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: jessica.duncan.2@city.ac.ukView 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.