For experienced and inexperienced researchers and practitioners alike, this engaging book opens up new perspectives on conducting fieldwork in the Global South.
Following an inter-disciplinary and inter-generational approach, Understanding Global Development brings into dialogue reflections on fieldwork experiences by leading scholars along with accounts from early career researchers. Contributions are organised around six key issues:
Meaningful participation in fieldwork
Working in dangerous environments
Gendered experiences of fieldwork
Researching elites
Conducting fieldwork with marginalised people
Fieldwork in development practice.
The experience-led discussion of each of the topics conveys a sense of what it actually feels like to be out in the field and provides readers with useful insights and practical advice. A relational framework highlights issues relating to power, identity and ethics in development fieldwork, and encourages reflection on how researcher engagement with the field shapes our understanding of global development.
Chapter 1: Global Development Fieldwork: A Relational Perspective - Gordon Crawford, Lena J. Kruckenberg, Nicholas Loubere and Rosemary Morgan
Section I: Encountering the Field
Chapter 2: Liberating Development Inquiry: Freedom, Openness and Participation in Fieldwork - Robert Chambers and Nicholas Loubere
Chapter 3: Democracy of the Ground? Encountering Elite Domination During Fieldwork - Ashish Shah
Chapter 4: Combining Participatory Tools with Ethnography in Rural Cambodia - Sarah Milne
Section II: Gender and Fieldwork
Chapter 5: Gender is not a Noun, It's an Adjective: Using Gender as a Lens within Development Research - Ruth Pearson and Rosemary Morgan
Chapter 6: Encounters with Diversity: Reflecting on Different Perceptions of Gender in the Field - Johanna Bergström
Chapter 7: Gendered Agency in Constrained Circumstances: Researching Women Selling Sex in Kenya - Egle Cesnulyte
Section III: Fieldwork at the Margins
Chapter 8: On the Margins of World Society: Working with Impoverished, Excluded and Marginalised People - Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka and Lena J. Kruckenberg
Chapter 9: Encounters at the Margins: Situating the Researcher Under Conditions of Aid - Swetha Rao Dhananka
Chapter 10: Marginalisation(s) at the Margins: Studying Identity, Ethnicity and Conflict in Rural Bolivia - Lorenza B. Fontana
Section IV: Engaging with 'Elite' Actors
Chapter 11: Encounters with the Powerful: Researching Elites - Jean Grugel and Rosemary Morgan
Chapter 12: The Ups and Downs of 'Studying Up': Researching Elites in China - John Osburg
Chapter 13: The Nature of Power in Elite Interviews: Researching Environmental Politics in the Southern Cone of South America - Karen M. Siegel
Section V: Danger in the Field
Chapter 14: Under Threat: Working in Dangerous Environments - Jenny Pearce and Nicholas Loubere
Chapter 15: Perceiving Threats to Health in the Field: Researching Zoonotic Diseases at the Human-Animal Interface - Scott Naysmith
Chapter 16: Children in the Streets: Activism and Representation in Dangerous Fields - Nelly Ali
Section VI: Development in Theory and Practice
Chapter 17: Beyond the Ivory Tower: Researching Development Practice - David Mosse and Lena J. Kruckenberg
Chapter 18: Multipositionality in the 'Field' - Kathy Dodworth
Chapter 19: Irrelevance Dressed as Success?: Dis-spirited Reflections on Knowledge-based Development - Lata Narayanaswamy
Chapter 20: Towards a Relational Understanding of Development Research - Gordon Crawford, Lena J. Kruckenberg, Nicholas Loubere and Rosemary Morgan
