Kate Lloyd

The potential for combining indigenous and western knowledge in reducing vulnerability to environmental hazards in small island developing states

Abstract The benefits of indigenous knowledge within disaster risk reduction are gradually being acknowledged and identified. However, despite this acknowledgement there continues to be a gap in reaching the right people with the correct strategies for disaster risk reduction. This paper identifies the need for a specific framework identifying how indigenous and western knowledge may be combined to mitigate against the intrinsic effects of environmental processes and therefore reduce the vulnerability of rural indigenous communities in small island developing states (SIDS) to environmental hazards. This involves a review of the impacts of environmental processes and their intrinsic effects upon rural indigenous communities in SIDS and how indigenous knowledge has contributed to their coping capacity. The paper concludes that the vulnerability of indigenous communities in SIDS to environmental hazards can only be addressed through the utilisation of both indigenous and Western knowledge in a culturally compatible and sustainable manner.

Integrating indigenous and scientific knowledge bases for disaster risk reduction in papua new guinea

Abstract. In investigating ways to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards it is essential to recognize the interaction between indigenous and scientific knowledge bases. Indigenous and scientific knowledge bases are dynamic entities. Using a Process Framework to identify how indigenous and scientific knowledge bases may be integrated, three communities impacted upon by environmental hazards in Papua New Guinea, a Small Island Developing State, have established how their vulnerability to environmental hazards may be reduced. This article explores the application of the framework within the communities of Kumalu, Singas and Baliau, and how this could impact upon the future management of environmental hazards within indigenous communities in Small Island Developing States.

Co-becoming Bawaka Towards a relational understanding of place/space

We invite readers to dig for ganguri (yams) at and with Bawaka, an Indigenous Homeland in northern Australia, and, in doing so, consider an Indigenous-led understanding of relational space/place. We draw on the concept of gurrutu to illustrate the limits of western ontologies, open up possibilities for other ways of thinking and theorizing, and give detail and depth to the notion of space/place as emergent co-becoming. With Bawaka as lead author, we look to Country for what it can teach us about how all views of space are situated, and for the insights it offers about co-becoming in a relational world.

From vulnerability to transformation: a framework for assessing the vulnerability and resilience of tourism destinations

Tourism is a key driver of global socio-economic progress. However, its sustainability is at risk from multiple shocks and hazards that threaten livelihoods. Surprisingly little is known about the complex drivers of destination vulnerability, leading to the creation and application of ineffective resilience-building solutions. The paper presents the Destination Sustainability Framework (DSF) designed to assess destination vulnerability and resilience, and support successful resilience-building initiatives. Holistic in nature, the DSF comprises: (1) the shock(s) or stressor(s); (2) the interconnected dimensions of vulnerability – exposure, sensitivity, and system adaptiveness; (3) the dynamic feedback loops that express the multiple outcomes of actions taken (or not); (4) the contextualised root causes that shape destinations and their characteristics; (5) the various spatial scales; and (6) multiple timeframes within which social-ecological change occurs. This innovative framework is significant because its the first framework to chart the complex manifestation of vulnerability and resilience in tourism destinations. Further, it brings tourism sustainability research in line with wider debates on achieving sustainability within the dynamic coupled human–environment system, doing so through the inclusion of insights from contemporary systems approaches, including chaos–complexity theory, vulnerability approaches, sustainability science, resilience thinking, along with the geographies of scale, place and time.

Telling stories in, through and with country : engaging with Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia

Recent work in ethnographic and qualitative methods highlights the limitations of academic accounts of research interactions that aim for total objectivity and authority. Efforts to move beyond totalizing accounts of both the research experience and the investigator raise questions of how to engage with, make sense of, and (re)present embodied, sensual, visceral, and the ultimately placed qualities of collaborative research interactions. Our response to this set of questions entailed recognizing and respecting the knowledge and agency of the human and nonhuman actors involved in co-producing the research. In this paper, we analyze transcripts, research notes and conversations between non-Indigenous academics, Indigenous researchers, and Bawaka, northern Australia itself to explore storytelling as a collaborative, more-than-human methodology. We argue that in research, storytelling consists of verbal, visual, physical, and sensual elements that inform dynamic and ongoing dialogues between humans (academics/co-researchers/family members), and between humans and nonhumans (animals, water, wind). To move beyond the human/nonhuman binary in our storytelling, we look to Aboriginal Australian concepts of Country in which place is relationally defined and continually co-created by both human and nonhuman agents. Acknowledging and engaging with the embodied, more-than-human nature of research contributes to an enlarged understanding of how knowledge is co-produced, experienced, and storied.

Qualitative methods 1: Enriching the interview

In this first of a series of three progress reports on qualitative methods we scope recent qualitative research in human geography through the prism of the interview. Across diverse subfields the interview persists as the dominant means of understanding, though increasingly supplemented or complemented by other means such as diaries and autobiography. Capturing social life as it happens is emerging in response to theoretical developments that encourage new methodological thinking, and includes cities and buildings being thought of as methodological resources as well as sites. These point to concerns with the materiality and inventiveness of method that will be explored in subsequent reports.

Contesting control in transitional ­Vietnam: The development and regulation of traveller cafés in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City

As Vietnam has moved into the same economic orbit as its Southeast Asian neighbours it has been exposed to globalizing forces which bring about social, economic and political change - one of a transitional economy. One of the Vietnamese states main dilemmas during its transition from a command to a socialist market economy has been how to manage the emergence of market forces within an existing Marxist ideology. The social, economic and political context in which burgeoning new sectors and industries, such as international tourism, are gaining a foothold is complex and often contradictory. The international tourism industry provides a milieu demonstrating the states response to new cultural industries and the strategy employed to regulate such development. The study of tourism development in Vietnam also provides an opportunity to rectify the under-theorization of social and cultural processes within the discipline of geography. This paper examines the impact of government regulation and its pro-State Owned Enterprise policy on the development of private small-scale tour operators in Vietnam. It uses a case study of the development of traveller cafés in backpacker areas of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi to argue that traveller cafés have been subject to erratic responses by government authorities and that attempts by the state to regulate the private tour operator sector are undermined by personalized social networks which are present at all levels. As a result of personal values, interests and the bureaucrats ability to exercise discretion in the implementation of policy, the institutional management of tourism is not absolute.

Working with and learning from Country: decentring human author-ity

In this paper, we invite you night fishing for wäkun at Bawaka, an Indigenous homeland in North East Arnhem Land, Australia. As we hunt wäkun, we discuss our work as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and more-than-human research collective trying to attend deeply to the messages we send and receive from, with and as a part of Country. The wäkun, and all the animals, plants, winds, processes, things, dreams and people that emerge together in nourishing, co-constitutive ways to create Bawaka Country, are the author-ity of our research. Our reflection is both methodological and ontological as we aim to attend deeply to Country and deliberate on what a Yolŋu ontology of co-becoming, that sees everything as knowledgeable, vital and interconnected, might mean for the way academics do research. We discuss a methodology of attending underpinned by a relational ethics of care. Here, care stems from an awareness of our essential co-constitution as we care for, and are cared for by, the myriad human and more-than-human becomings that emerge together to create Bawaka. We propose that practising relational research requires researchers to open themselves up to the reality of their connections with the world, and consider what it means to live as part of the world, rather than distinct from it. We end with a call to go beyond ‘human’ geography to embrace a more-than-human geography, a geography of co-becoming.

Real and Virtual Experiential Learning on the Mekong: Field Schools, e-Sims and Cultural Challenge

This paper describes two innovative and linked approaches to teaching and student learning in the environmental and development geography of the Mekong region, a region remote from students’ normal experiential options. The first approach is field-based learning through Field Schools carried out in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. The second approach is a structured role-playing web-based simulation exercise (e-Sim) on Mekong Basin environmental management challenges. This paper discusses the complementarities of these approaches and considers the degree to which these two experiential approaches to teaching and learning have contributed to key competences, namely cross-cultural communication and understanding, multi-disciplinary approaches to environment and development, and regional knowledge of Southeast Asia.

‘That means the fish are fat’: sharing experiences of animals through Indigenous-owned tourism

This article considers the ways members of Indigenous-owned and operated Bawaka Cultural Experiences (BCE) from northern Australia share diverse ways of knowing the world with tourists through a focus on the sapient beings categorised as animals in western cultures. The article is co-authored by two owners of BCE and three human geographers. Lak Lak and Djawa of BCE are situated as key agents who sculpt the experience for visitors and tourists and in the article discuss the various ways they actively challenge tourists through a range of experiences on country. Sarah, Sandie and Kate are multiply positioned as academics, collaborators and visitors. The article discusses the ways members of the Burarrwanga family invite tourists to learn about the interrelated importance of animals through a range of sensory experiences. The relationships shared by Lak Lak and Djawa with tourists are indicative of an ontology of connection that underpins Yolngu and many Indigenous ways of knowing the world. As tourists are invited into these worlds, they are given the opportunity to challenge their own relationships with animals and rethink an interlinked social–cultural–economic and ontological approach to self-determination in a postcolonial nation.