Negotiating research principles and methods

I&K were very strongly adhering to one particular research principle: “real-world research requires interventions that do not deviate too much from real world conditions” – according to Sjoerd. He meant that in order to improve the aid practice of local partners and project staff of both funding agencies, the researcher has to experience the constraints and pressures herself to produce relevant and meaningful solutions. The implication was that I shouldn’t spend more time in the field than programme officers usually do, meaning that I was supposed to visit partners and communities not more than twice a year for a short period of time. This was an issue of serious debate within the Steering Group, since I pre-ferred to stay longer in the field to do more in-depth research as a participant observer. My PhD supervisor also attempted to convince the Steering Group about the importance to have space and time for doing independent in-depth research, but the principle remained

unchanged. Whereas a prolonged exposure to local dynamics in villages would have resulted in more detailed information about community organizing processes, or NGO field staff prac-tices of participation, I realized that the many short visits over an extended period of six years still enabled me to investigate the interaction between local level institutions with civil society groups, and government institutions. I was able to observe some tangible, prelimi-nary outcomes of political struggles and negotiations among the various CBDRR actors like in Herat and Central Java. The limitation of short visits forced me to organize my field visits to Indonesia and Afghanistan more effectively, and to adopt a ‘multi-sited fieldwork’ approach (Marcus, 1995) along the aid chain tracking ‘CBDRR’ as a new idea and concept.

Multi-sited field work

In chapter 1, I contextualized CBDRR approaches in evolving development policy and prac-tice from a historical perspective, and remarked that various interpretations of CBDRR exist among actors across nations, embedded in particular state-society configurations. This in-teractive research explores CBDRR interventions in new contexts involving different actors along the aid chain, and is therefore already in itself ‘multi-sited’. This research particularly aims to understand why different interpretations of CBDRR exist and how these are opera-tionalized in practice. In order to answer this question, I adopted a multi-sited approach for my fieldwork (Marcus, 1995). Multi-sited research is designed around chains, paths, and conjunctions that are connected through the object of study, and where the researcher es-tablishes some form of presence (ibid: 105). In multi-sited field work, the researcher can follow a specific group of people, the production, processing and consumption of things, or the travelling of metaphors, an idea or concept, evolving events like conflicts, or –in this case – the translation of CBDRR policy into practice (ibid).

For this research, I followed actors in the head offices in the Netherlands to understand their construction of concepts like risk, vulnerability and CBDRR, and followed programme officers traveling to Afghanistan and Indonesia who explained and espoused new CBDRR policy to local partners, and local NGO field staff when they interact with local people. Locally, I studied how community people, civil society organizations and government officials con-structed their meaning of CBDRR and the various concepts, which are embedded in their cultural, organizational, historical and even so political environment in which they live and operate. “Multi-sited field work is thus always conducted with a keen awareness of being within the landscape, and as the landscape changes across sites, the identity of the

researcher requires renegotiation” (ibid: 112). Moving between sites as researcher required changing roles or positions, influenced by the researcher’s affinities for, affiliations with, or alienation from those with whom the researcher interacts at different sites. “In certain sites, one seems to be working with, and in others – like in Maluku - one seems to be working against, changing sets of subjects” (Marcus, 1995: 113).

An exchange visit to the Philippines – countering prejudices, uncovering hidden assumptions At the start of shaping this interactive research, I&K proposed to organize an exchange visit to Bangladesh or the Philippines. These two countries experience many large and small impact disasters, and are known for their various CBDRR-approaches to reduce disaster risk (UNISDR, 2004). The Philippines was chosen because I&K wanted to expose its local NGO partners from Afghanistan and Indonesia to a kind of CBDRR practice that recognizes the political nature of disaster risk reduction. The Philippine experience of the Citizens’ Disaster Response Centre (CDRC) served as a source of reference to provide direction for the CBDRR-pilots.

In November 2008, staff from all local partners NGOs involved in the CBDRR pilot in Afghanistan and Indonesia travelled to the Philippines to join a two-week exchange pro-gramme. Also staff from three local partners in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador joined the exchange visit since their experience in CBDRR could also contribute to a valuable exchange of experiences. The exchange visit was organized together with the Centre for Disaster Preparedness (CDP), CDRC ,I&K, while several local NGOs and government officials in Central Luzon and Mindanao hosted field visits. Staff of CDP who were temporarily doing advisory work for UNDP in Pakistan, were very instrumental in arranging visa for the Afghan participants at the Philippine Embassy in Islamabad, and to get permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to travel with Afghan and Indonesian citizens to war-affected parts of Mindanao.

The purpose of the visit was to reflect on CBDRR concepts and community organizing strategies; to critically reflect on ‘participation’ by actually conducting a participatory risk assessment in an urban flood-prone community in Manila, identifying appropriate risk reduction measures for that community, and then reflecting on the proposed measures with the community. Field visits to both disaster and conflict areas were organized to relate observations and reflections on CBDRR practices in the Philippines to the specific contexts in their home-countries. The Afghan and Indonesian partners were particular interested in understanding people’s risk perceptions and why these can differ among various actors, how to link people’s vulnerabilities at the local to macro level root causes, and how to engage with local government and other relevant actors.

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The exchange visit revealed that by ‘doing CBDRR’ in new contexts - like doing a risk assess-ment with urban poor in Manila - one’s own perceptions and values become more explicit, and that these often differ from the perceptions and values of community people. Through several real-time exercises, the Afghan and Indonesian NGO staff discovered the value of participation, and that local people are able to provide relevant feedback on the staff’s pro-posed measures. These new practices deviated from their routines at home, and made the Afghan and Indonesian staff’s implicit assumptions and tacit knowledge explicit. “In

Afghanistan we work top-down, because we assume that people are not yet ready to participate and take decisions like these urban poor do in Manila”. They looked at the

“Philippine world of CBDRR” through their contextualized lenses, like I did in their countries.

“In Indonesia it is not possible to just enter a village without having spoken or getting

permission from the village head”. By carefully listening to the kind of questions they raised, I could learn about the realities in their home-countries and their hidden assumptions.

The exchange of multiple perspectives on CBDRR increased the reflective ability of the whole group and made our prejudices explicit. Instead of posing the question “is CBDRR – meaning like in the Philippines- applicable in the Afghan and Indonesian context” we asked: “what will CBDRR look like in Afghanistan and in Indonesia?”. This may seem an innocent twist in a question, but it raised new questions. Questions about how does change happen in each context, what do we want to strengthen and what do we challenge through our interactive research, whose and which norms and values are inserted, and whose expertise counts?

Visiting the Philippines with a group of foreign CBDRR practitioners confronted me with my own conceptualization of CBDRR. I gained a deeper insight in the particularities and context-specificity of the CBDRR approach. By allowing multiple perspectives on CBDRR and related concepts, I was confronted with my own perceptions and prejudices. I increasingly became aware that my so-called expert knowledge on CBDRR was not only contextualized but also idealised. The multiple reflections during the exchange visit made me realize to change my idealized image of CBDRR into a more naturalistic approach, emphasizing the unknown and unpredictability of current and future social dynamics in the selected CBDRR pilot areas.

Instead of an ‘expert interpretation’ of CBDRR, I let its meaning emerge in the Afghan and Indonesian contexts. During the course of this interactive research I changed from a true CBDRR believer to someone questioning my own CBDRR practice in the Philippines.

The exchange visit further produced hope and inspiration for particularly the Afghans who visited conflict-affected and displaced communities in Mindanao, and observed how CBDRR could prepare people to prevent or reduce violence, and to report human rights and

ceasefire violations through grassroots networks using text-messaging. The Indonesians returned home with more confidence¹⁰, taking with them many creative ideas for risk

mapping, community organizing, and community exchange visits, which they applied in their CBDRR-pilot areas. Later, I noticed that the exchange visit had been instrumental for Afghan and Indonesian partners to open up to me, as researcher, in sharing their dilemmas.

10 This is what they expressed to me after they returned home.