| | Sociological field research and its outcomes
To date, six periods of field research of one month each in the three
countries of Indonesia, Namibia, and Uganda have provided a wealth of
local views on global topics such as poverty reduction, resource use,
the meaning of development, and sustainability. The data and
observations resulting from the first four of these field researches
have been shared and discussed with all other participants of the
project in the form of reports – which are made available here in
chronological order.
November 2003: Lore Lindu und die umgebenden Gemeinden (available only in German)
Oktober 2004: Sustainability, the TKFA, and the communal area of Omatjette in the context of the land question in Namibia
February 2004: Respect for Boundaries – whose boundaries?
June 2005: Resource Use and Sustainable Development among the Baluli in Uganda
From a comparative perspective, the following areas of overlap between
these different field research periods in different countries emerge:
- Poverty is a very concrete – and pressing – condition in all
research areas, including the Tura region of Ivory Coast (which
remained beyond the reach of the sociology component’s field research
for political reasons). This is expressed in a straightforward – and
sometimes pleading, sometimes demaning – way by many of the
interlocutors. For them, “development” and relief from at least a part
of the burden of poverty are inextricably linked.
- There are, however, substantial differences between the areas with
respect to resource endowment. The glaring and obvious inequality of
natural resources endowment particularly between the research area in
the Omatjette communal lands in Namibia and the research area around
the newly created Lore Lindu National Park in Indonesia is demonstrated
by the reaction of Omatjette interlocutors to seeing photographs of the
Indonesian region: “This is paradise!” Conversely, some Indonesians, on
seeing Namibian pictures, noted how fortunate they were in comparison
to the Herero people.
- People in all areas are aware of environmental degradation, and
they do see human action as a cause for it. Their response to this
recognition, however, is varied: only in Indonesia, where “voluntary
conservation agreements” have been negotiated in some villages, do they
see it in their power to act against this degradation themselves. Both
in the Nakasongola District in Uganda, and in the Omatjette are of
Namibia, the majority of the people talked to felt powerless to do
anything against the observed degradation. This feeling of
powerlessness was linked to povery: in the conversations, poverty
appeared both as a cause for the degradation, and as a reason for the
inability to act against it. It is one of the major goals of the
remaining research period to gain a better understanding of the
variations of this line of argumentation.
- Even during these rather (too) short periods of field research,
sharp local inequalities in resource endowment among individual
families became apparent – inequalities which were sometimes clearly
related to the position in the local power structure. At the same time,
it appeared to be almost impossible for the people involved to talk
about these inequalities and the related feelings of unfairness else
than in indirect ways or in more or less “hidden” discourses. Examples
are accusations and suspicions of unfair or even corrupt practices of
people in leadership positions [1].
- One of the most striking observations concerns the similarity of
notions of good leadership. A “good leader” not only “leads” in the
sense of “showing the way (forward)”, s/he also listens to suggestions
coming from those s/he [2] leads and takes them into account, s/he solves
problems “of the community”, and acts as a mediator between them and
higher levels of authority when this is needed. And a leader “provides”
for those s/he leads – “as a mother suckles her baby” said the chairman
of the best organized rural branch of the Tjohorongo Kondjee Farmers’ Association in Namibia.
These findings do more than support the global priority of halving poverty – which is the first of the Millennium Development Goals
to be reached by 2015. They also confirm that “listening to the poor”
is as necessary as the World Bank declares it is. And if one listens
closely enough – guided by Local Language Hermeneutics as this research
project is – it is possible to discern more than one local discourse:
even within small local “communities” there are different and sometimes
conflicting voices. They talk about mostly submerged conflicts which
turn around conceptions and feelings of justice and injustice
concerning the distribution of resources, the access to resources, and
the use of resources. These “hidden discourses” therefore alert to the
discrepancy between the place which the public global discourse accords
to inter- and intra-generational justice as a precondition for
achieving sustainable development [3], and the scarcity of practical means to include “justice” into that other priority goal: that of “good
governance” – globally and locally. What else, if not the difficulty of
achieving “just” solutions to global and local conflicts, could be
responsible for creating parallel, hidden discourses?
The existence of parallel – partially hidden, partically conflicting –
discourses also points to the necessity to combine “listening” with
“action.” Conflicts persist in an “underground” form because the
involved parties have no “mechanism” at their disposal which would
allow for an open and mutually agreed on solution. Finding or
developing such mechanisms therefore answers to a practical and
theoretical need. A researcher may answer to that need by attempting to
find existing “indigenous” mechanisms or to develop new ones. One of
the ways to do that is to abandon the position of a distanced observer:
to become an engaged yet respectful partner in an action-oriented
dialogue – an option which has been explored in an internal discussion
paper in our project (see Reflexivity and Action).
[1] Thomas Bierschenk and
Olivier Sardan have developed a more elaborate methodology to study the
relationship between hidden conflicts – with “sweeping under the
carpet” seen as the dominant mode of dealing with local conflicts – and
processes of rural democratization in the context of decentralization.
See the annex on ÈCRIS (Enquête collective rapide d’identification des
conflits et des groupes stratégiques) in: Thomas Bierschenk and Olivier
de Sardan (eds, 1998): Les Pouvoirs au Village. Le Bénin rural entre
démocratisation et décentralisation.
[2] Leadership positions
are only rarely occupied by women, which is a novelty drawing mixed –
i.e. often negative - reactions from men. Only in the Indonesian
village of Toro is a “forgotten tradition” invoked to justify the –
partially successful – attempt to firmly anchor a female voice in the
decision-making bodies of the village.
[3] For a thorough
discussion see Andrew Dobson (1999): Fairness and Futurity. Essays on
Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, available online
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