{"title":"Assembling the ‘Field’: Conducting Research in Indonesia’s Emerging Green Economy","authors":"Zachary R. Anderson","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.1-11","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"New forms of environmental governance, such as the green economy, premise reconfigurations of social relations and rearticulations of scale, which raise myriad questions for field researchers, not least of all, what actually constitutes ‘the field’, and where it is to be found. These questions – practical, methodological, political, and personal – are integral to research itself and can tell us much about the dynamic forms that social organization and emerging governance structures take in practice. This contribution discusses the methodological challenges associated with ‘doing fieldwork’ in the amorphous networks of an emerging environmental governance assemblage – the green economy. Drawing on my fieldwork in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, I argue that by interrogating the positionality of different actors in relation to this assemblage, while remaining critically reflexive about one’s own role in this production, field researchers can capture something of the rich embodied practices through which knowledge is produced and exchanged. Moreover, this relational focus on networks of knowledge, actors, and policy can help us to explore the processes of translation and negotiation that underlie the implementation of new forms of environmental governance.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2016-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.1-11","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
New forms of environmental governance, such as the green economy, premise reconfigurations of social relations and rearticulations of scale, which raise myriad questions for field researchers, not least of all, what actually constitutes ‘the field’, and where it is to be found. These questions – practical, methodological, political, and personal – are integral to research itself and can tell us much about the dynamic forms that social organization and emerging governance structures take in practice. This contribution discusses the methodological challenges associated with ‘doing fieldwork’ in the amorphous networks of an emerging environmental governance assemblage – the green economy. Drawing on my fieldwork in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, I argue that by interrogating the positionality of different actors in relation to this assemblage, while remaining critically reflexive about one’s own role in this production, field researchers can capture something of the rich embodied practices through which knowledge is produced and exchanged. Moreover, this relational focus on networks of knowledge, actors, and policy can help us to explore the processes of translation and negotiation that underlie the implementation of new forms of environmental governance.
期刊介绍:
The Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies (ASEAS) is an international, interdisciplinary and open access social sciences journal covering a variety of topics (culture, economics, geography, politics, society) from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics should be related to Southeast Asia, but are not restricted to the geographical region, when spatial and political borders of Southeast Asia are crossed or transcended, e.g., in the case of linguistics, diaspora groups or forms of socio-cultural transfer. ASEAS publishes two focus issues per year and we welcome out-of-focus submissions at any time. The journal invites both established as well as young scholars to present research results and theoretical and methodical discussions, to report about on-going research projects or field studies, to publish conference reports, to conduct interviews with experts in the field, and to review relevant books. Articles can be submitted in German or English.