Situation: Situation

Earlier this week, we did an in-class activity that introduced us to examples of situated environmental research. Each student was asked to select a reading from a list created by our professor, Jim, and to become an ‘expert’ on it. Each reading on the list was an example of situated environmental research. Examples ranged from Daniel J. Redo, Mitchell T. Aide, and Matthew L. Clark’s “The Relative Importance of Socioeconomic and Environmental Variables in Explaining Land Change in Bolivia,” to Robert E. Wood’s “Caribbean Cruise Tourism: Globalization at Sea.”

The goal of this activity was yo familiarize ourselves (or, get situated, if you will) with examples of situated research, and to see what’s possible through the format. When we shared what we learned, it became apparent that the methods of situated environmental research are diverse. Surveys, participant observation, ground truthing, and collection of statistical or empirical data were all represented in the studies we read.

According to the L&C ENVS program’s webpage on situated research, “Situated research, in short, grounds interdisciplinary environmental research in a real-world context. It helps bring big, often abstract environmental issues down to earth, in a manner open to their full complexity while offering focus.” I think this is a really beautiful idea.

Getting situated in situated in situated environmental research in this way was an important first step in the lengthy process of our own situated research projects. I think the diversity of the topics represented in our class final projects can be attributed to differences in countries represented, but also to the activity we did in class that emphasized diversity in situated research.

My exposure to the examples of situated research directly contributed to my group’s ability to conceptualize our project. We are very excited to utilize the diverse and interdisciplinary methods of environmental analysis that are available to us.

The interdisciplinary nature of environmental studies is often obscured to people, and is missing in people’s conceptualizations of environmental analysis. Hopefully, as the members of LC’s ENVS program progress in their studies and in life, we will continue to find new, effective tools or methods of communication that we can use to expose people to the diversity of ENVS. There needs to space for everyone to engage in ENVS, and I believe its interdisciplinarity can accommodate for this.