Doctoral Dissertation Research: Citizen-based Sea Turtle Conservation Across the First World-Third World Divide

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This research compares case studies of citizen participation in sea turtle conservation in the US and Mexico to analyze how different frameworks for participation impact citizen engagements with science and resource management. To explore the impacts of these different frameworks on citizen contributions to conservation science, this research compares case studies of sea turtle conservation programs in North Carolina, USA and Baja California Sur, Mexico. This comparison will examine the ways in which citizens in both projects may co-produce sea turtle science in similar and different manners, and consider how discursive constructions change engagements with science and its institutions, and with participation in resource management.This primary research objective will be explored through three specific questions: (1) How do citizens participate in sea turtle conservation monitoring? (2) To what degree do citizens co-produce sea turtle science? (3) In what ways might citizens be empowered through participating in science?To answer these questions, data collection will proceed through participant observation, document analysis, and in-depth interviewing. Analysis is driven by a grounded-theory approach, coding and categorizing data into themes and will be undertaken throughout the research. Overall, the research seeks to better understand: the significance of participation, such as the degree to which participation opens conservation to local control and knowledge as well as the potential empowerment of citizens through participating in science; the possibilities for democratizing science and how this process may improve models of science and conservation; the nature of the First-World/Third-World divide, and how the production of this divide is bound up with the exercise of power and the creation of knowledge. Recognizing how different frameworks for participatory conservation impact outcomes is important for understanding what conservation can achieve and for realizing the full benefits of citizen participation.