Flash forward to about two weeks ago. We're sitting in the cab of an ancient pickup truck retrofitted with bench seats and a metal cage on top for cargo. We join approximately 10 people and heave a year's worth of our suitcases, stroller, and other accoutrements onto the groaning roof. The truck bumps and squeaks its way slowly along a rutted dirt road, taking us to the rural Brazilian settlement where we will be living for the next year. Annie is crying, Jo is getting sunburned, David is getting irritated, we're all dripping sweat. This time, there's only a single terse exchange: “Honey, you can't do this kind of thing with a family. This is ridiculous.” Same idea—we can't do this.
We've both reflected quite a bit on the similarities between these two memories, and on the very real feelings of panic that choked us both at one point or another as we've traveled around while pregnant, giving birth, and with our (now) 8-month-old. We've realized that there have been many times when we thought we couldn't do it, but we did, and quite a few times when we thought we could do it, but we couldn't. In this post we discuss some of the challenges of doing fieldwork with a family. What happens when reality is really too much, and how can compromises be negotiated? It is neither solely about rising above the challenges of doing fieldwork with a family and riding off into the sunset, nor about retreating with one's proverbial tail between the legs. It's about negotiating the professional and personal juxtapositions that are kids in the field.
We'll draw another example from our first days as a family in Brazil. To provide a little background, David's research is about the potential linkages between political participation and environmental education in the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST). In 1996, 21 MST members were massacred while marching as part of their struggle for agrarian land reform. Survivors of the community have created an annual 10-day educational event leading up to the anniversary of the massacre.
Group discussion following debate on agroecology
Che: "To be young and not a revolutionary is a genetic contradiction." Who knew?
Discussion group on gender with monument to those massacred--made from burned Brazil nut trees-in background
The daily protest, closing the highway for 21 minutes in memory of the deceased.
This encampment on the side of a rural Amazonian highway was a key event for David's research. However, sleeping under black plastic tarps on the side of the highway, in the rainy season, with unspeakable heat indices and little shade made the chances of encamping for 10 days with an 8-month old pretty much nil.
Home sweet home?
Turns out black plastic is actually fairly waterproof. Emphasis on fairly.
The 2000 liter open shower
First, we both acknowledged that there were the things we HAD to do to keep everyone safe and comfortable. For example, avoiding heat-stroke, dengue, and dehydration. The onus is greater when only one member of the group speaks the language, as was the case for us in India and now in Brazil. Then, there are the things you WANT to do. Oh, man, it would be so nice just to skip taking an hour-long motorcycle ride tomorrow in the heat of the day to the encampment and instead hang out in the river with my daughter. Similarly, I think I'll go to the encampment another night so I can have dinner at home and not wake up in a mud pit. Or the reverse: I'd really like to participate to the fullest extent in this 10-day encampment, and get that sought-after 'emic' perspective. Early on we decided that David would go each day to the encampment, and at some point we would try to spend two nights there as a family. This seemed realistic in principle, but the day that we tried to encamp as a family turned out to be the hottest of the entire event, and Annie started getting diarrhea. Not a good combination for any involved. Annie was clearly not happy, and as a result nor was Jo; David was trying to conduct interviews with little success as it became increasingly clear that this family encampment was just not going to work out after all. A marital skirmish ensued and we re-evaluated and compromised again: David would continue to commute to the encampment during the days, and would spend two separate nights encamping with his research community. We think this example illustrates the fact that combining fieldwork and families is a lesson in tradeoffs: we can't do this— we can do this. Situations that you would be comfortable in, e.g., sweating it out on the side of a highway for 10 days, are sometimes not fair to ask of your family, particularly when they can't answer back. But at the same time, having Jo and Annie at the encampment during the day was incredibly rewarding, both personally as well as professionally as a multitude of people wanted to hold her, bathe her, and watch her during the day (Annie, not Jo, although Jo wished someone wanted to dunk her in a big tub of cool water). We realized that it wasn't only the MST members that had been learning during the week at the encampment; we had as well. And importantly, although David's style and depth of participation in the event did not turn out as he had originally envisioned it, he came away feeling he had collected enough material in those 10 days to write an entire MA thesis, or at least a dissertation chapter. We can't do this—We can do this.
Happy Annie=Happy Us
