Research Process

I went to Ethiopia three times for field research. The first stay was for four weeks in May 2009 to prepare the field study and collect some key documents. Most of the empirical research was carried out from September 2009 to July 2010, and then from November 2010 to March 2011.

The remaining time I spent partly in the UK, and in Austria. During the time I spent in Austria I interviewed scientists and policy-makers associated with the two case studies and I collected other relevant documents. I visited Ethiopia for private reasons in 2011–2012 and I also went there for some project-related work in June and July 2012, and again in October 2012. The numbers of interviews and respondents are listed in Table 2.1.

In Ethiopia I lived in Addis Ababa in the first year, because CST1 was closer to Addis Ababa. In the second year I moved to Gondar to be closer to CST2, where I also stayed during all consecutive visits. I lived in hotels and apartment buildings when I was in the city; when going to the rural areas I stayed as close to the villages as possible. In Galessa I was hosted by the contact farmer of the GWP. In Ambober I had to stay in the kebele village in the storage room of the veterinarian. The kebele was located one to two hours’ walking distance away from the villages. However, this arrangement could not continue after September 2010, and staying there became increasingly more difficult after that.

I repeatedly visited both field sites during all seasons of the agricultural year. I usually went to the villages for a time period of between one and 14 days per stay, depending on the availability of my research partners and the farmers’ work situation. The duration of my stays there was constrained by the logistical situation, as we had to bring all food and other

provisions for the entire stay with us. Finally, I spent a total of about five months at the two case study sites.

I interviewed scientists as well as staff of development and Austrian and Ethiopian government organisations, either in semi-structured interviews or focus group discussions. One woreda official and two DAs of the Makgsegnit Woreda Office of Agriculture and Rural Development (WOARD) were interviewed. This is where Ambober is located. The woreda of Galessa is Dendi.

There two officials and one DA of the Dendi WOARD were interviewed, and the PA chairman of Galessa as well as the local project coordinator of the GWP.

After the initial meeting with the key informants (2.2.3.1) at the case study sites I continued with village walks, participatory village mapping and seasonal diagrams. At this point the DAs still invited the key informants and other farmers, which limited my possibilities to influence the selection. However, I asked them to abide to the same criteria as for the initial selection of key informants (2.2.3.1). I then prepared a village map for each village (Figure 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4) together with the key informants and the other farmers. In Wojnie priests and DAs also joined

Figure 2.1: Result of village mapping in Tiru,

Galessa. Figure 2.2: On-going village mapping in Abeyi,

Galessa. Women participate by giving comments, men are doing the map.

Figure 2.3: On-going village mapping in Wojnie, Ambober. DA in colourful shirt and priests to the right watching over the farmers.

Figure 2.4: Result of male-only village mapping of Woglo area, Ambober.

the discussion (Figure 2.3). In all cases except for Woglo other farmers who were passing by also joined in. Women only participated in Galessa, but not in Ambober.

The farmers used natural material to draw a map on the floor, and I added labels on paper when it was required for my notes. The farmers indicated houses, rivers, roads, mountains and forests. I asked them to specifically point out areas of severe soil erosion or other forms of degradation or risks, such as frost in Galessa. Then they made a list of household names for the village and indicated the following criteria:

• Wealth (based on their own criteria, which were also recorded)

• Knowledge of trees and soil (people who were known to know a lot about trees and soil and sometimes shared this knowledge with others)

• New/old household, migrants

• Female-headed households

• Other specific characteristics

This later helped me to elect respondents in order to gain a representative sample for each village (see 2.2.3.1). I also filmed the mapping, which provided me with interesting insights about the processes going on during the mapping. For example, in Ambober not only women were totally excluded in both villages. Only a handful of powerful actors took charge of the process. In Galessa, it was much more mixed: men and women, rich and poor, old and young, all participated. I was trying to find a female translator to do separate mapping with the women in Ambober, but I only managed to find one at the end of my research period.

The same groups who did the mapping also did the seasonal diagrams. The seasonal diagrams resulted in a list of activities for men and women throughout the year, as well as the main cultural and religious events. This was very useful for me to better understand the life of the farmers. However, in Ambober the lack of contribution of different groups in the village (and the lack of women all together) lead me to have serious doubts about the value of this exercise.

The final preparatory exercise was the village walk. In Galessa the walk for one village lasted about half a day; in Ambober it was one full day per village. It was planned as a walk with one or two persons across the village, guided by the key informants without any indications from me as to where I wanted to go. While in Ambober we met many people on the way, they did not join us for long, and no women stopped to talk to us. In Galessa many people joined the

discussions on the way, and sometimes up to 15 people accompanied us for at least some of the time, including women.

The main part of the empirical data, however, was collected through conversations with farmers, scientists and policy-makers, using semi-structured question guidelines. These guidelines were important in the beginning, but after some time I remembered the questions and topics and only referred to the guidelines occasionally. The interviews increasingly turned into conversations. This informal conversational style proved valuable to understand emotional, sense-making and other alternative ways of knowing rather than only reason-based ways of knowing.

The interviews with farmers took place at the homestead of the farmers in most cases. They also involved a visit to the homestead garden of the farmers. Other people were interviewed in their offices or in quiet corners of public places like restaurants.

In Galessa, the semi-structured interviews were initially documented in writing, because my research partner expected farmers to object to digital recording. After the farmers agreed, I started to tape-record the remaining interviews. In Ambober all interviews were recorded. The interviews were later transcribed and analysed. Each interview started with an informal introduction, where I introduced myself, explained the purpose and background of my research and encouraged questions. Literate respondents received a project information flyer (in English, Amharic or Oromiffa) and the informed consent form (in English). This consent was given orally or in signing the form. Illiterate respondents were informed about the contents in their own language, and their consent was given orally.

After concluding the individual interviews, farmers and scientists were invited to FGDs (Table 2.1) according to the same criteria as explained in 2.2.3.1. I separated the groups as follows:

• Farmers: One group per village. In Galessa men and women joined together in the groups. In Ambober I organised separate FGDs for women with a female translator.

• Scientists: One group per institution (BOKU, ARARI, HARC and the Forest Research Centre [FRC], another subcentre of EIAR).

FGDs are usually limited to six–eight people, and discuss in detail a specific topic (Mikkelsen 2005); however, in my case this rule was difficult to put into practice. In one case in Galessa, in the village of Abeyi, a very large group of around 25 people participated. And at the FRC in Addis Ababa there was confusion about the task, and researchers showed up to attend a

seminar rather than an FGD. In that case the number was initially about 15, but when they realised the purpose of the meeting about half of the people left. The main topics discussed with farmers evolved around tree and soil management, adoption and innovation, and the presence of research. In the case of the scientists, the same topics were addressed plus an additional question about the impact of policies and the relation of science to policy-making.

The respondents received a short methodological description of how the FDG would take place, who would participate, and a rough outline of the topic. For the scientists, I moderated the FGDs myself. For the farmers, this had to be done by my research partners. The FGDs lasted between one and two hours and were digitally recorded with the consent of the participants. Additionally, I made observation notes during the FGDs on people’s interactions, behaviours and participation.

During the interviews I realised that I wanted to try another method to assess the understanding of farmers and scientists regarding landscapes. For this purpose I selected a random sample of 24 landscape photographs of mountainous areas from all over the world, including different parts of Ethiopia. I showed the photographs to different respondents from interviews (in both the research and the farming community, see Table 2.1). While I am using some of these data as background information, I decided not to include the full analysis of these data in this thesis, as it addresses a topic leading away from my main argument.