Voices from the field - Experiences of WOTRO researchers in their Ph.D. or post-doc projects
14 juni 2010
Social gymnastics in South Africa
‘What looks good on paper, will not always work in practice, but development relevance criteria force me to constantly think about the public use of my work.’
Femke Brandt studies labour relations on commercial trophy-hunting farms in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa where commercial farmers increasingly convert to wildlife-based production. Within the conversion process farmers often scale up their business and incorporate more farms into the game farm. Femke seeks to explore the impacts of these conversions on farm-dwellers: farm labourers, (former) labour and rent-paying tenants and their families.
Being a researcher in South Africa presented Femke with many challenges. The tensions that are a legacy of the Apartheid remain everywhere and segregation is still a daily matter. These issues play a large role in the research area of Femke, since farm-dwellers are a historically disadvantaged and marginalised group in society and farm owners mostly well-organised privileged people. Researchers need to have a good understanding of the context, and Femke experienced that at times it takes out-of-the-box thinking to achieve this. During her stay she organised a running contest, which is an unexpected activity for a researcher. ‘But’, argues Femke, ‘after this race I had a much better idea of the tensions and relations within and between communities. Besides that it provided me with a lot of contacts which proved useful for me during my fieldwork.’
Social gymnastics
Besides ‘physical gymnastics’ Femke also experienced ‘social gymnastics’, partly resulting from WOTRO’s relevance for development criteria. Among other requirements, WOTRO expects researchers to involve stakeholders in their research and the communication of results have to go further than scientific publications. Having to deal with stakeholders in the context of people in powerful and vulnerable positions and tensed labour relations has sometimes put Femke in difficult situations. The farm holders did not always understand why she was also interested in the perspective of farm-dwellers. This required some ‘social gymnastics’ in which she had to consider the ethical implications of balancing between getting access to people and places and being transparent about research objectives.
Stakeholder participation
According to Femke, the development relevance criteria force her to constantly think and discuss this aspect over, which she applauds. ‘But what looks good on paper, will not always work in practice’. In addition, as a researcher you also have your limitations.’ She questions, for instance, whether a researcher is the most competent person to facilitate workshops or translate research results into practice. Moreover, she experienced that it is almost impossible to bring stakeholders in her research area together, as they have different interests and the situation is often tense. But she makes clear that this does not mean that researchers should let go of the aim of working with stakeholders. Researchers need to think creatively to find the best way within their programme to deal with such local circumstances. To her, the need to participate with stakeholders is clear.
Sharing results
Femke will soon return to South Africa to share her initial findings with various stakeholders and her South African colleagues. This dialogue will provide her with extra insights, information and knowledge, and it will enable stakeholders to remain included in the research process.
This project is embedded in an Integrated Programme coordinated by Marja Spierenburg (VU) and Shirley Brooks (University of the Free State). Selected Integrated programmes comply with three criteria: high scientific quality (including interdisciplinarity), relevance for development and quality of collaboration (including multi-stakeholder collaboration). The programmes consist of multiple PhD and post-doc projects.
