In the Azores, looking for the regions of knowing

Abstract

This multi-voice script highlights the process of five years of research with coastal fishing communities in the Azores islands of Portugal. Initially, we used photo elicitation and focus groups to invite people to speak about the sea and all the deep, complex and sometimes contradictory meanings that it may have. In later years, the researchers sought environmental justice within everyday processes, using deep ethnographic and autobiographic-narrative inquiry which led to participation in learning about – as well as supporting – collaborations between fishers, scientists and policy makers. The text is constructed via arts-informed research methodology and consists of two parallel, creative narratives, intermittently interrupted by a visual narrative. This work calls for looking at the sea through new eyes, hearing with new ears, feeling differently and awakening to the possibility of knowing the sea in unfamiliar ways.

Keywords

• arts-informed research
• Azores
• fishing communities
• islands
• multivoice theatre
• participatory reflexive practice
• sea
• social construction