From the researched to co-researchers: including excluded participants in community-led research on urban agriculture in Cape Town

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Traditionally, marginalised community members have been perceived by academics as providers of information and end users of research results. Co-research (community research) reverses this paradigm and uplifts ‘the researched’ to co-creators of knowledge and advocates for their own solutions to problems.

Design/methodology/approach

A co-research approach was developed, employed, and scaled by urban farmers in Cape Town, South Africa. Data was collectively gathered using mixed methods: primarily, focus group discussions, farming diaries, a vulnerability assessment, a structured survey, and a validation discussion.

Findings

The participants perceived the research process itself to be much more important than results, as they learned to challenge their own preconceptions, dismantled the cultural scaffolding which impeded their understanding of their world, and developed agency over processes for change.

Practical implications

The mutually developed results were used by the co-researchers to establish a representative body which advocates for policy action to address small-scale farmers’ needs.

Theoretical implications

Co-research goes beyond participatory action research by addressing its bottlenecks, such as actors’ limited involvement in data collection.

Originality/Value

This long-term study was led by actors who have been historically excluded from access to education. This study actively encouraged the inclusion of excluded voices and calls for a paradigm change in knowledge creation and democratisation of research processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-Research
• participatory action research
• urban agriculture
• knowledge justice
• Cape Town
• small-scale farming

Acknowledgement

First and foremost, we express our deepest gratitude to the Urban Research Farmer Club in Cape Town for actively collaborating in this research over a period of almost three years in the design, implementation, and discussion of results. This was a privilege and a gift. The authors thank the UFISAMO project, funded by the German Federal Institution for Agriculture and Food, BLE (2016–2019) through the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture (BMEL) for the study support and funding. The authors are equally grateful to Zayaan Khan and Sonia Mountford for the support they offered the Urban Research Farmer Club. We thank PD Dr Stefanie Lemke from the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), Coventry University for her continuous feedback in the course of the research. Last but not least, we would like to thank Carmen Aspinall for the critical comments and editing that certainly improved this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The UFISAMO project (Urban Agriculture for Food Security and Income Generation in South Africa and Mozambique) was coordinated by the Centre for Rural Development (SLE) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin between March 2016 and November 2019.

2 The ethnic terms ‘Black’, ‘Coloured’, ‘White’ and ‘Indian’ are still widely being used in post-apartheid South Africa, although these terms are highly contested. The apartheid laws intended for ‘racial classification’ designed a social hierarchy, attempting the imposition of these ‘race groups’. Moreover, we use the term people of colour as an umbrella term for Black, Coloured, and Indian South Africans, as used in the broader South African context (Durrheim, Mtose, and Brown 2011).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the German Federal Institute for Agriculture and Food (BLE) through the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture (BMEL) between 2016 and 2019 under [grant number 2813FSNU13]. Bundesanstalt fürLandwirtschaft und Ernahrung (BLE).

Notes on contributors

Nicole Paganini

Nicole Paganini is an associate researcher at the Centre for Rural Development (SLE) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research focuses on urban food systems in Southern Africa and relies primarily on participatory research methods. She is a geographer by training with a focus on participatory planning and organic farming. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Hohenheim in the Department of Societal Transformation and Agriculture and the Department of Consumer Economics. ORCID: 0000-0001-6100-3828

Silke Stöber

Silke Stöber is a post-doc researcher and lecturer on participatory and action-oriented co-research methods, rural advisory services, communication, and teamwork at the Centre for Rural Development (SLE) of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has more than 25 years of professional experience in international development cooperation with long-term experience in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. She has published articles on climate change adaptation, its impact on smallholder farmers’ livelihoods, and food security. SLE’s research is solution – and impact-oriented and one of its mainstays is the promotion of livelihoods and food security of small-scale family farms in the Global South. ORCID: 0000-0002-8972-1191