Ethical Considerations

All research implicates ethical issues. I agree with what Berg (2001:39) postured that ‘as a social scientist I have a great extent of ethical obligation to my colleagues, study population and larger society’. The Rhodes University Ethical Guidelines5

first alerted me to the ethical dimensions of my research. Similarly, Birch et. al (2012) argue that ethical questions in the research relationship, the use of data and the interpretative and analytical processes have all become more significant as the landscape of qualitative research continues to change and researchers face new issues when using new tools to produce knowledge.

Entry into the Mutoko district and ward 3 was negotiated through gatekeepers that included the District Administrator, the ward councilor, village heads and traditional leaders. My initial contact with the leaders in ward 3 was facilitated by Plan Zimbabwe (Mutoko Unit). The NGO is working in the ward in the areas of livelihoods, food security and child education. I took advantage of one of their field visits (to conduct workshops on child marriages in the ward) in March 2014 to introduce myself to community leaders and seek permission to conduct my study in the ward. The process involved briefing the authorities on the purpose, procedures, outcomes and uses of my research. In doing this, I took heed of the fact that there is no excuse for keeping the fieldwork’s true purpose secret, even if the potential informants may dislike the project when the agenda is revealed. Therefore my method of gaining access to the ward was through open and consensual negotiation with the gatekeepers.

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Access to the key informants, places of interest (such as fields and gardens) and household heads was negotiated at the community and household level. I took note of the fact that participants in research naturally have a right to decline to take part in and at any phase of the research process. Informed consent, then, is a fundamental element of ethical practice, alongside related concerns such as the avoidance of deception, harm and exploitation, and the principles of confidentiality and anonymity. I therefore sought verbal consent from each research participant and stressed his or her right to terminate the interviews. In line with what other researchers have done, the process of seeking consent was dynamic and continuous. Consent should be ongoing and renegotiated throughout the research process and researchers need to continually reflect on what it is that research participants have consented to (Miller and Bell, 2012). I hence did not assume that respondents who had agreed to participate in the survey would automatically give me their life histories.

Respondents were also assured of confidentiality in the use of a tape recorder and camera, and I gave them the chance to refuse their use. I was therefore conscious to the idea that researchers should use the tape-recorder judiciously and with consent. In addition, in obtaining qualitative data, I adopted the concept of active interviews, as suggested for critical realist researchers. I did this in order to fully interact with research participants in my study. Holstein and Gubrium (1997) developed the conception of active interview in opposition to a positivist model in which ‘neutral interviewers simply extract information from interviewees, seen as mere carriers of opinions, sentiments and the unadulterated facts and details of experience’. Thus, my interviews were more similar to conversations than to situations where one of the parties (usually the interviewer) has the dominant position. I also answered to questions about myself, whenever research participants had some. In particular I was asked many times, kumusha kwenyu ndekupi

uye mutupo wako chii (where do you come from and what is your totem?), to which I graciously

answered. As stated by other researchers, it is important that participants have the sense of being listened to and they feel that they have been ‘given voice’. Central to these concerns are the concepts of agency and competence. Research participants must be able to express their own agency within the research process, rather than being treated merely as subjects upon whom research is done (Heath et.al, 2004). It is therefore a truancy that the respondent remains an active agent, who not only holds facts and details of experience but, in the very process of

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offering them up for response, constructively adds to, takes away from and transforms the facts and details.

As well, my data was collected and processed with stringent confidentiality to protect the identities of the farmers, especially knowing that some of their coping strategies are prohibited (such as cutting down trees and cultivating in stream/river banks). Participants were assured of privacy through the use of pseudo-names in my data analysis unless where consent to use actual names was granted. Informed consent included participants’ consent to allow me to publish the research findings subject to the requirements in respect of confidentiality and anonymity espoused in the Rhodes University Ethical Guidelines. In my presentation, I also extensively use pictures from observed landscape aspects such as fields, gardens and streams. The use of full pictures of respondents is limited in the thesis and, in instances where I do so, consent was sought and granted.

Furthermore, in order, to give voice to the farmers in my study and present their views as authentically as possible, my thesis – as indicated earlier – used many quotations in presenting findings. However, I am aware of the complications involved in attempting to give respondents in my study voices through quotations. I realised during my data analysis, as I went through my transcripts many times, that I could not use everything I got on tape. This means that I left out some parts of the conversations, which may mean that whilst I gave ‘voice’ to respondents, these respondents, given a choice, may have chosen different quotations. I therefore got comfort in the notion that there is not one single right way to interpret data. In my chapters, my voice appears stronger than the voice of the farmers in Mutoko, yet I am aware that subjectivity is inevitable.