As mentioned earlier I conducted interviews in Sri Lanka with the help of two research assistants. On the one hand this was necessary based on my rudimentary Sinhalese language skills, on the other hand I was aware that working with a well informed and well-networked ‘colleague’ would facilitate getting access to relevant people, interview partners, documents, and information. For these reasons I decided to work with two former work colleagues: one AID colleague and one former university colleague. Both had long lasting and well-established networks within local authorities and the Sri Lankan aid sector. Further both were familiar with my working style and the private donator driven housing project. Related to their personal history and different work experience and networks I was able to draw on different skills and access possibilities to the field. The former AID colleague was now living in Galle district working as director of an international development organisation. She obtained excellent knowledge, good rapport and broad networks within the local development sector (tsunami and post-tsunami time) but also within the local authorities in Galle District. This enabled access to many interview partners and key informants. The university colleague on the other hand has great experience in working for several international researchers.
She supported the process of developing, conducting and transcribing interviews and the translation of documents (Singhalese to English).
Briefly outlining the relation to my research assistants but also their affiliation to the field shows the importance to reflect upon knowledge (co-)construction and the genesis of our dataset. Working with research assistants means their history and positionality in the field is reflected in the data we collect. They become informants playing a key role in facilitating access and guiding the research process by their networks and personal understanding of the field. Assistants
are not ‘pure’ or ‘neutral’ companions. Even though their understanding and knowledge, insight and access to hidden transcripts and stories of the field do have the advantage of making fieldwork insightful and profound. Nevertheless the researcher has to bear in mind that those translations, information and data always contain a great deal of the assistants’ interpretations, reflections, subjectivity and positionality. As Aull Davies (2008) commemorates, “…
ethnographers … must remain aware that translation … is far from a theoretically neutral activity and that… [translators/assistance] own perspective, both professional and personal, will influence their translations” (125, cf. Coffey 1990;
de Neve 2006; England 1994; Temple 1997; Unnithan-Kumar and de Neve 2006).
Through continuous discussion on translations, conducted interviews, interview situations/setting and transcripts I cross-checked the research assistants’
position, opinion, and interpretation on the context and interview partners aiming to get to know their judgment of correctness and how far their translations and transcripts were influenced by their knowledge. Even though I was able to minimize the scale of subjectivity I am aware that to a certain degree “field notes…are necessarily partial and reflect the ethnographers’ perceptions” (Aull Davies 2008: 256) and in my case that of two research assistants as well.
4.2.3 Writing of Text
The mentioned emotional and personal difficulties arising when re-entering the field, aggregated while writing. The first set of intensive writing and analysing leading to two articles (Article 2, Article 3) started way before re-entering the field again in late 2009. The first writing process enabled me not only to intensively ground my working experiences in theory but to physically and temporally draw a boundary to the field. However an emotional distancing remained undone. Analysing and writing the field is re-writing and re-defining memories accompanied by a constant struggle to locate and reduce these memories within theoretical boundaries. As Coffey (1999) observed, “…qualitative data analysis cannot only be thought of in terms of technique and strategy…it is a point of emotional involvement and personal investment… at this stage of our research
… we manipulate, rethink and represent our endeavours, drawing upon our own ideas of what the data are saying” (Coffey 1999: 136-138).
While writing I consciously left out interview parts anticipating disappointment or conflicts with the researched if they identify themselves in the text. I was caught in the dilemma that Mosse (2011) pointed out for the production of ethnographic text: “…Ethnography is unfair or bad evaluation because it does not involve the
usual negotiation of an acceptable story that mediates interpretative differences.
Ethnography draws attention to different points of view and does not involve, or require, a drive to consensus” (55). I would argue that even though I was aware that in order to conduct reflexive, accountable and ethical research it is necessary to share my work with involved actors, interview partners and the researched, my subconscious guided me differently avoiding additional personal dilemmas and conflicts I faced since the writing process began. Thus the ethnographic self is disturbing, selective and partial, subtly influencing decisions during the research process.
Yet another shortcoming appeared in the writing of texts – anonymity. As Shutt (2006) remarks based on personal experiences in writing internal-ethnography: it is “virtually impossible to both give thick contextual descriptions and anonymise communities and organisations in practice” (34). I experienced similar difficulties obviously not being reflexive and sensitive enough in relation to anonymity.
As one anonymous article referee pointed out: “If you give the real name and location of the village, will it be easy for people to figure out the identities of the donors? Much of the tsunami aid information is still available on the internet...” (Anonymous Referee Comment, 13.04.2013). Until I received this comment I never was really concerned about writing details of the geographical location, not realizing the transparency I create. After double-checking on the Internet I realized that with the given information in already published articles I unconsciously annihilated the personal right of anonymity of my informants. I have to admit, that I failed to fully secure the anonymity of involved donators, organisations and institutions and was not able to achieve the agreement of confidentiality.
Nevertheless reflecting on these shortcomings and admitting occurring failures I believe is the strength of insider ethnographic data that is particularly dependant on the formation of tight and close relations and the development of an emotional relation to the field and its actors. As Coffey (1999) writes: “ethnographers are not outsiders looking in. They have to be reflective insiders, negotiating roles and subjectivities, looking out” (57). My empirical data illustrates first-hand and exclusive insights into complex socio-political realities, networks and processes within organized non-anonymous giving and the everyday reality of doing aid.
The following chapter will now give a brief introduction to each article highlighting its objective and theoretical starting point. It further completes the frame document attempting to consolidate the article findings in a comprehensive synthesis.
5. Composition of Articles and Synthesis
Five scientific articles, all subject to a double-blind peer-review process, form the main part of the PhD thesis. Till this day four articles have been published (Development in Practice, Disasters, Journal of Development Studies, Geoforum) and one accepted for publication (International Development Planning Review).
The aim of the articles is to comprehensively uncover different aspects and consequential effects of what I define as the paradox of good intentions: the practical conversion of ‘pure’ development gifts into culturally charged political commodities. The thesis hence does not intend to answer the question if aid works or not but to expose how it works (Mosse 2004, Korf 2010) through the everyday practice of doing aid. The ethnographic insights into the non-anonymous donator driven rehabilitation project provide evidence that even though actors rhetorically distance themselves from mundane practices of development aid (or humanitarian aid, as it were), they become part of exactly that system of organized gift giving that is guided and dominated by self-interest and power. The articles therefore write out the hidden mechanisms of the development gift and “how aid intermingles with multi-local gift economies and local political economies” (Korf 2010: vi) transforming good intentions into socio-political interests.
5.1 Articles
The first set of articles, comprising of one single authored and two co-authored articles, focuses on the humanitarian moment of transnational solidarity expressed in the form of ‘pure’ gifts. My analysis building on Marcel Mauss’ theory of the gift (see chapter 2) shows that the donators’ active participation influences and changes practices, politics and power networks in the humanitarian aid chain at different localities, creating dynamics that reinforce the prevailing modes of social hierarchy as well as serving donators’ self-interest of social recognition and honour (Article 1). It further revealed how these influencing factors provoke a process of commodification whereby pure and good intentions get contaminated through the politics of patronage and international aid (Article 2). Furthermore the research asserts that rituals and ceremonies around the gift and the direct encounter between those who give and those who receive visualize the perpetuating socio-economic asymmetries and existing power relations executed through gentle forms of violence (Article 3).
The second set of articles, consisting of one single and one co-authored article,
shifts the focus towards analysing the transformation of the ‘pure’ gift into long-term visions of development. In relation to Foucault’s concept of governmentality (see chapter 2) one article illustrates how donators’ visions, logic and socially informed knowledge on the one hand influences the projects objective, and while on the other hand establishes the basis for actual practices and technologies of doing aid (Article 4). The last article in addition uncovers how donators’ initial
‘pure’ and good intentions transfers into a will to improve the unpacking of private non-anonymous donators’ powerful role, in giving meaning to sustainable development and village improvement in the context of post-tsunami housing in Sri Lanka (Article 5). For article three and five I joined Dr Kanchana Ruwanpura in bringing together our separate empirical case material on post tsunami donator driven housing project. The two cases complemented each other nicely as Dr Ruwanpura’s case study highlights that donators with Sri Lankan origin coming from Colombo middle class inhabit the same habitus of giving and the intention to govern the lives of others towards their socio-economic standard as is the case of international donators. In bringing both cases together it becomes clear, that the consequences of development gifts and the paradox of good intentions is not a matter of culturally different understanding of giving but a problem of the structures and processes of the gift.
Before outlining the articles in more detail, the following list will provide an overview presenting my contribution to each co-authored article: