Journal of Peace, Conflict & Development http://www.bradford.ac.uk/ssis/peace-conflict-and-development/ Issue 21, March 2015 ISSN 1742-0601 Dilemmas of Peace Studies Fieldwork with Emancipatory Concerns Roberta Holanda Maschietto 1 One of the critical aspects of Peace Studies is its normative character. Differently from other disciplines of social sciences, Peace Studies, since its inception, was driven by the desire to not only understand the reality of conflicts, but also to propose actions to avoid the repetition of war and full-scale violence, expressing therefore an open concern with how things should be (Rogers & Ramsbotham, 1999; Patomäki, 2001; Atack, 2009). With Galtung s (1969) conceptualisation of structural violence, this normative dimension was expanded to include not only the concern with direct violence, but also with structural aspects that tackled the distribution of resources and the existence of social inequalities. This more emancipatory perspective of peace became increasingly entrenched in Peace Studies and still pervades much of the research done in the field (Fuller, 1992; Patomäki, 2001; Richmond, 2005 and 2007). This brief essay is a reflection on how the concern with emancipation may be problematic in the practical pursuit of fieldwork. It is written from the point of 1 Roberta Holanda Maschietto is a doctoral candidate in Peace Studies, at the University of Bradford and researcher at the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Her research interests include peace building and local empowerment in particular in Mozambique.
view of a researcher who started her PhD driven by the emancipatory ideals in Peace Studies, and, half way through, was forced to question her own understanding of emancipation and the problematic aspects of pursuing a normative agenda whilst conducting academic research. At first hand, it should be noted that the concept of emancipation is in itself the subject of contention (Peoples, 2011). In the case of Peace Studies, as noted by Richmond (2005: 197), the emancipatory call may be used by different strands of peace discourses (from liberal approaches, on the one hand, to critical and poststructural approaches, on the other hand). In this essay the focus is on emancipation as broadly conceived in the critical theory scholarship, therefore linked with the recognition of structural asymmetries that restrict human freedom, oppressing specific groups of people while overpowering others (Horkheimer, 1937; Freire, 1996; Booth, 1991). As such, emancipation refers to the critique of the system and the revision of the status quo in such way as to eliminate oppression. When it comes to research, an emancipatory perspective leads to the researcher s commitment to unveil dynamics of oppression and the questioning of dominant discourses of power that reproduce these dynamics (Harvey, 1990; O Leary, 2004: 144; Grbich, 2007: 7). Qualitative research, such as critical ethnography, is particularly useful in this regard, as it allows a closer contact and understanding of the positions of the marginalised groups, who mostly have their voices unheard. At the same time, from an emancipatory perspective, it is important not to treat the research participants as merely objects or data, but as subjects in their own sake, who are also involved in knowledge creation (Fuller, 1992). More generally, at the heart of the emancipatory project there is a call for 168
transformation, in which conscientisation (Freire, 1996) the development of an awareness of the oppressive dynamics that keep people in disempowerment plays a crucial role (Fuller, 1992: 292). The emancipatory perspective poses a series of problems that have been widely discussed and criticised, especially by post-modern scholars. A major point of contention is who is in a position to emancipate whom? or, more generally who defines what emancipation is and how it should be achieved (Fielding, 1996: 408; Baumann, 2000; Grbich, 2007: 7). Another issue, even more practical is how realistic it is to expect researchers to promote social transformation? (ibid.). These are not only abstract questions, instead they present serious ethical challenges for researchers committed to an emancipatory perspective. The next paragraphs address my personal experience facing these dilemmas during my PhD fieldwork in Mozambique considering these two questions. My research was driven by my interest in understanding what had changed since the end of the war in the lives of the ordinary people, in this case, the predominantly rural population. In particular, I wanted to grasp if people had been, or felt, empowered in the last 20 years. In order to do this, I first analysed the domain of the institutional changes that had taken place since the peace agreements. Subsequently I chose a national initiative were I could assess in more detail the national efforts at promoting local empowerment and how people perceived this process and its effects. The national initiative in question was a district fund, aimed at improving rural people s access to credit and tackle rural poverty. The fund implementation was embedded in the general post-war state reform that aimed to promote gradual decentralization. As such, it also had a concern with the promotion of bottom-up practices, which was reflected in the 169
direct engagement of local councils in the districts in the selection process of the projects to be funded. What follows is a collection of general reflections about my fieldwork in a northern district, where I spent in total two and a half months, first in 2012 and later in 2013. The focus is less on the data per se, but mostly on the process of conducting research and some of the ethical dilemmas that I faced and that sometimes forced me to leave aside what I perceived as my emancipatory commitment in order to preserve the integrity of the academic research. Who Is in a Position To Emancipate Whom? The very idea of an emancipatory research starts from the premise that there is a problem that needs to be solved, a situation that needs to be questioned, oppression dynamics that need to be unveiled, that some kind of social transformation needs to take place. More fundamentally, the whole project is based on a fairly clear idea of right and wrong, which has been historically informed by modern Western concepts of freedom, equality and social justice. That means that, no matter how much the researcher assumes an open-minded posture, most probably she will be constantly judging and making mental notes during the research activities categorizing the new information in terms of good and bad. At the same time, this way of thinking points towards a sense of separation of the self and others (does the researcher see herself as a subordinate/oppressed? Or maybe as an oppressor or a liberator?), which is to a large extent illusionary in the context of an interactive process that is a fieldwork. Indeed, regardless of ones commitment to neutrality or to emancipation, it is at 170
best very difficult to control the dynamics of interaction with those we are trying to study and understand. Instead, the researcher may be confronted with her own process of conscientization. In my experience, my research eventually became like a mirror that forced me to confront my own worldview as well as my academic and ethical stands. THE SEARCH FOR THE BAD GUY AND THE PURSUIT OF CRITICAL AWARENESS One of the first phenomena I indirectly faced on a regular basis during my stay in the district was the manifestation of petty corruption. By taking the local transport available (the so called chapas) to move from one place to the other, I invariably witnessed the drivers stopping at the police check with their car documents and a separated amount of money to go and talk to the chief. Also, as I started to conduct interviews with some of the beneficiaries who had access to the district fund, again I heard different stories that reported several kinds of exchange of benefits in order to obtain the fund, as well as other forms of power abuse. My first reading of this situation was very linear. As I heard and saw the stories of the victims, I also identified who was to be blamed. As I saw it, clearly the local police officer was a bad guy, and so was the member of the local council who asked for money in order to approve someone s project. This chain in turn, was only possible due to the lack of the government capacity (or will?) to tackle corruption and promote transparency and accountability. Before I realised it, I had mentally endorsed a position of judge instead of a researcher. At the same time, my emancipatory side wanted me to teach (conscientise) everyone about their 171
rights and the actual rules that regulated the activities of the district fund, as well as their general rights and duties as citizens, and the functions of the local administration and the local councils. In no time I saw myself carrying the white man s burden on my shoulders and feeling that my ethical duty was to open people s eyes to how they were being exploited by not knowing their rights. The more I thought about this the more I started to question my role as an academic. I was trying to understand empowerment and ironically putting myself in a position that assumed some kind of privileged view of the matters that seemed to contribute to the persistence of specific patterns of local disempowerment. Furthermore, the need to criticise caused a propensity to identify anything that was possibly wrong in that particular setting, instead of adopting a more open and unbiased posture. This initial tendency soon revealed itself analytically problematic. For one, it oversimplified a reality by creating an artificial dichotomy between oppressors and victims, whereas more accurate could be the idea that most people were both oppressors and victims at the same time and that power relations were far more complex than merely unidirectional in that context. For instance, the same police officer who got his extra income by using his authority was also a victim of a complicated process of post-war peacebuilding, which put him a position where his original income was not adequate for his basic needs. Clearly my initial mind-set obscured the dialectical dimension of the social processes that I was analysing. Even if I thought that the bad guy was not a specific person, but the system itself, I would miss the fact that this very system, while oppressing many people also offered spaces for empowerment that a rigid rule of law, at that stage, could suppress. For instance, if law would be rigidly 172
applied, probably most drivers of chapas would not be able to circulate, due to the conditions of their own vehicles and their limited resources to pay for a better car. If that happened, many people would simply be prevented from moving around or else they would have to walk several miles for days to reach the provincial capital. This in turn would affect trade and access to products, and even money circulation. Progressively, the more I gathered information, the more these dialectical aspects came to the surface, and the more I noticed my own preconceptions. The click came in a focus group with women. As part of my methodology, after the end of every activity I switched roles and let the participants ask me questions. It was common to be asked for more information about the district fund and even general advice on how to find partnerships to improve their local economy situation. This time however, the women asked me more personal questions. They were trying to understand why a woman my age was not married and, considering I already had a graduate certificate, why was I studying even more? I had many straight answers to those questions, but all of a sudden I realised I never really opened my own black box. Was I there because I truly wanted it, or because I was conditioned by a society that pushed me to be ambitious and strive for a better social status with a PhD? Was I in any way more emancipated than those women? Was I really free to choose anything? It did not take long to realise that my own academic experience was full of examples of non-emancipatory accounts. In hindsight, if my research had any emancipatory effects, it was probably by making me more critical about my role as a researcher. Nevertheless, and in spite of this, I could not abandon my normative drive. In all my interactions I heard many complaints about life conditions and, in spite of the dialectical aspects I 173
could perceive in my analysis, I also noticed a major asymmetry in the capacity for influence that some groups of people had compared to others, in deciding fundamental (including life and death) aspects of their lives. It was precisely in that context, where basic means of survival were at stake, and where people were prevented from acting because of fear of reprisal (as it happens) that the very notion of emancipation seemed to matter the most, not as an objective goal, but as a possibility of creating alternatives. Alternative means having access to a different option, a different course of action, not necessarily one specific option. In my conversations with local people, the worst expression of disempowerment was singled out in the question what else can I do? It was often not so much about not knowing what was (their) right but acknowledging that the cost of choosing a different course of action was simply too risky or not worth, as it could directly affect their basic means of survival or disrupt the local social order. It was by realising this particular aspect that I started to question my own role in that context and think of how could I, as an academic, contribute to finding concrete alternatives that could in any way foster emancipatory outcomes to those at the bottom of the power chain if I could do that at all. How Realistic It Is To Expect Researchers To Promote Social Transformation? On a few occasions, following an interview or focus groups, I found myself in the ethically uncomfortable situation of being asked a favour which consisted in intervening between the interviewee and the district government in order to follow up on their problems. As I had been interviewing some civil servants in the district administration, some participants saw me as someone with more influence and 174
that could therefore help them solving problems they had not been able to until then. It has to be pointed out that I was only able to move around the district because I first obtained an official go ahead from the district administrator. In that setting I had to abide by the local rules. No matter how much I was moved by my normative drive, the fact was that I needed to find a clear balance between the latter and my academic function and previous ethical commitments with my university. By interfering in the local administrative dynamics I would have put myself in a very delicate position, and my actions could be interpreted as a form of contestation of the local power dynamics. Indeed, even by simply explaining in the focus groups and interviews how things should be done, I would indirectly contribute to the questioning of the way things were working until that moment. Still that was a situation I could not fully avoid: by asking questions I would inevitably open the door for people to think of issues that perhaps they had not questioned before. And from an emancipatory perspective that was a good thing. In fact, I did not want to solve anything for anyone, as that would not reflect an expression of agency and conscientisation, which was intrinsic to the emancipatory ideal. My internal wish was to see people feeling empowered in such way as to demand their rights and contest any oppressive structures that had been preventing them from realising their full human potential or, less ambitiously, simply guarantee their basic means of survival. However, as I later met those who did take action to change things, I realised that agency alone did not entail necessarily any kind of empowering outcome. The problem of asymmetries came through. I met people who again and again tried to reach the authorities to solve problems of irregularities, and yet, the 175
more they tried, the more they got frustrated, as their actions did not yield any result. At that point it became clear to me why people frequently opted for nonaction, as well as how limited my role could be in that specific context. Conversely I also met people who, despite their non-privileged position, found reward in their agency. In one particular case, a woman s courage to refuse to give in to the illicit financial requests of a local official and to report the case led to the latter s being sacked. Instances like this, although rare, reminded me of something very basic that sometimes seems to pass by when the search for solutions is on the agenda: by pursuing a specific kind of social change we often forget that social life is already constantly changing. The difficulty of researching on-going events is precisely to keep our ability to capture what is often still unclear and the overall significance of specific events that, however small, may reverberate in the micro-context. Could it be that by focusing on our own agenda we may simply miss other actions that may however be more revealing and help explain variance of behaviours and therefore show other emancipatory alternatives? When I went back to Mozambique in 2013, after nearly a year since my data collection, I carried along a detailed report of my findings. Thanks to my previous contacts, I was able to hold a meeting with some actors from the local civil society network, as well as some civil servants engaged in my topic. Besides the interesting different points of views of the participants regarding my results, what marked the event were the mixed views about my own role. As much as I presented myself as an academic, some participants were expecting clear policy recommendations. Their question basically was so what?, we know the problems, so what should we do? As this came to the fore, I had once more to 176
confront myself. My emancipatory perspective saw the problem as not only a policy problem, but also as something much more structural and deep-rooted that went beyond the policy in question. What would be the value of recommendations that in that specific context could not be applied precisely because of the current existing power asymmetries and hierarchies? At the same time, by taking such a critical stance, was not I distancing myself from more practical and concrete alternatives that could have a more direct effect in the current situation? Concluding Remarks The opposite and contradictory aspects of emancipation have been critically discussed by Laclau (1996). According to him, the classic notion of emancipation in its many variants has involved the advancement of incompatible logical claims (ibid.: 2). Nevertheless, he continues, it is by playing within the system of logical incompatibilities of the latter that we can open the way to new liberating discourses. The idea of logical incompatibility is theoretically appealing, however it is far more challenging to grasp the empirical component of social research. In particular, the praxis dimension of the emancipatory ideal raises ethical challenges that are not easy to overcome. The very commitment to the critical quest may often blind us to other dynamics that may contest the very dichotomies that we create by labelling what is oppressive and what is liberating. Understanding emancipation broadly as the expansion of alternatives to overcome oppression may help, in particular by not tying the researcher to a predetermined agenda that may be oppressive in itself. Reflectivity (Harvey, 1990: 29-30; O Leary, 2004: 58), in this regard, is a useful tool for the researcher. Yet the challenges of combining an in depth critique with a realistic praxis may be less 177
easy to overcome. In this case, there may be clash between the different roles played by the researcher, where the pursuit of rigorous research may not adequately fit the normative call for action for change. In my personal experience, I let the first concern prevail, acknowledging my contextual limitations and influencing capacity. The other question, however, is what kind of change the researcher expects to contribute to and which audiences she needs to address in order to do that. This question entails a more fundamental one, which is what is the connection between academic knowledge and policy implementation? This is an issue that is in itself linked with the basic dynamics that compound the existence of disempowerment in the first place. References Atack, Iain (2009). Peace Studies and Social Change: the Role of Ethics and Human Agency. Policy and Practice: a Development Education Review, Issue 9, 39-51. Bauman, Zygmunt (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, in association with Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Booth, Ken (1991). Security and emancipation. Review of International Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, October, pp. 313-326. Fielding, Michael (1996). Empowerment: emancipation or enervation? Journal of education policy, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 399-417. Freire, Paulo (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Books. 178
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