This week’s course hosted a guest speaker who shared his experienecs with working and conducting research in Sierra Leone. This insightful account gave students a glimpse into the step-by-step process of engaging with people, countries or environments that are foreign to us.
The very first step involves a desk review, in which the researchers prepare and learn about the environment they will operate in. This includes a review of socio-economic and political contexts, previous project phases and donor landscapes. While intuitively this might sound as the obvious step before conducting research or field trips, I am sure that in many cases, especially in projects relating to development or aid, this step is often overlooked or not given sufficient attention. I remember reading an account of a former peacekeeper in “Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention,” in which the author argued that one of the main reasons these operations failed was the lack of country and cultural-specific knowledge the peacekeepers had. The guest speaker also alluded to the fact that it may be hard to find reliable information regarding our countries of interest, which is a challenge I found myself facing nearly in every post in my blog.
The next step is the actual research, which for our guest speaker included a two-week trip to Sierra Leone, 50 interviews and visits to project sites. For this step, he noted that it is important to adapt and be persistent, as plans and circumstances might change. During interviews, he highlighted the importance of cultural sensitivity, being aware of agendas and interests interviewees have and the language we use. Here I appreciated his anecdote regarding traveling (as he mentioned) as a white European male to an African country. His supervisor was female, which might have been a surprise to locals he engaged with. To deal with that, they decided that she would get out of the car and introduce herself first, so locals will understand that she is the supervisor and that he is “lower” in the hierarchy. Personally, I did not fully understand why it was so important to rightfully convey the hierarchy to their counterparts.
Then the speaker shared the final step, which is issuing the final report. Here, it is important to demonstrate understanding of the project and the context, provide a detailed documentation of the interviews and visits, consider organizational requirements and review the report. In this stage I personally find it important not to let one’s personal beliefs affect the conclusions reached in the interviews (or whatever method we decide to use). This is something I had to force myself to be aware of when I wrote my posts for the blog on the UAE; while I genuinely believe I did not have too many preconceptions of the UAE (as I did not know all too much about that country), it is often difficult not to place what I learn about the UAE in a context that is more familiar to me. However, I hope that so far I am doing a decent job analyzing the UAE and the most “objective” way possible and I intend to do an even better job in the future.
