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'Connections and transformations in Africa' : A Note on Team Research |  |
| A workshop at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, Tuesday 21 November, 2006 |
return to: Index page 'Connections and transformations in Africa'
Developing the study of connections; the Gambia-project.
Rijk van Dijk
Jan-Bart Gewald
Mirjam de Bruijn
The study of connections and connectivity is
relatively new in the way it brings together various insights
from a wide field of social science study dealing with mobility,
relationships, (social) technologies and processes of migration,
transnationalism and globalisation. This being the case the
development of conceptual as well as methodological tools
requires considerable attention. The nature of the study of
connectivity is such that these tools require first of all a
focus on the multi-sitedness of the phenomena under study, hence
a need to understand the complexities of mutli-sited
methodologies. Secondly, considering the speed by which social
relations and other phenomena become connected across time and
place requires a special consideration for the fact that research
should not only take place at several locations but also within
one and the same time-span. Connections through
telecommunication, motorized transport and the like imply
an immediacy of the connectedness of the localities involved to
such an extent that being multi-sited is not enough to be able to
cover all the ramifications and implications of the current
nature of connectivity. Multi-sitedness must be combined with
simultaneous presence at all points of these connections, which
as such has a profound bearing upon the nature of the research
methodology.
Thirdly, this connectivity requires the
development of specific concepts that bring forth the nature of
this immediacy of multi-sited presence. Concepts of that nature
hardly exist, yet need to be developed in view of the common
language the research group on connections requires in order to
make progress in the type of studies that are undertaken.
It is for these reasons that in an early
stage of the research on connections a project will be undertaken
which aims at testing a multi-sited ethnography and at the same
time aspires to produce insights from this 'experiment' that will
be prove to be a learning ground for further conceptual
development. The research project envisioned will not only be
multi-sited but in addition will also be arranged in such a way
that the presence of a number of researchers at one and the same
moment in time is guaranteed so as to create the necessary
simultaneity of the research experience. In addition to
being a multi-sited ethnography this experiment is envisioned to
be a team ethnography allowing for the presence in the field of
more than one researcher at the same time, interacting with one
and the same research object.
In order to achieve the highest possible
outcomes of insights gained from this research experiment it is
proposed in the following section to organize this multi-sited
team ethnography in a location that has great potentiality for
producing the desired results. This location should offer the
kind of 'connections' that are at the heart of the
research-group's interest, that allow for the study of their
underlying social technologies, that is easily accessible for
multi-sited explorations and that in terms of the scale of its
social, political and economic relations is manageable, also in
terms of the limited amount of time available for in-depth
fieldwork of a team of ethnographers.
Gambia is proposed as a suitable location
for the integrated ethnographic research project of this sort and
in the next section the major benefits, advantages and ambitions
of a project of this nature in this country are elaborated.
As this project is essentially an experiment, its basic requirement is to seek and create an environment in which the various participants have the opportunity to gather insight into one another’s field work methods, into different approaches to their research, as well as gather together data that can be beneficial to the group as a whole. That is, instead of the usual fear that “too many cooks spoil the broth”, the project seeks to discover what added value can be gained from deploying people in a truly multi-disciplinary, multi-sited, and short term research project.
Ideas regarding this experiment developed
out of talks held between Rijk, Mirjam and Jan-Bart following
Rijk's reading of such integrated team-ethnographic fieldwork
research in Kenya amongst drug addicts and the kind of more
profound insights it gave way to (see ......check). The
ways in which this multi-sited team-ethnography was conducted in
Nairobi among drug-addicts appeared not only successful but also
very promising with regard to the kind of methodologies and
concepts that need to be generated in the study of connections.
Following this example from Kenya, the central idea is that three researchers from the ASC, Jan-Bart, Mirjam, and Rijk travel to Gambia to conduct a short fixed period of research as a team ethnography.
Gambia has been chosen because of the ease of logistics, cost factors, and the fact that for all three of us the Gambia is unknown territory. That is, not one of us can start with pre- defined notions of the way things should be and should be interpreted and explained as the kind of connections we will be looking at will be new to all of us.
In keeping with our theme of connections a number of possible research fields and sites have been discussed. Eventually it was decided to do a team ethnography on the “bus route” as a whole. That is take the classic street scene of any contemporary African urban setting, the jam-packed taxi buses, and follow them through from beginning to end.
The idea would be that one of us would travel on the buses, one would conduct research at the beginning of the route, or the central bus station where all the routes come together, and one of us would conduct research along the various stops on the bus route proper. The various sites would require similar, though at times different research methodologies and approaches, whereas for the single historian hidden amongst the anthropologists the research would be interesting primarily in the differing research concerns. In this way not only multi-sitedness in the study of this connection is achieved, but also its simultaneity in terms of time. In addition frequent and intensive contacts between us as researchers while in the field will allow for the immediate exchange of insights and thus, hopefully, for the immediate generation of concepts to work with.
The idea would be to fly in to Gambia on one of the cheap package tours and stay at one of the hotels in the package tour. Use the hotel as the base from which to operate. Each hotel will have a bus route passing by close by. This will be taken as the route to be studied.
In the morning each researcher will go to their individual research sites, and meet again at the hotel in the evening to discuss research findings and discuss further avenues for possible research on the following day.
It is envisaged that the research as a whole would take one month. Three weeks of this time will be used for continual research on the bus route.
In the months following return to the
Netherlands, the researchers will produce a joint paper, as well
as separate papers based on their shared research experiences.
The project is planned to take place in
February 2008.
This research question implies:
1. an understanding of the variety of social
and historical relations that hang together with the operation of
the connection: these relations can be social, cultural, economic
or perhaps even political and religious. These may also apply a
rootedness of the route in a culture of travel and the
ideological features that relate to questions and histories of
identity, class and social status; i.e. who is/was on the bus,
for what reasons and in what context ?
2. an understanding of the social technology
that is required to operate the bus line as well as the relations
that are dependent on it; technologies of these sort may imply
the management of 'hard' and 'soft' techniques (i.e. the
technical as well as the organisational/logistical aspects), the
commodification of mobility (i.e. the handling of money) as well
as the 'technology of the road' i.e. all that has to do with the
travelling along these routes including the handling of
authorities and interests of various sorts (police,
administration, bandits, criminals etc.)
3. an understanding of the ways in which any
connection also engenders disconnections of various sorts; i.e.
processes of exclusion and marginalization, processes of
inequality vis-à-vis the bus-route's social/economic/cultural
environment which for instance have to do with all those that do
not ride on the bus but still are dependent on the bus as small
market vendors, car mechanics, cleaners and the like. Who, which
groups or wider social formations are in control of the
bus-economy and what does this mean in local social-political
terms.
These basic questions should above all lead to the identification of conceptual nodes of knowledge production, to the identification of important processes and so forth that should be informative of the group's studies of connections in other settings as well.
return to: Index page 'Connections and transformations in Africa'
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