Working across languages/cultures in international and environmental communication fieldwork

Abstract

ABSTRACT As environmental communication grows as an area of study, international and environmental justice issues increasingly need attention. Sustainability, climate change, habitat erosion, water access, and a number of other issues disproportionately affect rural and marginalized communities around the globe. For researchers working in and with such communities, the ethics of interviewing local and/or non-academic people requires much thought and consideration. One of the authors has worked in Indonesian and Spanish, and the other in Hindi, Nepali, and Bengali. Questions such as what voice means, in relationship to postcolonial/decolonial theories, are especially important. Furthermore, how such interviews are recorded, transcribed, and then translated also raise significant ethical considerations. This paper explores how environmental communication researchers might rethink approaches to ethnography and interviews across cultures, languages, and other aspects of difference.