PARTICIPATORY FIELDWORK AND ARCHIVAL RESEARCH: COMBINING
NUMBERS WITH NARRATIVES
Abhijit Guha, Reader & Head
Dept. of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University,
West Bengal, India
“The fieldwork data, quantitative or qualitative,
which social anthropologists use to base their
conclusions are all derived ultimately from
observation.” J. Clyde Mitchell (1967).
Methodological Divides: Are They Really Great?
In any standard textbook on methodology in the social sciences ‘quantification’ is
defined as an activity that involves ‘measurement’ and ‘counting’ while ‘qualitative’ is
characterised as something which is not a product of measurement and counting but one of
description and subjective evaluation (Johnson 1978). In the classroom of Anthropology or
Sociology the teacher in methodology courses places the contrast between quantitative and
qualitative approaches with the help of some examples from familiar domains like
agricultural techniques, kinship and rituals. Through these classes the students become aware
that the degree of kinship relation revealed through genealogical method is a qualitative
information while the number of times a particular person gets help from his affinal kins
living in a neighbouring village in carrying out agricultural activities is quantitative data. The
culture of methodology in the social sciences has created amongst us an idea that clear-cut
division between quantitative and qualitative data exist and they should not be mixed up for
the sake of specialisation.
There is another dimension of this problem. This is related with the ‘macro’ and
‘micro’ studies. The macro-micro dichotomy has created another level of methodological
divide within the social sciences (Appadurai 1989). Very broadly, macro and micro studies
are not only distinguished by the scale on which they operate but also by the type of data that
are collected and the methods employed for the collection of the data. Accordingly, the
census and the National Sample Surveys represent macro-studies while village studies by the
social anthropologists in India and sociological researches of urban slums are regarded as
micro studies. In the former type, large volumes of quantitative data are collected through
surveys with structured questionnaire schedules and are used mainly by the economists and
planners to arrive at certain large-scale generalizations about the socio-economic conditions
of countries and regions. But in the micro-level studies conducted by the social
anthropologists and sociologists, the whole range of qualitative data on the socio-economic
life of a small group of people (usually selected in a non-random manner) are collected by
employing protracted participatory type of fieldwork methods. Ironically, these
methodological paradigms have become polar opposites in the social sciences and the
followers of one group often views the other as ‘irrelevant’ to their own project even when
both are looking at the same set of problems. For example, the major users (the economists)
of National Sample Survey data look at anthropological studies as being preoccupied with
trivial matters of social life having little or no value either for generalizations (since they
have small and unrepresentative samples) or for development planning. The followers of
micro-studies on the other hand, consider large scale quantitative survey data as
“distributional” rather than “relational” and hence the generalizations derived from the latter
ignore differences among various human groups and produce aggregate figure but hardly
make any attempt to understand social processes hidden within such aggregates. Till today,
there is very little systematic attempt in the social sciences to unite the micro and macro
studies, qualitative and quantitative data as well as participatory and survey types of research.
One of the important reasons behind the lack of effort towards unification may lie in the
separation of the different branches of the social sciences within our university curricula.
Under this general background, we would now come to the issue of development
research and its relation with the micro versus macro levels of study in the social sciences. In
general, development studies have a dual character. Let us try to understand the matter with
the help of some examples. Suppose a development economist in India wants to evaluate the
results of land distribution among the landless peasants through land reforms programme by
the Government in a region. The economist would definitely collect official data from the
Land and Land Records Department of the State Government. But at the same time he or she
has to conduct some micro-level studies in order to understand the actual impact of this
development effort on the landless peasants on the ground. Furthermore, in order to involve
the beneficiaries of the development programme (in this case, land reforms) within the
research process the economist cannot remain confined only within the jungle of official
statistics.
Now consider the case of a development anthropologist doing his/her research on the
same problem viz. evaluation of land reforms programme in a State in india. The
anthropologist may have a different starting point. He or she may select a village where land
distribution has taken place and conduct a participatory type of research on the socioeconomic impact of the said development programme. But in order to make this development
research policy oriented, the anthropologist would have to move up from the village level
and consult the Government archives for understanding wider macro-level implications of
the study. In order to carry out dialogues with the policymakers in a meaningful way the
anthropologist cannot remain satisfied with the rich qualitative data collected at the microlevel but also make use of legal, administrative and policy level data collected from
Government archives. Examples can be multiplied, but the point is, since development
research involves at least two major stakeholders – the policymakers and the people, the
research would have to make sincere efforts to reach both of them along the micro-macro
ladder. To put it rather bluntly, the academic divide produced by the curricula between
qualitative and quantitative research is bound to collapse in a policy oriented development
research.
Development Induced Displacement In West Bengal: Is It A Matter Of Numbers Only?
The literature on development induced displacement reveals that there is a major
emphasis on the quantitative aspects of the problem. Most of the researchers including
sociologists and anthropologists try to calculate the magnitude of displacement in terms of
the number of people who have lost their traditional occupation, the number of areas of
agricultural land acquired for a development project, or the number of families who have lost
their homes for the launching of some development project by the Government (Fernandes et
al. 1989). Researchers on displacement however already identified several dimensions of
impoverishment where both quantitative and qualitative data are combined to develop risk
model of rehabilitation (Cernea 1999).
The quantitative thrust in displacement research has political as well as policy
implications. For example, raising of the issue of displacement owing to development
projects by the author of this article in the context of West Bengal met with an inevitable
response both from the policymakers as well as politicians of the ruling State Government.
The response is something like this: ‘The magnitude of development induced displacement in
West Bengal is not very great, at least not as much as it is in other Indian States’ (Guha,
2000). Any further discussion on the attitude and policy formulation about displacement and
rehabilitation is thus closed by this type of response which is backed by a quantitative and
comparative agenda. The implications of the response can be ordered in the following
manner. If West Bengal does not have an appreciable amount of development induced
displacement then there is no point in raising this issue. And even if West Bengal has
displacements then too it is lesser than other Indian state so the Govt. does not have to be
worried about the formulation of a comprehensive policy on displacement. So for the
policymakers and politicians in West Bengal displacement is still a matter of numbers both in
absolute and relative senses of the term.
The Micro Picture of Development Induced Displacement: Evidence From The Field
Under this background, the present author in the year 1995, selected a particular area
7-8 kilometers from the Vidyasagar University campus for studying the socio-economic and
political consequences of land acquisition through which displacement has taken place in a
recent period in the erstwhile Medinipur district (now West Medinipur) of West Bengal. The
study began through repeated visits to villages where the peasants who had been affected by
land acquisition were then organising a movement against the district administration for
getting higher rates of compensation and jobs in the industries for which their fertile
agricultural land was acquired. Group discussions and reading of the letters and memoranda
submitted by the peasants were the first primary source of data in this study. Certain
interesting developments took place during this phase of anthropological fieldwork. First, the
displaced peasants and their leaders started to request the researcher to write popular articles
and publish news items in the local as well as Calcutta based newspapers to draw the notice
of the general public and the administration about their worsening socio-economic condition.
The researcher accordingly, started to publish articles and became instrumental in the
publication of news items in the local and Calcutta based newspapers which served two
purposes. On the one hand, the researcher could gain the confidence of the affected people
and their local leaders and on the other, made the local people conscious about the
importance of collecting detailed household level socio-economic and political information
on the displacement scenario of the affected villages. The quick and frequent publication of
news items and articles in the local dailies and their circulation among the affected people
was also a source of encouragement to the local leaders and these acted as a bridge between
the anthropologist and the people being studied by him. This can be called a kind a research
with participatory activism that was followed by collection of household level quantitative
data. This constituted the second phase of fieldwork which yielded a lot of rich information
(both quantitative and qualitative) on the economic impact of land acquisition as well as the
attitude and views of the affected people towards the acquisition of land for industries. In
short, if we consider our attempt to understand the process of displacement through land
acquisition at the micro-level as an unbroken string of research activity then it is very
difficult to separate numbers from narratives. Our first interactions with the peasant leaders
was not only a rapport establishment activity but it also yielded valuable data on the attitude
of the affected peasants towards the ruling government, various strategies adopted by the
peasant leaders and also on the number of landlosers in five villages in the locality. In the
second phase, which can be called the household survey phase, quantitative data in the form
of numbers were collected but here also narratives of informants regarding their crises arising
out of displacement played a complimentary role. The latter formed the human dimension of
the survey data.
From Field To Archive: Moving Towards The Macro-Level:
The Social Anthropologists following the British Structure Functional tradition have
narrowed down their field locations to specific locales (villages or urban slums) manageable
for one or two participant observers and developed the tradition of collecting detailed
information (mainly qualitative) on almost every aspect of social life. This Malinowskian
embeddedness of the individual anthropologist within his/her locality has helped to generate
a bounded definition of ‘field’ where only participant observation could take place. The
wider politico-economic context within which the anthropologist’s village is located is not
usually considered as the real ground of a typical anthropologist. This kind of methodology
has had an important consequence as regards enquiries into macro-level policy decisions and
their implementations by a powerful administrative bureaucracy backed by a politico-legal
structure. ‘The anthropologist is not supposed to look beyond the field’ so goes the
disciplinary folklore. Because, going outside the so called field to search for data in
Government offices, record rooms and Legislative Assembly proceedings is not regarded as
the job of the anthropologist. It is to be done by the political scientists or contemporary
historians. But what happens when the anthropologist moves out from the typical village site
and tries to reach the different levels of policy formulation and implementation? In this study
this is what exactly have been done and as a result of this we could combine the numbers
with narratives within the overall framework of policy formulation. In the following sections
we would describe in brief the different stages of the research through which this numbernarrative, quantity-quality and micro-macro combination has been done for a critical
evaluation of the land acquisition policy of the Govt. of West Bengal.
STAGE I
The Peasant Movement Around Land Acquisition In Kharagpur: Combining
Qualitative With the Quantitative
The protests launched by the landowing peasants of the Kharagpur region against
land acquisition took many forms, even though these did not last long maintaining the same
intensity. The movement reached its peak from the later part of 1995 upto April 1996 during
which the farmers even went to the extent of violent means. The fieldwork for this study also
began during the period. The entry of the anthropologist in the field during this time of
turmoil was quite significant in terms of the type of data collected as well as the nature of
participation of the researcher. The active participants of the movement provided us with the
list of affected peasant households in different villages and discussed about the rationale
behind their demand and we could also observed their nature of protest in the field. All these
gave us ample opportunity to collect data on the (i) chronology of the movement; (ii) castetribe affiliation of the participants of the peasant agitation, (iii) peasant perception towards
administration, (iv) government’s land acquisition policy and (v) the political dynamics of
the movement. Action oriented and participatory type of field research helped us to build up
a new kind of relationship with the leaders of the movement wherein the peasants were also
looking into the research outputs as they were being published in the local and national level
newspapers in the form of news items, popular articles and letters. We have already touched
on this aspect of the research in the previous section entitled “The Micro-picture of
Development Induced Displacement: Evidence From The Field.” Let us now summarise the
method and the nature and type of data yielded in this phase of research with the help of the
following flow-chart:
ENTRY INTO THE FIELD THROUG A
PEASANT MOVEMENT AGAINST LAND
ACQUISITION
IDENTIFICATION OF
THE AFFECTED
HOUSEHOLDS
CHRONOLOGY OF
THE EVENTS OF
THE MOVEMENT
HOUSEHOLD SURVEY
QUANTITATIVE
PARTICIPATORY MICROLEVEL FIELD WORK
PEASANT
PERCEPTION OF
LAND ACQUISITION
POLITICAL DYANAMICS
OF THE PEASANT
MOVEMENT
CASE STUDIES
QUALITATIVE
Fig. 1 Combination of the quantitative and qualitative data in the field.
STAGE II
A Journey Into The Archives: Land Acquisition As Revealed By The Documents And
The Executers Of Policy:
The household surveys and case studies of a good number of families (194) who have
lost all or most of their agricultural land owing to the establishment of industries revealed the
disempowerment of the peasantry by the Left Front Govt. in West Bengal. Interestingly, this
Govt. championed the cause of the poorest section of the peasantry through a pro-people land
reform policy. Now both land reform, which involves giving land to the landless and land
acquisition, which dispossesses the peasants have to be executed by the district level Land
and Land Reforms Dept. This Dept. and its Land Acquisition section have to keep records of
all documents related to land acquisition. The typical anthropological definition of ‘field’ did
not include this kind of arena within it. The village studies in India rarely taken into account
the Land and Land Records Dept. of the District Collectorate in order to understand the
relationship between administration and the people at the grassroots. When we had taken up
the study of the displacement of the peasants in Kharagpur villages, we found that the
phenomena of displacement cannot be viewed in isolation from land acquisition. The
displacement of peasants (not from their homes but from their agricultural land) took place
through the acquisition of land which is basically a legal and administrative process that
forms and interface between the people and the government. The documents of the Land
Acquisition Department and the officers who executed the acquisition provided a rich source
of data on the government-people interface. From the Land Acquisition Department we have
found five kinds of data viz. (1) Gazette notifications, (2) letters and Departmental notes, (3)
Departmental reports, (4) written protests and objections of the landlosers and (5) opinions
and attitudes of the officials of the Department to the various problems of land acquisition.
These five kinds of data sources again yielded a variety of qualitative and quantitative
information which were combined in this study and suffice it to say, that this kind of
combination helped us to generate certain specific policy recommendations on displacement
by land acquisition. Let us now described each of the five data sources in some detail.
5.
Gazette Notification: This is the most important official and legal apparatus of land
acquisition by which the Govt. informs a private landowner that his/her land would be
acquired. The published notification contains three types of quantitative data, viz. (i)
location of the piece of land, (ii) amount of land in acres, and (iii) the date of
notification. There is also a piece of qualitative information in the notification viz.,
the purpose for which the land is being acquired. Both the qualitative and quantitative
information in the gazette notifications over a period of time enabled us to understand
the trends of land acquisition in terms of the type of development projects (e.g. dams,
industries, urban settlements, roads, power stations etc.) as well as the rate of which
the Govt. wants them to come up. In this way, data from gazette notifications can be
used as very good development policy indicator of a Govt. in India. In our study of
erstwhile Medinipur district, we have observed that over a period of 7 years since
economic liberalisation land acquired for industrial showed a quantum jump since
1995 (49.66%). Analysis of Gazette notification in Medinipur also showed certain
other interesting points in terms of social development. Acquisition of land for
rehabilitation of project affected persons constituted 2.41 per cent of the total land
acquired in erstwhile Medinipur district during 1991-97 (Guha 2001).
5.
Letters and Departmental Notes: The execution of the Land Acquisition Act is an
administrative process that involves keeping of records, making clarifications, giving
instructions, and asking for necessary actions. All these take place through written
communications within the different sections of the bureaucracy and outside agencies
(e.g. private companies in case of acquisition for industries). The files in the Land
Acquisition Department contain a wealth of materials from which one can study the
day to day activities of the administration regarding specific cases of land acquisition.
From the letters and note sheets one can also arrange chronologically the various
events of land acquisition over a period of time. From these materials in case of land
acquisition for a private company in Kharagpur, we have been able to describe in
detail the chronology of events which ultimately led to the failure on the part of the
State Government to utilise a huge piece of agricultural land acquired for an industry.
The letters and notes provided the archival source for the study of the recently
adopted policy of industrialization of the Left Front Government in West Bengal.
5.
Departmental Reports: The unpublished reports of the Land Acquisition
Department provided many important quantitative as well as qualitative data on the
various problems of Land Acquisition in Medinipur district. Interestingly, these
reports also revealed the attitude of the bureaucracy towards land acquisition and also
the severe financial and legal constraints for the completion of the acquisition cases
which in turn delayed the payment of compensation to the project affected persons. In
short, the departmental reports provided the “insider’s account” of the executors of
the Government’s decision to establish industries on agricultural land.
5.
Written Protests And Objections Of The Landlosers: If the Departmental reports
provided the “insider’s view” of the bureaucracy then the various protest letters and
objections filed by the landlosers revealed the reactions and demands of the people on
the ground. We have however, collected qualitative materials on the nature and
dynamics of peasant protest in Kharagpur through our participatory fieldwork in the
earlier phase of the work. The most interesting aspect about written objections lies in
the way they have been ruled out by the administration. In fact, the objections by the
people and the way they have been dealt with by the bureaucracy can be viewed as a
kind of dialogue between the people and the government. For example, we learnt
from a memorandum signed by 342 peasants that the acquisition of their land for a
company would throw them out of their only source of livelihood, that is agriculture.
A short Departmental report dealt with this objection which, however before ruling it
out recognized that acquisition would seriously affect a large number of farmers. But
this is the only sentence in the report which upheld the interests of the peasants. The
rest of the report was devoted to justify the acquisition by citing the locational
advantage and low fertility of this land.
5.
Opinions And Attitudes Of the Officials Of The Department: The district land
acquisition departmental was not only an archive of records but also a living arena
where officials, clerks, surveyors and company representatives interacted with the
researcher on the different dimensions of land acquisition. This enabled us to collect
interesting data on the views and attitudes of the persons who executed acquisition.
For example, as regards the power and functioning of screening committees at the
district level on the approval of project proposals from private companies,
experienced land acquisition officials enlightened us by saying that when Calcutta
level of administration agrees, the district has to abide by although theoretically, the
district level screening committee (constituted by elected people’s, representatives)
can reject any proposal for land acquisition. During our research in the collectorate,
the land acquisition officials constantly pointed out that the rules for giving
compensation to sharecroppers by acquisition is unjustified and should be changed.
The point motivated the present researcher to look more closely into the details of
compensation payment of sharecroppers and this helped us to think in terms of policy
recommendations rather than the construction of a simple descriptive account of the
various bureaucratic aspects of compensation payment. The interactions of the
researcher with the officials of the Land Acquisition Department yielded mainly
qualitative data which led to in-depth probing at the level of policy.
We may now summarise the different sources in the Land Acquisition Dept. and the
nature of data yielded by those sources with the help of the following table.
SOURCES OF DATA ON LAND ACQUISITION IN THE DISTRICT
COLLECTORATE
GAZETTE
LETTERS
REPORTS
PROTESTS
OPINIONS
QUANTITATIVE
AND
QUALITATIVE
POLICY
RECOMMENDATIONS
Fig. 2 Convergence of quantitative and qualitative data towards policy recommendations on
land acquisition.
STATE III
How The Policy Makers Make Policies: Narratives From The State Legislative
Assembly:
From the District Collectorate, we moved up towards the nerve centre of policy
making in West Bengal which is the State Legislative Assembly. Published records of
Assembly proceedings were consulted on the specific subject of land acquisition since
Independence in West Bengal. The Assembly Proceedings certain rich data in the form of
debates and questions on land acquisition, displacement and rehabilitation conducted and
raised by Ministers and elected members belonging to various political parties. These
narratives also contained qualitative and quantitative information on displacement in various
districts of West Bengal since Independence upto mid-1990s. The Assembly Proceedings
also gave us an idea about the common themes that dominated the attitudes and actions of the
policymakers towards land acquisition by Govt. for Development projects. The radical and
class oriented approach of the elected members belonging to the left parties towards land
acquisition whenever they were in the opposition was one of the main themes that revealed
from this narrative.
The questions and replies on various aspects of land acquisition in West Bengal
Assembly followed a pattern, that did not change much over the years. The questions
revolved around compensation and rehabilitation. The elected members seemed to be more
concerned with the deprivation of the landlosers owing to the non-payment of compensation.
With only one notable exception, there was no occasion when the policy makers raised
questions on the justification of acquiring agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes.
There is also a virtual absence of discussion in the Assembly on the adverse effects of land
acquisition on land reforms. In a state, which claims to have made remarkable progress in the
distribution of land to the landless, it was really surprising not to find any member of any
political party saying something on it (Guha 2001).
The Assembly Proceedings, helped us to identify the gaps and shortcomings of the
policymakers to adopt a pro-peasant land policy in the context of liberalisation. It also helped
us to develop a wider policy perspective on land acquisition displacement and rehabilitation,
in the state of West Bengal.
How Holy Is Anthropological Holism?
The anthropological concept of holism is basically methodological. Because,
whatever may be the philosophical underpinnings of holism, anthropologists are regarded as
experts at the level of practice who have to work with the concept. The different varieties of
holism (bio-cultural, environmental and socio-cultural) is another methodological
problematic. The question of combining quantitative and qualitative methods can also be
viewed as a kind of methodological holism, which needs good practice.
In the present study, we have made an attempt to transcend the arbitrary limits of
anthropological holism developed through small-scale qualitative studies of Indian villages.
The point of entry too was non-conventional from the typical social anthropological studies
of tribal or caste villages in India, which usually deal with stratification, ethnic identity,
environmental adaptation, religion, local level politics and agrarian change. We started from
a broader policy question, which is directly related to the development policy of a
democratically elected popular Government and its contradictions. The peasant movement
against large-scale land acquisition under state patronage for industries in Kharagpur
provided a unique arena for studying the contradictions of the land policy of the Left Front
Government in West Bengal. The policy-oriented approach of this study led us to search for
data sources beyond the village. The district collectorate provided a number of data sources
for studying land acquisition as a policy in practice. The third level of data source was
Assembly Proceedings which provided the debates and questions in verbatim on
development, displacement and rehabilitation among the policy makers since Independence
down to mid 1990s. At all these levels, qualitative and quantitative data have been collected,
arranged, classified, tabulated and combined to understand the changes in the development
policy of the Left Front Government in recent years. The policy direction of the research kept
us on the search for data sources in the field as well as archives, which not only crossed the
boundaries of village but also helped to combine quantity with quality.
STAGE I
STUDY OF
PEASANT
PROTEST AS A
CONTRADICTION
IN LAND POLICY
STAGE II
COLLECTION OF
FIELD LEVEL DATA
ON THE
DISEMPOWERMENT
OF PEASANTS
COLLECTION OF
ARCHIVAL DATA ON
THE EXECUTION OF
LAND ACQUISITION
POLICY
STAGE III
COLLECTION OF
DATA FROM THE
CENTRE OF
POLICYMAKING IN
THE ASSEMBLY
POLICY CRITIQUE
MICRO-MACRO CONTINUUM
Fig. 3. The Three Stages of Policy Research On Displacement: Holism Beyond Village.
Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to my loving son Arani who first informed me about the
Conference on combining methods in Swansea while looking at my mails. Second in the row
comes Mrs. Sandra Kramcha for providing me with all kinds of information on the
Conference. Third is Dr. John Campbell who provided real intellectual inspiration by raising
crucial issues on the abstract. Then come Dr. Jeremey Holland, Prof. Alan Rew, Mr. S.A.
Khan and Md. Basar Ali who sincerely wanted me to present the paper. Last but not the least,
I must acknowledge the assistance of Biswajit who carefully typed the successive drafts of
the manuscript.
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