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Dive into the research topics where Martina Angela Caretta is active.

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Qualitative Research | 2015

Situated knowledge in cross-cultural, cross-language research: a collaborative reflexive analysis of researcher, assistant and participant subjectivities

Martina Angela Caretta

This article analyzes situated knowledge through the lens of the author and her three field assistants. This work is written self-reflexively and is based on geographical fieldwork in Eastern Africa. It seeks to capitalize on the personal and professional relationships of the researcher and her field assistants to improve both research outcomes and working arrangements. Reflecting on episodes of failure, anxiety and misunderstanding, it disentangles the power geometry of situated knowledge and sheds light on the vital role played by the assistant/interpreter and by his/her positionality ‘in the making’ of cross-cultural, cross-language research. Grounded in a feminist epistemological perspective, this article shows that methodological reflexivity should engage not only the researcher or the participants but also the field assistants. This praxis is crucial to enhancing the validity of studies conducted in a cross-cultural, cross-language environment across social science.


Qualitative Research | 2016

Member checking: A feminist participatory analysis of the use of preliminary results pamphlets in cross-cultural, cross-language research

Martina Angela Caretta

Participation and reflexivity have become buzzwords that are seldom discussed in terms of their practical employment. Against this backdrop, with a specific focus on geography, this article presents and analyzes the advantages and limitations of a methodological tool that seeks to enhance both reflexivity and participation. The tool was a pamphlet written in local languages that contained several pictures and summarized the data gathered in previous fieldwork sessions. This tool was used in a four-year research project on the gender division of labor in smallholder irrigation farming in Kenya and Tanzania. The pamphlet showed participants their contributions to the research process and offered them the opportunity to correct, improve and further discuss previously collected data. It not only ensured research validity but also allowed for a shift in the research power hierarchy. Finally, the pamphlet effectively created a space for inclusion, discussion and reciprocal learning, leading to collective reflexivity and catalytic validity by empowering participants and re-orienting the researcher.


Sociological Research Online | 2015

Re-Thinking the Boundaries of the Focus Group: A Reflexive Analysis on the Use and Legitimacy of Group Methodologies in Qualitative Research

Martina Angela Caretta; Elena Vacchelli

This article aims at problematizing the boundaries of what counts as focus group and in so doing it identifies some continuity between focus group and workshop, especially when it comes to arts informed and activity laden focus groups. The workshop [1] is often marginalized as a legitimate method for qualitative data collection outside PAR (Participatory Action Research)-based methodologies. Using examples from our research projects in East Africa and in London we argue that there are areas of overlap between these two methods, yet we tend to use concepts and definitions associated with focus groups because of the lack of visibility of workshops in qualitative research methods academic literature. The article argues that focus groups and workshops present a series of intertwined features resulting in a blending of the two which needs further exploration. In problematizing the boundaries of focus groups and recognizing the increasing usage of art-based and activity-based processes for the production of qualitative data during focus groups, we argue that focus groups and workshop are increasingly converging. We use a specifically feminist epistemology in order to critically unveil the myth around the non-hierarchical nature of consensus and group interaction during focus group discussions and other multi-vocal qualitative methods and contend that more methodological research should be carried out on the workshop as a legitimate qualitative data collection technique situated outside the cycle of action research.


Qualitative Research | 2016

Feminist participatory methodologies in geography: creating spaces of inclusion

Martina Angela Caretta; Yvonne Riaño

This introduction prefaces a special issue on the topic of feminist participatory methodologies in geography. Drawing upon the experiences of the contributors in developing new tools and methods to facilitate interaction with participants and working with groups that tend to be forgotten, subordinated and/or alienated, we argue for the methodological significance of instating a feminist perspective to participatory research. Although much theoretical debate has taken place among feminist and post-colonial scholars on unequal research relationships between ‘researchers’ and ‘research subjects’, the literature on how to operationalize greater equality remains quite limited. We attempt to fill this research gap by bringing together scholars working in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres in order to illuminate the multifaceted ways in which these methods can be used not only to debunk hierarchical research relationships, but also to produce new scientific insights with greater validity.


Gender Place and Culture | 2016

When bodies do not fit: an analysis of postgraduate fieldwork

Johanna C. Jokinen; Martina Angela Caretta

Abstract Feminist geographers are increasingly examining embodied aspects of research. These embodied dimensions of fieldwork often build upon intersecting positionalities, yet studies focusing on bodily limitations encountered by feminists in the field are relatively few. In this article, we explore what it is like to be bodies that do not fit easily into the context within which they are supposed to be doing fieldwork. We are both female postgraduate students conducting fieldwork in the Global South. We have encountered, many times over, instances where, because of our sick and fatigued bodies, we have not been able to continue our work. We question the normalization of able-bodied postgraduate students by problematizing our own experiences, and argue that discourses of ability dominate fieldwork, in both its expectations and its conduct. This is especially the case for those with invisible disabilities because researchers may appear healthy but are not. As a result, postgraduate students may jeopardize their health for the sake of their research.


Journal of Geography in Higher Education | 2018

'Who' Can Play 'This' Game? The Lived Experiences of Doctoral Candidates and Early Career Women in the Neoliberal University.

Martina Angela Caretta; Danielle Drozdzewski; Johanna C. Jokinen; Emily Falconer

Abstract Work intensification is a characteristic of the current neoliberal trend in academia. Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers (PhD candidates and ECRs) in geography are no strangers to this development but are rarely the focus of publications or dialogue on the (gendered) outcomes of the academy’s neoliberal agenda. Encouraged by the recent emotional turn in the social sciences and humanities, this article seeks to unveil some of the everyday particulars of life in academia for PhD candidates and ECRs under the tide of financial cuts and increased competition for funding. We explore the question: “Who can – and indeed wants to – play this game?” As three early and one mid-career academic women in four different institutions in the Global North, we make use of reflexivity, autobiographical writing, and reflection, to analyze increasingly stressful and demanding working conditions. Through the depiction of our lived experiences, we contend that the push for ever increasing outputs attends most of our time and represents a distinctly different form of scholarship than has been traditionally considered as the pathway into academia, not seldom jeopardizing well-being of young academics, one that needs to be interrogated by geographers.


Annals of the American Association of Geographers | 2018

Striving beyond Epistemic Authority: Results Dissemination in Smallholder Irrigation Farming Research

Martina Angela Caretta

Epistemic authority is the institutional measure of trustworthiness and reliability of our work. Can we really claim, though, that our research is reliable if we do not create spaces for sharing potential societal benefits with the communities we investigate and with which we work? Against this backdrop, I aim to examine the practice of results dissemination and its potential benefits for researched communities. This reflection is produced through the analysis of a ten-day itinerant dissemination workshop that took place in January 2015 between Kenya and Tanzania. Results were presented to local participants through booklets in English, Swahili, and Marakwet. Although societal impact is a long-term process, I discuss some benefits that emerged during the ten-day workshop: seeds exchange, learning of agricultural practices, debating womens exclusion from irrigation, the use of the booklet with results in school, and the transliteration of the spoken language of Marakwet. By giving researchers and participants an occasion for reciprocal learning, dissemination is a cornerstone of responsible geography. Responsible and truly participatory geographers ought to give equal weight to societal and scientific impacts. If we want to be serious about the rising call for geographies of responsibility, I argue, we have to further challenge our disciplinary knowledge production norms and self-bestowed epistemic authority by renewing our engagement with participatory research practices throughout their investigations, until the final stage of results dissemination.


African Studies | 2017

Kerio Valley, 1973-2013: a case study of Kenyan smallholder agriculture

Wilhelm Östberg; Martina Angela Caretta

ABSTRACT This article examines changes during the last 40 years in a smallholder irrigation-farming community in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya. Agricultural productivity has increased thanks to improved seeds and the practice of adding manure and crop residues to fields, a very rare occurrence in the 1970s. People’s range of assets, housing conditions and communications have also improved. Development agencies have had limited impact on these developments, particularly in comparison with their ambitious plans for a radical transformation of the study area. Increased yields and improved living conditions are attributed to local initiatives rather than to external interventions.


Landscape Research | 2018

Lake Extent Changes in Basotu, Tanzania : A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding the Impacts of Anthropogenic Influence and Climate Variability

Lindsey Higgins; Martina Angela Caretta

Abstract Incompatible land use is a major contributor to ecosystem degradation, and is often exacerbated by climate change impacts. We investigate Lake Basotu, Tanzania as a case study where natural lake variability has been affected by agricultural land use. Comparisons between a satellite-derived history of lake surface area, local precipitation records, and corresponding anthropogenic activity show the impacts of agricultural and historical practices. We argue that insufficient consideration to the wider ecological impacts of large agricultural projects has lasting implications. This is particularly true in semi-arid environments where food production demands need to be continuously met. In the future, major conservation strategies should be investigated to maintain the environmental integrity and sustainability of freshwater resources.


Progress in Development Studies | 2016

Book review: Wendy Harcourt, W. and Nelson, I.L., editors. 2015: Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving beyond the ‘Green Economy’

Martina Angela Caretta

Wendy Harcourt, W. and Nelson, I.L., editors. 2015: Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving beyond the ‘Green Economy’. London: Zed Books. 326 pp. £65 (hardback). ISBN: 9781783600885

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David Mwehia Mburu

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology

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Florence Jemutai Cheptum

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology

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