Human-Nature Interactions in El Astillero, Nicaragua
A Photo-Voice Project
A Casa Congo Collaboration
Human-nature interactions can be complex. Nestled between the Pacific Coast and the Chacocente Wild Refuge in Nicaragua, folks of the El Astillero community recognize their interconnectedness with the natural world around them.
In an attempt to better understand the complexity and interconnectedness of human and environment in this fishing village, a photo-voice project was carried out. Alvaro, Douglas, Gabriela, Karen, Marcelo, Maria Elena, Medina, Victor, and Yorling, project participants and local members from the community, were given disposable cameras and asked to photographically capture aspects of their environment that called to the human-nature experience in their community. Upon taking and developing their photos, participants were then asked to speak a bit about the images that they captured.
Scroll below to experience the environment through the eyes of this community.
After photos were taken, interviews were conducted, and the artistic components of this project were all said and done, an analytical approach to El Astillero's interconnectedness and symbiotic relationship followed. Interview recordings were transcribed to text, and that text was then analyzed. Words, word use, and word frequency were considered. We also explored the sentiment associated with the words used by participants as they described their photos and relationships with nature.
Some of the most frequently used words that photo-voice participants used to describe their photos include: naturaleza (i.e., nature); casa (i.e., house); arboles (i.e., trees); mar (i.e., sea); plantas (i.e., plants); lluvia (i.e., rain); cambio (i.e., change); pesca (i.e., fishing); basura (i.e., trash); agua (i.e., water); and pescado (i.e., fish).
Interestingly, some of these words relate to overall concepts of livelihood (i.e., casa and agua). Even more nuanced, many of the most frequently used words hint to potential human-nature interactions for economic livelihood (i.e., mar, pesca, pescado).
And when photo-voice participants talked about their photos and the human-nature interactions that they captured, an overall neutral sentiment was expressed. Despite this overall neutrality, participants still expressed more positive sentiment than negative sentiment.
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Considered together, all of this can provide a better understanding of some of the most prominent natural elements in participants' human-nature interactions and how they feel about it all. The findings of this project indicate that members of the El Astillero community have a positive relationship with the natural world around them. Analytical components of this project hint to the fact that folks in El Astillero value the economic livelihood that many natural elements bring to them. More specifically, and while less apparent when looking at the captured photos alone, participants' words in interviews really stress the importance of fishery-related livelihoods for the community.
In all, human-nature interactions can be complex. In El Astillero, though, things are rather simple. This coastal community embraces the natural world and all of the abundances that it has to offer - from land to sea and everything in between.
METHODOLOGY
The analysis behind this visual project makes use of data that was collected via recorded participant interviews during the November 2021 - February 2022 period. Interviews were then transcribed by Casa Congo staff members. A list of "stop words" for the Spanish language, provided by Alireza Savand was also used. In order to analyze this data, the Python and JavaScript programming languages were used. With Python, data was wrangled. Data was prepared for content analysis with the Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning (VADER) model from the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK). Using the multilingual toolkit, Pysentimiento, sentiment analysis was conducted.
The original Observable notebook used for this project can be accessed here. This app was developed with JavaScript. Data visualizations were created with the D3.js JavaScript library. The code behind this application is freely available on GitHub.
This project was made possible through the support of Casa Congo and the participation of community members in El Astillero. Special thanks to Alvaro, Douglas, Gabriela, Karen, Marcelo, Maria Elena, Medina, Victor, and Yorling for sharing their perspectives and experiences.