Accompanied fieldwork

The PhD research was based on nine months of fieldwork in Andean Ecuador. I needed to find a way of keeping up with aspects of my family life. This is the kind of issue I had not read much about in all the preparatory work I had done. And I was aware I was not the only one, as the question of how to manage fieldwork and personal life was often posed by fellow PhD students at conferences and seminars. The image of the ‘solitary anthropologist’ still persists even though it is increasingly common to do fieldwork accompanied (Amit, 2000: 6). The special nature of Anthropology means that the usually easy distinction between personal and

professional life is difficult to maintain. The edited volume by Flinn et al. (1998) is one of the few works which has explored the effects of the anthropologist being accompanied (whether by their children or partners) while on fieldwork. Authors like Cupples and Kindon (2003), Frohlick (2002), Levey (2009), Starrs et al. (2001) and Sutton (1998) have reflected on the fact of taking their children with them to the field.

My long-time partner eventually decided to travel with me, but not before agreeing that he must have his own independent project that would not create obstacles for my own research.

The outcome was very productive for both of us; for me as an anthropologist and for him as a photographer and film maker. Our work fed back to each other but never interfered. My ethnographical insights greatly improved the focus of my partner’s documentary (The Weight of Gold), while his photos became a token of reciprocity for many families who wanted a picture to be sent to their relatives abroad. Also his photos of traditional crafts and sports enriched my research giving me contextual data that otherwise I would have not looked into with so much detail.

Nevertheless, my partner’s status as the ‘follower’ puzzled Andean villagers, particularly in the village of Xarbán, where males migrate to the US and women stay put or follow them after a while. Perplexity increased when villagers learnt that we both cooked and did the domestic chores. In this sense we became closely monitored. The observer became observed. As Cupples and Kindon argue, this interaction with a member of my own culture (my partner) made me appear less anomalous to the villagers (2003: 214).

I can see how my partner’s presence spared me numerous questions about what a young woman was doing on her own so far away from home. It did spur, though, innumerable inquires about me not having children and ‘contraception methods’. Obviously there was something wrong with me because in my late twenties and with a stable partner I did not have children and nor were they one of my priorities in life. Although my partner’s presence saved me from some of the ugliest manifestations of machismo (I was never harassed or molested in any way), it also brought to the surface some others, particularly regarding educational background. I found it very annoying that in the early stages of the fieldwork in Xarbán some men addressed him as ‘Señor ingeniero’ (Mister Engineer) while I only deserved a ‘Dianita’²¹.

21 Modes of address in rural Ecuador are quite rigid. They use the term ‘usted’ (the Spanish expression of respect which is nowadays quite outdated in everyday conversations in Spain) even to talk to friends or relatives. On the other hand they quite often use diminutives (Dianita), particularly for young women

He also provided me with access to aspects of the village social life that otherwise I would have never been able to catch a glimpse of, particularly regarding young male villagers’ socializing practices. I need to account for the fact that my partner was present while I filled in many questionnaires (he was not though when carrying out semi-structured interviews). Trying to minimise the impact of his presence, he stayed quiet throughout the whole filling-in process.

Overall his presence was not perceived as a threat as he was performing a traditional male role of accompanying and protecting his female partner. Villagers showed their contentment about him performing his masculine task of protection.

3.4. Ethics

Like all PhD students enrolled in a UK university, I was required to fill in a ‘research ethics pro-forma’ before proceeding on fieldwork (adapted from the Social Research Association).

Informed consent was one of the most important requirements I had to comply with, obtaining it ‘preferably in writing’ (SRA, 2003: 54). Once in the field I realized that the ethical concerns I was made to worry about in the UK had little to do with reality in Andean Ecuador.

The idea of carrying around a paper to be signed before talking to anyone as a proof of informed consent was simply surreal. It was not a way of lowering ethical standards for the fact of not being in the UK. I was trying to adapt ethical considerations created in a completely different environment to make sense in a small village in the middle of the Andes. For instance many people did not know how to properly read or write; hence the informed consent in writing was unsuitable. I also considered that it would create unnecessary suspicion. What I did was to make the reasons of my presence as understandable as I could to the villagers. I explained to them (as many times as needed and in many different ways till fully understood) that the data I gathered with the questionnaire and the interviews would be anonymized, processed and analysed and only used for the purposes of my thesis. I always sought to keep my ethical standards as high as I could, not because I was bound by a form I signed several months ago in the UK, but because I was truly committed to respect and be honest with the people I was researching. I considered honesty and respect, with myself and with the others, my ethical guidelines. But I needed to tailor these two grand words to changing contexts. By and children. ‘Mija’ (from mi hija, my daughter) is their most affectionate term. People with education beyond primary education are addressed as bachiller (with high school education) and licenciado or ingeniero (if holding a university degree). For the record my partner has not finished university and I am doing my PhD, which is completely levelled out by the fact that he is a man and I am not. Rigidity in codes of address was more marked in Xarbán than in Pindo, and stronger among those who had never migrated abroad.

honesty I do not mean always telling everything. I mean never lying or hiding information. As in any personal relationship, what one is willing to share, and how much, changes as reciprocal trust develops. As acquaintances become friends we feel more inclined to share. Personal relations in the field are not different in this sense. In a few interviews I found it tricky to manage personal boundaries, either because I had a friendship with the interviewee or because I disliked his or her ideology or actions. In all the cases, I always tried to create a setting of respect for the interview, no matter how much I might dislike the interviewee.

Regarding people I liked, interviews were very obviously easier to carry out. I declined to formally interview any of the few people I became close friends with, as it would have made it difficult to maintain boundaries between the research interview and the friendship.

Nonetheless, like Rabinow (1997), I also learnt a great deal from conversations with these people. I only incorporated information in the form of quotations when I had the interviewees’

consent and the quote was created in the context of a previously agreed formal interview.

Nevertheless, I could not erase from my mind what I had been told in a non-interview setting.

After intense reflection I resolved not to explicitly mention things told to me as a friend but because I cannot stop knowing them I must account for them, as this knowledge inevitably affects my analysis.

Reciprocity was also a source of ethical reflection. Readings about reciprocity in the Andes had warned me how omnipresent it was in the area (Barlett, 1980; Corr, 2002; Montes del Castillo, 1989; Tousignant and Maldanado, 1989). Coming from an urban environment, I was sceptical at the beginning, but I quickly discovered how pervasive it was. Very often I was fed with bread and soft drinks when visiting villagers’ houses and came home with bags of fruits, vegetables, eggs, milk or whatever villagers had at hand to give me. Usually they were agricultural surpluses; however at other times villagers’ presents represented a clear burden to them. The few times I refused a present (because I could clearly see how heavy the burden was) or food (because I had been well fed before), it provoked a reaction of sadness. Villagers felt I did not consider their presents good enough for me. It led me to always accept their presents, expressing passionately my happiness and thankfulness. Like Huisman I also ‘made continued efforts to substitute a colonialist approach of “taking” for one of mutual exchange’ (2008:

386). I tried to reciprocate by giving free English lessons in Xarbán and free copies of the photos my partner took in both villages.

The different rights to mobility (mine and those of the people I worked with) unexpectedly became one of the most poignant ethical issues I had to face whilst on fieldwork. As an EU

citizen I am entitled to an almost unlimited geographical mobility. I can travel freely within Europe or go as a tourist to the US or Ecuador without having to apply for a visa. This mobility is denied to Xarbán and Pindo villagers, which impacts profoundly on their lives. Xarbán villagers have to risk their lives and endure extreme discomfort in a long and expensive journey to arrive in New York, which to me means no more than an eight-hour flight. This injustice caused me a great deal of anxiety, and as much as I knew I was not directly responsible for it I could not help but feel guilty. The different frame of mobility entitlements is in fact at the very core of this research, as legal status proved to be essential to explain Xarbán and Pindo migrants’ material and social remittances. I hope this thesis will at least draw attention to this unfairness and the undesirable consequences it has on many people’s lives.

3.5. Summary

In this chapter I have covered the methodological design of the thesis, as well as the context in which the information was created and the ethical issues I needed to face in that context. A double triangulation of sites and techniques is the methodological scaffold of this thesis. I carried out eighty-three interviews as well as extensive participant observation in the Ecuadorian villages of Xarbán and Azuay as well as in the borough of Queens (New York City), the town of Port Chester in the state of New York, and the provinces of Madrid and the Canary Islands in Spain. A questionnaire was administered in Xarbán and Pindo to collect social and demographic data and to comparatively sketch the profile of material remittances in both villages. The researcher’s positionalities are key in the production of knowledge (Rosaldo, 2000).

Dialogic interaction is at the core of knowledge production processes based on ethnographic and qualitative techniques (England, 1994). Due to intense reflexivity in all of the research sites, I have been able to consider in depth my multiple positionalities as a researcher: my gender, age, ethnicity, geographical attachments, education, religious stances and even my personality. Given that fieldwork took place ‘away from home’, I was forced to find ways to reconcile my personal and academic life. The fact that my partner lived with me in Ecuador had an impact (overwhelmingly positive) on the research outcome. In the last part of this chapter, I have argued for the usefulness of applying honesty and respect towards the people we work with as field researchers and towards ourselves, as my ultimate ethical guideline. In the line of much feminist research, I also see the resulting frame of interaction suitable to overcome colonial ethnological approaches (Huisman, 2008). Finally, as it could not be otherwise,

legally-entitled versus actual mobility has not only crucial content consequences for this research but also methodological ones.

Chapter 4: