The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

The local context
4.4.2 Methodological considerations
The basic idea is simple: invite people to tell their stories, provide a safe place in which they can speak, and
then listen for the experience that lies behind their words. (Schroeder 1996: 23)
Having obtained permission to carry out our investigation within the communities,
the methodology applied during the field research essentially based on a qualitative assessment.
To obtain data on behaviour and attitudes, an informal semi-structured
conversational approach was most often applied to collect information on general issues
regarding the local economy and social structures within the communities. The
important feature of conversational interviews is that they attempt to approach the informants'
perceptions of their own reality. As the informal interview develops, the
technique using predetermined questions and topics allows new issues and concerns
to be addressed. At the community level, the investigation also included informal interviews
with staff members of conservation agencies and field workers from development
organisations, local village representatives, teachers, priests, scientists and
even tourists. However, the essential insights gained in the process of fieldwork
emerged from personal relations with women and men, youth and elders in the villages.
In the frame of guided field walks, informants were primarily men, but many interviews
were also conducted with women in the domestic domain. Although their
knowledge repertoires reflect different sets of labour responsibilities, they often reported
in the same degree of detail as men on the subsistence activities, agricultural
practices and income patterns of the family households. The insights obtained presented
in the first part of the following chapter on local knowledge expressions were
gained predominantly through case studies conducted with five Q'eqchi' farmers in
each village. The sample of informants was chosen on the basis of a socio-economic
survey that had been previously carried out by my counterpart Sindy Hernández. She
had selected a representative cross section of the village population. 72 In the course of
the joint fieldwork, we additionally applied visual tools as an aid to verbal descriptions,
which comprised mapping techniques and seasonal calendars to explore land use systems,
cropping patterns and plant inventories. 73
72 Originally, she had been working with ten farmers and their families in each village. After having
reduced the number of key informants, we still kept in touch with the farmers who were no longer
case study informants. Nevertheless, the results of our assessment cannot be said to reflect the
knowledge of the entire community. The men who participated in our study were between 29 and 70
years old.
73 Over the past two decades, the field of rural development and research on farming systems has
witnessed a paradigmatic shift with the emergence of participatory methods. Largely derived from
anthropology, they entered into mainstream agricultural research. Drawing on a variety of sources,
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in particular has been receiving considerable attention as it includes
the placement of IK on a more equitable foundation with scientific knowledge. For details,
see Working with Indigenous Knowledge. A Guide for Researchers by Grenier (1998) For further details on
ethnographic methods, consider the contributions in Ethnographic Research. A Guide to General Conduct
compiled by Ellen (1984).
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