Challenges and Benefits of Community-Based Participatory Research for Environmental Justice: A Case of Collaboratively Examining Ecocultural Struggles

Abstract

This essay features critical reflections on a process of generative community-based participatory research (CBPR) in which communication researchers collaborated with environmental organizations, cultural advocacy groups, and community participants to identify better ways of addressing ecocultural struggles. In response to Depoe's call to promote scholar–practitioner interactions, the authors make explicit challenges and benefits implicated in employing a CBPR process to promote environmental justice. This critical reflective analysis centers on three key issues related to engaging in CBPR-oriented praxis-based research. The findings challenge the researcher's role as the initiator of a community-university collaborative project, broaden the notion of community in CBPR, and promote multiple analytical perspectives that can speak to diverse partner-stakeholders. The authors conclude with a conceptualization of how CBPR can aid in promoting environmental justice as both a goal and a process and offer practical recommendations.

Keywords:

• Community-Based Participatory Research
• Environmental Justice
• Nuevo Mexicano/a
• Applied Research Collaboration

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Michelle Otero, who created and facilitated the creative writing workshops (originally as staff of The Wilderness Society), Javier Benavidez who originally pursued this collaborative project as outreach coordinator with Conservation Voters of New Mexico, Jacobo Martinez who collaborated as director of the UNM Resource Center for Raza Planning, and Henry Rael who provided ongoing encouragement as director of Arts de Aztlan. We also would like to thank the rest of the tireless research team, including Elizabeth Dickinson, Iliana De Larkin, Sara McKinnon, Antonio Sandoval, Genesis Hernandez, George Rincon, and Ana Luisa Aldrete.

Notes

1. In this paper, we use the term Nuevo Mexicano/a to refer to our study's community participants. There are other available signifiers, including but not limited to: Hispanic, Chicano/a, Hispano/a, Mexican/Mexicano, Mexican American, Spanish-American, and Latino/a. We are mindful of the differences in the variety of ethnic self-identifying labels, and that the very words chosen can carry numerous cultural meanings and ideological implications. Our participants’ preference is largely “Hispanic,” which privileges “New Mexicans that prefer to identify as Hispanic or Hispano because of 400 years of distinctive Mexican and/or direct Spanish settlement and history” (Rinderle, 2005, p. 306). The signifier Hispano/Hispanic is widely used in New Mexico and other parts of colonized territories in the Southwest (Acuña, 2008) and recognizes regionally unique historical and contemporary contexts. The term “Hispanic,” however, has also been widely critiqued. Latino/a has often been adopted as the preferred pan-ethnic label, a signifier primarily utilized by scholars as it refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin and is seen as a more politically conscious label (Rinderle, 2005). We choose the term “Nuevo Mexicano/a” for it is descriptive, specific to communities in our study, and also used by many in these communities.

2. We use the term ecoculture to represent and constitute a heuristic framework for understanding discursively and materially integrated human–nature relations (Milstein et al., 2011). This ontological and epistemological move is an attempt to bypass terminology and frameworks in scholarship that can reproduce the very human–nature (and culture–nature) binaries such studies attempt to overcome. In symbolically combining the interrelated and interdependent systems of ecology and culture, we equally hope to indicate communication's mediating force within and between these systems and to highlight within nature human expressive co-existence (e.g., Carbaugh, 2007; Milstein, 2009). We forego a hyphen in ecoculture to further emphasize reciprocity and inseparability.

3. New Mexico has the proportionately highest Latino/a population of any state, with Latino/as making up 44.9% of the population. The second largest population group in New Mexico is non-Latino/a White at 41.7%, and the third is Native Americans at 9.7% (US Census Bureau, 2008). New Mexicans often speak of a “tri-culture state,” comprising mostly Latino/as, Native Americans, and non-Latino/a Whites.

4. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the US-Mexican War and led to the compulsory absorption of almost one-half of Mexico's territory. Examples of the ways in which environmental law are racialized go back to the US v. Sandoval decision in 1890s that rejected Latino/a community forms of property after the US colonized the Southwest area (Peña, 2005, p. 132).

5. Acequia systems are a traditional form of community shared ditch-based irrigation, which in some parts of New Mexico are very much alive and struggling to stay that way in the face of privatized development interests. Readers who saw John Nichol's Milagro Beanfield War will have an initial familiarity with some of the area acequia water struggles (Milstein et al., 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yea-Wen Chen

Yea-Wen Chen is an Assistant Professor at Ohio University

Tema Milstein

Tema Milstein is an Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico

Claudia Anguiano

Claudia Anguiano is a Lecturer at Dartmouth College

Jennifer Sandoval

Jennifer Sandoval is an Assistant Professor at Central Florida University

Lissa Knudsen

Lissa Knudsen is a doctoral student at University of New Mexico