Introduction to Special Issue: Qualitative Method/ologies in Development Studies

The articles in this special issue address a selection of questions in qualitative methods and methodologies in development studies, which is a topic that often seems to be overlooked or under-communicated in international journals. Searching through previous editions of Forum for Development Studies, we find only a few articles with methods as the primary topic, although method/ology is arguably addressed in articles’ methods sections. For method/ological themes one has to turn to thematically focused journals such as Ethnography, or to recent resource materials such as Sage Research Methods Cases (Hansen, 2018). Whereas the wealth of textbooks within social sciences provides comprehensive methodological elaborations or overviews of methods, they may not be ideally suited for the needs within development studies. Undoubtedly, publications dedicated to methodologies and methods for fieldwork in the global South are scarce, with Doing Development Research (Desai and Potter, 2006) as one notable exception.

Furthermore, the changing nature of the digital and global world opens up for new methods at the researchers’ disposal. Far from the studies of the founding fathers and mothers of development studies and anthropology, globalisation and digitalisation processes impact on how one is able to perform research, i.e. on the methods – understood as the concrete techniques and practical choices involved in collecting and analysing data. Underlying such discussions there should also be room for methodological elaborations – understood as a systematically, theoretically, philosophical and disciplinary grounded reflection about the justifications for the chosen methods.

This special issue was initiated in order to contribute to such discussions. It draws on an initiative by Professor emerita Turid Hagene that spurred the collaborative efforts of the Research Group on Development, Power and Inequality in the Section for Development Studies, Department of International Studies and Interpreting, Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway, and it comes out of two distinct experiences. First, it addresses concerns we have had in our own mainly qualitatively oriented research within the interdisciplinary field of development studies, where different disciplinary methodological traditions meet. Second, it draws on our experiences as lecturers in preparing entry-level students of development studies for extensive fieldwork in the global South. Incidentally, five years ago this department even published a textbook on development studies (Eriksen and Feldberg, 2013) – without a method/ology focus. Thus, we see the need for texts discussing some of the more overlooked aspects of performing development studies research, without producing a handbook on methods.

Drawing on our combined concerns and needs for texts which tackle empirically grounded method/ological elaborations, the contributions intended for this special issue of Forum for Development Studies were discussed in a seminar that received funding from the Oslo Metropolitan University Research Fund. The articles are thus sourced from researchers in our department and in our immediate network of development researchers in Norway.

It has recently been argued that there is a tension in development studies between critical theory and vocational skills (White and Devereux, 2018), and that current development studies programmes risk framing candidates for aid work only (Denskus and Esser, 2015). Indeed, our students of development studies ask for focused accounts of how to tackle the multitude of methods at their disposal when preparing their first fieldworks in the global South. Despite providing texts which may be helpful also in this regard, this special issue is not framed as providing articles that emphasise methods as vocational skills. Thus, there are no contributions here on participatory methods, which probably are the most popular methods within development activism (Desai and Potter, 2006). Rather, the articles all belong to the critical theory vein of development studies, and focus on qualitative method/ologies where open questions, in-depth analysis and meaning-making are central. In line with this, we argue that there is a need for focused qualitative method/ological discussions within development studies, also taking some of the newer approaches into account, such as visual storytelling and interaction with the informants through social media. Finally, we argue that it is significant to do so in a manner that illuminates the multiple challenges one encounters throughout the research process: How to find informants, how to get access to them, and how to understand the underlying meanings of what is going on, are examples of such real challenges which are rarely elaborated on in the resulting research.

The articles in this special issue

The seven articles in this issue span three continents and a wide array of topics: From schools and classrooms in conflict-ridden South Sudan, to hip-hop musicians in Uganda; from vote-buying in a village in Mexico, to different forms of comparisons in development studies; and from household histories as part of an impact evaluation in Ethiopia, to women’s everyday lives in Botswana and India. The articles vary from meta-theoretical discussions about different forms of comparisons to detailed descriptions of ethnographic approaches. Hence, most articles are ‘hands-on’ in their aim to elaborate on the details of the research process itself.

Two methodologically oriented articles open and close this special issue. First, Helle-Valle and Borchgrevink write about their experience from an impact evaluation of a development programme in Ethiopia, where they introduced household histories and methodological triangulation. The authors thus combined a commissioned impact evaluation – a rather routine exercise within the development industry – with a sophisticated analytical discussion about the nature of causal-oriented explanations in the social sciences. Finally, to close this issue, there is a methodological, ‘meta-theoretical’ discussion by Eriksen about different forms of comparisons in development studies and the justifications used for making them. Providing a comprehensive overview of different forms of comparisons, the article raises fundamental questions within the social sciences, and within development studies.

The remaining five articles are ethnographic and method-oriented. What links them together is an interest in qualitative methods beyond the qualitative interview – that is, qualitative methods in the manner first developed within anthropology as a way to explore the unexplored and unspoken (Hastrup, 2016). However, since development studies by its nature is interdisciplinary and the topics studied require different approaches, the ethnographic avenues chosen in these contributions vary. Thus, while Skårås in her research on teaching and learning in volatile conflict zones in South Sudan developed a more ‘focused ethnographic’ approach, with few, brief visits, Hagene studied vote-buying and village politics in a peri-urban village in Mexico by taking long morning walks on her many recurrent visits. Hagene’s ‘ethnography by walking around’ thus connects to early methods within anthropology where participant observation is central.

Similarly, the next three articles are also based on long-term ethnographic research, and provide detailed accounts of what the researchers did and how they did it. Waldrop and Egden use their respective prior anthropological fieldworks undertaken in urban India in the 1990s among high-caste, middle-class women, to retrospectively discuss challenges encountered in delineating, ‘constructing’ and getting access to potential field-sites. By discussing the way positionality and serendipity played into their research, they highlight challenges otherwise often overlooked or under-communicated.

What sets the next two articles apart from the former is the focus on social media as a research tool, albeit in different ways. Whereas Schneidermann was able to continue her fieldwork among hip-hop artists in Uganda through the use of social media after leaving the field, Storm-Mathiesen asked her informants to make video accounts that they shared and discussed with her. The use of social media and participatory approaches to visual analysis give the informants a more active role in the research process, and demonstrate how ‘the field’ continues to exist even after fieldwork. Furthermore, this points to the ongoing discussion of the informants as co-creators of the ethnographic insights gathered.

Summing up

We present this special issue with an empirically grounded focus on qualitative method/ological elaborations within critical development studies research. It is our aim that the articles may provide interesting empirical insights as well as exemplifying our three points of concern: First, that the ‘messiness’ of research in the field, where the research process can often be characterised as a string of decisions, loops and leads, and making the best out of the situation, is worthy of being highlighted. Second, that the close contact with the field opens up for elaborate empirical accounts which are valuable in their own right. Third, that there are new approaches to the multifaceted field of development studies. On that note, we agree with Currie-Adler’s argument that ‘[r]ather than enforcing a uniformity of theory, methods or geographic focus, it is the pluralism and interdisciplinary of development studies that allows it to be a meeting place for different dialogues’ (Currie-Alder, 2016, p. 20).

Acknowledgement

The editing of this special issue was made possible thanks to a grant from the Oslo Metropolitan University’s Research Fund.

Notes on contributors

Hilde Arntsen is an Associate Professor in development studies at Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway. She holds a PhD in media studies from the University of Bergen, Norway, from 2010. She has conducted research in several African countries since the early 1990s, mostly based on media ethnographic approaches. She has published on issues of gender, popular culture, religion and political satire.

Anne Waldrop is a Professor in development studies at Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway. She holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo, Norway from 2002. Spanning a period of more than two decades, Waldrop has done extensive ethnographic fieldwork in New Delhi, India, with a particular focus on class, gender and political mobilization. She has published widely on the topic, and she is the co-editor of two recent publications on gender and change in India: Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India (Anthem Press 2014, co-edited with Kenneth Bo Nielsen), and Family and Gender in a Globalizing India, Special Issue of Asia in Focus (Autumn 2016).