My Epistemological approach

All sides of the dam debate have one thing in common which is their desire to improve the human condition yet they are so strongly opposed to each other’s viewpoint. The approach of the major conflicting actors in the dam debate seems to be epistemologically similar as it is rooted in empiricism, while using deconstructs to discredit each other. The differences being that while those for the building of dams are highly structuralist, those against seem to be less so and want to cite agency in local people and communities. For instance, Adams (1992: 24) argued that:

“The future of Africa rural people must be based on the informal skills of local people, organised and directed in concerned political and practical action by those people themselves. Development is what those people will do with the resources and ideas at their disposal. Development planning must be something they control. Outsiders must come as equals to meet with local people face to face, and must seek to facilitate and not to dominate.”

Adams (1992) posits and privileges an ecologically governed imperative of development – based on the natural functions of rivers and wetlands in Africa - which he believed was more appropriate for improved livelihood of local people based on a combination of “integrated natural resources management with realistic socio-economic goals” (ibid: 16) over an emphasis on technological induced socio-economic development imperative of large dams.

This difference has led to a development stalemate, which has had a significant impact on the very people for whom the large dams and development protagonists are desirous to assist. Accordingly, specific “actors” such as NGOs, state agencies or transnational companies may not act autonomously to create ecological oppression or liberation, but may themselves – as are their critics – be acting within structures defined by environmental discourses or storylines (Forsyth, 2003: 272).

The epistemological approach to this research will be a combination of critical realism and pragmatism in the context of political ecology. The reason for these approaches is to enable me to be eclectic and show reflexivity. Critical realism is the attempt to ‘understand “real” structures of society and the world while acknowledging that any model of such structure will reflect only partial experiences of them, and social and political framings within the research process’ (Forsyth, 2003: 16). My choice of critical realism rejects positivism and its narrowly empirical philosophy (Proctor 1998: 360) which has an ontological proposition that reality exists independently of our ideas of it and is knowable to some significant extent (ibid). My own ontological position is that reality exists, yet acknowledges that its content and context

changes in time and space and the knowledge construction of that reality is mediated by experience, training and culture. In this regard, I reject scientific determinism but accept its importance and relevance to knowledge creation for addressing the needs of the human condition. As Proctor (1998) observed, knowledge, to critical realists, is neither wholly objective nor subjective but is in fact the result of interaction between subject and object. These negate the cornerstone of empiricism: objectivity, value neutrality, and independence from social and cultural contexts (Bradshaw and Bekoff, 2001: 461), leading to the view that modelling, analysis and explanations are subjective processes affected by the experience of the individual (ibid). For the critical realist the truth content of different ideas can be compared on a relative basis: some [social] explanations are more adequate representations of reality than others, though all are, by virtue of the dialectic (subject-object) nature of knowledge, always “partial truths” (Proctor 1998:361).

Critical realists recognize that direct access to a reordered reality is impossible and that knowledge is always fallible and incomplete; coupled with optimism that this admission need pose no fatal blow to the project of finding better explanations for reality (ibid). Consequently, it is an acknowledgement that ‘sciencetification’ functions as part of a larger system of knowledge, nature and society (Cillers, 1998). In spite of the differences with empiricism, critical realism cannot interpret divergent truths since it only seeks to explain reality in terms of structures. It is the acknowledgement of the limitation of critical realism that leads me to draw on pragmatism.

Hawkings (1988: 392) defined pragmatic as “treating things from the practical point of view”. Hospers (1997:46) refers to pragmatism, as “the truth is what works”. The term “pragmatic” is thus widely used in the lay sense to mean a focus on practical issues or practical, workable means to accomplish a desired end (Proctor, 1998:363), and showing that the essence of knowledge is problem-solving capability [it is however, recognized that pragmatism is subject to various definitions] (Lovejoy, 1963). In this regard:

Pragmatism may be seen to refer to three key tenets: the rejections of essentialist concepts of truth; the perception of no epistemological difference between facts, values, morality, and science; and a belief that social networks or solidarities determine scientific inquiry. For pragmatists, ‘truth’ is just the name of a property that all true statements share. The term pragmatism refers to the necessary limitations such social solidarities place on the extent to which scientists – or the networks to which they belong – can produce explanations that go further than their own experience and objectives. In this sense, pragmatists seek to understand how social networks (or institutions, or solidarities) may be the determining factor in

understanding complex reality, rather than placing innate faith in the predictive power of science itself. (Forsyth, 2003: 92).

This has important implications for my research topic; as the issues involved are central to the livelihood of people in several continents especially the developing world. The proposition is whether the solutions being offered are workable and can make significant contribution to the development of the society in general. Proctor (1998: 368) citing a rubric presented by Anne Buttimer (1993) argues that pragmatist and critical realist look at the word in different ways.

I also intend to draw on the concept of political ecology. Political ecology is premised on the fact that society - from individuals, households’ local communities, nation-states and the global - is political. The development continuum in my research is a political issue, and every development has an ecological implications. Blaikie (1999:132-3) identifies two narrower foci of political ecology. “The first is the interaction between changing environmental and the socio-economic, in which landscapes and physiographic processes acting upon them are seen to have a dialectical, historically derived and iterative relation with resource use and the socio-economic and political sets of relations which shapes them. The second being the examination of different states of nature, their change through time and their contested representations under conditions of unequal power.” Given that development is a negotiated and contested process, political ecology as an epistemological approach will sit comfortably within my research by linking it up with critical realism and pragmatism; I believe their interface will enhance my research.

The issue of power relations (Blaikie 1999:138) is clearly embedded in the dam debate, where agency is rooted in the authoritative (privileged) speech of technocrats and bureaucrats (Woolgar 1988:101), while less visible, yet present, are those who oppose large dams development – NGOs, for example. There is therefore a contest between approaches that put human conscious agency at the centre of the analysis, and those that focus attention on the social - structural conditions for, and constraint on, action (Benton and Redclift, 1994:7). This leads to a struggle which either seeks to stress the supremacy of social law and determinacy or to celebrate human agency and freewill (Chapman and Driver, 1996:19). This recognises that the power to make a significant difference is immensely unevenly distributed (Benton & Redclift 1994:8) even though people have free will and do face choices (Chapman and Driver, 1996:22). I intend to attempt to strike a balance between power relation and agency, thereby examining what Benton & Redclift (1994:8) refers to as “collective agency” and collective decision-making in the pursuit of development and improved living standards for Africa.

My approach seeks to straddle both logical positivism and post-structuralism by attempting to blend three different epistemologies: critical realism, pragmatism and political ecology. This reflects my desire not to be constrained and confined by any epistemology straitjacket in attempting to address one of the most contentious and divisive if not insidious controversies to afflict humanity - the use of water resources for development, particularly in Africa. This, I believe, will lead to the production of knowledge that is fluid and dynamic enough to address a pluralistic audience, in languages they recognize, to identify real and feasible choices (Blaikie 1999:144), and accepting that all knowledge is provisional as variables changes over time and space. This is what I think Blaikie (1996:84) refers to as “the case for swimming”.