Selection of Case Studies

As explained in 1.4.1, I was the coordinator of an Austrian funding programme for research for development at that time. This programme based at the Commission for Development Studies (KEF) funds small research partnerships in developing countries. There is always a partner in Austria and at least one in the partner country: the role of manager and supervisor falls to the Austrian partner. The proposals undergo a process of peer-review by two external reviewers and are then discussed in a board meeting. The reviews and the discussions are based on a specific list of criteria (see Appendix 1). There is no ex-post evaluation; therefore the success of the project again is evaluated against the list of criteria and the original Logical Framework (logframe) in the proposal.

This professional background and my private interest in the life of farmers (see 1.4.1) led me to study the ways of knowing of farmers and scientists in research projects. I selected Ethiopia because it is the country with the largest number of KEF projects, and because it is also a priority country of the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) (see 1.4.2). I focused on two case studies in the Ethiopian Highlands, one in Oromia Region (Galessa, Case Study 1: CST1), and one in Amhara Region (Ambober, Case Study 2: CST2) because of their similar background (see chapter 3) and their accessibility in terms of infrastructure. Both case studies had a project funded by KEF and were led by an Ethiopian doctoral student funded by the ADC and supervised at an Austrian agricultural university (BOKU). However, neither case study can be

defined as stand-alone, packaged project with its clearly demarcated boundaries. These projects are embedded in a network of other research projects and related activities that are more or less connected to the KEF projects (see Figure 3.5 and Figure 3.9 in Chapter 3). Thus, it was sometimes difficult to differentiate between the doctoral studies and the projects, as the doctoral students were also the Ethiopian project managers of the KEF projects. The advantage of studying the projects of two doctoral students was that there was sufficient documentation of their research. This holds true especially for CST1: the project leader completed his thesis based on his publications in scientific journals. At the time of my studies he had already published eight papers about his thesis research. In the case of CST2 it was different – he had to write a monograph. That again was an advantage for my studies, because he wrote at length about his research and experiences in Ambober in the monograph. Because of their recent or current status as doctoral students they also showed a lot of understanding for my situation and my research interests. They were keen to learn more about the findings of my research. However, they were not the only scientists I interviewed in the context of the case studies. I will elaborate more on this in chapter 3. A disadvantage of focusing my work on their case studies was that their own doctoral studies had forced them to prioritise and rush through their projects, because as scholarship holders they were obliged to submit and defend their theses within three years. Because of that and the specific type of research required for a doctoral thesis at BOKU, the case studies were to some extent biased to produce fast outputs that could be presented in a straightforward way to the satisfaction of supervisors and examiners (at the time of their defence the supervisors were also the ‘internal examiners’).

The requirements in the students’ department put a focus on bio-physical research, and the implementation of empirical research, even though the supervisors in both cases also encouraged an additional focus on social issues. The presentation of the research was usually done by presenting tables, graphs and figures rather than descriptive and reflective text passages. Therefore the research did not involve as much social research and interaction between farmers and scientists as I had hoped for at the outset.

At the time when my research started, CST1 had already been concluded, so few on-going activities could be observed. The topic was the impact of selected indigenous and exotic tree and shrub species on soil fertility improvement and fodder production. The partnership project enabled the doctoral student to expand his research and include a wider survey than originally planned. His studies were carried out following the participatory research activities and household surveys done by the African Highland Initiative (AHI) project. The Ethiopian researchers refer to the research activities in Galessa as ‘the watershed project’, so I will also

use this term as a summary for these interlinked research activities using the acronym GWP (Galessa Watershed Project). The main researcher and doctoral student will be called GR (Galessa Researcher).

CST2 was on-going, but as the doctoral student was busy with his research as well as undergoing a period of personal tragedy it was difficult to coordinate joint visits. During the time spent jointly in the area fewer direct interactions with farmers were organised by the project in comparison with CST1 (e.g. group meetings, participatory workshops). The two projects had different objectives; participatory meetings took place at the beginning of CST1, but it was not intended to continue such meetings throughout the project because the project had not planned a continuous participatory process. This limited my observation to informal encounters. The KEF partnership project was developed during the first stage of the researcher’s doctorate. It was submitted to the donor in 2008. The doctoral student will be called Ambober Researcher (AR) in this thesis. AR is also the project manager of the KEF project. This partnership project is one component of his doctorate. It is referred to as ‘the Exclosure Project’ (EP) by some farmers and the scientists. I also used part of the thesis of a second Ethiopian doctoral student working there at the same time. Unfortunately I could not meet him for an interview because our stays in Austria and Ethiopia never overlapped. He is referred to as AR-DS.

To differentiate between the Austrian and the Ethiopian respondents I add A for Austria and E for Ethiopia, for example, A-Scientist, E-Policy-maker. When referring to literature of the projects published by GR or AR, I do not provide the direct quote but refer to their acronyms in order to protect their anonymity. If there is a direct reference to a person in the quote, I replace the name with NN.

I use many direct quotes from primary sources in the text. These are based on the interactions I had with different respondents as explained above. I have chosen to do this because I want to give their voices as much authenticity as possible. I therefore add quotes to the text when a specific explanation has been given about something, or when the respondents have explained issues that are particularly important for them, if they have indicated so during the interaction, or to particularly emphasise key messages in the text. I quote respondents by indicating the date and type of interaction (e.g. interview, 29.9.2010), and in the case of the farmers I also add their respective village (e.g. Farmer, Woglo, interview, 15.6.2010). To protect their anonymity I refer to the respondents only by their professional titles, such as farmer, scientist,

policy-maker and donor representative, and I add male, female and their age to give them a clearer identity.