Contribution short abstract:

This presentation will show how poetry can be used both as an emotionally supportive analytical tool to make sense of fuzzy data. This presentation will be based on extracts from notes of research, lecture, analysis, as well as finished writing to question the limitations of normative storytelling.

Contribution long abstract:

My research takes a critical look on the global value chain of organic chocolate produced from organic cocoa plantations in the department of San Martín in Peru. Even if cocoa beans are the main ingredient in chocolate, the final price paid to the producers stays very low in comparison to the consumer price. This income stays relatively low even in agrarian development project supported by sustainable ambitions. Furthermore, the lower price paid to cocoa farmers contrasts with the higher salary of cooperative managers, agronomists, resellers and, also, researchers whose careers are based cocoa cultivation. This difference of income reveals a highly hierarchical industry and access restriction to social and geographical mobility as well as too financial, educational, and material resources.

These discriminations and the effects of structural violence are felt, lived, and experienced by the cocoa farmers and can be felt and seen directly or indirectly by researchers. The emotions that emerge during and after research experiences can be analyzed through poetical attunement to the world and to oneself. Listening to the researcher’s and to other’s emotions through this poetical attunement can help to reveal unseen power relations through creative perception of human encounters.

I will take examples of the notes taken during research, analysis, and writing on cocoa cultivation in Peru, where I faced important neocolonial tensions around the differences of life quality of these different actors within the cocoa value chain.