BertaLab aims to collect semi-structured oral interviews with individuals involved in social movements or engaged in ensuring food sovereignty, the right to land, and the right to water in their territories. The research perspective is global both in the sense that there are no territorial limits to the investigation, and because it intends to highlight interconnections and alliances, common practices, and shared objectives. The collective intends to equip itself with at least three tools to avoid bending the collected memories to Western geographies and perspectives.
1. The right to opacity, as theorized by Édouard Glissant, will be applied to oral history and the interviews collected. This will not imply that the subjectivities involved in the dialogue, in the intersubjective exchange, must share a common language and culture, but rather that dedicated tools will be used in the production and collection of sources.
2. Decentering the European gaze will be possible through the involvement of researchers who live in or are familiar with the territories where these forms of resistance have manifested. Precisely to create a workshop of methodological tools for oral history, an international seminar is planned to be held each year.
3. The respect for the needs of the communities will take priority over the research objectives. Both the themes of the interview grid and the “best practices” adopted will be continually re-evaluated based on the criteria, canons, and issues relevant to the involved communities or those who are the subject of the narratives.
Finally, policies regarding access to the materials will be decided on a case-by-case basis, together with the involved communities. The intention is to make every recording and transcript freely available. This issue, like all others, will be subject to dialogue and exchange, a shared construction between the project and the individual communities.