Soldadura de materiales metálicos y pruebas no destructivas .1 Generalidades

The overall methodological approach for this research is mixed-methods, with ethnography at its core. The methods that I drew upon included survey techniques, semi- structured and open-ended interviews (key informant and in-depth), and ethnographic observations in various local settings, including of clinical diagnoses at a local health dispensary in Naiti.

The decision to combine qualitative and quantitative methods was not merely to provide comparison of findings, but was, as Pope and Mays (2006) frame it, an attempt to explore complex issues by means of methodological diversity. However, I am cautious of the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research, which, as de Vaus (2014) rightly observes, is frequently unhelpful and misleading, because the two can be used to enhance the specific data objectives of a given study. Therefore, rather than apply these methodologies as separate from each other, I used them as complementary tools to help me get the most depth out of my research endeavour.

As the central aim of the thesis is to understand everyday local experiences of risks from human-animal interaction, febrile illness and health-seeking behaviour, ethnographic and participatory survey methods were necessary to capture the necessary descriptive detail, and for methodological triangulation (Jick, 1983). Denzin (1970) argues that triangulation serves to confirm a phenomenon using various data gathering techniques. However, as Arksey and Knight (1999: 20) caution, “the individual strengths, weaknesses and bias of the various methods must, first, be known, and secondly, applied in such a way that they counterbalance each other”. Similarly, for Young (2004: 4), “complexity of methodology must match substantive complexity”.

Ethnography is defined by Boellstorff (2007: 11) as “both an epistemological approach and a linked series of methods, with ‘participant observation’ as the key practice”. Arguably, the most influential and controversial published work on ethnography is Writing Culture, a book by Clifford and Marcus (1986) which has influenced the way many anthropologists write about culture. The authors place ethnography at the centre of a new intersection of social history, interpretive anthropology, travel writing, discourse theory and textual criticism. This definition of ethnography as “writing culture” is an

appropriate one because it posits that, in conducting ethnography, one does not just observe and describe, but also one interprets and presents other people’s “culture” (Geertz, 1973). Wilkinson (2013: 54) extends this argument by noting that ethnography is “the process of observing and interpreting ‘culture’ in its natural setting and producing a written account of it as far as possible from the perspective of the people whose culture it is”.

In following these principles, ethnographic observation became a critical tool of my research. As Agar (1996: 31) illuminates:

[Participant observation] simply codes the assumption that the raw material of ethnographic research lies out there in the daily activities of the people you are interested in, and the only way to access those activities is to establish relationships with people, participate with them in what they do, and observe what is going on.

Following this view, throughout the time I spent in the village, I filled out 146 field diary entries with notes from participant observation. I accompanied herders to the grazing fields on many occasions, where I observed food habits and human-animal interactions, for example people’s relationship with animals, especially when they fell sick, gave birth or died during herding hours. In the village and nearby fields, I observed and participated in work (helping to hoe the land or plant food crops) with both women and men. In forests, I observed and asked questions about the medicinal plants that were foraged to treat fevers and other ailments. I noted milk consumption habits of families in and out of their homes, and when it was boiled or consumed uncooked, in what form, where, when and by whom. I observed men when they butchered animals (both sick and healthy) for various ceremonies, including after the birth of a baby or for circumcision, death and burial rituals, and for use in conflict resolution. I also observed meat inspection (by elderly men who cut open dead animals and inspected the offal) for signs of disease contagion and saw what happened to the meat if it was infected. I attended consultations between the physician in the Naiti health dispensary and his patients, and analysed patient clinical records. I also observed interactions between patients and their caregivers at the clinic and afterwards in their homes, in order to understand how they interpreted the diagnoses and what treatments they sought.

These opportunities offered me access to “sufficient proximate experience of the everyday circumstances in which people learn and tell their stories,” (Gubrium and

Holstein, 2012: 38). I achieved this by living in a hut in the village (see Figure 3.1), where there was no clean water, no electricity, no infrastructure, no heating, and where wild animals including elephants, zebras and sometimes hyenas roamed. I was able to observe daily life and people’s everyday activities and behaviours. I faced challenges and hardships, including a limited diet based on animal products and cornmeal, as well as isolation, as I had no phone or internet access over long periods, and thus was out of touch with my family and social and professional networks.

Figure 3.1: The Hut where I Lived During Fieldwork in Naiti.

At the same time, living in the village enabled me to trust and be trusted by my informants and hosts, and to develop collegial relationships, to understand animal-human relationships in an entirely new way, and to put into perspective my own ways of living. All these things helped me navigate the rest of the research process, and my academic and personal life thereafter.

As Denzin and Lincoln (2000) argue, research methods are decided upon based on the subject of study, i.e. whether the phenomenon under study is essentially convergent or a more individualistic social phenomenon. Arksey and Knight (1999: 10) agree that

competing theories of being (ontology) and knowledge (epistemology) have implications for the research methods used in social research. Therefore, in order to blend and integrate different methods, and not merely to design a study that comprised distinct, mutually exclusive approaches, I integrated the use of ethnography with survey techniques, interviews and focus group discussions as a way to give attention to “the differences and particularities in human affairs… what people think, what happens and why” (Arksey and Knight, 1999: 10).

Ethnography and mixed methods enabled me to achieve greater completeness. I approached the research questions from various angles and brought together a range of views that captured the social complexity of studying human-animal interaction and health and illness. Sometimes these views were not consistent. There were cases where the same respondents shared different views while answering the same questions under different methods of enquiry. For example, one respondent indicated that they did not own livestock in the survey questionnaire but admitted to owning “a few goats and sheep” during an in-depth interview on a different occasion. These multiple viewpoints were helpful in enabling me to explore respondents’ attitudes and beliefs and understanding the basis of their responses. For instance, I noticed that some respondents were hesitant about discussing their herd sizes with me. Some either refused to answer the question or simply mentioned an approximate number. One participant explicitly challenged me by asking how I would have felt if he asked me to disclose my bank balance to him, an opinion which I thought was fair. However, with time, and as people got to know me and understand my research agenda, they became much more open about the subject of livestock ownership. And at the same time, I also learned that ownership was not as straightforward as I had assumed, and in Naiti, as is the case in most livestock-keeping communities, gender dynamics played a significant role in defining what ownership implies. For instance, a vast majority of female respondents said they did not own any livestock, although they would sometimes say they owned the milking cows. One woman told me, for example, that:

I don’t really own our livestock. However, I know they are mine because my husband allocated them to my house, but I do not control what happens to them. So, if you need to know how many we have, ask my husband…20

As this example shows, “ownership” is a problematic concept, especially in communities like Naiti where gendered resource allocation implies women having access to livestock but not actually owning them. This is not new and is consistent with what many researchers working in these settings have found (see for example FAO, 2018; Njuki and Sanginga, 2013; ILRI, 2012; Hodgson, 2000; 1999). I return to livestock and other asset ownership in Section 3.2 below.

To sum up why I decided on ethnography as a methodology, my aim was not to produce a generalisable explanation of human behaviour. Rather, I sought to explore in detail the particularities of individual and group behaviours, and their implications for zoonoses research, health systems research and One Health interventions in public health challenges. This is because illness is fundamentally social, cultural and political, but also experienced personally, and so it can only be understood by being observed in a “naturally” occurring environment (see Kleinman, 1981; Atkinson and Hamersley, 1996). Without seeing how people behaved in everyday contexts, and without having some experience of these contexts myself, I would be unable to answer my research questions. Although at times it seemed as though different people gave me contradictory messages about various aspects of my questionnaire, I became interested in these divergencies because, as Arksey and Knight (1999: 22) also point out,

Even if the data pull in different directions, it is likely that investigating the reasons for the discrepancies will shed light on processes that otherwise might not have been recognized… divergent results can be equally fertile areas for theory-building, policy and practice.