tanzania, Brazil and Fiji in which they conduct PAR. Theoretically, they share the same hyphen-spaces of being both insider and outsider.

However, their sense of insiderness appeared stronger in the interviews, when they described their ‘ongoing’ roles in the communities through the PAR projects and previous projects. Researcher A’s team has been in the communities since 2019:

We have… contributed to addressing climate change…. So developed a close relationship with them…. We express our appreciation to them, and we support you [them] on your [their] own terms. After two months, the Climate-U opportunity came on. We could do some intervention together on climate adaptation…. This kind of trust and appreciation is important (Researcher A).

Researcher B prioritises ‘indigenous identity’ in considering his positionality:

The important thing is their [indigenous people’s] culture and bringing their awareness of their own rights. Our way of research is living with indigenous people, dialoguing with them, interacting with them, going to their territories, staying with them, doing jobs together. In this process, we register, record, write the memories, important to understand their education, work, culture, political relationship, organising daily life (Researcher B (translator)).

For Researcher C, learning by doing with communities has been her ethnography:

[I use] action research approach – observation, imitation, practice. Important for me to immerse myself as part of what they are doing. People want to see me doing. This is how we wanted it to be done. I will have to be able to learn. How we do it and do it together. If I don’t do it, I don’t become part of it, part of them. I will be seen as an outsider (Researcher C).

Trust was built, and the researchers felt ‘at home’ spending time in the communities. The interviews, however, revealed the researchers’ positions concerning the communities being studied are more complicated than what Cunliffe and Karunanayake’s question addresses.

This will be explored further in the following variation section.

Sameness as Co-Learners – Difference as an Obstacle

All researchers referred to being the same as the research participants as being co-learners and co-researchers in their PAR projects. Particularly at the beginning of the PAR, researchers’ attitudes were critical:

[From] the beginning, we [researchers] were clear, we were not there to tell them [community members] what to do. We are there to learn from them to help address the issue. If we don’t, they will see us as outsiders and won’t cooperate. We give them the voice, and they take the ownership. They are benefiting from them [the PAR] (Researcher C).

Such ‘mutual relationship’ had to be developed consciously being as ‘learners and doubters’ as Researcher A explained:

Researchers are there to learn about the community…. Knowing what they [community members] know and do, we support them what they can do removing hindrances…. We value what they do…. they are co-researchers (Researcher A).

As co-researchers, a partnership has been developed in the PAR group. When the team reported the findings, for example, the whole partnership got involved. For Researcher B, sameness is achieved through living together with peasants, fishers and other indigenous people:

Our way of research is that all cultures, identities, knowledge are incomplete. They complete themselves in relation with ‘others’. We aren’t separate, we are integrated. Power relationship transform others’ invisible identity, culture and knowledge. Impossible to be neutral in research (Researcher B).

As demonstrated by Cunliffe and Karunanayake (2013), certain differences between the researchers and the participants often hinder trust relationships and partnerships within PAR. As an indigenous researcher, Researcher C is highly aware of the significance of knowing the specific culture and protocol in each indigenous community. If she does not follow them, ‘they will kick you out!’

In Fijian culture, it is important to understand taboo relationships. In those instances, there are protocols to follow, that has to go through someone else. I am mindful of the relationships with them to get that rapport (Researcher C).

In the case of Researcher B, he recognised that a political difference might have obstructed the building of a relationship. The indigenous people were already politically engaged in defending their own territory threatened by construction companies to produce mineral and plant palm trees:

The indigenous people were already very aware of the problem, and we came to add climate change factors. Not all of them weren’t able to understand climate change scientifically…. Every time we go, there were different indigenous people…not the same people came twice. Probably religious leaders were right-wing; researchers were left-wing (Researcher B (translator)).

Political and religious differences could be challenging to overcome in PAR.

In-Depth Engagement – Conscious Distancing

One of the robust commonalities found among the three researchers’ positionalities is in the hyphen-spaces of engagement–distance. This was no surprise given that PAR as a methodology tends to be intersubjective involving both researchers and research participants in shaping the whole of the research project (Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013; Fine & Sirin, 2007). The researchers were ‘engaged with participants in their activities’ with a high degree of emotional involvement. Their participants played an integral part in ‘generating knowledge’, and many ‘elements of the research created between researcher-respondent’. Every researcher spent substantial time in the interview explicating why engagement is important and how they engage with community members.

Researcher A stressed that ‘communities are at the centre stage’ because ‘the whole purpose is to generate the evidence to inform back to the communities to continue social dialogue’.

The communities were over-researched, but no feedback. Usually, researchers collected data and left, but we shared our findings and invited them to create the proposal together…. [Through] culturally sensitive climate interventions…what we are trying to do is to be critical and support them (Researcher A).

Researcher C also mentioned that community members needed to know she was not there to simply study them: ‘They have to see I am genuine. Unless I am emotionally involved, it won’t show my passions, I cannot influence.’ She referred to ‘bi-directional learning’ as the key to community engagement.

By listening to them, not dictating to them, understanding their issues, as well as understanding how they have been addressed, what’s best. The key is being able to listen to them, with an open mind – bi-directional learning (Researcher C).

Her PAR partners held a discussion meeting at the beginning of the project to address gaps.

We can work together [to figure out] what is best. They know their community better than us. The project is all about them. Participants get to benefit from their actions. Solesolevaki [a traditional principle of working together for the common good] – the term we use as a principle bottom-line of PAR (Researcher C).

For Researcher B, ‘our philosophy is to bring their [indigenous people’s] perspectives and voices [to us]’.

We try to understand their ways of life… through dialogue, participation and integration. We are also forming themselves in ourselves… we learn from them traditional knowledge, the way they are constructing their territoriality with the relationship with the nature (Researcher B).

Hence, ‘living with them’ is critical in co-generating knowledge.

I don’t believe research without interacting with them…. We aren’t there only to investigate their life; we are there to live with them. In this interaction, we learn about them, and we also teach them in a broad way to live together, sharing our meaning and understanding (Researcher B).

As a means of communication and engagement, ‘dialogue’ was emphasised by all researchers. Researcher B put it succinctly: ‘The dialogue is the principle of the relationship. There isn’t a collaboration without a dialogue.’ The continuity of dialogue was also stressed, as Researcher A indicated: ‘We want to develop community members’ based-on way of thinking and knowing and systematise them so that we could promote dialogue.’ In the field where co-generation between researchers and participants is intended, dialogue rather than interview or observation should occur. Dialogue helps both parties to question conventional perspectives and develop fresh ideas to enable positive change (Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013).

When researchers are engaged in communities’ agendas and involved emotionally, they are also aware of a need to be distanced themselves because ‘they could affect the quality of data’, as Researcher C indicated:

When you are immersed, you get to feel what they feel. For example, if someone dies in the village, as guests, we [researchers] have to still participate in their mourning. At the back of our minds, we research, although with great respect. Respect is very important (Researcher C).

Distancing themselves as researchers is also significant in co-generating knowledge. In Researcher B’s (translator) view, researchers ‘have to say something’ in the process of knowledge generation by interpreting and analysing findings.

In the hyphen-spaces of engagement and distance, the researchers’ positionalities are clearly oriented towards engagement, even though there are moments when they create distances to fulfil researcher responsibilities.

Taking Action Aiming for Social Change

Another commonality can be found in the hyphen-spaces of activism–neutrality, in which the three researchers were involved in communities’ agendas and acted on them for improvement. Cunliffe and Karunanayake (2013, p. 384) imply it is usual in PAR that researchers and research participants share ‘an explicit agenda for social…change’ and work together ‘in a hyphen-space of full engagement and political activism’. This position was demonstrated in Researcher B’s comment, ‘impossible to be neutral in research’. The researchers’ interventions in the communities are to play an active role in the struggles of the communities aiming for positive change.

For Researcher A, advocacy and activism comprise important aspects of his research.

I advocate focusing on how to use empirical research to develop ethics, showing how that could be possible and to say it is possible. I…pay attention to culture and how it hinders or contributes to climate change…. I can also do some activism trying to draw attention to policy-makers, trying to change things. Not necessarily policy-makers but communities of science for different ways of thinking…. We are all responsible (Researcher A).

Researcher B clearly states that ‘we are researchers and political activists’.

We engage in social movements. We are built in together. University people don’t just teach but engage with society, in a justice way, so that we can better live in the world. To transform relationships because the power is from anthropocentric, colonial, gender, race and complex (Researcher B).

He went on to describe such complexity in the context of Amazon where external interests proliferate to exploit lands and resources. His PAR is therefore part of their broader activism against the ‘movement of colonisation, by own people…. We are the defender of human rights. They with us, us and them…to change the hegemonic relationship we face.’

The ideology of city knowing better than rural. Peasants should move away from rural to the city to have a better life. We try to challenge this. We try to bring awareness of their own values…. We don’t become the voice of them. We work with them to empower them (Researcher B (translator)).

Researcher C also highlights the ‘reciprocal’ nature of the relationship with her indigenous community: ‘Participants give me what I won’t take for granted…. I will protect whatever information they gave me not to cause tension or conflicts but to bring about benefits’. However, one variation concerning the activism dimension is that Researcher C does not consider her research activism and herself as an activist. This point will be discussed further in the following section.

Insiderness, Sameness and Indigeneity

An earlier discussion referred to all three researchers as outsiders applying one of Cunliffe and Karunanayake’s criteria of insiderness–outsiderness – whether the researcher is indigenous to the community being studied. Two distinctions can be identified. First, Researchers A and B preferred not to use the notions of insider–outsider in describing their positionalities. They are from cities but study indigenous communities. As they have been working with the communities for many years, they might not see the point of identifying themselves as insiders or outsiders. Researcher C, on the other hand, uses the terms frequently.

Where I am in my community [being studied], I am both an insider and an outsider. I can consider myself an insider, but there are outsider aspects too…. When I go to other communities, I am an outsider to them. But insider in a sense I understand certain protocols and cultures (Researcher C).

What this comment refers to is the fluid nature of researcher identity. Because of that, some researchers may consider identifying themselves with the insiderness–outsiderness category less significant.

Second, indigeneity is multi-dimensional, which separates Researcher C from Researcher A and B. Researchers A and B were clear they were not indigenous researchers, whereas Research C referred to herself as ‘an indigenous researcher’, even though she is not indigenous to the community of the Climate-U PAR. This distinction may influence the researchers’ processes of integrating themselves into the communities, and the community members’ perceptions of the researchers being ‘one-of-us’. It appears that Researcher C already possesses many samenesses with the community being studied given certain ‘cultures and protocols’ are similar across indigenous communities in Fiji, as she explained. The indigeneity of Researcher C may make her more insider to the community she studies, compared with Researcher A and B who are from cities.

Endorsement and Reluctance of Activism

Researchers who choose PAR as a methodology are bound to be on the politically active end because they are ‘involved in the agendas of respondents’ with an understanding of ‘the struggles of respondents’. Together, they aim to enable ‘social change’ through a ‘thick’ form of participation that PAR allows (Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013, p. 372). As discussed earlier, the three researchers’ hyphen-spaces of activism–neutrality is oriented towards activism – their PAR projects aim for social betterment through co-learning. The variation here is whether the researchers regard themselves as ‘activists’ or not. Researchers A and B did, while Researcher C did not because

I don’t like the word ‘activist’ because you are forcing people – very radical, aggressive. We cannot bring change with aggression…. Any of my colleagues never use ‘activism’. It’s a foreign concept. You can hardly see people protesting (Researcher C).

Being an indigenous researcher seems to explain Researcher C’s reluctance against the concept of activism.

One thing [Fijian] communities avoid is confrontation. You have to know your place. Our relationships are very important. If what you [researchers] bring is not comfortable, they [community members] can kick you out. They can kick you out by not attending because Fijian are not confrontational, they are better not accepting you to ignoring. That’s why being an insider is important, otherwise you don’t understand the politics. We use soft power to agenda in (Researcher C).

Instead of being an ‘activist’, Research C prefers being an ‘educator’. Non-confrontational culture and the importance of ‘soft power’ in Fiji seem to have contributed to the building of Researcher C’s unique positionality concerning activism.

Engagement and Activism Methodologies

Earlier, full engagement and political activism were highlighted as commonalities. How the researchers pursue them varies. They passionately spoke about other methodologies for engagement and activism besides the overarching methodological framework of PAR. Researcher A emphasised the importance of the Ethics of Collaboration, which is for him an operational tool for Empirical Development Ethics Research. He draws on Dower’s (2008) interpretation of ‘development ethics’.

What development ethics consists of is looking at the values and norms involved in development, often comparing different approaches and seeking a justification for what seems the right approach (Dower, 2008, p. 184).

Researchers such as Christen & Alfano, (2014) argue for empirical approaches to development ethics proposing generating empirical data relevant to ethical theorising. To execute such Empirical Development Ethics Research, one of the means for Researcher A is the Ethics of Collaboration, which is

a good way of how to go about [undertaking PAR]…. You know the responsibility, distribution of resources…. I strengthen upfront Ethics of Collaboration, for example, to design the mechanism and product of the critical engagement with the PAR members (Researcher A).

Researcher A explains to the PAR members, ‘“This is what will guide us.” If an ethical analysis could be a threat to collaboration, we develop strategies to mitigate them…we talk about it and decide.’

Researcher B combines the Pedagogy of Alternance with PAR. Originating in France, the Pedagogy of Alternance has widely been deployed in Brazil. It is ‘an educational model founded in a rural context in order to guarantee…children a proper education whilst…preserving their local ties, where they keep working along with their families’ (Rubin, 2021).

In the social movement of peasants, we use the Pedagogy of Alternance in their territory as a praxis to recognise different times, spaces and knowledge, which can be used as an educative research intervention dimension…. When researching them, living with them, doing some activities, in the space that they live and where they have their culture (Researcher B).

Pedagogy of Alternance is useful in his PAR and in his dialogue research as a ‘constructivist’ perspective.

[It is a] strategy of the way we research indigenous people in Amazon, fishermen and peasants living in the forest…. We organise the research to put everyone together at different times, different spaces and different knowledge. We try to do everything together, not ‘now it’s time to research…’. You need to plan with the people…. We always research in their territory…. They continue to extend the research to other times, to recognise not just scientific knowledge but indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge, cultural practice as legitimate knowledge (Researcher B).

Researcher B goes on to describe the contribution of the pedagogical model.

Pedagogy of Alternance articulates education dimensions with work, production and territory dimensions. Difference between city territories and rural territories and hierarchical power relationships. City works against rural. All fundings and political problems are active in city territories. This motivates or forces rural people to move to cities. Our social movement is to strengthen rural territories…. The city only exists because of rural territories (Researcher B).

As an indigenous researcher, the foundation of Researcher C’s research is the Fijian Vanua Research Framework, an indigenous methodology originally developed by Nabobo-Baba (2008). ‘Vanua’ means

universal whole, which is inclusive of a chief or related chiefs, their people and their relationships, their land, spiritualities, knowledge systems, cultures and values…. The philosophy behind Vanua Framing is one of the interconnectedness of people to their land, environment, cultures, relationships, spirit world, beliefs, knowledge systems, values and God(s) (Nabobo-Baba, 2008, p. 143).

The Vanua represents the Fijian identity. Nabobo-Baba (2008) argued that Fijian research should be underpinned by Vanua identities and cultures. This approach is shared with Researcher C.

Vanua is most important…. I just want them [indigenous communities] to look after their environment and have a sustainable way of life. Not only for them but for their children…. We should go back to the ways we used to do things, what is best for us. Climate change is added stress, nothing new. It’s been happening. Our forefathers were able to focus, adapt, mitigate. This knowledge our children don’t know (Researcher C).

Drawing on the Fijian Vanua Research Framework, Researcher C created a practical tool called the Community Engagement Protocol in Climate-U. It outlines the procedure researchers must follow in requesting cooperation from indigenous communities in Fiji.

We have a saying, ‘cock crows in my village, the next village cannot hear it’. People in other villages won’t listen to me. Indigenous researchers have to understand their little things. You don’t overstep your boundaries. Need to trade carefully. The Engagement Protocol is very important (Researcher C).

Vanua then determines data collection methods: ‘It’s important to use methods that suit them. Interviews they aren’t used to, so focus group. Drawing instead of writing…. Learning is through observing, imitating’ (Researcher C).

By applying Cunliffe and Karunanayake’s four hyphen-spaces as a framework for analysis, this paper was able to highlight the commonalities and variations among three Climate-U researchers’ positionalities. Some aspects of commonalities and variations are more evident than others. The final part of the paper delves into four particular aspects that concern PAR.