Qualitative Inquiry and the Politics of Evidence

Norman K Denzin, Michael D Giardina, Norman K Denzin, Michael D Giardina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315421391
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Forschung & Methodik in der Psychologie

What is evidence in qualitative inquiry and how is it evaluated? What is true or false in research is strongly influenced by socially defined criteria and by the politics of academia. In providing an alternative to conservative science, qualitative researchers are often victimized by these politics. The use of qualitative evidence within the policy arena is also subject to social and political factors. Within qualitative inquiry itself, evidence is defined differently in different discourses—law, medicine, history, cultural, or performance studies. The interdisciplinary, international group of contributors to this volume address these questions in an attempt to create evidential criteria for qualitative work. Sponsored by the International Center for Qualitative Inquiry.

Section III

Performative Interventions

9	Narrative Poetics and Performative Interventions^1
	D. Soyini Madison
	Northwestern University

Practice without thought is blind; thought without practice is empty.

—Nkrumah, 1964, a popular expression

One day in my performance ethnography graduate seminar, a student who was frequently absent and not keeping up with the course readings was becoming more and more frustrated with the critical and theoretical aspects of the course. He did not approve of my approach that included critical and political theory in a course he felt should focus exclusively on performance “methods.” Toward the end of one session, he looked around at all of us sitting in the seminar circle and said: “With all this emphasis on theory and politics, you are not really interested in what people are actually doing in your fieldwork; but, instead, you are telling people what to do!” My blood was boiling at the accusation that all that was said, read, done, and discussed in the seminar up to this point was so blatantly diminished to “telling people what to do!” Although the young man was often absent and not keeping up with the rest of the class, I took his complaint seriously. Perhaps he was not doing well in the class because there was some truth to his accusation and I was overemphasizing theory and politics at the expense of sound methodological practice. The student’s comment was also difficult to understand, because it has always been impossible for me to separate theory from method. How can there be such a thing as critical methods without critical theory or politics and political theory? Can’t we embrace theory and politics in the field and work for social justice—out of which our methods are generated—without being accused of “telling people what to do”?

A few weeks before the unhappy student’s remark, I attended a presentation on campus by two Afro Peruvian women who were human rights activists in Peru. Their talk was inspiring and informative. One of the points they made that will always stay with me concerned the motives of fieldwork research. They said it is a problem and waste of time when academics come to Peru to engage in what they called “folklore” encounters. The women explained that rights violations and structures of racial oppression and poverty have affected their communities for generations, but academics come and want to know about “beads, songs, myths, and weaving without associating them to the material conditions of our lives.” According to these activists, some of us seem to care more about “crafts and customs while ignoring the injustices that pervades the day to day.” The women were concerned that the apolitical approach that extricates the dirty details of political life for “weaving and myths” was another form of “romanticizing the native” while white-washing the urgent realities of oppressive forces. I left the presentation of the Peruvian activists even more determined to teach and write in ways that recognize the importance of theories that inform a critical approach to methodology—a critical approach guided by political theory that matters on the ground, but at the same time believing in the power and beauty of cultural expression.

After the student made the comment, I thought about the Peruvian activists. The student equated a critical theory approach to methodology as “telling people what to do”; the Peruvian activists equated a lack of political and critical consciousness in the field as “folklore encounters” that ignored material suffering. What critical performance ethnography hopes to bridge is the frustration and feelings of lack in both these positions: the poetics of a space and its politics as well as its politics and its poetics. Haven’t we learned by now those expressive and cultural traditions always occur within the machinations of power that encompass them?

• • •

Critical performance ethnography is animated by the dynamics interacting between power, politics, and poetics (Alexander, 2006; Conquergood, 2002; Denzin, 2001, 2003; Hamera, 2006; Langellier & Petterson, 2004; Pollock, 1999). In this chapter, I examine these dynamics within the oral narrative performances of local human rights activists in Ghana, West Africa, who are working for the rights of women and girls against traditional cultural practices that impede their freedom and well-being.

For several years, I have been conducting field research with Ghanaian activists working in rural areas. They are involved in remarkable and courageous initiatives for the defense of human rights, particularly as they relate to women and girls. The activists discussed here are concerned with a specific cultural practice known as Trokosi by most rights activists and Troxovi by most adherents of traditional African religion. The Troxovi/Trokosi practice involves a young girl usually between the ages of six to twelve, depending on the location, who is assigned to a village shrine. This can be for a certain period of years or for the duration of her life; again, this depends on the area where the shrine is located. In some areas, the Troxovi/Trokosi (the name given the females as well as the name of the practice) are sent to the shrine in atonement for a crime or transgression that is said to be against God and the community. The crime is committed by a family relation, usually a male, and can range from a variety of transgressions such as an insult, stealing, or an act of violence. To appease the wrath and punishment of God against the family or village for the moral transgression, the virgin girl of the family is sent as reparation for the crime.

In certain shrines, the girls are forced into slave labor and often become concubines for the shrines priests. According to many traditionalists, these shrines are not genuine Troxovi/Trokosi shrines. It is said that these shrines are actually violating the principles of the religion and are considered “breakaway or outlaw” shrines. In other areas, in what traditionalists regard as genuine Troxovi/Trokosi shrines, the women and girls attend the shrines for “moral and cultural training,” serving as “protection” or “proper moral teaching” from a family that has violated the moral codes of the community and religion. In these shrines, the traditionalists say that the girls have freedom of movement and may live at home; moreover, it is against the laws of the religion for the priests to sexually abuse them. Instead, they must to be treated respectfully.

Since I began my research, the Troxovi/Trokosi institution² has undergone many changes. Some traditionalists and rights activists have joined together in a campaign to reform the institution and eradicate shrines and expel shrine priests in areas where human rights violations were being committed. Some of these shrines remain for religious worship, but in several cases the girls and women are no longer being sequestered or abused. However, there are some areas where Troxovi/Trokosi girls and women are still being violated and “breakaway” shrines are practicing “underground.”

This chapter presents the oral narratives of rights activists who are working against these breakaway or “outlaw” shrines. I hope the chapter serves as a bridge and opportunity for readers to listen to indigenous activists telling us (and each other) what they do. The chapter operates from a polemic of social justice relative to human rights, but my intention is to use it as a platform and a means to forefront the polemic of those Ghanaians themselves who are fighting for the future of their own country, critiquing their own traditions, defending human rights from their own tactics and strategies, and desiring that others hear what they say and be exposed to what they do. I am claiming the “native point of view,” but I would be committing the same crime of false objectivity as researchers who do not take responsibility for their biases, who refuse to recognize their inherent subjectivity and their ingrained power over the data (a power that always trails the ethnographic project) if I did not state in the beginning my admiration, support, and bias toward these activists and their work.

These narratives are examples of critical performance ethnography because each narrator poetically narrates his or her own indigenous and critical methodologies based on the politics of their performative interventions in defending the human rights of Others. As a critical performance ethnographer, I am “being there” within the time and space of others who guide, advise, and inspire me to further embrace performance (in different and con textually specific ways) as a means to interpret, illuminate, and advocate a politics of change. I interpret the in-depth interview with each rights activists through a performance lens to capture the complexity and multilayered dimensions reflected in the expressiveness of the human voice and body in the act of telling as well as the immediate environment or scene—ripe with influence and meaning—of the telling. In this sense, poetic transcription aims to capture the signification of what Richard Bauman (1977) calls the narrative event and the narrated event, or what Della Pollock (1999) calls the telling and the told. Poetic transcription aims to capture the content of what is said and the form of how it is said in gesture, movement, vocal affect, and the symbolic surrounding reported and expressed.

The chapter will present two oral narratives by members of International Need Network, Ghana. International Needs Ghana (ING)³ is a human rights organization that has been at the forefront of reforming the Troxovi/Trokosi institution and releasing or liberating girls and women from certain shrines. The first narrative by Patience Vormawor describes the tactics employed by ING in the liberation of Troxovis/Trokosis from the religious shrines that inhibit their freedom. The second narrative by Agnes Okudzeto describes the ING school for liberated Toxovi/Trokosi that was prompted by a response to a charge made by a particular traditionalist who opposes the work of ING.

Throughout the narratives, I weave my own commentary and observations to illuminate the implications of their words and experience. There has been general and legitimate criticism far and wide of this “weaving” approach of researcher and Other by numerous observers and practitioners of qualitative research (including myself on occasion). In summary, the criticisms argue:

• The researcher’s analysis is an intrusion where the subject’s narrative is often silenced. The authoritative voice and heavy hand of the researcher overshadows the voice and presence of the narrator. The researcher’s analysis “upstages” the narrative, leaving the narrator’s actual words almost forgotten and their meanings but whispers in the booming volume of the researcher’s interpretation.

• The researcher’s analysis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: The Elephant in the Living Room, OR Advancing the Conversation about the Politics of Evidence
• Section I: Policy Intentions
• Section II: Theoretical and Methodological Interruptions
• Section III: Performative Interventions
• Coda Let’s Get Personal: First-Generation Autoethnographers Reflect on Writing Personal Narratives
• Index
• About the Authors