WWOOF volunteers were something of an improvised addition to the interview portfolio rather than a strategic part of my research design. In my early volunteering experiences I worked primarily alone but when spring arrived more WWOOFers began to appear on farms. I worked alongside several but limited my interviews to three on the grounds that they were actively seeking a life in agriculture and were using WWOOF as a kind of apprenticeship. Other volunteers were far less committed to agriculture, using the farmstays mainly as a cheap form
of travel. I approached my interviewee volunteers as potential back-to-the-landers whose insights from the WWOOF experience I saw as particularly valuable to the themes of knowledge and skill that emerge in Chapter 7. In all cases the interviews were conducted on the farms where we worked together.
Box 4.1 – Finding a lingua franca
Research is inevitably complicated when any of the participating parties are required to solicit or provide information in a language other than their native one. The online questionnaire for WWOOF farms went through numerous drafts and was passed between several native Italian speakers before finally going ‘live’ in its final form. Certain nuances of expression had the potential to significantly affect outcomes. It was difficult, for instance, to settle on a direct translation of ‘host’ farms, since ‘host’ refers more literally in Italian to hospitality. A colleague assisting with the translation also suggested a change from the verb form used in early drafts.
The ‘voi’ form of verbs addresses the plural ‘you’, and was initially thought the most appropriate for addressing the questionnaire to households rather than individuals. However, use of this form has never been popular in certain regions of Italy, particularly since Mussolini’s Fascist party enforced its use in the ‘official’ Italian of the Fascist era. I was advised that using ‘voi’ would not make a good impression on left-leaning respondents, particularly in the famously ‘red’ region of Emilia-Romagna. Such sensitivities were certainly taken into account, and the general satisfaction among contributing colleagues with the quality of the questionnaire suggests that the final product was not significantly compromised by my intermediate level of Italian. However, I do acknowledge that linguistic dissonance can impact research results in any case, and that the framing of my research may have a distinctly anglophone bent, emphasising certain issues and overlooking others that native Italian speakers may consider of relevance.
Participant observation and interviews were generally conducted in a mix of English and Italian, English being the lingua franca of many back-to-the-land migrants who have moved to Italy from abroad. Host farms were never specifically chosen on their owners’ language capabilities; indeed, I attempted to reflect the diversity in the national and linguistic backgrounds of back-to-the-landers, and wanted to include many Italians as well as non-Italians in the mix, regardless of their English abilities. It happens to be the case, however, that many Italian back-to-the-landers do possess some knowledge of English, no doubt strengthened through participation in the WWOOF programme. WWOOF hosts often tell of the many nationalities represented by the volunteers
they have hosted, making it clear that a functional knowledge of English is certainly useful for hosts.
Multilingualism often reflected a level of formal education and cosmopolitanism that contributed to my interest in a household’s potential as research participants. That the people in question chose to articulate some kind ambition in rural Italy, whether personal or political (not assuming that the
Box 4.1 cont.
two can always be so easily divided), offers rich material for investigation into both urban and rural life, and suggests possibilities for a future countryside that may contradict common stereotypes of contadini (farmers or, more generally, country people) as ‘backward’ and irrational.
Such derisory views are encountered regularly in Italy, and I took the position that researching educated farmers with life experience outside of the countryside might help to challenge them. I therefore sought research participants whose backgrounds seemed likely to counter these stereotypes, and one significant indicator of this potential was an English language capability. A fair amount of guesswork was involved in selecting participants on this basis, but in many cases an initial hunch proved worth following. In other words, candidates for research involvement were never selected or eliminated based on their English capacity, though it proved a propitious circumstance when that capacity was strongly developed.
As a final note on language issues, I want to mention that quotations in the text have been transcribed verbatim, a fact that can account for occasionally awkward phrasing when the interviewee does not speak English as a first language. I have tried to remain as faithful to the intended meaning of the quotations as possible while editing for clarity. In instances where I have translated interviews from Italian, statements are often paraphrased to convey meaning without risking an inexact quotation.
4.5. Events
The previous sections have detailed a research design that required careful planning, with schedules, interview questions, consent forms and budgets all prepared in advance. There
were, however, some more spontaneous site visits that informed the research results, as well as attendance at events that I hoped might guide or inspire research questions more than answer predetermined ones.