Sense of Place and Environmental Stewardship Among Young Q'eqchi' Maya Women of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala PDF Download

Author: Lilly Pascoe Briggs
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Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Understanding the relationship between indigenous people and the environments they inhabit is critical given that these groups often live in regions of high ecological and cultural diversity. Both forms of diversity are threatened. It is particularly important to understand the relationship between indigenous women and their environments given prior studies showing negative social and environmental impacts of the gender inequality experienced by women living in poor, rural regions throughout the developing world. Using multiple conceptual lenses - including sense of place, environmental stewardship, environmental education, placebased education, and positive youth development - this dissertation advances our knowledge of one understudied group: Q'eqchi' Maya women of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. The Q'eqchi' are the predominant Maya group in Guatemala's central highlands and northern lowlands (CCFC, 2015). I place a particular emphasis on the young women who participate in an environmental education (EE) program called Women, Agroecology, and Leadership for Conservation (WALC), facilitated by the non-profit organization Community Cloud Forest Conservation (CCFC). My initial research framework was structured around investigating whether and how WALC impacts participants' sense of place. I conducted 219 semi-structured interviews exploring: how young Q'eqchi' women conceptualize their sense of place, what types of environmental stewardship practices they engage in and the motivations behind them, as well as the pedagogical strategies and outcomes of WALC. I combined a positivist framework of pre-determined place constructs (place meanings, attachment, dependence, and identity) with qualitative methods in order to examine research participants' sense of place. My results reveal multiple place themes, particularly the dominance of place dependence. Young Q'eqchi' Maya women depend on their place for a number of reasons, including access to cultivable land and natural resources. My research also provides theoretical and methodological insights regarding place scholarship among indigenous women. I also contribute to our understanding of young Q'eqchi' women's environmental stewardship practices and motivations, through findings that both align and diverge from prior indigenous stewardship research. Young Q'eqchi' women engage in stewardship practices such as treeplanting and collecting garbage, motivated by factors such as subsistence-based needs. However, research suggests that collectively, the Q'eqchi' often use resources unsustainably. Finally, in examining the impacts of WALC, I explore how EE programs that incorporate elements of place-based education (PBE) and positive youth development (PYD) can contribute to EE outcomes, by bolstering participant knowledge, skills, and confidence. I propose a theoretical framework integrating PBE and PYD, and describe how my research has broader implications for EE in both developing and developed countries.