Part I: Concepts, literature, and methods
Pseudonym 26 Status at garden Pseudonym Status at garden
Bongani Co-op member Blessing Casual worker
Margaret Co-op member Grace Volunteer/ EPWP
Rebecca Co-op member Lindiwe Volunteer/ EPWP
Samuel Co-op member Moses Co-op member
Thandi Volunteer/ EPWP
Thato Co-op member
Note: The payment of salaries to some of the garden participants at Sekelanani under the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) is discussed in Chapter 6.
4.4.6) Food/life history interviews
After several more months of participant observation, I conducted food/life history interviews with garden participants, between February and April 2015, again using an interpreter when needed. A list of those interviewed is included in Table 3, below.
The goal of this exercise was to understand their lifelong relationship with food, agriculture and the food system more generally, in order to see if and how it had changed as a result of their participation in the garden (Bornat, 2004; Kouritzin, 2000;
Payne & Payne, 2004, p. 24). The life history interview method enabled me to focus on a specific issue, namely the food system, over the course of participants’ lives, while also situating their experiences within a broader historical context (Bird &
Ojermark, 2011; Jackson & Russell, 2010). This method is particularly useful as a way “to explore the relationship between individual people’s ability to take action (their ‘agency’), and the economic, social, and political structures that surround them”
(Slater, 2000, p. 38). Thus in these interviews I sought to assess empowerment as a result of participation in the garden, in the sense of enhanced capabilities, self-
confidence and control over food-related decisions, the food system and/or associated political issues (e.g. provision of infrastructure support services to gardens) (Harnett, 2010). The food/ life histories contributed to answering all of the research questions.
Table 3: List of food/ life history interviews
Vunani, Alexandra Sekelanani, Bertrams
Pseudonym Status at garden Pseudonym Status at garden
Bongani Co-op member Grace Volunteer/ EPWP
26 As mentioned earlier, I have used pseudonyms for all garden participants, as well as for the gardens themselves.
Isaac Co-op member Lindiwe Volunteer/ EPWP
Margaret Co-op member Moses Co-op member
Rebecca Co-op member Thandi Volunteer/ EPWP
Samuel Co-op member Thato Co-op member
4.4.7) Garden participant interviews
Near the end of my fieldwork, in January and February 2016, I conducted semi- structured interviews with participants at both gardens. A list of those interviewed is included in Table 4, below. These interviews sought to fill in any gaps that still remained. The interviews covered the history and functioning of the gardens,
participants’ motivations for joining and remaining involved, and the various benefits and challenges associated with participation. As the issues of empowerment and food system localisation remained somewhat challenging to assess because of their
complexity, I included questions that sought to further flesh out these themes. During this final round of interviews, I also included questions related to dietary diversity.
These were lightly adapted from the standard questions from the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS)
questionnaire (Swindale & Bilinsky, 2006). At this point more than a year had passed since the food diary exercise (which had not been without its challenges), so I thought it would be useful to assess participants’ diets again. This was a method of
triangulation, but also allowed for the possibility of change over time.
Table 4: List of garden participant interviews
Vunani, Alexandra Sekelanani, Bertrams
Pseudonym Status at garden Pseudonym Status at garden
Bongani Co-op member Grace Volunteer/ EPWP
Isaac Co-op member Happy Casual worker
Margaret Co-op member Lindiwe Volunteer/ EPWP
Rebecca Co-op member Moses Co-op member
Samuel Co-op member Thato Co-op member
4.4.8) Analysis
Analysis began as soon as the research began, and continued throughout the entire process of data collection. As I proceeded with the research, I continuously analysed the data I had against my conceptual framework and its various sub-themes. This informed the evolution of the research process. I manually coded all of the interview
transcripts, field notes, food diaries and other data according to the broad themes of the research, as well as information about the political, socio-economic, spatial and ecological context in which the gardens are situated, and about the functioning of the gardens (Ezzy, 2002). During the coding, I allowed space for additional themes to emerge from the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
It was through the analysis, in particular, that I was able to connect the local and the global, or the micro and macro scales. This was also where my extensive reading of the literature and my fieldwork came together. I was able to connect personal events recounted to me in life history interviews—such as tending cows rather than attending school, migration to Johannesburg to work in the mines and learning to cook while living in a mining hostel—with the racist political and economic policies of apartheid that denied black people education, uprooted them from their families and forced them into white-owned industries. I could understand an individual dietary choice, such as only consuming fruit when it was brought to Johannesburg by family
members from the rural areas, within a shift from a rural, communal system in which fruit was freely available to pick and eat, to an urban, highly capitalist one in which it carried a high price in shops.
My validation strategies of triangulation and gathering feedback from interviewees contributed to the reliability of the research. While a qualitative study of this nature is not replicable, because it grows from the interaction between researcher and
participants, transparency and detail with regard to methods used is key to reliability.
I kept detailed records, notes and transcripts of all field interviews (Creswell, 2007, pp. 209–210). Piloting my research instruments also enhanced their validity and reliability.
4.5) Ethics, reflections, limitations
I have made every effort to protect sensitive information and to respect the rights and dignity of all research participants. In general, garden participants were generous and open with their time and opinions, and usually did not request that their information be kept confidential. However, a few participants did request confidentiality at times.
Because the gardens have few members, I have chosen to use pseudonyms for the
gardens and for all of the members, in order to protect the identities of those participants who did not want them disclosed. All interviewees were informed in advance of their right to refuse to answer any question and to withdraw their
participation at any time. Only one garden participant exercised this right, refusing to participate in the third and final round of interviews, after willingly participating in the previous two. This resulted from on-going conflicts between garden co-op members and non-member participants (which are discussed further in Chapter 9), more than out of a desire to withdraw from the research, but of course I respected her wishes.
While it is possible that research participants chose not to fully disclose information during our interviews, or even to alter their answers in order to present a particular narrative, this is an unavoidable risk of qualitative or ethnographic research. In some cases I was able to compare participants’ answers’ to things I read or observed, but in the case of their life histories, my ability to verify their answers was naturally quite limited. However, I did not get the impression that participants wished to mislead me, and between their answers and my other forms of data collection, I felt that the information reflected the perceived “reality” of the participants—which was my objective—if not a quantitatively verifiable “objective reality.”
Any field research involves a unique set of power dynamics between the researcher and the ‘observed’, and in the context of post-apartheid South Africa, these are influenced by the racialised inequality that characterises the broader society. Scholars have pointed out how a researcher’s positionality or social location influences the entire research process, including the kinds of research questions asked, the theories and methods employed to answer them, the kinds of data collected as well as one’s interpretations of the data (Muhammad et al., 2015; Shope, 2006). My position as a foreign, white, female researcher was certainly a privileged one. However, the power relations were by no means straightforward, nor were they static over the course of the research. While my race may have commanded a certain amount of respect, and therefore cooperation, amongst some participants, it undoubtedly created distance from others (Becker, Boonzaier, & Owen, 2005; Schutte, 1991). At times, my
outsider status may have prevented me from seeing or understanding certain subtleties in the gardens; at other times, it may have made participants feel safer confiding in
me about things (e.g. their feelings about other participants) they might not have shared with their immediate community members. Different garden participants reacted to me in different ways, and these changed as they got to know me over the course of the fieldwork. Because I sought information from the participants, they ultimately held a certain amount of power insofar as they could choose whether and what to share with me.
I undertook this research reflexively, and kept a research journal to record and review my perceptions, assumptions, biases and positionality in the research (Creswell, 2009, pp. 191–193; McNair, Taft, & Kegarty, 2008). Reflexivity involves “reflection on self, process, and representation, and critically examining power relations and politics in the research process” (Sultana, 2007). As a foreign, white, female researcher in community gardens in poor areas, I was immediately visible as an ‘outsider.’ This was particularly true at Vunani, in Alexandra, where I never saw another white person during all of my fieldwork. The fact that I came to the garden in an automobile further separated me from the members and surrounding community, who did not have cars. I became the “mlungu27 in the garden,” about whom customers frequently asked
questions. I often overheard customers ask one of the gardeners what I was doing there. Usually, she would explain to them that I was studying agriculture.
Occasionally, she would joke that they are now employing white people in the garden, because black people don’t want to work. I was uncomfortable with the underlying racial assumptions of this joke, but garden members and customers (all of whom were black) found it extremely funny. Other comments by the gardeners suggested they were proud to have a ‘mlungu’ working in the garden with them. At times, customers would greet me in Zulu and I would greet them back in Zulu. This very limited ability to respond in their language delighted them, and they would compliment me on my language skills. I was aware that if the situation were reversed, nobody would commend a black South African for knowing a few words of English.
My ‘outsider’ status was slightly less obvious at Sekelanani. There, black staff members of the DSD drove cars to work, so my car was less noticeable. In addition, there were white customers at the garden who came to buy organic produce, as well
27 Mlungu is the Zulu word for white person.
as other white volunteers (schoolchildren, university students or corporate groups).
While some of the garden members accepted me as one of them, other garden participants continued to view me as an outsider. Engaging with them in basic Zulu helped to establish rapport in the early days, though this rapport often seemed tenuous. Racialised assumptions about work emerged at Sekelanani as well, where one core member of the garden never failed to comment to anyone who came by about how hard I worked. While this was partly due to the fact that many volunteers (and indeed garden participants) did not work as hard as she did, it also related to the fact that the presence of a white person doing manual labour was highly unusual.
Several of the casual workers also frequently commented on my labour, saying that white people usually didn’t want to work hard. The fact that we were working hard together did seem to help with rapport. Eventually, I understood that some of the distance between these participants and me probably emerged from the conflicts at the garden, and their perception that I favoured those on the ‘other side’ of the conflict, despite my efforts to remain neutral and uninvolved.
My role at the gardens was not to uncover a single, objective truth, but rather to seek to understand the perceptions of the gardeners. I do not believe that my outsider status prevented the gardeners from opening up to me—most of the time, they seemed quite comfortable to share their views and experiences with me, and my long-term presence in the gardens helped to develop trust and rapport. At times my questions seemed to baffle the gardeners, who did not understand either why I would be interested in certain things, such as where they purchased maize meal, or how I could not know certain things, such as how to transplant kale cuttings. Thankfully, they were patient with me and my questions. Indeed, they may have been more patient precisely because I was an outsider.
Another way in which my difference affected the research was in the expressed interest of participants in learning certain things from me. As an educated outsider, they believed I had expert knowledge of certain topics about which I spoke to them, e.g. food and nutrition. At times I had to negotiate between their desire to learn from me about these topics and my interest in learning about their current (not-yet-
influenced-by-me) knowledge and practices. In general, however, I sought to share whatever knowledge I could, while communicating the limitations of my expertise
and noting any changes in their behaviour that might have resulted from our interactions. One gardener’s decision to stop consuming sodas (“cool drink”), for example, was at least in part a consequence of our discussions about how unhealthy sugar-sweetened beverages were.
I observed that my outsider status certainly influenced my own perceptions of the gardeners, and of the views and experiences they shared with me. At times, I noticed myself thinking that what they were telling me was clearly incorrect—not the ‘facts of the matter,’ so to speak, but rather their interpretation of them. Yet I dutifully
recorded their interpretation, keeping in mind that their perception was what mattered, not my assessment of its veracity. For instance, several gardeners at Vunani
mentioned to me that the reason corporate volunteer groups no longer came to assist them was because the gardeners were not getting along. As far as I could ascertain, the corporate volunteers had previously been organised by the supporting NGO, whose contract for support had subsequently ended. It was unlikely these volunteers had even noticed the internal dynamics at the garden in their brief visits. There was no moral judgment involved, simply the end of the NGO’s contractual support. Yet because the gardeners themselves were so upset by the in-fighting, they perceived this distress to affect those around them as well.
Impact on the “researched”
This was a socially engaged, critical research project, with the goal of gaining
understanding for the purpose of bringing change. While the principal avenue through which a research project such as this contributes to change is usually through
influencing policy and practice, this can be a slow and circuitous process. Thus from the outset, I sought to ensure not only that my research adhered to the principle of doing no harm, but that it actually benefited the gardeners. Of course, my work in the fields as a participant observer was the most obvious benefit, particularly since they were often short of labour. It was also the only benefit I promised them when I first asked permission to conduct fieldwork at the case study gardens. I was very wary of making any promises I would not be able to keep, so I explained that I would be there working with them each week, in exchange for their cooperation.
Beyond the labour, though, I sought to assist in other ways when opportunities presented themselves. The gardeners at Sekelanani quickly realised the benefit of having a researcher with a car in the garden, and enlisted my help in the form of transportation to meetings, to purchase supplies or to markets. Occasionally, they would even call me in the morning on days when I was scheduled to work in the garden, to confirm that I was coming and would be able to drive them somewhere.
My research skills and access to the internet were also in demand at Sekelanani, where at times participants would ask me to look up information about a possible supplier or the best way to plant something. This skill was also in demand at Vunani, where I routinely looked up information on a pest or disease affecting one of the crops, as well as information on how to cook some of the lesser-known vegetables that volunteers had planted there.
In general, I sought to share any useful information or knowledge I had with the gardeners. This included successful farming practices I had seen at other gardens or had read about, information on possible assistance from NGOs or other sources, recipes using garden produce, as well as access to markets. Recipes were of particular interest at both gardens, although I often found that I would need to simplify recipes to be accessible to people at the gardens, who had significantly less kitchen
equipment as well as ingredients available to them (e.g. oils, spices, etc.). At Vunani, I connected the gardeners to a vendor at an organic market, in the hopes that it could provide an additional avenue for sales. Also, because that market employed a
participatory guarantee system (PGS) to monitor organic production methods of growers, I thought their membership would afford them access to advice, support and a community of other growers. On one occasion, I ferried unusual, unwanted produce (artichokes) from the garden to the organic market, and brought back the proceeds to the garden. However, while the PGS team did provide advice when they visited the garden, it turned out that some members were not interested in an additional market.
Indeed, one member felt that they already struggled to produce enough for their existing customers, and thus the group did not pursue the market.
While a traditional positivist research paradigm might view these efforts as
‘interference’ that somehow contaminates the research field, this was by no means the case. From a constructivist point of view, there was no ‘objective’ external reality for
me to interfere with, and my presence in the garden as an observer already impacted upon the garden. Thus, from a critical, activist standpoint, it was important to ensure that my presence in the garden had a beneficial impact. Of course, I undertook these measures consciously and reflexively, observing and analysing the effects as part of the research process. They also contributed to the sense of a two-way exchange, in which I provided labour and also information and transportation in exchange for access to information (and new garden skills) from the garden participants.
Limitations
The majority of the limitations experienced during this research can be grouped under the banner of language. First and foremost amongst these, was the fact that I did not speak any of the home languages of the gardeners, beyond a basic level of Zulu. The first languages of garden participants included Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Swazi and Venda, though between them they spoke many additional languages. Most of the gardeners could communicate with me in English, though one man at Vunani spoke virtually no English at all. This language barrier had several implications for the research. First, during participant observation, I could not necessarily understand the conversations happening around me, either between the gardeners or with their customers. When these happened in Zulu, which was frequently the case, I could usually follow the gist of the conversation, but I could not necessarily follow all of the detail. Thus my ability to observe what happened around me was incomplete. However, given the length of time I spent at the gardens, I was able to piece together interactions to the point where I felt I understood what was happening fairly well.
The second implication was for the use of the various research instruments. To ensure that participants understood what I was asking, and that I understood their responses, I employed a field interpreter to translate during my interviews with garden
participants. For some, this was absolutely necessary. For others who were able to communicate in English, I gave them the choice of using the interpreter or doing the interviews in English. Naturally, there are risks associated with translation, as some meaning may be lost along the way, but I sought to mitigate these by briefing the interpreter about the topics under discussion, recording the interviews and having a different translator check some of the transcripts for accuracy. As I was able to follow