Ethnographically-inspired interviews

In the classical sense, ethnography is meant to capture the social meanings and ordinary activities of people (Brewer 2000). In this study the focus shifted from individual to organisational actors, although people are still at the core of the narratives and voices that make up an organisation. Whilst not an outright

ethnography, the field work for this study was ethnographically-inspired in the sense illustrated by Heyl as a project ―in which researchers have established respectful, on-going relationships with their interviewees, including enough rapport for there to be a genuine exchange of views and enough time and openness in the interviews for the interviewees to explore purposefully with the researcher the meanings they place on events in their worlds (Heyl 2001: 369).

A six-months internship from November 2008 to May 2009 at the Islami Bank in Dhaka provided an opportunity to carry out an organisational ‗ethnography‘, providing an insider perspective² of the policy-making processes within an Islamic setting.

2 In a previous professional capacity I had met the then Chairman of the Islami Bank, Shah Abdul Hannan, who facilitated my internship with the Bank at the highest level. This door-opener, coupled with the fact that I was seen as an insider due to my work with an Islamic INGO in Bangladesh, created a relatively open dialogue, despite that fact that I had to occasionally ‗prove‘ my personal faith position.

Arguably this is not a classic ethnography in the anthropological sense, since the six-month field work period might be barely sufficient for an ethnographic study

(Hammersley and Atkinson 1995) Instead, it primarily instrumentalised participant observation (Jørgensen 1989) by relying heavily on experiential data (Strauss 1987).

As outlined, this ethnographically inspired fieldwork was conducted in ‗compressed time mode‘ (Jeffrey and Troman 2004: 538) with a six-month stint, drawing heavily on previously established contacts in and considerable prior knowledge of the

mainstream and Islamic development fields in Bangladesh.

Moreover, the ethnographically-inspired work with the Islami Bank provides an important empirical-discursive foundation for the case study, utilising ‗ethnographic‘

techniques through which to gain closer proximity to the organisation that is at the centre of the research study. In this sense ethnography is has inspired the

methodological approach for the field research, which, as discussed,was

conceptually grounded in discourse analysis and used ethnographic approaches to identify micro-level discourses and power relationships.

The internship and the ethnographic approach taken allowed for a number of conversational, semi-structured and open-ended interviews or discussions with key informants (Mikkelsen, 1995), not just at the Islami Bank but also in the wider development field, such as multi-lateral donor organisations, government

departments and non-government organisations. The rationale was to be able to compare and contrast the policies and practices of different types of organisations, and also to interpret the reality constructed by the Islami Bank. Altogether 40 such semi-structured / open-ended formal and informal interviews were conducted - see appendix A for a list of all the organisations involved. Please note that due to the sensitive political nature of Bangladesh, all interview references have been kept anonymous to protect the integrity and respect the wishes of the interviewees.

Therefore interview references used in later chapters are coded to only reveal the organisation and date the interview took place.

The interviews were ethnographically-inspired, particularly in that they were handled as ‗a form of dialogue‘ (Fairclough 2003:43). In order to establish a level of rapport with the informants, interviews were conversations or a dialogue (Riddell 1989).

Hence, many interviews were informal, although extensive notes, following a more or less standardised pattern for ease of analysis (Mikkelsen, 1995), were taken during them. In a search for ‗authentic‘ conversations it was also chosen not to utilise a recording device. Moreover, some interviews with key informants evolved into ongoing dialogue during the duration of the field work.

Key informants (Mikkelsen, 1995; Woodhouse, 1998) were critical in the formation of the case study that underpins this thesis, as they are insiders, who are willing to be informants and act as guides and translators of cultural mores and, at times, jargon and language (Fontana and Frey 2003: 76). Key informants, however, often are also giving voice to the multitude of sub-narratives that can be found in an organisation, which adds layers of a complexity to this field study of an organisation. However, in interpreting institutional discourses, the presence of sub-narratives requires that individual voices are heard and located on a spectrum of analytical categories (O‘Laughlin 1998). For the benefit of this study, the genealogical analyses of Chapters 3 and 4 will provide such categories. To provide internal analytical parameters to situate the institutional narratives, the ethnographic rapid appraisal tool of a transecting ‗walk-through‘ (Pratt and Loizos, 1992) was also deployed to situate informants within the physical/spatial organisational power structures of the Islami Bank.

Through several key informants, links with a number of related organisations were established. Through good fortune as a result of attending a short executive course at Dhaka University‘s Development Studies Department entitled ‗Understanding Development‘, contacts with informants from other organisations including Government Departments and some key academics were made. Additional

interviews were arranged through a snowball effect (Burgess, 1984; Wasserman and Faust, 1994), in which further interviews were set up through the recommendations of initially identified key informants. This snowballing aided and was aided by a stakeholder analysis that sought to establish policy influences in the field in which the Islami Bank operates and has an institutional footprint (Roche, 1998) – see below.

Interviews within the Islami Bank, following an interview guide (see appendix B) that was either circulated in advance to key informants where required to gain access or carried out spontaneously, was facilitated through my legitimate presence as a researcher on an internship. The interviews were semi-structured or open-ended. All were carried out in English and hence represent a snapshot of the English-speaking elite within the field.