The Challenges of Symmetrical Dialogue: Reflections on Collaborative Research in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

This article explores ways to promote symmetrical dialogue among knowledge-practices of artisanal fishing communities, primary education teachers, and academic researchers in the state of Bahia, Brazil. We describe multiple engagements in an inter- and transdisciplinary project that integrates research, educational, and conservation activities in two communities living in an estuarine ecosystem. Most community members dedicate their efforts to fishing activities, harboring wide knowledge about local biocultural diversity. The project promotes collaborative inclusion of local expertise and knowledge in school activities, while also striving for the inhabitants’ inclusion in the planning of protected areas. The collaboration aims at symmetrical dialogues between researchers and communities that support self-determination in local school education and biodiversity conservation. Challenges to such symmetrization, including disagreements and tensions among diverse actors, not only appear in encounters of local and academic knowledge, but also within the interdisciplinary project involving natural sciences, social sciences, and philosophy.

Pluralist Ethnobiology: Between Philosophical Reflection and Transdisciplinary Action

“…This multiplicity is reflected in a multidisciplinary identity in ethnobiology, which employs diverse methods from both natural and social sciences, such as archaeology, biological systematics, cognitive psychology, cultural anthropology, human geography, and plant genetics. As ethnobiologists have highlighted rapid environmental change (Wyndham, Lepofsky and Tiffany 2011;Wolverton 2013) and decolonization (McAlvay et al 2021) as focal points of new phases of ethnobiology, the methodological diversity of the field has been further growing through normative projects such as action ethnobiology (Armstrong and McAlvay 2019) and transdisciplinary research (Athayde, Stepp and Ballester 2016;Bollettin, El-Hani and Ludwig 2023). Contemporary ethnobiology therefore focuses not only on the study of human and natural systems but also on interventions in areas such as environmental justice, conservation policy, agroecology, biocultural heritage, Indigenous rights, land conflicts, food security, and food sovereignty (Vandebroek et al 2020;Renck et al 2023).…”