At Imbakucha, known as Lake San Pablo, Ecuador, Marc Mariner-Cortés is developing a unique blend of visual anthropology and ecological documentation, capturing the delicate interplay between infrastructure development and traditional landscapes.
A student in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology at the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, Marc is no stranger to bringing disciplines together, with an undergraduate in Musicology and a master's degree in Philosophy. It was during the pandemic that Marc started thinking more deeply about the intersection between "ecological, artistic, and socio-ecological problems," which led him to choose a course that mixes visual elements, techniques, and disciplines. "The visual element," Marc explains, "has affected how I think about the landscape - a very visual thing. In Ecuador, tracing failing and absent infrastructure with visual methods, mainly photography, I felt like a kind of detective where I was following traces."
Photography will aid Marc not only to produce an original thesis, but more importantly to create a visual report to document and analyse ecological impacts to help the Otavalo municipality. For Marc, "caring as a process is at the centre of this project. It is not only a way of conducting ethically minded research. Instead, it is, for me, a crucial path to addres socio-ecological problems."
At Imbakucha, known as Lake San Pablo, Ecuador, Marc Mariner-Cortés is developing a unique blend of visual anthropology and ecological documentation, capturing the delicate interplay between infrastructure development and traditional landscapes.
A student in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology at the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, Marc is no stranger to bringing disciplines together, with an undergraduate in Musicology and a master's degree in Philosophy. It was during the pandemic that Marc started thinking more deeply about the intersection between "ecological, artistic, and socio-ecological problems," which led him to choose a course that mixes visual elements, techniques, and disciplines. "The visual element," Marc explains, "has affected how I think about the landscape - a very visual thing. In Ecuador, tracing failing and absent infrastructure with visual methods, mainly photography, I felt like a kind of detective where I was following traces."
Photography will aid Marc not only to produce an original thesis, but more importantly to create a visual report to document and analyse ecological impacts to help the Otavalo municipality. For Marc, "caring as a process is at the centre of this project. It is not only a way of conducting ethically minded research. Instead, it is, for me, a crucial path to addres socio-ecological problems."
Can academic research truly care for the most vulnerable communities?
Care has been at the centre of my research. Through my fieldwork, my project has also been revolving around the absence of care, and how some claim to be caring for the lake, but are not capable of doing much because they are alone - and institutions don't want to get involved. How can this help? Scholarship as care can be an interesting frame. Obviously, we have to be careful when thinking our scholarship is "helping". I don't think we have a special vantage point, and I don't think we can save anyone. Anthropology, for a long time, has had a colonial and imperial narrative of savagery, dismissing cultures to another pool.
The best way to counter this is to be as faithful as possible to your interlocutors, asking them: what can I do? Trying to be faithful and open to real needs. And to be honest to yourself as well: if I had a law background, I could have helped them in other ways. It's important for them not to promise big things. They are used to so many NGOs going there with projects that will 'solve all the problems'. They truly appreciate it if you don't tell them these kinds of things.
Another important thing: read, reference, and quote Indigenous people. Sometimes we want to change things, to care for the people we meet, and this can happen in our own work as scholars if we take care of what we choose to use as sources. That's another way of caring, even if I'm not suggesting definite solutions to solve, for example, lake pollution.
Can academic research truly care for the most vulnerable communities?
Care has been at the centre of my research. Through my fieldwork, my project has also been revolving around the absence of care, and how some claim to be caring for the lake, but are not capable of doing much because they are alone - and institutions don't want to get involved. How can this help? Scholarship as care can be an interesting frame. Obviously, we have to be careful when thinking our scholarship is "helping". I don't think we have a special vantage point, and I don't think we can save anyone. Anthropology, for a long time, has had a colonial and imperial narrative of savagery, dismissing cultures to another pool.
The best way to counter this is to be as faithful as possible to your interlocutors, asking them: what can I do? Trying to be faithful and open to real needs. And to be honest to yourself as well: if I had a law background, I could have helped them in other ways. It's important for them not to promise big things. They are used to so many NGOs going there with projects that will 'solve all the problems'. They truly appreciate it if you don't tell them these kinds of things.
Another important thing: read, reference, and quote Indigenous people. Sometimes we want to change things, to care for the people we meet, and this can happen in our own work as scholars if we take care of what we choose to use as sources. That's another way of caring, even if I'm not suggesting definite solutions to solve, for example, lake pollution.
What stories have you encountered in your fieldwork? What happened?
I lived with a host family in Peguce, a town with a long anthropological and colonial history connected to the textile industry. I learned a lot about how these Indigenous communities are dealing with transformation and modernity, integrating into capitalism modernity, and how they travelled all over the world.
I have learned to be attentive: I wanted to be attentive to detail, but I learned not to read social groups as a monolithic structure, and to understand that within every social group there are lots of conflicts, criticisms. I knew that, of course, because humans are humans. But once you get there, you realise how strong colonial structures are, and how they are embedded in social relationships even between Indigenous peoples.
And then I found stories about the dying lake. This dying process is prominent when people speak to you, relating the loss of the lake to the loss of relationship. Some people feel the loss of indigeneity and language. Other times, there are scientific explanations. Everyone mixes these elements together: scientific, institutional, spiritual. All these stories are woven together in people's discourses. Now, the difficult part is to weave them in my thesis.
With this grant, you've been able to get to know the LSRI and its core focus on the concept of integral ecology. What have you learned about it? Have you seen it being present in your research?
You see it effectively. I didn't know about integral ecology until I applied for this grant, but it resonates easily with an anthropology-minded project. In particular, during the fieldwork, I realised the importance of the religious and spiritual aspects of integral ecology. I realised religious lives were impacting the way people relate to the lake, or how spirituality is central to people - not necessarily God as such, but some kind of spirit, or sometimes God itself.
There is a particular origin story about the lake. There once was an hacienda - a big house ruled by a landowner - and a river. One day, a beggar comes to ask for money. He was rejected, and he informed one of the servants: Tonight, there will be a huge flood, and this hacienda will disappear. So the servant escaped. As he did, the flood happened, and the servant witnessed the lake appearing. When people tell this story, they explained it was God who did it. It's interesting to note these stories where God punishes lords and owners, because they are woven into this colonial history. The spiritual life is present in people's lives. Many things I didn't expect came up, and they relate to an integral ecology perspective in this sense: the spiritual and religious life, and how it intersects with the relation to the environment.
With this grant, you've been able to get to know the LSRI and its core focus on the concept of integral ecology. What have you learned about it? Have you seen it being present in your research?
You see it effectively. I didn't know about integral ecology until I applied for this grant, but it resonates easily with an anthropology-minded project. In particular, during the fieldwork, I realised the importance of the religious and spiritual aspects of integral ecology. I realised religious lives were impacting the way people relate to the lake, or how spirituality is central to people - not necessarily God as such, but some kind of spirit, or sometimes God itself.
There is a particular origin story about the lake. There once was an hacienda - a big house ruled by a landowner - and a river. One day, a beggar comes to ask for money. He was rejected, and he informed one of the servants: Tonight, there will be a huge flood, and this hacienda will disappear. So the servant escaped. As he did, the flood happened, and the servant witnessed the lake appearing. When people tell this story, they explained it was God who did it. It's interesting to note these stories where God punishes lords and owners, because they are woven into this colonial history. The spiritual life is present in people's lives. Many things I didn't expect came up, and they relate to an integral ecology perspective in this sense: the spiritual and religious life, and how it intersects with the relation to the environment.
