Field Research Stuff 4: Language Issues (or Lost in Translation)

There is this one million dollar question for every researcher. Is it possible to conduct a research in a language that is not your mother tongue? Considering the fact that even if you are fluent in your research language, you need to accept that it is hard to understand every detail, read the cultural codes and understand the jokes. Language is not a pile of words, it is a pile of experience, past, culture, and the rest. However, I think everything depends to your research design.

• If your research design does not necessitate to have that much of fluency you are on the safe side. This means, your research doesn’t necessitate for you to understand the secret meanings, covered references, to read in-between lines and etc... If you are already fluent enough to conduct the research, good for you, go for it and yeahhh!!! This means if you will ask more straightforward questions and will spend time with your subjects to become a little more familiar with their cultural codes, references, wording and jokes... In any cases, I think it is good to support your findings with some other sources such as archival research or quantitative findings.
• If you are not very familiar with the language, opes you have a problem. And guess what: this is my case! I understand half of one language and 1/10^th of the other one that people speak in the country that I conduct my research. I should admit that it limits my research to a great extend. Still there are a couple of options:
• I conducted interviews in English with people who can understand and answer the questions. 
• I found native speakers who are willing to come to interviews with me to translate my questions and my interviewees answers to them. 
• I hired an assistant who established contacts for me, and sit with me during the interviews to help when needed. 
• Still it was a big pain in the a*s. It makes especially hard to establish the first connections with the interviewees. However, when you make friends or find assistants, things get a little easier. In any case, there can be people who questions the accurate of your research as you are not a native speaker. It is good to question yourselves and your works, and listen people who bring up critical issues to your attention. This will make you think about your own justifications, reasonings and will help you to protect your works against various criticisms, some meaningful ones as well as some nonsensical ones (warning: the academia is full of them).
• In my very humble opinion, there is a very dangerous outcome of over exaggerating this language issue. It takes us back to the time when each one was studying her own country or culture (of course except the native-English speakers whose knowledge have been considered as objective and above criticism). This is a different version of colonialism that tells you what to study, where to stand. Even if it is not good enough, I am up for trying new things, take the risk and learn the language. As I mentioned before, I strongly believe that we can make it work if we can design our research accordingly.
• Plus, I think the best time to try this is during the PhD. Afterwards, we will probably become more conservative and concerned with our abilities and positions.

To be continued... 

Field Research Stuff 3: Researcher's Gender and Indentity

My field research is based on interviews. My interviewees are mainly activists, residents, bureaucrats and technocrats. I should admit that there are advantageous and disadvantageous of being a woman in a field such as mine. I have some ways of communicating with people from different backgrounds. Your name, religion, ethnicity, and gender definitely have an impact on the way people sees you and treats you.

1- bureaucrats or technocrats, if they are old, they can easily treat you as their daughter and want to teach you something, show something new and protect you. They would either try to manipulate you or be very open to protect/teach you something.

2- bureaucrats or technocrats, if they are young, they can have political aspirations and this can make it difficult for you to learn what you want to learn (if you are trying to learn something else them the political discourse they use). This is a difficult case. You may act ignorant on the subject and let them share their own worldview or ask difficult questions that would either crack them open or close more and more.

3- residents, if they have problems with the authority you need to earn their trust and convince them that you are not working for the state or another authority. When they are assured they will be much more open.

You can participate to their actions or share a piece of their life. This is the best way of assuring them that you are not a spy or something.

4- NGO people are the most friendly and open ones. They are used to do advocacy of their work, and it is easier to contact them. If they are working on the same issue area that you do, they can be really helpful to connect you with the right people. 

5- In some fields (especially in the case of deeply-divided societies such as my research countries), your religious or ethnic identity can matter for people. 

When I was conducting my research in Urfa (a majority Kurrdish city in the Southeast Turkey), I was interviewing a couple of landowners. They were talking cautiously about the state's water and electricity policies. At some point, one of them asked me where are my parents from. I told him that my mom's family is from the Kurdish region (I am not sure if they are Kurdish tho), all of a sudden everything changed. He said "ohh you are one from us!!" and started to tell me everything open-heartedly. 

The same day, I was talking to another Kurdish man on Kurdish politics. He was a leftist but somehow glorifying the Kurdish right-wing movements. I could not understand. Then, it turned out to be that he was telling me things that he does not believe, but wants me to believe as he was considering me as an outsider and wanted to draw a positive picture of the Kurdish politics. You can be in insider and outsider at the same moment, it is a really fine line and hard to not to cross. 

6- Your name can mean something to them

This is an interesting point that I never thought about before starting my field in Israel. Then, I realize that my name (Esra) stands at the very intersection of a Jewish male name (Ezra) and an Arab female name (Israa). This was a fun fact and can easily break the ice when you meet new people. The name is always one of the easy ways to start a conversation. My advisor in Israel was thinking that I am a man until the point that I entered to his office. It was a surprise for him, but fortunately enough did not negatively affect our relationship. 

To be continued...

Goodbye Mother Ship – Setting Foot in the Field

Post by Anat Goldman: 

I grew up in one of my research sites, and had lived and studied in the other, and yet, from the moment I set a foot in the field, in late December 2013, and for the entire year of research, I felt more vulnerable than ever before. Sure, coursework and qualifying exams can be very stressful, but the type of uncertainty inherent to international field research can be just as stressful and daunting. In this post I would like bring up some causes of this uncertainty that I think anyone doing international dissertation fieldwork might encounter, and use this list as means to start a conversation on possible ways to deal with them.

So why are we so vulnerable?

-       Scarce Funding: Many institutions don’t provide funding for dissertation fieldwork, or provide limited funding for their graduate students. If you are lucky, you have been able to land one of the bigger (and hopefully prestigious) grants and have a full year of research ahead, but what happens when you don’t? How would you deal with local economic issues such as currency collapse, or rent hike, or inflation? What would you do when your funding is over? Would you take a job on site to stay close to the field while writing (and be away from your advisors and colleagues), or would you go back to your home institution to write? This is even more complicated for international students who cannot be in the US without being enrolled full time (meaning that they pay tuition).

-       Logistics: unlike some study abroad programs, there is no one to help you take care of your logistical issues. You will have to find housing and arrange plane tickets and visas on your own without being fully familiar with laws and procedures on your research site and without having complete fluency in the local language or cultural codes. But logistics is just one part of the story, since you will have to keep doing your academic work with minimum distractions and meet deadlines while apartment hunting, traveling, or trying to find a place to fix your laptop that crushed. Where can you get affordable housing and how do you know if your landlord is fair? What are good ways to travel between locations? How much time should you spend on each site? Is it better to just stay in one place until you finish or to go back and forth? What would you do with your books? What kind of equipment would you use for archival work or for storing recorded interviews (not to mention protect your informants)? How do you store and manage the insane amount of data that you are about to gather and make it easily accessible for the time you start writing your dissertation?

-       Time management: our funding is limited; our visas are limited and our families at home or on site will make their own demands. Also, doing research in a changing region might yield all sorts of surprises, from a currency collapse, to rent hikes, to mass demonstrations and riots, internet censorship and shut downs, and a even to war (all true stories). How can anyone stay focused productive despite all that? How not to get overwhelmed or consumed by everyday events and demands and finish what you came to do? How do you decide what risks to take and what not to take?

-       Ever-changing research topic: maybe the data you thought you might find doesn’t exist or isn't accessible? Maybe the archive is closed or some of the documents are not available. Maybe you discover a goldmine of data that will shift your focus to a story you didn’t expect or initially did not think was important. It is likely that two or three months into your research your prospectus will begin to seem outdated. But how do you stay on track even if your question and arguments change? How not to get lost in all the data you discover and still be able to see the big picture?

-       Relationships on site: landlords, bus drivers, baristas housemates, local colleagues and friends, librarians, archivists, informants, interviewees, academics etc. The success of your project depends on the relationships you build with all these people, but how do you do it? Apart from some ethical questions, how do you handle working with people who don’t like each other, don’t agree with each other, or for whatever reason don’t like you? How do you get reluctant librarians and archivists to help you get what you need? How can you tell who’s your friend and who isn’t? How do you express anger or hold your ground with a person who’s trying to hurt you in your 3^rd or 4^th language?

-       Isolation: your advisors and colleagues are on the other side of the world, you are probably on-leave from your home institution, the fellowship people just want to know that you are making progress, and the people on site (including friends and family) often don’t understand what you’re doing all day, since you don’t seem to have a “real job”. Who would you talk to about all these concerns, how do you make decisions while in the field?

Anything else?

To be continued

Field Research Stuff 2: Self-Questioning

One of the most challenging aspects of being out there all alone is not being able to remember my purpose sometimes. When I first arrived to my field research site, I realize that these people are not just "subjects of my proposal or research," they are real human beings with contradictory ideas and difficult life, they are making daily decisions that I either like or hate, but they are there, they are full-fledged. The questions and also the answers depend on our field questions and design as well. Mine is a field based on in-depth interviews and these questions are related to the nature of that kind of a field. The main questions that I ask many many times:

1- Who am I to come here and act like I know something on their life? 

2- Can I help them on something?

3- How can I break the power relationship between the researcher and her subjects? 

4- How much should I get involved with their political  activities?

5- How much should I get involved with their live, I will leave this place at some point and they will have to keep going? 

The answers is what shape the nature of our field and the distance between us and our subject matter. Depending on the subject, you can choose establish a different kind of distance and different distances can have different values... For example, if I really try to understand why people act in that way, I may choose to get embedded to their life rather than asking them the cold question of "why you are acting this way?" For most of the cases, I think we don't have answers for these big questions, but we make up one.

The big, repetitive and inescapable self-questioning of each and every day (especially of your field is based on interviews that are not 7/24 activities):

6- Did I do anything good for my research today? Is this much of daily work enough?

7- Does my research question make sense? Still? Maybe not anymore!!

8- Maybe I should not do this. Maybe I am not good as a researcher.

9- Now, I am totally confused!!

To be continued...

Field Research Stuff 1: Contact Person

While writing my proposal, I did not think enough on the viability of my project actually. I mean, I did not pick a very hostile or violent field, but I did not think about how to reach or my ability to reach people that I need to interview or contact. This is something that everyone should keep in mind. Don't repeat my stupid mistakes. I was lucky enough to establish contacts with some people one month before I visit my first field site. What I learned about contacts:

1- If you want to interview various shareholders of the same issue, try hard to find a couple of people with different background and connections who will be willing to help you.

By total chance, once I had the opportunity to contact a bureaucrat, an attorney and a businessman. They connections on the same subject were so different from each other and gave me the unique opportunity to listen different stakeholders and actually made it possible for me to contact easily people from opposing camps. 

2- They are the ones who knows the field and have relations. They can put you in touch with people that you wont be able to access probably.

3- If your research area is the Middle East (mine is) don't forget, everything works on relationship. If you know the right person you are fine, if you dont know, your bad.

When I decided to go to Jordan for my research, I was trying to contact various bureaucrats and technocrats from Ministries, but (this is not Europe) no one reply emails coming out of the blue. Then, a friend of mine used his connections and I conducted almost 10 interviews in 3 or 4 days. This was a new record. 

4- Try to become semi-friends with your primary contacts. These people will be your anchors in the field and they will decide on a daily basis if they still want to help you or not. If you become a friend for them, this daily plebiscite will be much easier for them and have much better outcomes for you.

Primary contacts that you establish before arriving to your field have the potential to determine the direction of your field research. Keep your good relationship with them. There is nothing wrong with being friend if you are able to draw some lines.

To be continued...

Keban Dam: A New Era Starts

Keban Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Euphrates, in the Eastern Turkey. Construction started in 1966 and ended in 1974. The construction of the dam brought hope to the arid region. The dwellers had attended the groundbreaking ceremony. On the one hand, this was interesting to see the groundbreaking ceremony of this kind of a huge infrastructure project. On the other hand, this was a symbolic move, a passage from an "underdeveloped" present towards a "developed" future.

Groundbreaking ceremony, 1966

Tunnels T1 and T2, 1967

The President of the Republic Cevdet Sunay and the Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel were present at the groundbreaking ceremony.  This was a unique opportunity for them to repeat the goal of the state and the government. Both of them put the emphasis on the development of the region. For both, the Keban Dam was not just a regular dam project, it was a development project for the region and a project of integration for the whole country.

"Bu nehrin ehlilestirilmesi, bir nehrin medeni hizmetlerinin, medeniyetciligin, icine sokulmasi kolay bir is degildir." Suleyman Demirel, 1966, Groundbreaking Ceremony Speech

[Taming this river, putting this river into the service of the civil services, "civilization-er-ness" (the task of civilizing) is not an easy task to accomplish.]

Keban is the first one of the several large-scale dams to be built in the region. The Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP) as it is structured today, has been planned in 1970s, after the construction of the Keban Dam. Keban Municipality lists four direct benefits of the dam:
1) Social and economic development of the Southeast and Eastern Turkey.
2) Electrification of industrial various centers and villages.
3) Reduce the need for thermal power plants, and due to this, saving of foreign currency
4) Provide a huge amount of energy for the whole country.

Construction overview

Tunnels' entrances

Some questions on the Keban Dam: What is its contribution to the regional development? Did it mainly served to the region or to the market economy of the country? What is the capacity and maintenance of the dam today? What is the bigger political-economic context of the dam construction?...

Picture source: http://www.keban.bel.tr/keban-foto/nos/nos.html