Field Notes

Creative counter-discourses to the “green city” narrative: practices of small-scale urban agriculture in Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract: As a central component of the “green city” narrative, urban agriculture is gaining importance in urban planning and global sustainability agendas. In Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, the “green city” is core to the state’s urbanisation agenda, with a green corridor envisioned as part of the city’s Master Plan for 2030. We investigate the patterns and processes of small-scale urban agriculture underway in this green corridor to better understand whether this type of agriculture actually intersects with, and is supported by, state plans. We frame our paper in conceptual debates around food safety and everyday governance, while supporting our analysis with data from interviews with resident gardeners and officials, as well as the mapping of urban gardens in seven wards in and alongside the green corridor. We pay attention to practices and motivations of residents who maintain small-scale vegetable and fruit plots (the most prevalent form of urban agriculture), and the challenges and constraints they face. Our work reveals the temporary and interim status of urban agriculture in Hanoi, highlighting the contradictions within Vietnam’s “green city” discourse. Nonetheless, urban residents still undertake urban agriculture, negotiating or compromising with state officials, to meet their demands for fresh and safe food.

The full article can be read here.

Check out our new publication in a special issue of Canadian Journal of Public Health about qualitative research in the 2017 Nunavik Inuit health survey. Our paper is called: Epistemic inclusion in the Qanuilirpitaa? Nunavik Inuit health survey: developing an Inuit model and determinants of health and well-being.

Objective :At the request of Nunavik Inuit health authorities and organizations, the Qanuilirpitaa? 2017 Nunavik regional health survey included an innovative “community component” alongside youth and adult epidemiological cohort studies. The community component objective was to identify and describe community and culturally relevant concepts and processes that lead to health and well-being.

Methods: A qualitative, community-based research process involving workshops and semi-structured interviews was used to generate a corpus of data on health concepts and processes specific to Inuit communities in Nunavik. Thematic analysis and repeated community validation allowed for the identification of three key dimensions of health salient to Inuit experience and eight community-level health determinants.

Results: The health model consists of three linked concepts: ilusirsusiarniq, qanuinngisiarniq, and inuuqatigiitsianiq, which reflect distinct dimensions of Inuit health phenomenology. The determinants community, family, identity, food, land, knowledge, economy, and services were generated through analysis and reflect community-level sources of health and well-being.

Conclusion: The development of the culturally grounded health models and determinants is an exercise of epistemic inclusivity through which researchers and Indigenous communities may form new and equitable paths of knowledge creation.

The full text can be found here.

Just launched! The Kuching Gardens project website is live. This is a collaborative project between McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, or UNIMAS (Kuching, Malaysia). The project aims to examine the realities and possibilities of urban agriculture for Kuching, which is the capital of Sarawak in East Malaysia (on Borneo). Specifically:

• Where is urban agriculture happening?
• Why are people growing their own food?
• Who is benefitting from urban gardening and who is left out?
• What are the challenges and barriers to growing food in Kuching?
• How are policies enabling or restricting urban gardens, and what can be done better?

Check out the site, here.

I was recently invited to write a popular article for the Stories Section of the GenderAquaFish website, which is supported by the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society. My article outlines resistance to marine conservation policies along lines of ethnicity, class and gender in the Wakatobi National Park in Indonesia, and is based on research recently published in Gender, Place & Culture.

Read the popular article here.

Read the peer-reviewed article here.

AAG 2022 Call for Panelists

Teaching Qualitative Methods in Geography

Virtual Panel Session

How can we best prepare the new generation of geographers to undertake qualitative research?

Qualitative methods in geography have increasingly gained recognition since the 1980s. As such, dedicated qualitative research courses have become more and more common in geography departments. However, several departments still do not have structured or systematic ways of teaching qualitative methods to students at both graduate and undergraduate levels. We wish to contribute to ongoing discussions about best practices, innovative approaches, and challenges to teaching qualitative methods in geography in various contexts. 

In this panel session, we seek to explore the following topics, among others: 

• Innovative pedagogical approaches to teaching qualitative methods 
• Challenges to teaching qualitative methods, particularly in quantitative-focused departments and/or during the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Benefits and barriers to teaching through experiential learning 
• Teaching on differing epistemological foundations underlying qualitative research 

Interested participants are encouraged to email a brief statement of interest to Melody Lynch (melody.lynch@mail.mcgill.ca) and Nino Antadze (nantadze@upei.ca) by November 1st. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. 

This session is organized by the Qualitative Research Specialty Group.

References:

Deborah G. Martin (2010). Reflections on teaching qualitative methods in geography, pp. 406-417. In: D. DeLyser, S. Herbert, S. Aitken, M. Crang and L. McDowell (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of qualitative geography. SAGE Publications Ltd. 

Dydia Delyser (2008) Teaching Qualitative Research, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32:2, 233-244, DOI: 10.1080/03098260701514074. 

Dydia DeLyser , Amy E. Potter, James Chaney, Stephanie Crider, Ian Debnam, Gentry Hanks, Corey David Hotard, E. Arnold Modlin, Martin Pfeiffer & Jörn Seemann (2013) Teaching Qualitative Research: Experiential Learning in Group-Based Interviews and Coding Assignments, Journal of Geography, 112:1, 18-28, DOI: 10.1080/00221341.2012.674546

Michelle S. Lowe (1992) Safety in numbers? How to teach qualitative geography?, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 16:2, 171-175, DOI: 10.1080/03098269208709191.

Steve Pile (1992) Oral history and teaching qualitative methods, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 16:2, 135-143, DOI: 10.1080/03098269208709186.

In 2017, I travelled on board the CCGS research icebreaker Amundsen to carry out data collection in each of the 14 communities of Nunavik as part of the largest regional Inuit health survey. The recently released CBC documentary short, Qanuilirpitaa? How are we now?, follows the icebreaker–which was converted into a floating clinic–into the North during the survey to explore some of the challenges Nunavimmiut face today. The feature-length documentary will be released next year.

View documentary short here.

This semester, I am teaching an upper-level undergraduate course entitled Environmental Management, in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University.

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach as we explore the scientific and political angles of environmental management. We trace the evolution of thought that has shaped how we imagine the environment and our role within it. We unpack the ecological, social, economic, political, and cultural dynamics of conservation and management practices. We think about the different stakeholders that are involved, and how science and policy translate on the ground. Through a critical lens, we question assumptions and taken for granted concepts in assessment practices, such as baselines and indicators. Overall, we contemplate different possibilities for sustainable futures, and think about different approaches to getting there.

Lynch, M. and Turner, S. (2021). Rocking the boat: intersectional resistance to marine conservation policies in Wakatobi National Park, Indonesia. Gender, Place & Culture. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1971630.

Abstract: Much scholarship has stressed the need for conservation initiatives to consider local livelihood realities in order to effectively manage marine ecosystems; however, the gendered implications of marine conservation often remain overlooked. This paper takes a feminist political ecology approach to examine intersectional resistance to conservation policies in one of Indonesia’s largest and most populous marine protected areas (MPAs), Wakatobi National Park. We show that current Park policies and management fail to account for the livelihoods and culture of local ethnic minority fishers. In response, and along lines of gender, ethnicity, and class, ethnic minority fishers resist conservation measures in novel ways. Justified by their moral economy, these include continuing to access natural resources surreptitiously, allying with each other, and critiquing authorities. While many fisherwomen face additional barriers due to local cultural gender norms, they resist by pursuing livelihood activities against their husband’s wishes. A key mechanism for this gendered resistance is increased mobility for women, achieved through their clever use of new infrastructure. Concurrently, Park authorities work to regain control through ‘creative enforcement’ by accepting bribes, intimidating locals, and wasting fishers’ time – techniques that further expose class, ethnic, and gendered frictions. Overall, we find that MPA residents use resources differently across intersectional lines and reveal the extent to which everyday resistance can undermine conservation efforts if regulations ignore local needs. We thus stress the need for an intersectional and multi-scalar approach that is contextualized within local communities and wider infrastructures to improve marine conservation research and policy.

Read the full article here.

As the Project Coordinator for the community component of the most recent regional Nunavimmiut health survey called Qanuilirpitaa? (How are we now?), I am pleased to share that the results of the community component are now published. This research is being used by the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services to identify priorities for a new strategic regional health plan.

In this report, we develop our IQI model, which is built on the concepts of ilusirsusiarniq (having a strong, healthy and capable body), qanuinngisiarniq (feeling of being comfortable, content and without worries or pain) and inuuqatigiitsianiq (harmonious relations among people who share a place). We then outline eight determinants of health in the Nunavimmiut context: community, family, identity, food, land, knowledge, economy and services.

You can read the whole report here.

Fletcher, C., Riva, M., Lyonnais, M.-C., Saunders, I., Baron, A., Lynch, M., Baron, M. (2021). Definition of an Inuit cultural model and social determinants of health for Nunavik. Community Component. Nunavik Inuit Health Survey 2017 Qanuilirpitaa? Quebec: Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services (NRBHSS) and Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ).

Recently published in the AAG Review of Books is my review of A Recipe for Gentrification, edited by Alison Hope Alkon, Yuki Kato and Joshua Sbicca. The full review can be accessed online here.