Abstract
This chapter provides a detailed account of the methodological approach and methods employed in this thesis. As an empirical study and in the tradition of ethnographic writing, it provides deep insights into the different processes involved in the development of the thesis. The chapter begins with reflections about the overall research design. Subsequently, it depicts the data generation process and provides a detailed account of the fieldwork. Lastly, the chapter details data analysis as an abductive and iterative process.
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Notes
- 1.
Abductive research differs from the inductive research logic in so far as it does not seek to provide general principles from its empirical research. Rather, “the explanation(s) it generates is (are) as situated as the puzzle with which it begins” (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2012: 28, parentheses in the original).
- 2.
When focusing on participation in development interventions, one can rightfully ask why it is necessary to take this rather open, flexible and qualitative approach, given that participation has not only been a mainstay in development practice since the mid-1990s but has also been of interest to academics from such diverse fields as geography, urban studies, political science and public administration for several decades. The perspective taken in this research project is that exactly because the body of knowledge on participation in development interventions is extensive, it was necessary to build on an open approach to allow for the possibility to uncover what is relevant in the field. Beyond such considerations, however, a constructivist-interpretivist methodology conforms to my way of seeing the world, and the abductive logic represents my general understanding of how scientific inquiry realistically happens.
- 3.
Professor Kurowska mentioned this in her seminar “Introduction to Ethnography and Field Research” at the 11th ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques from 28–30 July 2016 at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
- 4.
I anonymised this municipality as Exploration Town in the list of interviews in Annex I. Exploration Town does not reappear in the remaining chapters of the thesis.
- 5.
The event had been organised by the foundation which provided me with office space. In return, I helped out at several of their events.
- 6.
I was not able to do this before the interview because at the time I still had significant challenges understanding Ugandan English and I had not written Dominic’s name down correctly from George so my internet search before the interview yielded no results. It was only after I had received the official title of his position at MoLG from him, that I was able to find this information.
- 7.
CDO is the abbreviation for Community Development Officer. Throughout the thesis, the full position is always mentioned either in the sentences immediately before or after a quote. Moreover, the abbreviations for positions in the municipal administrations can be found in the list of abbreviations on p. xii-xiv.
- 8.
Some of the cited literature was read in the Kindle edition. Not all Kindle editions provide page numbers, but rather give positions. In these cases, instead of naming the page where the citation stems from, the Kindle position is specified.
- 9.
Soss’s use of the term “clients” reflects the terminology used in his field of research: clients of state welfare agencies in the United States of America.
- 10.
I do not identify the municipalities with their pseudonym here so as not to harm their anonymisation.
- 11.
These three separate application processes consumed more time than I had planned for. As a result, I received my final research permit only shortly before I left the field. The research permit and ethics approvals are shown in Annex V in the Electronic Supplementary Material.
- 12.
Although for interpretive research, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea even argue that “[w]ith prolonged observation, researchers can come to see participants and their words and acts in context, which will put ‘performing for the observer’ into perspective. … But more than that: … interpretive researchers are less likely to understand ‘performance’ as a problem than to see it as data” (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2012: 110) (see also Schaffer, 2014: 193).
- 13.
These offers of putting my writing skills to their use were never taken up by my research participants.
- 14.
Clark-Kazak even considers whether scholars have a responsibility to intervene: “should I intervene? Anthropologist Scheper-Hughes (1990, 1995) argues that scholars do have a responsibility to intervene—whether it be to prevent mothers from killing their children, or to speak out on behalf of poor Brazilian communities. Initially, I did become involved in such circumstances, taking up some cases with officials in the refugee system, or with service providers. However, despite my best intentions, my actions had ambiguous ethical and methodological implications” (Clark-Kazak, 2013: 100). In her conclusion she draws on Lerum, who suggests using the emotional entanglements inevitably arising in the field to produce “critical knowledge, which is both self-reflexive and able to critique the power relations between people, institutions and culture” (Lerum, 2001: 481).
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Schindler, E.M. (2021). Methodological Framework. In: Structuring People. Sozialwissenschaftliche Zugänge zu Afrika. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35903-4_3
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