Producing New Knowledge to Empower a Community: Treading a Fine Line Between Scholar-Activism and Community Intervention

Abstract The co-creation of new knowledge by combining traditional ecological knowledge and citizen science can empower communities to cope with impending and irreversible changes. However, scholar-activists walk a fine line between driving communities into fields that they are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with, and sharing their wealth of knowledge. This paper uses an autoethnographic approach to reflect on my experience as a researcher deeply involved in community organising in a rural fishing village in southwest Johor, Malaysia, and the tightrope I walked to provide locals with access to resources, networks, and materials, and to amplify their work through myriad media. My accidental scholar-activism is the outcome of 17 years immersed in this community, initially as an environmental education facilitator, then as the community found its voice, as a supporter of efforts to participate in and benefit from the development encroaching onto its neighbourhood and natural habitats. While the villagers simply wanted to safeguard nature-based livelihoods despite increasing habitat destruction and climate change impacts, my work in the background effectively empowered them to overcome restrictive power structures and improve social justice. This was an unplanned social movement that took on a life of its own, analysed through engaged and participative ethnography. While the community made headway in effective and impactful change, the journey demonstrated some failures in youth engagement, but unexpected success with the fishermen. Throughout it all, I questioned the wisdom of my providing people with a near-impossible vision of surmounting entrenched power structures, and the contravention of conservative cultural and gender norms.