King’s India Institute Graduate Workshop
FIELDWORK AND ITS
FRAGMENTS
July 1, 2016
K0.18
King’s Building
KING'S COLLEGE LONDON | STRAND CAMPUS
Himadri
Chatterjee (Jawaharlal Nehru
University)
Magician,
Traveler and Laborer: ‘Market Talk’ and ‘Home Speak’ in a Refugee Village at
the ‘Border’ of Kolkata
Abstract:
How do we distribute the field? This question animates the reflections on an
ethnographer’s task in constituting and construing ‘the field’. This paper
takes it bearings from Sharad Chari’s (2003) use of ‘Genres’ in distributing
and constituting his field in Tiruppur. This paper is based on ethnographic
material collected from 2013 to 2015 in the village of Netajeepally at the
North- Eastern extreme of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. A village largely
settled by refugees from the 1971 War of Liberation in Bangladesh –
Netajeepally embodies the characteristic regional history of West Bengal. An
extremely mobile population with histories of migration spanning the years
since 1947 Partition of South Asia makes the narratives uncontainable in terms
of the village boundaries. Such mobility disturbs the stable ‘regional’
constitution of the field. Scholars like Appadurai, Ferguson, Gupta and Passaro
have commented on this mobility and its particular dialectic with the
territorial constitution of the field. In this study there are two levels at
which the field is distributed. Firstly, the narratives distribute life
histories across long migrations triggered by violence and continued due to
economic necessity. Secondly, the narratives told at the village market place
change substantially in character, tone, detail and meaning when the same
respondents speak of their ‘journeys’ in their ‘homes’. The paper attempts to
empirically distribute the field through the two genres and spaces in which the
respondents spin their tales while assuming different roles and meanings
through each re-telling.
Himalay K Gohel
(Jawaharlal Nehru University)
A
study in the field of dance: Tracing the movement structures in the regions of
Saurashtra, India
Abstract:
My research focuses on the movement structures and changes in the choreographic
elements of dances like ‘Garba’ and ‘Raas’. My field work, conducted in autumn
of 2015, made me interact with dancers, organizers of the dance events, and
contemporary choreographers. Since the conception of this dance form is
grounded on the community identity, it is conventionally studied through an
ethnographic perspective. I intend to see dancers’ interaction with society
through physically intensified movements from dance studies perspective. On
fieldwork, my encounter with several organisers and dancers was initiated first
with caste, and second with the knowledge of Garba dance. Since Garba dance
styles also depend on the castes and regions, it was necessary to bring caste
discourse in front. As a researcher, my caste and knowledge of Garba was
discussed as well. My hypothesis about dancing communities’ caste assertions
was gradually changing and becoming more nuanced
as
I realised that these identities worked on subtler level. After interviewing
the organisers I found out that caste specific dance events are organised not
only to assert caste identity but also to forge business ties with capitalist
function. My belief of gaining an easy access to the region and people was
challenged when I was restricted to interact with female dancers of certain
castes. In the end, my writing up was informed with the material on old aged
dancers and pregnant women’s movements to labour practices turned into
choreographed dance movements.
Sarah
McKeever (King’s College London)
Digital Discontents: Negotiating the
Digital Field with Qualitative Research
Abstract:
As our world becomes increasingly mediated through the lens of the digital, new
realms of study have opened up for the academic researcher. From digital
ethnographies to Big Data studies, research methods are adapting and shifting
to cope with the rapidly changing digital landscapes of our lives. However, in
the enthusiasm and excitement of digital studies, the user often remains an
elusive yet crucial element that is often overlooked or left as an anonymous
entity. Many studies overcome this issue by focusing on large-scale data
scrapes or maintaining digital boundaries and researching other aspects of
digital changes to the social world. Negotiating the boundaries of the digital
to find the user and conducting qualitative research poses many unanswered
issues of access and to the ethics of digital research that require more
critical examinations. This paper explores the difficulties of critically
analysing digital events using qualitative methods. From defining the
boundaries of a digital study to confronting our own biases as researchers in
digital expectations, the variety of challenges and re-conceptualisations of
“the field” in a digital world require a rigorous examination of methodological
and academic assumptions. This paper will explore and discuss some of the
challenges involved in studying the digital impact of two movements – The
Anti-Corruption Movement in 2011 and the Delhi Rape Case in 2012 – using
qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, to search for and
understand the user and practitioner. It will examine issues of bias and ethics
and discuss new methodological difficulties posed by the mediated world.
Sruthi Muraleedharan
(SOAS, University of London):
‘Mapping Democracy’: The ‘Visual Field’ of Politics
Abstract:
Politics needs to be analyzed as a ‘visual field’ and so does the discipline of
politics need to engage with the ‘visual’. My research explores practices of
meaning making in the context of Identity politics. It tries to understand the
relationship between identity formation and interventions in symbolism. Hence
the forms of evidence collection have involved – ethnographic observations,
open- ended interviews and visual ethnography through photographs. Embedded in
inter-disciplinarity and a reflexive approach to ethnographic fieldwork
methodology incorporating the visual.
Since
my PhD research gives the ‘Visual’ a critical role, by introducing it as an
alternative way of understanding and a route to knowledge about social and
political phenomenon. Here particularly I am referring to how photographs can
be used as an effective tool for accessing the unarticulated and embodied views
of individuals and groups in the research process. This paper will aim to chart
out the journey of engaging my ‘field site’ as a ‘Visual site’ engrained in capturing
the symbolisms and performativity that informs the everyday engagement of my respondents
with politics and to analyze the changing configuration of how democracy is performed
and experienced. It would aim at discussing for instance how does use of photography
as a mode of evidence collection layers and complicates the analysis of ethnographic
moments of social interactions, temporalities and ocular empowerment. This analysis
would also entail discussing the encounter of this ‘visual field’ with my
positionality as a ‘female researcher’ and entering the masculine space of
photography/ videography and the challenges therein.
Anna
Ruddock (King’s College London)
Getting In: Notes from the threshold of the All India Institute of
Medical Sciences (AIIMS)
Together with being the country’s
most respected public hospital, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences
(AIIMS) in Delhi is widely considered to be India’s most prestigious medical
college, accepting less than one tenth of one percent of 90,000 annual
applicants to its undergraduate program (MBBS). It is also notably understudied
by social scientists, partly informing my choice to write an ethnography of
AIIMS for my PhD. This narrative paper follows efforts to gain access to
AIIMS from two perspectives: firstly, mine as a researcher, and secondly, that
of a student aspiring to study medicine at the institute. In both cases I
employ Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of capital(s) as a means of explicating how
AIIMS reproduces its status as an elite institution, and the consequences these
processes have for those seeking access, whether as an aspiring young doctor,
or a foreign anthropologist.
Saba Sharma
(University of Cambridge)
Me Again:
Practice, Fieldwork, and How to Go Back
Abstract: Traditional notions of the ‘field’,
particularly in qualitative fieldwork, imagine unconquered lands, whose depths
the researcher slowly uncovers through her dogged pursuits and piercing questions.
How, then, does one return to a field that is already ‘known’, not just through
books and writing, but through first-hand experience? Specifically, in this
case, how, when one has established one’s identity in a place as a development
worker, does one return as a researcher? Between 2013 and 2014, I worked for a
year on a post-conflict rehabilitation project in the Bodoland Territorial Area
Districts, or BTAD, in Assam. I was responsible both for coordinating the
project, as well as conducting a year-long study mapping the aftermath of the
conflict. Soon after I left, I decided to do a PhD that focused on the same
region, but on different aspects, primarily the relationship between state
practice and conflict. I returned for the first time as a researcher for four
weeks in March 2016, to study ongoing election campaigning. This paper will
explore the nuances of attempting to bridge the divide between ‘NGO type’ and
student during fieldwork, and whether it is possible, or even useful, to abandon
one role for another. How does the change in role affect the way we gain
access? Finally, the paper also looks at the way returning as a student reveals
certain blind spots in the understanding of the field as it was known.
Shreya Sinha (SOAS,
University of London)::
Studying
Agriculture in ‘Rurban’ Space: Reflections on Fieldwork
Abstract: In a 2015 paper, Dipankar Gupta used
‘rurban’ as a ‘clumsy term’ to describe the rapidly transforming countryside in
India. Harriss-White (2016) has used the term ‘Middle India’ to express the
dynamism of small towns, and their links to rural areas. It is this fluid and
ill-defined, but surely expanding, terrain that was ‘discovered’ and traversed
by this researcher in the course of her fieldwork on agrarian capital in
Punjab. This paper draws on a year’s fieldwork conducted in 2014-15 on the
accumulation strategies of large farmers and the structure of crop markets in Punjab.
The fieldwork was based in a market town and surrounding villages in Ludhiana
district. Since capital-centred political economy projects are relatively
uncommon, there was ambiguity on the nature of the field and the most effective
research methods for the purpose before the fieldwork, even though a detailed
tentative plan had been made. This paper will, therefore, reflect on how the
field itself was ‘found’ and defined, through fieldwork, at the inter-section
of the rural and the urban. It will also provide insights into how the choice
of data collection methods differed across different types of respondents and
settings. The limitations and trade-offs involved in these choices will be
explored. There will also be a discussion of how fieldwork strategies were
informed by gender constraints. Finally, the paper will constitute a methodological
note on being a researcher in and of a transforming agricultural space, and on applying
emerging analytical ideas to fieldwork practice.
Veena Sriram (John
Hopkins University)
Navigating
uncertain terrain: Reflections on the use of Elite Interviewing and Observation
in Health Policy Analyses in India
Abstract: Health policy analysis is a small, yet
growing, subset of health research in India. Policy analyses often necessitate
‘studying up’ (Nader 1972), by examining institutions, mechanisms and actors at
the top of the decision-making architecture. The use of elite interviewing and
non-participant observation are frequently used methods in such analyses, but
their application in India and other low-resource settings requires further attention.
These methods often blur the boundary between art and science, and furthermore,
have not been sufficiently dissected in the Indian context, where dynamics of
class, race, ethnicity, caste, gender, institutional affiliations, connections,
and other factors, on the part of the researcher and researched, strongly
influence study outcomes. This abstract reflects on experiences during my
dissertation research in India in 2015. Methods for my study, an analysis of
the development of medical specialties in India, consisted of interviewing
elites in powerful positions in public and private health sectors, and
observing high-level meetings. I will discuss the tensions in navigating the
complex and fragmented stakeholder network in my study, and the challenges of
engaging controversial institutions, such as the Medical Council of India. I
will reflect on my positionality as an Indian-origin researcher from an
US-based institution, and how those characteristics facilitated and hindered
access. I will discuss how being a young, female researcher, and a mother,
influenced my relationships with interviewees. I will explore the role of
connections in access and relationship building. Finally, I will consider how my
Tamil ethnicity enhanced trust with Tamilian interviewees.
Smita Yadav (University
of Sussex)
‘Native’
Ethnography: Contestations of Gender, Marital Status, Class and Education in
Central India
Abstract: What challenges does ethnographic
fieldwork present when the ethnographer is perceived as a ‘native’ by the
informants?How different is the experience compared to those ethnographies who
are perceived to be non-native anthropologists by the informants? In this
paper, I will discuss how during the ethnographic fieldwork and data collection
in a remote village in central India, how my ‘native’ identity led to
contesting gender stereotypes of being single working Indian woman as an
ethnographer. The fieldwork entailed traveling at odd hours and being seen in
odd places and wearing odd clothes as judged by traditional and patriarchal
standards in that region. How there was a thin line between me losing the trust
of my informants due to my unmarried status which was considered a threat by
other married women in the field and how I dealt with speculations regarding my
sexual and unmarried life and constantly being Judged and asked to justify
about my pursuits in the field due to my urban roots. More importantly, how
difficult it was to conduct fieldwork without men in this part of India where women
are rarely seem alone in public and what implications it had for my fieldwork. I
will discuss accounts of how these local men (as motor bikers taking me around
to inaccessible villages) would take advantage of me for not having any kinship
relations in the village and pursue me for temporary companionships which is
forbidden until marriage in such societies of India. I will also show how
initial relations of trust to enter the fieldwork soon turned unprofessional
and personal threats to life from the local mining mafia in the region and what
negotiating strategies were used to make the fieldwork possible.
