PART III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
5. Introduction: Nested case design and research methodology
5.1 Reflexivity, positionality and research philosophy
5.1.5 Contradictions, paradoxes, dilemmas
I am aware of the shameful colonial history of research and the imbalance of power between researched and researcher (cf. Smith, 1999:1; Denzin, 2010:298). As Smith (1999:2) argues, there are ‘complex ways in which the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and colonial practices’. The balance of
151 power was clearly tilted in my favour, particularly in interviews with victims and
offenders. Madlingozi’s (2010:211) article titled ‘On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims’, in which he refers to the theft of victims’ stories and cultural imperialism, served to remind me of my contradictory position. Even though I offered all victim and offender participants an amount in lieu of travel expenses, some insisted on only receiving the exact amount, others declined and those who accepted appeared amazed at the ‘excessive’ amount I offered but accepted it with grace. At the end of one interview, a woman who told me that she lived in a ‘tin house’, had HIV AIDS, worked for one day a week and was looking for a job, hugged me twice before leaving the room. For her, the token amount was a fortune. In those moments I did not know what exactly my philosophy or right to conduct this research were. I have been holding myself back for many years because it feels like a betrayal to ‘succeed’ as a black woman and be part of a small percentage of people with tertiary education and much more than the bare necessities of life in the South African context. I felt as if I was mugging people for research information that would benefit me in the first instance. Yet I continued with this research when everything in me told me to stop during those
encounters. Why did I continue? What was the logic that made me sit up day and night to complete this thesis? Enlightened self interest might be part of the reason, but I also have a more profound sense that I should use my epistemic advantage (Hill Collins, 1998:121, hooks, 2004:153, Narayan, 2004, Bowell, 2011) to produce knowledge from the
outsider’s standpoint. This stance resonates with Smith’s (1999:2) contention that
‘[i]ndigenous peoples across the world have other stories to tell […] counter-stories are powerful forms of resistance which are repeated and shared across diverse indigenous communities.’
For these reasons, I regarded and treated every participant as the expert on their own experience and capable of constructing their own accounts and thus their view of victim offender mediation processes of which they were a part. On this view, the interview questions were a guide to generate data and were designed to seek their opinions on their experience of restorative justice processing, rather than their personal stories. Where (victim and offender) participants offered additional information on their own cases, it was entirely by their own volition or how they understood the opening question: ‘What is your experience and knowledge of restorative justice?’ Where appropriate, I have used
152 unsolicited accounts and accounts elicited after respectfully probing subtext, to shape the direction of the analysis as suggested by Bazeley (2009:9) – particularly where it
confirmed or disconfirmed data gathered from other sources. In this sense, the
participants and I co-constructed the research story within the constructed boundaries of the study.
The following questions, on which interview schedules for this study were based, are subsumed in the overall research question and inform the underlying hypothesis and research focus:
1. Are restorative justice processes, practices and outcomes aligned to the peacebuilding and social justice agenda embedded in the South African Constitution (1996)?
2. Do Criminal Justice and NGO stakeholders discern links between restorative justice, South Africa’s peacebuilding process and the correlation between inequality and crime?
3. Does restorative justice processing as practiced in South Africa address the interaction of personal and structural causes of crime?
4. What is the function of restorative justice within the Criminal Justice System? Sub-process or alternative paradigm?
5. On what basis do prosecutors divert some cases for mediation and others not?
6. What is the theoretical or other basis for the frameworks, process, strategies, techniques and tactics employed by restorative justice practitioners?
7. What are the characteristics, knowledge base, role, function and skills of the mediators?
8. What is the role of the mediator during and beyond the agreement stage of restorative justice processing?
9. Does restorative justice processing have an impact on structural injustices that facilitate crime?
10. What, in general, does restorative justice offer to unequal, transitional societies in the long term?
The interview questions in each schedule were designed to generate data from which to discern if victim offender mediation, as a form of restorative justice processing,
contributes to peacebuilding in an unequal, transitional context. These questions were spread over four schedules with seven core questions and the remainder specific to each sub-unit. Questions were not always asked in sequence. In some instances certain questions were omitted if previous answers covered the information sought or when saturation was reached. A combined table of the interview schedules are attached as appendix ‘A’ and one transcripts from a participant who straddled the mediator and key
153 informant sub-units is attached to give an idea of the open way in which interviews were conducted, marked ‘B’.
The semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed for flexibility to suit the knowledge of the participant and to minimise power imbalances insofar as that was possible. Where it became apparent that the questions on the research schedule were outside of the
knowledge of participants, I switched to an unstructured interview mode and focussed on what participants preferred to share about their restorative justice experience in general.
This helped to thicken and deepen the overall analysis, as well as to add to numerous themes for further research. During interviews with experts, power was either balanced or tilted in their favour, in contrast with primary participants who seemed to feel obliged to co-operate because of their relationship with the restorative justice organisation. In some instances I departed from the script and allowed the experts to focus on aspects that they considered important in the bigger picture of South Africa as an unequal, transitional society. Many aspects of these dialogues either confirmed or disconfirmed my own general observations, or were an opportunity to debate some positions disputed by my interim analysis based on data already gathered. To balance these unavoidable and unspoken power imbalances that occurred during the data gathering phase, every voice was assigned an equitable place in a 360° formation of perspectives (discussed in section 5.3 hereunder) around restorative justice processing, during the iterative data analysis and report writing phases.
In sum, the field research was limited to focus specifically on what restorative justice processing contributes and how it does so, from the perspectives of restorative justice stakeholders. This was done by examining victim offender mediation processes
conducted with parties who have been referred by criminal justice system officials. The application of a hybridised research philosophy was contingent and responsive to the ground truth and the research agenda to (i) gather varied perspectives (ii) by varied means (iii) using a variety of analytical methods to assess whether contemporary forms of
restorative justice advance peacebuilding in unequal, transitional contexts. Restorative justice processing provided a contained unit of analysis which became the instrumental case to cast light on contributions to peacebuilding in South Africa. The choice of an embedded, instrumental case study approach is discussed hereunder.
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