Introduction
A combination of methods have been used in this study in order to incorporate methodologically the socio-cultural dynamics of layering communication and under-communicating practice in the context of complex, and globally influenced, contemporary processes. In what I have termed an ‘intersecting dialogical methodology’, participant observation, long-term informal dialogue in the field and the methodological use of
photography – together with life-story-based interviews with women over three generations – are foundational to the ethnographic enquiry. One explorative education survey, where female and male students also were asked to write a story about their future, together with one explorative household survey, was carried out. Lastly, interviews with experts working with women’s issues and education have been conducted. To call this dialogical methodological strategy ‘intersecting’ is to draw on Kimberlé W. Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) analytical concept of intersectionality in a methodological sense. This means going beyond a mere adding up of different methods, to being attentive, in an analytical sense, to the unanticipated constellations that emerge in the intersection of different methodological approaches. The methodological strategy applied here is also based on what Armi Pekkela conceptualises as a ‘dialogical methodology’ that situates the researcher as an active part of the phenomenon that is studied (Pekkala 2007: 175; see also Pink 1999; Mjaaland 2004c). Hence, it is interestedness rather than disinterestedness that is emphasised in this research project (see also Goodson 1995).
Aaron Cicourel’s understanding of the research process as an ‘encounter’ where the interplay of interaction and context constitutes an emergent process that changes through time and space (Cicourel 1992: 293) also helps explain my positionality as a researcher in an epistemological sense. Furthermore, Stephen Tyler’s conception ‘evocation’ (Tyler 1986:
123), suggesting a shift from knowledge production as description to knowledge being evoked, is also important here because it suggests inroads to the use of still photography in anthropological research that goes beyond realist documentation and the production of evidence (see also Mjaaland 2006, 2009b). These intersecting methods that are utilised to incorporate socio-cultural dynamics and the complexity of contemporary processes in the Tigrayan context, has also much in common with triangulation (Denzin 1970, 1989) used as
‘an additional epistemological source’ (Flick 1992: 176; 2006), in terms of the unanticipated meanings that can be evoked in the intersection of different methodological approaches.
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In addition to providing a descriptive overview, including epistemological
considerations of the multiple methods used, I will centre my discussion on the implications of using these methods in the Tigrayan context. Since telling occupies an ambiguous space in layered socio-cultural dynamics in the highland context of Ethiopia, my discussion in the first part of this chapter will address what might seem a contradictory significance ascribed to narration as a methodological approach in this study. However, this is based on narration being approached as a social strategy, rather than as more, or less, transparent representations of personal experiences. My long-term involvement in this area of Tigray with several visits and fieldwork trips over almost two decades would qualify this study for being classified as
‘multitemporal’ in Signe Howell and Aud Talle’s (2012) conception (see also Howell 2011).1 This multitemporality has enabled the ‘walking with’ (Lee & Ingold 2006) people through parts of their lives with the possibility entailed to hold on to particular dialogues over years, involving as well visual communication through photographs (see also Pink 2007, 2011). This time aspect in both a literal and visual sense has constituted one analytical approach to access contestations and contradictions in socio-cultural practices. Finally, this intersecting dialogical methodology also accommodates an exploratory attitude towards scientific investigation most often relegated to art practice.
Participant observation and participation
Foundational to anthropological methodology, the use of participant observation in this research project is not primarily centred on observing, since – as in earlier research from the same area in Tigray (Mjaaland 2004c) – I have opted for a more intervening role as a social agent (see also Fangen 2004). While Marlene de Laine notes that ‘[i]n contemporary
fieldwork the trend is for more participation and less observation’ (Laine 2000: 2), Tim Ingold emphasises that participation is not opposed to observation but rather a precondition for it (Ingold 2011b: 11). This emphasis on participation, therefore, acknowledges the intervention that participant observation always entails (Clifford 1986), but that is not always explicated in anthropological research. Using intervention as a methodological strategy is also based on my first anthropological fieldwork experience in Tigray where observation alone did not come across as a particularly fruitful method, since what was made visible was not necessarily what was going on. A more interventionist methodological strategy in the Tigrayan context has
1 Visits to this area have taken place almost yearly since 1993, usually 2-3 months each time. The fieldwork for my Cand. Polit thesis (Mjaaland 2004c) lasted one year from December 2001 to the end of November 2002.
Fieldwork for this present study was carried out July-December 2008 (6 months), April-July 2009 (3 months), October-December 2010 (3 months), and December 2011-February 2012 (3 months).
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therefore centred on being a challenge to the layering of communication in socio-cultural practice in order to access the ambiguities and silences implied. However, rather than an unveiling of personal secrets, my focus is on the implication of this layering of
communication for socio-cultural practices. Another reason for this interventionist strategy is based on the possibility of accessing what Bourdieu (1977, 1990a) sees as the taken-for-granted in social practice and that allows for social reproduction to pass unquestioned.
This interventionist strategy is also contained, on a basic level, in my strategy of not trying to ‘blend in’ with the Tigrayan women in my study area, by not conforming to the common dress-code for respectable women in this area: ankle-long colourful dresses and tightly plaited hair. In fact, my initial attempts to conform on my first visits to the area in the 1990s had failed: the dresses I wore where not considered the right ones, I cannot stand the pain of having my hair plaited, and I do not have gold according to what was expected of a
‘rich’ female foreigner. I therefore gave up and resorted to my jeans and shirts/blouses while gathering my long hair in a pony-tail, or in one plait. Together with the fact that I have not borne any children and move around on my own, I often fell into the category ‘man’, and was often addressed as ‘Mr. Thera’.2 Since my ‘white otherness’ makes me stand out as different anyway, this methodological strategy of enhancing difference has further involved: (1) being open about my opinions and reactions to peoples’ practices and justification of them, as an approach to access conflicting interests and perceptions in day-to-day interactions, and (2) making ‘mistakes’ and utilising non-conformity (especially in relation to gender norms) to create ruptures in perceptions that enable a potential explication of what otherwise ‘goes without saying’ (Bourdieu 1977: 167). This methodological strategy also answers to what George Marcus (1997) has commented on as the ‘complicity’ that anthropologists have commonly been entangled in to accomplish rapport with fieldwork subjects. In what Barbara Tedlock suggests as ‘observation of participation’, ethnographers both experience and observe their own and others’ co-participation within the ethnographic encounter (Tedlock 1991: 69).
Going even further, Bourdieu seeks through what he has conceptualised as ‘participant objectivation’ to objectify the researcher’s relation to the researched by way of the researcher’s own relation to a specific academic field (Bourdieu 1999, 2003, see also Pels 2000). Less pretentious, at stake in this thesis is an attempt to provide an explication of my positionality, both in a methodological and epistemological sense, and which on a basic level
2 As a language strategy, gender reversals can take place in both Amharic and Tigriña. Helen Pankhurst (1992) notes that these gender reversals are utilised (1) to communicate closeness and intimacy between friends, (2) as insult, and (3) to honour someone.
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means that I will not speak about myself as a researcher in third person but use the personal pronoun ‘I’ to explicate my position when tracing the path this study has taken.
My understanding of participation has much in common with Jo Lee and Tim Ingold’s (2006) conceptualisation of participation during fieldwork as a literal ‘walking with’ – as opposed to (just) ‘being there’. Understood in a more figurative sense than Lee and Ingold proposes, ‘walking with’ requires an attunement not only to a temporally shared material circumstance but to the pace and the route women’s lives take within and beyond the temporality of the actual periods of fieldwork. Participation has also involved a wish to learn, not only the multitude of practices that women are involved in, but to understand how these practices are reasoned about from a gendered perspective. These practices range from daily work tasks at home, like making food and washing clothes to education and business activities, agricultural work and women’s house-building tasks as well as religious practices like going to church and the participation in religious associations (mahiber), celebrations like christenings and weddings, and rituals surrounding death and mourning. Hence, ‘walking with’ has involved following the flow of mundane daily life, spending my days visiting women in their homes. My long-term involvement with people in the semi-urban market town of Endabaguna since 1993, and the lowland rural community tabia (sub-district) Mayshek since 2001 has also enabled a tracing of correspondence (or lack of it) between what people say and what they do in practice. Potential contradictions between saying and doing have further been utilised as the basis for new discussions to understand the rationale behind women’s priorities. The data generated from this methodological approach is contained in fieldwork notes that refer to these daily interactions together with informal dialogue. The fieldwork notes also include my reactions and reflections on what took place, suggestions for new perspectives to be investigated, and analytical considerations.
Participation has in no way been a straightforward issue. People were often worried that I would get tired or dirty (or both), suggesting that I rested instead and only observed. The fact that one female-headed household in the neighbourhood in the rural area was short of labour made my contribution more acceptable, especially in relation to this household’s irrigation project where there was a need for two: one to handle the treadle-pump and one to guide the water. In the female-headed household in the market town where I rented a room, I was also allowed – when hands were too few – to contribute by peeling onions, potatoes and other vegetables for the restaurant they ran. Since people tended to treat me as someone unable to work (a common perception of white foreigners), it was on the issue of participation that we most often clashed. That I continued to walk three hours on foot to Mayshek after
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road-connection from Endabaguna through Mayshek to Edaga Hibret was established in 2010, and transportation was available a few times a day (but at no regular times), was
inconceivable to most people since lack of money was considered to be the only reason for continuing to walk. While I tried to explain that walking on foot cleared my mind, insisting on walking over the years and carrying my own backpack to the rural areas has earned me the classification of tegadalit (˰ͼͤʒ˵; female fighter) or beal sïre (ˠ͆ʕʽʰ; literally, ‘those who wear pants’, meaning ‘men’). The above restrictions on participation also reflect ambivalence and contradictions as to what it takes to learn practice: on the one hand, the extent to which it is a requirement to be a Tigrayan to be able to learn, while on the other, suggesting that involvement in certain practices influence ascribed gender identity (a point I will return to in Chapter 6). My involvement over time in this area, might, however, have worked to reassure people of my earnest commitment. An important aspect of the life-story-based interviews was precisely that the interview situation (with a few exceptions) constituted but one instance in long-term dialogical relationships where women had come to trust me over time by testing my ability to keep quiet and not circulating the information given to others in the community. It is these ‘multitemporal’ dialogues, which cover a much longer time span of ‘walking with’ than the delimited situation where the life-story-based interviews were conducted, that is at the base of my discussion of the methodological use of narrative accounts in this thesis.
The interview situation and beyond
The life-story-based interviews were carried out during the six-month period of fieldwork in 2008. Altogether 25 women were interviewed, aiming for an equal distribution between the semi-urban market town and the rural community. Some of those interviewed in the market town did, however, have their background in Mayshek or other rural communities. Aiming as well for an even age distribution between the women, ranging in age between 18 and 75, participation in the research project was based on purposeful selection through my own network in the two communities. I also sought to include some of the former fighter women, and other women, who defined themselves as having been involved in the struggle. A few participants were also selected through the networks of those women that had already been interviewed. Of the 25 interviewed women, five had been interviewed for my earlier research on women and agency in 2002 (Mjaaland 2004c), and were included in order to follow the path of their lives and potential changes in their life situation. This second interview provided, in most cases, more detailed elaborations on themes we had touched on in the previous interview and in informal dialogues in between.
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When basing the interviews on life stories, I was aware of the fact that the literary genre ‘life story’ as a chronological linear representation is not applicable cross-culturally. I was also aware of the fact that telling one’s life story (ʋ͂˵˳ʲ̵/hiwot tarik)3 is not established as a valued socio-cultural practice in Tigray, since the provision of biographic information, including personal experiences and opinions, tends to be surrounded by (protective) secrecy (see also Mjaaland 2004c).4 I therefore had to exert much effort in explaining what I meant by a life story, and to specify the exact information I was after, to get the women started. Hence, the initial question in the interview situation was, ‘could you tell me your life story from the beginning, meaning where you were born, education, engagement, marriage, children, job and the like’. These specifications were based on a common life trajectory in the Tigrayan context, and formed the basis for further questions and elaborations.
Education was also used as a framework for enquiry to establish if it had a place in their, or their children’s lives, and if so, in what ways. Questions on education further addressed how these women had strategised (or not) in relation to education, and what education meant for them. Issues relating to gender equality, women’s rights and empowerment were included to establish how these global concepts were perceived locally. Questions pertaining to
government policies as well as Women’s Association of Tigray’s (WAT) activities were asked to establish to what extent the women had knowledge about prevailing development strategies concerning women in general and education in particular.
Peoples’ experiences with being interviewed in this area is first and foremost based on surveys done by different government bodies like agriculture and health, women’s affairs and education bureaus, or local NGOs, such as the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) or Women’s Association of Tigray (WAT), in matters most often related to livelihood and health issues.
When the tape recorder stopped, ending the hour-long interview, the female fighter Saba (50) also tells me that she had been interviewed two or three times on the radio channel Dimitsi Weyane (‘Voice of the Revolution’, now the regional government’s radio channel in Tigray) just after the liberation struggle. She says, ‘recently, one Ethiopian woman was here to make radio interviews of different fighter women for the [Ethiopian] Millennium celebration.5 The wereda administration picked us out. She did not know my name and I didn’t know hers. I cut off the interview. It didn’t feel right to broadcast what I really feel.’6 Having pondered on her
3 The word tarik (˳ʲ̵)in Tigriña is used both in terms of ‘story’ and ‘history’.
4 I came to understand later that one situation where (edited) biographies or life stories play a role in the Orthodox Christian highland context of Ethiopia, is at a person’s funeral, and hence when a life has ended.
5 Ethiopian New Year was celebrated 11 September 2007/Meskerem 1, 2000 E.C.
6 Fieldwork notes 3 November 2008/T’ïqïmti 24, 2001 E.C.
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answer for a while, I brought up the issue again a few weeks later. I ask Saba if she can explain to me why she had ended the interview with the journalist: ‘What did the journalist ask you?’ I ask her. ‘She asked me how I felt about my son dying in the struggle. She asked me how I felt about my own participation in the struggle. I told her that we got our freedom; that the Derg was overthrown’, she says. ‘What did you not tell her?’ I ask. ‘I did not tell her how hard it is to be surpassed by those who did not sacrifice anything for the struggle; how unfair it feels to not be given compensation, or a pension. (…) I have spoken up about it, even to the [the former regional] president (who came from a neighbouring village).’ ‘Does it have to do with the fact that you were not a combat fighter at the frontline?’ I ask. ‘Others that were behind the frontlines have been given compensation. Our present wereda leader has never loosened a shot, but he still got compensation. I know about others too.’ ‘But how come you can tell the president, wereda officials and me about it, but you cannot say it when you are asked to express yourself on Dimitsi Weyene? Is it because it will be broadcasted to the people?’ ‘Yes’, she says, ‘I want people to focus on what we gained from the struggle. To say something else was impossible. It stopped here’, she says and puts the tip of her right-hand fingers to her throat.7 Saba’s explanation shows precisely the consideration at play as to what is told to whom in which contexts for what purpose.
Conducting interviews in the Tigrayan context did not only have to incorporate attentiveness to how stories are commonly told, with the silences and ambiguities implied in the socio-cultural dynamics of layering communication and practice. The fact that stories can be portioned out in bits and pieces in different situations over time, depending on the situation and who is present, had also to be considered. As noted in my earlier research from Tigray:
People would be both conscious of, and selective about, which information was shared with whom, and for what purpose. Information might likewise be portioned out in bits and pieces at different occasions. This choosing of a particular version or fragment in a particular situation, might not always be obvious. However, realising that there are divergent versions at play, and even lies, is important to catch a glimpse of how social interaction is instructed by a need to hold some means for negotiation (Mjaaland 2004c: 118).
The methodological strategy of keeping narratives going over time, and patching pieces, which are not necessarily consistent, together, is therefore attuned to the layered socio-cultural dynamics in this particular context. The narrative accounts that are represented in this thesis must likewise be understood as cut-outs from a telling that has taken place at many
7 Fieldwork notes 11 December 2008/Tahsas 2, 2001 E.C.
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different points in time both before and after the actual interview situation. Furthermore, I had
different points in time both before and after the actual interview situation. Furthermore, I had