The Ethics of Participation in Environmental Field Research: Inclusion, Collaboration, and Transformation (1) (Research and Teaching in Environmental Studies)

Synopsis

Local participation is increasingly seen as a central and ethical part of environmental research. As such, many environmental efforts are becoming increasingly participatory. Participation, as a string of literature has shown, has many political, economic, social, and epistemic consequences, and ethics is fluid, polyvalent, and contextual. 'Right is right, wrong is wrong' is dangerous rhetoric that centres western experiences and forecloses the myriad realities and relations bundled within and forced upon marginalised experiences. Both participation and ethics – as concepts and praxis – cast decades-long shadows over field research (particularly in anthropology), yet much of these discussions are left at the threshold of interdisciplinary spaces, where participation, traditional and Indigenous knowledge, and co-production are brought in to sanitise and legitimise environmental actions. Where are our lessons learned and what ought we to make of their absence? The first half of this volume offers ethnographic examples that allow us to begin to ask whether participation (in the capitalist machinery and colonial legacies of academic knowledge) is ever even ethical. The second half of the book is dedicated to anti-solutions: refusals to define problems and approaches in fixed, closed terms from which equations, calculations, and solutions can be derived.This book provokes important new discussions about ethical participation in environmental field research by bringing to the fore the fluid nature of both ethics and participation. The volume aims to provide critical intervention for students and researchers across natural and social sciences whose fieldwork includes engagement with local communities and stakeholders, as well as conservation policymakers and practitioners who consult and work with local communities.

Copyright:

2026

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

260 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781040400050

Related ISBNs:

9781040400012, 9781032343778, 9781032343754, 9781003321804

Publisher:

Taylor & Francis

Date of Addition:

07/28/25

Copyrighted By:

selection and editorial matter, Lydia Gibson and Julia Sauma individual chapters, the contributors

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Science, Outdoors and Nature, Social Studies, Earth Sciences

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Lydia Gibson

Edited by:

Julia Sauma