A few weeks ago, I stepped off the metro at Glacière in Paris’s 14th arrondisement and walked into Sainte Anne’s hospital, where I had spent the better part of my fieldwork last year. It felt good to be back in a psychiatric hospital as an observer, not a patient. Walking through the gate was just… Continue reading Asylum
I haven’t blogged in a long time, thanks to a procrastination that my research in the mental health care system now allows me to label “apragmatism” (about which I am no longer “anosogosique”). Nonetheless, as twelve (12!) months of fieldwork in France comes to a close, I’ve been feeling an itch to write down some… Continue reading Souffrance Psychique
“Yasuní-ITT”—the proposal by the Ecuadorian government to leave 900 million barrels of oil underground in exchange for international compensation (and, not incidentally, also the topic of my thesis)—has evolved into a powerful symbol. When I first started my research, commentators were already declaring the proposal to be the solution to climate change and the harbinger… Continue reading The Wheels Come Off the Yasuní Bus (And My Thesis?)
I’m still in Ecuador, but for all intents and purposes my thesis research is over. Upon coming back from Yasuní, my dad and I returned to Quito, where we immediately were picked up to go to Maquipucuna Lodge, in the liminal zone between the Andes and the Coast. Decades ago, my dad helped some young… Continue reading The End (As Seen From Paradise)
It’s a little bit absurd to say this, but up until Wednesday of last week, I had never actually seen Yasuní Park. As my research went on, my understanding of Yasuní-ITT moved from generalizations drawn from the secondary literature and rumors collected in Quito to concrete, firsthand accounts on the ground. Yasuní itself, however, remained… Continue reading There and Back Again: A Barnard’s Tale
Here’s an idea that doesn’t get nearly enough consideration in the development community: poor countries are poor because they’re hot. Okay, I’m not going to try even a half-assed defense of that statement. I’m pretty sure there’s no shortage of peer-reviewed articles that disprove the climate-development link, and that if I thought for four seconds… Continue reading Heat
I don’t speak a word of Huaorani. I didn’t speak a word of Huaorani before I went into Huaorani territory, and despite five days of the guides trying to teach me a few basic phrases, I still don’t speak a word of Huaorani. (It’s a reminder that, although I have managed to learn enough Spanish… Continue reading Huaoranglish
I rarely have to ask more than a handful of questions in my interviews here: as soon as I mention “oil” and “Amazon” in the same sentence, people here can go on for hours. It’s better that way, of course, since it allows me to stick to a few Spanish paragraphs of explanation of my… Continue reading Location, Location, Location
If laws on the books were all that mattered, I’d put Ecuador way ahead of the U.S. The new constitution gives a formal right to existence and protection to “nature”, and, somewhat more practically, offers civil unions to gay couples. Ecuador has nearly open-borders and strict gun control; almost the inverse of the U.S., where… Continue reading La Revolución Ciudadana Está En Marcha
This weekend the train of bread crumbs that took me to Coca ran out, and I faced two days in the city with no one to interview and no meetings to attend. I wasted Saturday watching monkeys. On Sunday a friend who I made by phenomenally random chance at the Francisco de Orellana Anniversary-of-the-Merger-of-Two-Provicial-Directorates Fiesta… Continue reading Trust
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 