participant observation for solidarity s cholarship: opportunities, challenges, results
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Participant observation for solidarity s cholarship: opportunities, challenges, results. Food Power, Food Sovereignty, and Food Security SOAS Anthropology of Food Professionalization Event Jessica Duncan Centre for Food Policy, City University London March 14, 2013. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Participant observation for solidarity scholarship: opportunities, challenges,
resultsFood Power, Food Sovereignty, and Food Security
SOAS Anthropology of Food Professionalization EventJessica Duncan
Centre for Food Policy, City University LondonMarch 14, 2013
The point of this talk:
1. Make a case for participant observation (in solidarity with food social movements)
2. Discuss how and why I conducted fieldwork (as solidarity research) in a UN committee
3. Identify some of the challenges I faced/lessons learned
4. Reflect on the outcomes/tangible results
“The Field”
Constructing the Field• The “field” is not an objective place• Site of reciprocal and contested
relationships (Domosh 2003)• Site where actors co-construct meaning
through various forms of interaction• These meanings are not static: they are
continuously constructed, reconstructed, deconstructed, and enacted through interactions (or lack of thereof)
• It is important not to assume that shared experience results in shared meaning
CFS2007-8: food price crisis = 1 billion hungry2009: Reform process for greater coordination and cohesion of food security policiesVision: • The foremost inclusive international and
intergovernmental platform …work together in a coordinated manner … towards the elimination of hunger and ensuring food security and nutrition for all human beings
• Civil Society Mechanism facilitates the participation of CSOs in the CFS, including input in negotiations and decision-making
• Decision to research in solidarity with many of these civil society actors.
CFS = Interface space which constitutes “important terrains for confrontations between social movements and the defenders of the neoliberal agenda that has dominated the
world’s community’s discourse and actions over the past 3 decades” (McKeon 2009:48)
Doing Participant Observation
How it’s defined• Minimal methodology• Keep as close to the social phenomenon
as possible – distinct from emphasis on distance and objectivity
• Process of “deep hanging out”• Staring to understand processes from the
perspective of those engaged
What I needed• Gate keepers• Flexibility (a must)• Consultation• Feedback• Hard work• Language
– Cultural and linguistic– Fundamental role of interpreters: voice -trust– Value of English (*)
• Blog– Transparency– Public profile– Exposure– Remaining a-political (*)– Networking tool– Motivation – Archive of thinking and process
Methodological and ethical principles
• Active engagement and identification• Theoretical openness• Dialogue and reciprocity• Reflexivity
– (Brem-Wilson forthcoming)
Benefits of Participant Observation/Solidarity Research
• For Participant Observation:• Interviews = limited, actions don’t always align with words• Vantage point – as a co-constructor of meaning
• For Solidarity Research: • Social movements produce knowledge• Connected via positionality to fields of relations - often “outsiders”,
often “knowers” with a contentious and/or political quality (Brem-Wilson forthcoming)
• Social movements = conducive sites to privilege meaning-making: activities foreground resistance to dominant norms and institutions (Kruzman 2008)• Reinforced through interviews with CFS negotiators
• Raise possibilities of alternative world-views which challenges those engaged to rethink meanings often taken for granted
Key Challenges• Speaking social movement(s) and across cultures• Research/participant binary is critical• Negotiation of power relations, responsibilities and hierarchy within the constraints of the
research project – How to assessing truth claims (avoid locking participants into a time and place of meaning (Domosh 2003) – Ontological argument for viewing experience sand broader processes as mutually constitutive
• Researcher-CSO dynamics (shifting role)– Insider, outsider, both and neither (Mullings 1999)
• Gender politics– Bargaining with Patriarchy (Kandiyoti 1988, 1998)
• Time- methodological tension in ethnography• Dealing with political sensitive analysis
– Academic expectations vs solidarity vs capacity• Protecting participants • Emotion (highs/lows)
– How to address this personally & academically– Getting too involved?
Outcomes & Tangible Results
Outcomes for CSM actors• CFS = best practice in global
governance– Voluntary Guidelines on the
Responsible Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the context of national food security
– Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition
• Mechanism to coordinate inclusive international civil society engagement in food security governance
Outputs from me• Academic presentations and
articles – Academic legitimacy (peer review)
• Public talks• Blog communicates information• Facilitation & interpretation• Support with grant writing, note
taking, reports, briefs, presentations, videos, images, grants, advisory boards, committees … with varying outcomes
ANALYSIS
Resources and ReferencesBrem-Wilson, J. 2013. “Negotiating Positionality in the Pursuit of Solidarity Research: Towards Participatory, Engaged Social
Movement Scholarship.” Forthcoming. (contact author for info: jbremwilson at gmail.com)Brockmann, M. 2011. “Problematising short-term participant observation and multi-method ethnographic studies.”
Ethnography and Education 6(2):229–243.Casas-Cortés, María Isabel, Michal Osterweil, and Dana E Powell. 2008. “Blurring Boundaries : Recognizing Knowledge-
Practices in the Study of Social Movements.” Anthropological Quarterly 81(1):5–15.Chesters, Graeme. 2012. “Social Movement Studies : Journal of Knowledge Production Social Movements and the Ethics of
Knowledge Production.” Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest 11(2):145–160.Domosh, Mona. 2003. “Toward a More Fully Reciprocal Feminist Inquiry.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical
Geographies 2(1):107–111.Esteves, Ana Margarida, Sara Motta, and Laurence Cox. 2009. “‘ Civil society ’ versus social movements.” Interface: a journal
for and about social movements 1(2):1–21.Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2(3):274–290.Kurzman, Charles. 2008. “Meaning-Making in Social Movements.” Anthropological Quarterly 81(1):5–15.Mckeon, Nora. 2009. “Who speaks for peasants ? Civil society , social movements and the global governance of food and
agriculture.” Interface: a journal for and about social movements 1(2):48–82.Morell, Mayo Fuster. 2009. “Action research : mapping the nexus of research and political action.” Interface: a journal for and
about social movements 1(1):21–45.Nagar, Richa, and Farah Ali. 2003. “Collaboration across borders: moving beyond positionality.” Singapore Journal of Tropical
Geography 24(3):356–372.Nagar, Richa, and Susan Geiger. 2007. “Reflexivity and Positionality in Feminist Fieldwork Revisited.” Pp. 267–278 in Politics
and Practice in Economic Geography, edited by Eric Sheppard, Jamie Peck, and Trevor Barnes. London: Sage.Sultana, Farhana. 2007. “Participatory Ethics : Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research.” ACME: An
International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 6(3):374–385.Tsolidis, Georgina. 2008. “The (im)possibility of poststructuralist ethnography – researching identities in borrowed spaces.”
Ethnography and Education 3(3):271–281.Ward, Kevin G, and Martin Jones. 1999. “Researching local elites : reflexivity, ‘situatedness’ and political-temporal
contingency.” Geoforum 30:301–312.
Contact: [email protected] Presentation: foodgovernance.com
THANK YOU!“ If we have learned anything about anthropology’s encounter with colonialism, the question is not really whether anthropologists can
represent people better, but whether we can be accountable to people’s own struggles for representation and self determination.”
Visweswaran, K. (1990) Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. P. 32.