3.6 F IELDWORK P ROCESS : C OLLECTING P RIMARY D ATA
3.6.2 Participant observation
After securing access and establishing some rapport with workers, the researcher determined that he would immerse himself amongst workers and fortunately, the strike offered him a perfect opportunity to have time with workers over five weeks of industrial action. Through participant observation the researcher was able to study workers in their own time, in their space and in their everyday lives.
Burawoy (1991, 2000) argues that advantages of participant observation do not only lie in direct observation of how people act, but also how they understand and experience those acts64 (1991:1). The research on Dunlop workers is not only an observation of workers‘ everyday lives and the meanings they ascribe to those experiences; it is also the researchers own understanding and interpretation of how workers live their lives and make sense of their everyday life in the workplace. This is what (Giddens, 1987) calls the ‗double hermeneutic‘ because it involves both interpretation of participants of their lives and interpretation of the researcher.
The research cannot be separated from the personal reality of the researcher.
Beside his background in the struggle and his approach to gain access to Dunlop workers through their trade union instead of management, his ability to have a productive ethnographic research is also informed by three significant factors.
Firstly he was able to present himself as a migrant, a boy born and raised in eNtumeni, Eshowe (a small rural amakholwa community in Northern KZN), schooled in Nongoma (heartland of Kwa-Zulu) and only came to Pietermaritzburg and eventually Durban as an adult male to work. It was interesting to observe from the first visit at Dunlop and throughout visits with workers the pervasiveness of the rural/migrant identity amongst Dunlop workers. Presenting himself as a migrant and being able to identify with their background and the boyhood life of agriculture, stock farming and looking after cattle made workers more able to
64 Geertz (2000), the legendary authority on ethnography, argued that ethnographic research is not about studying spaces or people, but studying how people construct meaning in social relations.
identify with the researcher. Secondly, language became a very significant factor in his observation and in the ethnographic research with Dunlop workers. Many of the significant observations and data collected throughout my visits to Dunlop, in my conversations, interviews and various forms of conversations with workers and worker leaders and their families were only possible because of the researcher‘s fluency in isiZulu (his mother-tongue). Some of the data did not come from official interviews and, or observation scenarios, but from observing, listening and participating in informal conversations and exchanges with workers in everyday life. Lastly, workers were able to engage in the research as in their natural environment, using their everyday discourse and language because the researcher is also an African man. Because he is also a man, workers were more able to exhibit their rural, migrant and masculine identity pervasive amongst workers at Dunlop. This identity was both exhibited through real life stories of workers and was invoked during the trade union meetings to mobilise workers.
Masculinity played an important role in the researcher‘s ability to access Dunlop workers in everyday life.
Participant observation as part of ethnographic research also entails the breaking down of the constructed boundaries between researcher and subject (participant).
In essence, one cannot claim to present workers‘ everyday life and what these experiences mean to them without immersion into workers‘ lives. Throughout the seven months of daily visits to Dunlop and other visits with workers, shop stewards, their households and families, at times boundaries between researcher and participant become blurred. Bonnin (2007) did her research on the political violence in Mpumalanga Township, Hammarsdale. She found that being a woman, having an active role during the anti-apartheid struggle and her own personal experience of political violence from when she was working with workers at BTR Sarmcol and having friends and comrades that were victims of political violence, gave her a sense of common identity with the women she was researching in Mpumalanga Township. Marks (2004, 2005) did her research on the police in Durban. She found that as she increasingly gained access and the deeper she went into her role as participant observer, the more complicated and blurred was her identity and role as observer versus participant.
My participant observation deepened as I steered away from a focus on the college to a concern with the unit more broadly. I established an arrangement with the Head of Public Relations, Captain Dada, with regard to my participation in daily operations. I would call Captain Dada in the morning and check what operations were taking place and whether arrangements could be made for me to join the unit in whatever activity they were engaged in… After briefing, I would travel in one of the police vehicles to the scene of the event. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible; for the most part I played the role of observer-as-participant. However, there were times at which I was more of a participant than an observer, as this article demonstrates below (Marks, 2004:872-3).
She further mentions that at times she would be asked to comment during police debriefing sessions and at times during an operation, she would be asked to strip- search female suspects. This research had scenarios of complication when it was difficult to ascertain the differing role of researcher versus participant. During the strike, the researcher was asked by shop stewards to do several things, one of them was to organise media to cover the strike with the local press. This was after workers were frustrated with what they perceived as being the failure of the regional office of NUMSA to organise a march to the city centre and bring press media to highlight the strike. He was also asked to give input and make analysis for workers during various stages of the strike and in various meetings workers had after the strike. Furthermore he found himself participating and making input in shop steward executive committee meetings on various issues as well as being invited to participate in both formal and informal conversations of shop stewards and workers in the shop stewards office.
The researcher has also been asked by workers- mostly shop stewards- to help them on various aspects of their work, which gave him even more understanding of the shop floor and trade union experience at Dunlop. He has also been asked and in some cases has actually offered help on personal issues relating to workers, ranging from helping some workers with their children to apply for tertiary education at UKZN, but mostly, relating to this research. The researcher has
travelled to numerous locations of KZN and some parts of Eastern Cape, driving workers to their rural homesteads for a variety of family, cultural and religious events. These trips have become an important part of the observation research on linkages between workers‘ urban and rural lives. Many of the questions pertaining to household livelihoods, rural-urban linkages and workers‘ everyday lives were answered during these coincidental visits to places like Estcourt, Umnambithi, Flagstaff, High-flats, Phongola, Kwa-Nongoma, eMphophomeni, Mangethe; as well as various township households in and around Durban.