In her book, Decolonizing Methodologies (2012), the New Zealand researcher on decolonising education, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, states that methodology refers less to the selection of a specific technique but more to âthe context in which research problems are conceptualised and designed and with the implications of research for its participants and their communitiesâ as well as to questions of the power of the institution of research.1 I am guided by this approach. However, Smith writes from the perspective of being a person âwithinâ, addressing âresearchers who work with, alongside and for communities who have chosen to identify themselves as indigenousâ.2 My research endeavour differs in at least two ways. First, I do not write from a perspective from within but as a researcher who comes from outside. Second, I do not define the members of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines as an âindigenousâ3 group, nor have they ever referred to themselves in ways other than as being a départ volontaire or être gécaminois (to be a [unremembered worker of] Gécamines). They do, however, share the experience of having worked for a company that was founded by the Belgian King Leopold II (along with a diamond-mining business and railway company),4 whose legacy includes the gap between those in power and those who are kept powerless.
In her chapter, âImperialism History, Writing and Theoryâ, Smith discusses a point that inspired me, that history is not only about who is allowed to talk, who is heard and whose voice is valid; it is also about power. âIn this sense, history is not important for indigenous peoples because a thousand accounts of the âtruthâ will not alter the âfactâ that indigenous peoples are still marginal and do not possess the power to transform history into justice.â5 From my position as a researcher from the outside, writing from a privileged vantage point, I do not presume that members of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines need me to raise their voices to successfully get their compensation. But thinking about them not having the power to transform history into justice raised
1 Facing the Ghost(s)
Ich habe eben auf dem Balkon eine Zigarette geraucht, plötzlich sah ich ihn unten auf der Strasse, ich war so geschockt, dass ich mich hinter der Balkonmauer versteckt habe. Ich erinnere mich genau an diese goldene Uhr, sie hat in der Abendsonne geblendet, und an die Kofia, das sieht man sonst selten hier. Ich weiss, dass kann nicht sein und doch sah ich ihn eben. Ich zittere gerade, hoffentlich geht das wieder vorbei.
[I was just smoking a cigarette on the balcony when suddenly I saw him down on the street, I was so shocked that I hid behind the balcony wall. I remember that gold watch clearly, it was dazzling in the evening sun, and that kofia, you rarely see that here. I know it canât be, and yet I saw him just now. Iâm shaking right now; I hope it will pass.]
Notes in my research diary, 17 August 2018
I was haunted by a ghost for some days in August 2018. I knew my mind was playing tricks on me. Still, the ghost felt real then, and I was forced to confront my fears. And one way to do this was to think about my personality and positionality, not as a researcher (I come to that further below), but as a white6 woman in Lubumbashi. Let me approach the topic of positionality in a roundabout way, based on an encounter that is not even directly linked to the relationship between the researcher and research partners but which took place in the larger setting of everyday life in Lubumbashi. At the same time, I consider the researcherâs willingness to immerge into the community at large as crucial to understanding wider social dynamics.
One day, I travelled to Kipushi, a mining city 35 kilometres from Lubumbashi. Some members of the ODV s I knew from the meetings in Lubumbashi had invited me to visit Cité Gécamines in Kipushi and to interview them in
On the way to Kipushi, a roadblock by the police forced us to stop, and one of the well-known strategies to seek a bribe was played by staging a breathalyser test. Albert had to take a test that âprovedâ he was driving while drunk; the only way out was to pay a fine. The police did not notice me and Marc sitting in the back and the process of paying the fine moved quickly and discreetly. All parties involved seemed to be familiar with the process. Some hours later on our way back, the police stopped us once more for the same purpose. The driver was not happy to be forced to do the alcohol test again, and uttered some words of complaint.
Immediately, we were surrounded by several policemen, and the policewoman who had stopped us disappeared. One officer asked the driver for his papers, went away with them and then returned and asked the driver to get out of the car. Several policemen, I cannot remember how many, surrounded our car. Marc told me that now we would be in trouble and he urged me to be quiet, to stay calm, not to show fear and simply to trust him. A policeman appeared at the rear window on Marcâs side and asked him to get out of the car as well. Alone, I could see Albert and Marc in the rear-view mirror, in heated discussion with the policemen but out of earshot.
Then a policeman came to the front window of the car. He wanted to see my passport. I gave him a copy of it and told him that the passport itself was at the place where I was staying. He was not happy and told me that by travelling without the original passport I was violating the law. He waved at someone who had been out of my sight before. The man was big, his wrist was adorned with a huge gold watch and he was wearing a kofia and civilian clothes. He smiled at me and told me that if I could not produce my passport, I would spend the night in a cell at the police station in Lubumbashi because it was too late to go to my accommodation to fetch it. I did not say anything. He looked at me in an insinuating way and stressed again that I would spend the night at the police station. He opened his jacket to make sure that I would see the pistol holstered on the right side of his chest. He took it out and pointed it at me, very discreetly. He repeated his threat a few more times. I kept my mouth shut as Marc had instructed earlier.
At some point Albert and Marc came back to the car and off we went. Only then did I started to tremble, relieved that it was all over. My companions seemed to be happy with the outcome. Marc told me that the supervisor had asked for 500 dollars because I did not have a passport, plus a fine for Albert, for complaining about the alcohol test. In the end, they were able to bargain down to 10 dollars. Plus, he added, there was a second negotiation going on with the supervisor â the price for a night with me, that white woman just perfect for fulfilling his sexual fantasy. The discussions had taken so long because of this second negotiation. Although Marc and Albert were familiar with the usual harassments by the police and well-practised in dealing with these challenges, Marc stressed that negotiating that I was not for sale was a new thing for him.
We still had quite a way to go to Lubumbashi and on our journey Marc and Albert went over the details again and again. Unfortunately, they concluded, we could not lay a charge with the police, for obvious reasons. I fully understood. I commented, rather to myself than to my company, that it was indeed incredible that such incidents with the police could not be reported and that people experiencing this kind of harassment were silenced. I am not used to not being heard. My voice has always mattered. However, remaining silent before the supervisor and his colleagues was probably a way of speaking, too â my only way to contribute and avoid the situation escalating at a cost to myself and my companions.
Some days after that I noted in my diary that I had learned three important lessons from this experience. First, even by doing nothing other than sitting in a car, I had put the people with me in an uncomfortable situation, simply by being a white woman. My existence was a challenge for those around me, for those willing to support my research, for those trusting me and in whom I trusted. Even though I thought of myself as a reflexive researcher with a
Second, it was a strange and frightening feeling to have no voice and no place or institution where we could lodge a complaint (apart from the debriefing with Marc over many days, which was important to both of us). The reasons for no place to go with the complaint might be manifold, but there is one thing that was obvious to me: we were the ones without power. Being powerless â having no agency â is something I was and am not used to. I therefore consider that this experience increased my awareness of those who are silenced and whose voices are usually unheard. It thus heightened my sensitivity to the ODV sâ voices and the research methodology.
Third, the experience triggered more thoughts on silence â silence as a choice and as a strategy. First, it was my choice to follow Marcâs suggestion to remain silent, which seems to have been a successful way to deal with the harassment by the police officersâ supervisor. Second, I realise there must have been many topics that the ODV s preferred not to talk about, that they did not want to discuss or elaborate on. Silence as a strategy thus became something to keep in mind during the interviews.
My positionality is significant to the research process and my general approach that went along with this study. The following two questions guided my reflections: How do I assess my effect(s) on my research partners? (And I am aware that I will describe these thoughts based on my, and not my research partnersâ, perspective(s).) And, from which points of view, which are shaped by my experiences, do I start and base my assumptions?
2 Trust and (re)gaining Mutual Respect
I came to Lubumbashi as a white person, a female and scholar from the global North. The expectations I held about the first meeting with the ODV s were based on a misunderstanding.
The president tried to calm down the group and concluded the meeting instantly. He invited me, Marc and the ODV board members to their meeting room. There, the president officially welcomed us and a chair was placed for me and Marc in the middle of the room, the members of the board around us. The president introduced the members of the board, the vice president, secretary, treasurer, the lay priest and other board members without a specific assigned function. As per the communicative norms that setting required, Marc, whom the ODV s knew as the son of an ODV who had passed away, introduced me to those present before I was invited to speak. I chose to do so in French, because the president had spoken to me in French. I pointed out that French was not my first language; I explained where I was born, where I worked, what intentions had brought me there. This allowed me to present myself as non-Belgian, which I considered to be significant information for them against the backdrop of the DRCâs colonial history. Furthermore, I assumed that talking about my nationality (Swiss) and my country of residence (Austria) was helpful to underline the intention of my research interests. Both countries are equally unimportant in terms of (geo)politics â at least at first sight.7 I thus assumed
For the second part of my presentation, I switched to Swahili because that vocabulary came to mind, whereas French failed me. I cannot recall all the details of that first conversation. But I do remember that I felt not unwelcome anymore, and that there was some vague sense that they were interested in my research. And it was during this very first meeting that I first heard the master narrative âCâétait bien à lâépoque!â. In the following weeks (and of course during my later stays in Lubumbashi), attending the board meetings became a central part of my routine, and the living room of Mama Helene became the spatial locus of my research (see chapter five for the importance of during the baraza).
This first meeting was the start â as I perceive it now â of a mutual trust and respect that steadily grew stronger. What had begun as a verbal (and nearly physical) attack developed into a research situation in which people wanted to talk to me, asked why I had not interviewed them yet, and were interested in participating in the baraza (public forum). I observed their shift from justified anxiety to trust, a trust I later concluded was also the basis for their strategy to see in me a potential conveyer of their master narrative.
What makes me assume that there was trust and respect? There were some occurrences, which I discuss next, related to requests to be interviewed, mutual risk management and dealing with emotions.
3 Change of Perspective: from Near Attack to Registering for the Baraza
During my first stay, all the ODV s I asked accepted my request to talk with them, and during the following weeks the interest in participating grew. We met regularly during their weekly gatherings, but the interviews during the first year usually took place in Marcâs home in Cité Gécamines. Despite the fact that I wished to visit their homes (housing, after all, was the entry point into this research), I did not want to intrude into their private space before being invited in. Marcâs home was a stoneâs throw away from the place where the weekly gatherings took place.
The following weeks were filled with interviews. The first days were scheduled with one or two interviews a day, but other ODV s contacted Marc, having suggested that he be the one responsible for scheduling the interviews, and asked to be interviewed as well. Thus, towards the end of that first stay, several interviews had to be planned per day. I did not want to reject anybody who wished to share and was just happy about the positive attitude towards my
That I should come back the following year so that we could proceed was requested by the members and board members of the ODV s several times during the weekly gatherings, especially at the last meeting before I travelled back. Somehow we had managed to improve our relationship, from one of suspicion to an agreement that we would continue the exchange once I returned. Back in Vienna, I called the president three or four times just to pass on my greetings to everybody.
At the beginning of the second trip to Lubumbashi, during my first attendance of the weekly meetings, the good relationship was explicitly confirmed. That I had remained in contact while I was away and came back to âsupportâ them and their fight for compensation, as the president described it, was appreciated, they told me. The start of the second stay was thus characterised by mutual respect and trust, by the ODV sâ wish that I support their fight and by my wish to continue the planned interviews. âSupportingâ them was an important matter during the first meeting.
I had stated during my first stay, and wanted to clearly state this time, that I would not be able to fight the World Bank, but that my contribution would be âmy academic bookâ, as I described my planned dissemination, where their voices would matter. They assured me of their understanding and agreed that a book would be a good thing. Reflecting about the fact that both sides â the researcher and the research partners â had their own agendas also came as a relief.
Having âopposite partiesâ with their own ideas took away my feeling of being only a petitioner. Until that moment it had felt as if I was pursuing a research interest that was of interest to me but without any benefit to âthemâ, a position that is somehow immanent in research âaboutâ others.
Thoughts on how I could work more in the direction of research âwithâ others started during those first days of my second stay. However, I realised that to capture âtheirâ voices was not the only problem: âresearch informed by Western imperialistic discourses conducted on/with non-Western participants and packaged and represented in the Western academic world carries within it some inherent impossibilities of capturing the voices of peopleâ.8 But also, âtheirâ voices wouldnât fit into what Bhattacharya9 and Chow10 describe
I discussed my first thoughts about my concerns, that I was the one producing knowledge about others, with Sari Middernacht of the Waza Art Centre. What I felt would be right would be to produce knowledge with others to overcome the outlined incompatibility of âthird world experienceâ â even if their experience was only voiced. She then told me about the Art Centreâs former project working with the ODV s for an exhibition, where objects from their lives found their way into an exhibition together with their voices.
Those thoughts about methodology accompanied me during the packed weeks of my second stay. Many former interviewees invited me to their home, and there we continued our interviews that had started the previous year. New interviews were set up at intervieweesâ homes and I even received queries from some ODV s asking why I had not (yet) interviewed them. I realised that I had another role to play that year. Despite having clearly stated that I wouldnât have the power to fight against the World Bank, I was still seen as a kind of ambassador for their worries, expected to channel their concerns to higher institutions via my âacademic bookâ.
I was also seen as a researcher who came back because I was interested in them.11 Mama Mariam explained this to me when she took my hand and showed me through her house, to a bedroom that was filled from top to bottom with belongings that did not fit into the living room, which had to stay clean and tidy for welcoming visitors. While we were in the bedroom, she told me about her health issues and the difficulties she faced in accessing medical care. I remember trying to orient myself in that lightless room, listening to what she wanted to share, where nobody could see us and her tears. During this second stay, I experienced many tearful outbursts by women in dark bedrooms, a space safe from the others, from men, and heard accounts of challenging life situations. These women were taking a moment to involve me in their private issues, issues I often did not know how to deal with, except by being there and listening.
Two or three times, these were the moments when I was asked for money. Whether this was because by then they considered me to be a person close enough to help, or because I was seen as the privileged researcher, I cannot determine and it is not important. I took it as proof of trust, that they counted on me not to tell the other ODV s â and I did not. I decided that I would not help
That I had a camera with me was well known throughout my stays. I was explicitly asked to take pictures. During the first stay, I was asked to take portraits of the interviewees; on the second stay, while visiting them in their homes, the whole family was usually called over for family portraits. I ordered paper copies of all the pictures, from a copy shop in the city centre. The president asked me to hand the copies to him so that he could distribute them. I followed his advice and trusted that he knew best as to why the distribution needed to be done this way. However, picture prints were much in demand throughout the third stay, a year later. Some ODV s asked me for more copies or for new pictures. I did what time allowed â knowing that these copies were basically the only material objects I was able to offer.
During the third stay, for which the baraza were planned, the ODV s showed me how much they appreciated that I came back again. They made me understand that they wanted to continue our discussions. This is discussed in chapter three, in the section on âShared authority/barazawebâ.
Unlike the mineworkers discussed in the previous section, some ODV s were former senior staff and lived in Makomeno, the neighbourhood where the UMHK and later Gécamines housed the senior staff members. Lubumbashi was planned according to the ideology of segregation, like many other colonial cities. Thus, the question of gaining trust in the neighbourhood of Makomeno, especially with those interviewees who were not ODV s, had to be evaluated from a slightly different angle, even though they too had lost their jobs in 2003. It was thanks to Marcâs connections that I was able to conduct several interviews with former senior staff members who were not members of the ODV. They were not informed about my research endeavour via the weekly gatherings but through Marc, who explained my aims. All those who Marc contacted invited me to visit them.
Our first contact took place in their homes. All ex-senior staff lived either in bigger homes than the ex-blue-collar workers in Cité Gécamines or in an annex or the boyerie12 so as to rent their homes to make a living. In most cases, my first visit was to introduce myself and describe my research. Marc accompanied me
Weighing heavier, though, was the loss of prestige (see chapter four, on Heshima). So, it was up to me to assure them that their biographies and voices were equally valuable for me. I visited many interviewees several times, and with every visit interviewees opened up more, invited me to look at photographs from the âgood old timesâ, showed me certificates, and shared thoughts that they did not dare to share in the beginning. However, with two exceptions, they insisted that I should not take any photos and that I had to make sure they would remain anonymous.
4 Mutual Risk Management â On se voit sous Kabila
Whenever I went to Cité Gécamines, I first took a taxi partagé (shared taxi) to the city centre, where Marc was often waiting for me. Our meeting point was under a huge billboard showing a portrait of President Joseph Kabila. âOn se voit sous Kabilaâ (Letâs meet under Kabila), was Marcâs suggestion to make sure that I would be recognised and thus be safe, he argued. He was worried about me, because even though it was one of the most crowded places, I stood out. Therefore, he concluded, for me to be safe I had to be recognised. The billboard stood above a central square with numerous stalls, at a point where most taxis and buses stopped. Indeed, after a few days, the policemen working at that corner knew me, grinned at me with their ever-demanding expression. However, they let me be. Once in a while, the police even shouted at taxi drivers who were offering their services to me too vehemently â in their opinion. I observed how the police officers discreetly demanded money from the taxi drivers who stopped at the square to get passengers on board. The owners of the small shops got used to me too. As a result, Marc concluded after some days during my first stay in Lubumbashi that it was safe enough for me to travel to Cité Gécamines on my own.
From that square I had to take either a taxi or a bus. Most often, I took the bus. First, because I did not have to negotiate the fare, something I never got
Those weeks in the summer of 2018 were tricky in terms of safety, for everyone and not only for me as a foreign researcher. Political riots resulted in some days of curfew; communication during those days was difficult, because services such as WhatsApp were interrupted, and Marc and the members of the ODV s preferred to know that I was safely ensconced in the guesthouse. Once the situation improved, we continued with the interviews in Cité Gécamines. During the gatherings, we discussed who I would visit, and when and where I would interview them. As an aside, I was told that just recently two killings had taken place in Cité Gécamines â both poisonings. Even though there was no risk that anybody would poison me, they assured me, it would still be much safer if I were accompanied at all times. Thus, a masterplan was set up. Marc and one of the members of the ODV s, very often the secretary, would walk me to the home of the interviewee. Often, the interviewee would come to the meeting place and accompany all of us to his home.
I learned at this time, when we talked about the safety issues, that the decision to hold the meeting at Marcâs house the previous year had been taken because the members of the board thought it would be safer for me to not walk around. I consider their concerns, and Marcâs, about my wellbeing as one aspect of our mutual risk management. We gained each otherâs trust, and we all wanted the other not to worry about any problems that could result from being seen together. I was under surveillance â for better or for worse.
Safety was a worry not only in relation to me and my routes from A to B in Cité Gécamines; it was often a topic that was brought up, for example, when people described the security system that operated in Cité Gécamines in âthe good old daysâ, as I explain in chapter four.
Ignoring all of my instincts and my own personal risk assessment I knew with certainty that at this stage in the trip, after all the investment of time and money, I would not abandon the research opportunity. It was fortunate that previous experience and confidence (as an older researcher), knowledge of ships and shipping companies â their procedures and their safety policies â provided me with the wherewithal to resist the agentâs attempts to get me to do something which I felt was probably [but not certainly] beyond my capability.15
I felt comfortable with the ODV s, and I was confident that our shared research endeavour would be characterised by a willingness to understand each otherâs concerns. In retrospect, I think about the factors that were crucial for this trust. And my conclusion is that the management of emotions was one of the key factors.
5 Emotions/Weakness/Strength
â[W]ho we are as individuals and as academics, cannot but influence the conclusions we are able to draw.â16
One moment that sticks in my mind is when, during a group discussion, one of the participants lifted his shirt to show me scars all over his upper chest. Upset about the current lack of health services, he explained how this had affected his health condition. His voice was loud; he addressed me directly as âMama Danielaâ and asked me to look at him, his eyes filled with tears. I later watched that scene on the video shot by Gulda and Carl.18 I could not remember how I had reacted, although I knew that I had been close to tears. The video proof was unambiguous. My eyes were brimming; I looked straight into his eyes after having looked at the scars; I obviously could not find the appropriate words to say. I sat there, touched, and I remained silent. There was a rather long pause, which the video shows, in which nobody said anything. And the video showed something else: all the participants were looking at me, while I was looking at the man who had just shared his difficult health condition with all of us, but mostly with me. I will never be able to know if a different reaction was expected from me. However, I assess that my silence was not the wrong way to react. After the pause, the man with the scars thanked me for listening and looking at the scars. Silence, this time, was not the wrong strategy. This time it was not a strategy to save me and others from further trouble, as with the police officers, but a non-verbal expression of my sympathy in a situation where I could not find the appropriate words.
It was also a moment where the closeness/distance dynamic came into play and the question of whether I was an insider or outsider at this particular moment. How can one judge ownâs position in an emotional moment, or of the research partners? Do these emotions interfere with my ability to be the researcher? Down et al. write about the contradictory position, the inherent
Let me illustrate the last point with an example. When my second stay in Lubumbashi came to an end, I discussed with Marc my wish to thank the board members of the ODV s, those who attended regularly and those who had welcomed me for an interview in an appropriate way. We concluded that an invitation for lunch after my last visit of their regular meeting would be reasonable. A small restaurant next door operated by two ladies was thus the choice and a reservation was made. I informed the president, who was pleased to announce this invitation to the ODV s for the upcoming Friday. That day we enjoyed a cheerful get-together and I was glad to know that at least I could offer something.
A lunch was no matter of course for many of them, because of their precarious financial situation. One member came to me and offered me a necklace and bracelet made from malachite. I was surprised and touched, but at the same time felt uncomfortable accepting a gift, knowing how costly it must have been for him. That day, I wanted to be the one offering something, not receiving. However, I had to accept that it was equally his right to decide what was appropriate and to offer me something if it was his wish. After lunch, we went back to the house where the gatherings took place for the official farewell. There the president handed me not only the rooster made of copper that I mention in the Introduction but also a picture made from copper, showing the daily activities of a woman in the region. I was again very surprised and touched, but it was easier to accept these gifts from a group than the jewellery from an individual person. Receiving a gift is an emotional act, and it was easier for me to allow and show emotions towards a group than towards an individual, a man. The question in my mind was: why did he give it to me? What kind of expectations are connected with this gift, and what kind of damage would I perhaps cause by declining the expectations I imagined?
This narrative strategy in published work denies the emotional realities of life as much as it ignores the covertness we have discussed here. We are
aware today that all research positions, including objectivity, are social constructions, and as such, have moral and political consequences.20
Prominent in much qualitative research is the idea that the researcher, through reflexivity, can transcend their own subjectivity and own cultural context in a way that releases them from the weight of (mis)representations. Self-reflexivity can perform a modernist seduction â promising release from your tension, voyeurism, ethnocentrism â a release from your discomfort with representation through a transcendent clarity.22
Pillow refers to Patai, who criticises those people âwho stay up nights worrying about representationâ as privileged academics engaged in the erotics of their own language games.23 She also asks the âone question that the new methodological self-absorption seems not to ask ⦠: Does all this self-reflexivity produce better research?â24
Could this research endeavour have been done better in a different way? I am not able to answer this question. I try to be as transparent as possible without claiming any moral high ground because I disclose my feelings and my identity(ies). Then, âwe can still hope that doing so (or perhaps sometimes deciding not to) will help us to enhance our understanding of ourselves, those in the field, and ways in which we can work (together or apart) on improving the worlds that we live inâ.25
I drew on different methods, now understood in terms of techniques, changed my approach over time, adapted my approaches to what I thought
And I take note that different ghosts have accompanied me: that of the man with the gold watch, that of my institutional and privileged background, that of the methods we are taught far from the field, and that of the false assumption that I was a World Bank envoy.
I am aware that positionality is part of methodological considerations, but I chose to single it out because the research topic and research context required particular attention to where I come from, institutionally speaking, which affected the way in which I navigated through the research context.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London, New York: Zed Books, 2012), IX.
Smith, Decolonizing, 5.
I use Smithâs terminology. For her discussion of the term, see Smith, Decolonizing, 6â7.
See, for example, Smith, Decolonizing, 23.
Smith, Decolonizing, 35.
I understand the terms âwhiteâ and âblackâ as sociocultural constructs.
Looking deeper, the question of dictators such as Mobutu keeping their nationâs wealth in Swiss bank accounts might of course be relevant. But, although I am Swiss, I have no clue about the complex banking systems that cover dictators. Happily, it was never a topic we discussed.
Bhattacharya, âOtheringâ, 107.
Bhattacharya, âOtheringâ.
Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 38.
Mama Mariam and others I talked to had experiences with researchers whose research was obviously planned as a single visit, and who did not pay much attention to their voices and their knowledge agency.
The boyerie was the modest accommodation for the domestic servants and gardeners who were housed in the garden, next to the garage or storage areas of the house that was inhabited by a senior staff member.
Marc always carried a cloth to wipe off the dust before we entered a home. Only white people would arrive with dirty shoes, he commented one day, while looking at my appearance. I then started to also carry a cloth to always clean my shoes.
Helen Sampson, ââFluid Fieldsâ and the Dynamics of Risk in Social Researchâ, Qualitative Research 19, no. 2 (2019): 137.
Sampson, âFluid Fieldsâ, 136.
Simon Down, Karin Garrety, and Richard Badham, âFear and Loathing in the Field: Emotional Dissonance and Identity Work in Ethnographic Research,â M@n@gement 9, no. 3 (2006): 97.
Down, Garrety and Badham, âFearâ, 96.
Gulda El Magambo is a Congolese artist based in Lubumbashi. He filmed the baraza together with my colleague Carl-Philipp Bodenstein for the âMitaani #mapping Momentsâ project that is described in the next chapter.
Down, Garrety and Badham, âFearâ, 98.
Down, Garrety and Badham, âFearâ, 113.
Down, Garrety and Badham, âFearâ; Kari Lerum, âSubjects of Desire: Academic Armor, Intimate Ethnography, and the Production of Critical Knowledgeâ, Qualitative Inquiry 4, no. 7 (2001); Wanda Pillow, âConfession, Catharsis, or Cure? Rethinking the Uses of Reflexivity as Methodological Power in Qualitative Researchâ, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16, no. 2 (2003).
Pillow, âConfessionâ, 186.
Daphne Patai, â(Response) When Method Becomes Powerâ, in Power and Method: Political Activism and Educational Research, ed. Andrew D. Gitlin, Critical social thought (New York: Routledge, 1994), 64.
Pillow, âConfessionâ, 176.
Down, Garrety and Badham, âFearâ, 113.
Smith, Decolonizing, 5.