Local and Traditional Knowledge and the Role of Storytelling in Building and Sustaining Resilience in African American and Alaska Native communities

该奖项将支持一个研讨会，以探索社区在面对社会和环境变化时的应变能力。来自奥伯林学院的PI和研究团队建议通过参与式方法来实现这一点，该方法在来自阿拉巴马州非洲城(高原)和阿拉斯加州乌特恰格维克(巴罗)的社区成员和奥伯林研究团队之间建立合作。研究小组的论点是，跨代传播知识是社区应对快速环境和社会变化的长期复原力的关键。在以非洲城居民为代表的非裔美国人社区中，这种知识传播通常采取讲故事的形式，在以乌特恰格维克居民为代表的阿拉斯加土著社区中，这种传播是传统知识。通过理解韧性、讲故事和传统知识之间的关系，研究小组提出，即使面临极端环境事件，如海平面上升和风暴潮洪水，或社会、经济和技术事件，如全球化或英国石油公司漏油事件造成的失业，社区也可以得到加强。研究小组的想法是，通过这次关于面对快速变化的复原力的讲习班，与社区密切合作，共同创造知识，他们将能够确定能够确保许多社区长期健康和福祉的社会和文化系统的关键要素。虽然非洲城和乌特恰格维克是地理上不同的社区，但它们在应对环境和社会经济变化方面面临着相似的挑战。PIS将在阿拉巴马州的非洲城举办研讨会，培训来自阿拉斯加州乌特恰格维克的当地社区成员及其合作者有关社会科学方法和实践的培训。佛罗里达大学的塞缪尔·普罗科特口述历史项目一直在培训所有研讨会的参与者，包括奥伯林的学生和研究人员，关于社区口述历史、讲故事和传统知识的最佳实践、方法和伦理。使用科学中的知识联合生产模式，社区成员和研究人员将共同努力定义研究问题，选择方法，并创建分析框架，最终将转化为基于社区的长期研究项目。来自奥伯林学院的本科生将参加培训和正在进行的口述历史工作。在招生方面，研究团队特别关注STEM中代表性不足的学生，包括有色人种学生、女性学生和第一代大学生。会议将突出口述历史和文化传统中蕴含的地方知识如何应对当代挑战。

This award will support a workshop to explore community resilience in the face of social and environmental change. The PI and research team from Oberlin College proposes to do this through a participatory methodology that creates a collaboration between community members from Africatown (Plateau), Alabama and Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and the Oberlin research team. It is the research teams' thesis that the transmission of knowledge, inter-generationally, is key to long-term community resilience in response to rapid environmental and social change. Among African American communities, represented in this workshop by the residents of Africatown, this knowledge transmission often takes the form of storytelling and among Alaska Native communities, represented by residents of Utqiagvik, this transmission is of Traditional Knowledge. By understanding the relationship between resilience and storytelling and traditional knowledge the research team proposes that community can be strengthened even when facing extreme environmental events such as, sea level rise and storm surge flooding or social, economic, and technological events such as, job loss due to globalization or the BP oil spill. It is the idea of the research team that by collaborating closely with the communities in co-producing knowledge through this workshop on resilience in the face of rapid change they will be able to identify key elements of the social and cultural systems that can ensure the long-term health and well-being of many communities. Although Africatown and Utqiagvik are geographically disparate communities they share similar challenges to their resilience in response to environmental and social-economic change. The PIs will hold the workshop in Africatown, Alabama that will train local community members and their collaborators from Utqiagvik, Alaska in social science methods and practices. The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida has been engaged to train all workshop participants, including Oberlin students and researchers, in best practices, methods, and ethics of community oral history, storytelling and traditional knowledge. Using a model of knowledge co-production in science, community members and researchers will work together to define the research questions, choose the methodologies, and create the analytic framework that will ultimately be turned into a long-term, community based research project. Undergraduate students from Oberlin College will participate in trainings and in the ongoing work of oral history. In recruiting students, the research team has particularly focused on students underrepresented in STEM, including students of color, women, and first-generation college students. The conference will highlight how local knowledge embedded in oral history and cultural traditions can offer responses to contemporary challenges.