Naturally, things aren’t going to plan…

…But they’re certainly not going badly. The little schedule I made for myself the other day has not been diverged from too dramatically, and the next couple of days are set to be relatively fruitful.

So far, I’ve done the following:

• Arranged a meeting with the Sri Lanka Centre for Peace Building and Reconciliation in Thirrukovil tomorrow morning – this will hopefully be with a group of three or four people (although I’ve had to forewarn them that I won’t be coming with a translator, so am slightly limited in terms of the language barrier)
• Arranged a focus group in the factory tomorrow afternoon at about 3:30pm, where I will attempt to run the ‘build your ideal community’ activity. I’ll see how this works, but if it goes well, I think I’m going to ask people to do this remotely for me – i.e. I’ll send out little packs via the post and ask people to build their own community and then send a photo of it to me, with any accompanying comments they may have
• I’ve set up a Facebook group, where I hope to ask the occasional question that will hopefully stimulate further debate. I might also upload the ideal community diagrams here, as these should provide further stimuli for discussion.
• I gave out all the photos I took the other day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen photographs give such joy! The girls were absolutely thrilled to be given photographs – a large group photo was taken of us, so I had plenty of copies printed of that so that they could have one each, and there were also lots of individual photos to print. They also wanted to see photos of my family and village, and with eager smiles they asked if they could keep these photos too (to which, of course, I agreed). One sticking point is that now some more of the girls want photos, so I have to take my camera in tomorrow to take any last minute photos and then I’ll just have to send them once they’re printed!
• Gift bags are ready to be distributed, although I decided Monday evening would be the best time to give them out.

So what do I still want to do?

• I’d like to try to arrange another focus group in the factory for Tuesday morning, which I feel should be possible.
• Mapping the factory floor is going to be downright difficult… I’m thinking about it each day, but with nearly 2000 workers, many of whose ethnicities I still can’t tell for definite, it will not be a subtle or simple task. I don’t want to walk up and down the lines asking their ethnicities…
• And questionnaires… What’s to be done about the questionnaires? I still haven’t had them translated, because the whole issue of how to distribute and collect them is niggling away. Logistics… I’ll review the questionnaire today and see if I think it will be genuinely helpful for my research

And today, what am I doing?

• I went in to the factory this morning, to see whether it might be viable to hold a focus group today. But it’s pretty deserted. There are a few odd bods around, but I think it’s better to wait until tomorrow. My meeting in Thirrukovil is tomorrow. I’ll distribute the gift bags tomorrow. I’ll take more photos tomorrow. Everything will be done TOMORROW. Which gives me a day of doing very little today.
• This gives me the perfect opportunity to just lie down and THINK.
• What direction is my research going in now? What is my focus? Indeed, what is the question I am trying to answer? What research do I want to follow up once I return to the UK, and how?
• Such a common error that I’ve heard other students complain about is that they lose track of themselves and what they’re doing. They get so distracted by the bigger picture that they forget what they really want to find out about.

So, my goal for today:

Redefine my focus, and then relay it back to you all this evening.

Easy.

I have prepared 40 of these – it seems basic, but small gestures go a long way. Each bag has a selection of sweets and a little wooden elephant.

Time is of the essence!

Once a month, or rather, every full moon, Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka celebrate Poya Day. It’s a national holiday, so lots of places are shut for the day, including the factory. If I was in Ampara, I might see the empty factory floor, the machines sitting quietly, the fans immobile. But I’m not in Ampara. I’m running days behind schedule for a multitude of little reasons, from visa implications to accommodation availability. Frustrating as it is to still be in Colombo, it did mean I had some time yesterday to bury my head in the National Archives, and I would have gone again today had it not been for Poya Day.

Thankfully, I’m at last going to Ampara tomorrow, which will leave me with about three full days there before I’ll have to come back to Colombo for my flight home! I’m going to have to be super organised. I would still like to try the ‘ideal community’ activity with a group or two in the factory, and a peacebuilding organisation in the area are keen to meet up. I had hoped to conduct some questionnaires, but now with the time constraints I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get translation, distribution and collection done in time. I’ll talk to Padma in HR about it. Time is one of the biggest constraints in social research, and very often it is almost entirely out of the researcher’s hands. This means I have to be absolutely on the ball in the next few days, and hope that people in the factory aren’t too busy so I can draw in a lot of help!

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been doing lots of shopping – a lot of this has been purchasing thank you gifts for participants of my mapping sessions. It’s taken forever, but I’ve managed to find little gift bags and tiny little elephants, and I’ll be filling them up with sweets and chocolates when I reach Ampara. I’ve also been printing out lots and lots of photos, so some of these will be going into relevant gift bags.
I’m just trying, in my head (and now on here too), to establish my plan of action over the next few days!

Provisionally, it looks a little like this:

Friday:

• Travel to Ampara by bus, via Kandy – arrive late afternoon
• Go shopping for sweets and chocolates with which to fill gift bags, and a couple of large tins of biscuits for Padma (translator) and Sanjeewa (photographer). Also buy Coca-Cola to satisfy my new-found dependence on the stuff…
• Ring the local peacebuilding group to organise a meeting
• Draw a map of the factory, line by line, section by section, in preparation of mapping the locations of workers of different ethnicities

Saturday:

• Go in to see all the girls, and distribute gift bags.
• Talk to Padma and Dhama Sir about the possibility of holding a couple of focus groups with some of the staff – ‘ideal community’ session
• If possible, hold a focus group today
• More participant observations during tea break – I’ll join the girls for this
• Talk to Padma about translating questionnaires – Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim?
• Mapping the factory floor in terms of ethnicity

Sunday:

• Hopefully go to Thirrokovil to meet with the peacebuilding group and hold an interview or focus group
• Go to the factory for tea break, and if possible, another focus group (if factory open)
• Distribute questionnaires (very tentative, and if factory open)
• Mapping the factory floor in terms of ethnicity (if factory open)

Monday:

• Focus group in factory
• Distribute questionnaires (very tentative)
• Tea break and participant observation
• Mapping the factory floor in terms of ethnicity

Tuesday:

• Any final interviews, another focus group if time
• Collect the questionnaires (if any at all completed)
• Farewells!
• Fly back to Colombo

Wednesday:

• Some photocopying at the archives
• And probably more shopping…

If this all goes to plan, it will be a miracle.
Here goes nothing…

A New Group Activity Idea?

All four participatory mapping groups are complete, although I do still have another week in the factory (after a short ‘break’ in Colombo – hopefully some more interviews and meetings with some NGOs and researchers), so I could do some more when I’m back. Interestingly, I’ve called in Chamila’s help to arrange the last two sessions, and although up until now all the sessions have been girls only, yesterday she brought a couple of boys along too. I considered this, and then shrugged it off and thought that right now, for this activity, gender couldn’t matter less to me. The gender thing did then make me think a little more though: I can’t distinguish at all between boys of different ethnicities, whereas with girls there are very obvious markers, in terms of clothing and adornments. Food for thought.

Mapping sessions aside, however, I’ve had another idea. The direction my research is taking is slanting heavily towards looking at integration in communities and the benefits of it, so I thought I might do this:

Host several ‘build the ideal (imaginary) community’ sessions, without any input from me as to what ‘ideal’ is supposed to be (I may use a different word… like, build a good community, a perfect community, a happy community, a peaceful community, not sure yet).

I would do this by…

1. Cutting out a number of paper squares, and colour coding them according to ‘ethnicity’ – same colour code as for the mapping – black = Sinhalese, blue = Muslim, red = Tamil. I would cut out about 30 or 40 squares, and the ethnicity ratio would be roughly the same as the district ethnicity ratio, obtained from population statistics in a special enumeration report from 2007. This data is about as reliable as it’ll come.
2. Each square would represent 5, maybe 10 families.
3. I would also cut out basic outlines of a church, a mosque, a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple, and include some symbols to clarify what they’re supposed to be. These are the four main religions in the country. Although, from the mapping sessions, religion doesn’t seem to play a huge part in the day to day routine, these buildings are still one of, if not the main landmark in each community to indicate which ethnicity the community is.
4. I would also provide four stretches of road, which when it comes to building the community, provides a few options for community layout. This could be simplified with just two stretches of road, giving options of one straight road, a t-junction, or a crossroads in the community.
5. Most communities seem to follow a river, so I would provide a couple of stretches of ‘river’, and I would also provide a ‘lake’ – another popular element to any community (hence four stretches of road – I’d be interested to see if they positioned the community around all four sides of the lake, dividing ethnicities up that way – physical barriers to integration are important to explore too, and at this scale the only real physical barriers are water sources).
6. With these props, I would ask participants, together, to build what they think would make for the ideal community.
7. This activity would hopefully last for about 15 minutes, and I hope it would stimulate group discussion.
8. Once the activity was finished, I would give them a few more black pieces of paper, and invite them to add in any amenities they thought their community should have, and place them in the appropriate places.
9. Although I could provide them with shops and schools at the beginning, I wouldn’t want to introduce the bias of there being a predefined number. For example, if I give them three shops, then they might automatically assume the community should be divided into three, according, obviously, to ethnicity. The same goes for schools.
10. The session would be followed by a brief discussion about why things have been placed where they have. These sessions would need to be smaller than the mapping sessions, otherwise there’s a risk of shyer participants not contributing. I think three or four would be the ideal number, and a mix of ethnicities would be perfect, although it may be difficult to find one Muslim, one Tamil and one Sinhalese girl who all can speak English well enough to get what’s going on. I’ll think on it.

The aim of all this is to see, without asking directly, whether people think communities are better divided by ethnicity, or integrated. When I ask directly, people seem a little put on the spot as it’s not something they’ve thought too much about. Chamila’s father, for instance, when asked whether he thought it was good for ethnicities to mix in the community, shrugged and almost asked, ‘I suppose it’s good, yes?’, but he seemed very unsure and I think he was just repeating things to give me the answer he thought I wanted to hear.

The reason I’m doing this, is that with the reading I’ve been doing and the results I’m getting, I’m not sure that integration is actually desired. Not in a hostile sense, but I think people are perfectly happy to just rub along with each other. Peacebuilders are often quoted to say that integration is key, but I think this assumption needs to be explored a little more before I decide one way or another. Before I came, I thought, well, of course integration is the way forward when it comes to peaceful communities. Now, I’m not sure, and I think it’s really important to question it further.

Feedback on this idea would be really helpful, so if you have any suggestions or improvements please leave a comment!

Making Maps!

I’ve now completed two participatory mapping sessions with groups of workers at the factory I’m researching. The aim of the maps is to understand where and when workers of different ethnicities come into contact with people of other ethnicities. In a district where Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese reside, it is surprising to see that so far, the only time my participants come into contact with people of a different ethnicity to their own is when they’re at work.

Baba G will teasingly roll her eyes and mock me for being ‘such a geographer’ whenever I start talking about maps. It’s true. I love maps. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words; a map’s worth ten times more!

I first created a large basemap myself; I would have liked to have done this with my participants, but sadly, due to time constraints, it just hasn’t been possible. So, I tried only to put down very basic information, such as main roads, main towns and main lakes as additional reference points. I wasn’t sure how clued up on maps my participants would be, because despite having been to school, whether they’ve used maps much in the past is questionable.

 

Preparing a basemap, using a purchased tourist map of Sri Lanka for reference.

I also prepared some large plastic overlays: one for the morning, one for the evening, and one for the day off, on which the girls can mark where they are, and what they’re doing, at what time. This not only helps me to visualise where Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese paths cross, but also what places and activities in the district hold meaning for the employees. Again, I was going to have more overlays – separate ones for lunch in the factory and tea break in the factory, and a map showing the bus routes to work, but with only a half hour slot with each group, it just isn’t feasible. The overlays that have been removed from the sessions are ones for which information can be very easily gained elsewhere. Lunch time and tea break locations of workers in the factory, for example, can be deduced through participant observation, which I’ve been doing a lot of anyway, so I already have a pretty good idea of who goes where with who. Information regarding bus routes has been provided to me by HR, and I’m simply asking the girls to write down which bus route they take. The photo below shows everything prepared and ready, including choccy biscuits on the table – a little ploy to make the atmosphere a little more relaxed and welcoming, along with having opened the curtains in the room to allow more natural light to flood in.

Ready to begin.

I need to think about what to buy for Padma to thank her for all her translation skills! She’s been invaluable, and the other employees seem very comfortable with her, which is a relief. She is always smiling and laughing, and everybody seems to understand when she explains to them, so that’s fantastic! It’s really helped to make sure the girls are happy being there, and that there are no uncomfortable moments. Padma arrived a little late to my session yesterday, but I’ve learnt enough Sinhalese to get by for long enough, and there are now girls I know as friends in each of the groups, so that helps to break the ice with other participants too.

Me with the first group, and Padma translating at the side

 

More from the first group – this was at the end of the session, as I was explaining that I’d find them all in a week or so and give them a little something to say thank you.

The first group somehow arrived in two separate groups of four, which is why they’re all standing at one edge of the table. Thankfully, in yesterday’s session all 8 turned up at the same time, so there was a nice crowd around the table, munching on chocolate snacks as they placed their details onto the map.

Explaining the session to the first group, with the de-curtained window behind me

One downside of yesterday’s session was that three men had been having a meeting in the room before I wanted to use it. I asked Dharma Sir about this and he said it wouldn’t be a problem, and that I could use the room as planned at 12:30pm. I hadn’t realised that this meant the men would continue their meeting alongside my participatory mapping session, so at times there were competing voices, but thankfully the girls didn’t seem too fazed by it! I think I’ll be holding the next session tomorrow – I’m just hoping it goes as well as the first two!

All the data that I am collecting will be inputted into a GIS to create a basic time-map of the district and the employees’ movements through the district. It’ll be great watching it all come together.

 

To add to my previous post…

I just spotted this on another blog [The Hampshire Feminist Collective: ‘The legacies of Orientalism and the exoticizing of women’]:

“The brilliant Emi Koyama once said “There’s no innocent way of being in this world”, meaning that no one, not even the most enlightened among us, can exist outside of history, outside of the legacies of colonial violence that shaped the world we inhabit.” — Tassja, The Jasmine Diaries Part II: ‘Exotic’ is Not a Compliment.

This might help to clarify, even if just a little, what I was I think trying to convey at the end of the post [here if you can’t find it].

My Positionality as a Researcher

Before diving in and talking about this, I should probably first explain what on earth I mean by my positionality. I mean, how I am perceived by the participants of my research. I mean how I perceive them. What pre-existing factors are influencing the relationship between me and my participants? I need to be considering how things such as my appearance, my language, my body language, my expressions, my actions and much more are read by my participants – I need to try to see myself as they see me, and then work towards understanding what sort of impact this may be having on my findings – will my participants be consciously (or subconsciously) censoring themselves, how they act, what they say etc.? It is also useful to know what sort of discourses are present in popular culture, and even in traditional culture, regarding the typical, white, western female, as regardless of how I behave, these deeply rooted discourses in the imaginations of my participants will also affect how we interact, just as the traditional and modern discourses surrounding rural women in Sri Lanka will also impact upon interactions. What makes this so hard to establish is that very often we’re not even aware of the pre-existing thoughts and ideas we have of people before we meet them, as stereotypes can so swiftly become ingrained in the psyche, especially when these are stereotypes that have been around for as long as we can remember.

Pause for a moment, and think, what does the word ‘orient’ mean to you? What images come to mind? And why? What put those images there in the first place? Are they accurate, do you think? (I choose the word Orient as an example for a number of reasons: Edward Said wrote a book called Orientalism that is held in very high regard across the world, which discusses in detail the discursive relations and understandings of ‘other’ cultures; I am doing research in a country that was/is seen as part of the ‘Orient’, and which has frequently come under the focus of ‘tropical geography’ and ‘tropical geographers’; the theme of a friend’s party recently was ‘Black Tie with a hint of the Orient’… Just a little food for thought.

Harmless as discourses regarding different peoples and different cultures around the world may seem, they have been the root cause of a great deal of prejudices that exist in the world today, including ethnic prejudice, gendered prejudice, class prejudice, and many more. I want to ensure that I don’t reproduce any of these prejudices in my research and in my write up, or at least, I want to make sure they are minimised as much as possible, and that any discourses and pre-existing prejudices that creep into my work are recognised and understood. If you look back to my entry about postcolonialism in method, I explain a little more about researcher positionality, and if you’re really interested in the topic, I cannot recommend enough Edward Said’s book on orientalism.

Thanks to colonialism, there are very deep power relations between the East and the West, with a number of dichotomous connotations, with some of the most common being the ‘inferior’ and the ‘superior’, the ‘dark’ and the ‘light’ (not only in terms of appearance – think Enlightenment – we found the light whilst other parts of the world were left in the dark), the ‘savage’ and the ‘civilised’. As a white girl entering a factory full of Sri Lankan girls, despite my dislike of these binaries and representations of ‘other’ cultures, I must be aware of them. I cannot know exactly how I am perceived by the factory workers, but I am going to lots of measures to make sure we are on level footing with one another. Appearance aside, I am entering the factory as a friend of the owner’s daughter, so just because of that there may be some girls who are associating me with authority, and thus inwardly acknowledging a power relation. Breaking down power relations entirely is, I think, impossible. But here are the things I’ve been doing to help things along:

• I wear flip flops to work – nothing special, and Baba G hates them – and then I take them off and pad around bare-foot, like most of the other girls do too.
• I am trying to learn the language. The girls speak the occasional word or phrase in English, so I in return am doing the same in Sinhalese, and making plenty of mistakes as I go, so they are having to help and teach me as I go along.
• I laugh and smile a lot, to make myself seem friendly and approachable, and more friend than colleague. Even when walking past the production lines, I try to flash not just a polite smile but a friendly smile at each of the workers, and will make it seem like I recognise them even if I don’t. There are so many faces to remember, but I’m walking the same way everyday and I know therefore that I’m walking past the same girls, so I always try to make it look like I recognise them, which is appreciated I think.
• I arrive on time, and try not to leave before the others leave. Flaunting in late might make it appear that I am not taking the job seriously, and that I am somehow above it. Baba G teases me for it, but I get very anxious if I’m running even a tiny bit late. [lunch issue]
• I join them for tea – managers drink their tea in a small room off the main canteen, not visible to the workers, whilst supervisors and HR staff and the like will sit at separate tables labelled ‘staff’ at that end of the canteen. The managers initially asked me to join them there, but I declined. I always sit with the girls from my packing line. There seems to be a set group who sit together, usually on the same table, or one very nearby.
• I join in with jokes where possible, when I understand key words, and today crept up on Chamila as a joke.
• I make little harmless jokes about Baba G, who they refer to as Miss. This is actually a little naughty of me, so I only do that with the girls I’m closest too – but by altering slightly in their minds their perception of Baba G, and making her seem a little more human than director, I feel it’ll work in my favour also. I would rather be Baba G’s friend than the director’s friend. Sorry Baba G – if none of them have any respect for you in the future, you have me to blame…
• On a similar vein, when Baba G and I went to Chamila’s house, I requested that Baba G wear flip flops instead of heels, remove her Dior glasses, and tie her hair neatly like most of the girls at the factory do. Again, although this is not directly to do with me and my positionality, I feel that it helps to bring Baba G down to as approachable a level as possible. Besides, she walks better in flat shoes…
• I always refer to Mr and Mrs G as Sir and Madam, showing that I see myself as inferior to them in the factory hierarchy, as of course the girls will too.
• I ask Padman the driver to wait outside for me, rather than have him come over to the packing section to get me. Otherwise, I have to walk past all the other workers following a man who is quite clearly a member of Family G’s staff. Not good if I want to reduce power relations.

I think the tactics above are working quite well. I’ve heard the word ‘yaluwa’ when Chamila is talking about me, and I think she is inferring that she and I are friends, and not just Baba G and I. I get arms slung round me, hands occasionally holding mine, and limbs draped over me if we’re sitting down on boxes at the start of work. This may sound a bit odd, but there is a lot of (totally innocent) physical contact between friends, I’ve noticed. It’s only the girls who are like this with me, but I’ve noticed that the boys are very close with each other also, and even the boys and girls in the factory who are friends will behave like this. Also, it’s not always girls who I know doing this. If I was anybody with any authority walking around, girls wouldn’t dream of coming up and holding my arm as they walk along, I don’t think. The fact that they are shows, I think, that they are seeing me as friend rather than colleague.

Something I’ve just realised is that I am assuming that the pre-existing power relation is that I am perceived as being at the superior end of the relation. I am assuming that this is how they see me, due to colonial relations and discourses but perhaps, although I seriously hope not, on some subconscious level I am also seeing myself as superior. The mind is a very strange thing, so it really is difficult to know what ideas you internalise, but I am aware of the assumption that I’ve made, so I suppose this does mean that at some level, there is prejudice present. I don’t know. This is in danger of turning into some kind of auto psychoanalytical waffle, in which I’ll doubtlessly dig a hole. I think it’s something I need to think carefully about though. It may well be that the girls all see themselves as superior to me (and I think by now that is starting to be the case – I’ve made a few really silly mistakes in the packing section – upside down stickers etc), but something in me still tells me it was, at least initially, the other way round.

Test Drive Successful

Today I held the pilot run for my participatory mapping sessions. I’ll explain this in more detail in a later post (when I’ll also explain time geography – having promised in one of my previous posts to talk more about this I’m very aware that I have ignored the topic entirely), but I’m basically asking girls to map their daily routines using a base map of the Ampara district and plastic overlays for different times of the day.

I spoke to Dharma Sir in the morning regarding the mapping sessions, and despite Mrs. G saying that sessions would have to be held lunchtimes due to production constraints, Dharma Sir was very conscious not to deplete the girls’ lunch hours. Instead, he suggested just taking two girls from each packing session at a time, and asking them to participate. That way the line can continue as usual, and the girls will only be gone for half an hour. This was far better as the lunch time logistics were getting a little fiddly – how long would it take to queue and eat the food, where would they wash their hands, who would take the plates back because it might offend the kitchen staff if they have to collect workers’ plates and so on. Instead, I have been given a full half hour slot with groups just after the lunch break.

I spent the morning finishing off preparations and explaining to Padma from HR, who’ll be translating for me, how the sessions would be run. This gave her time to ask questions, and time for me to demonstrate exactly what was happening. Baba G was present today also, just in case, but Padma speaks good English and understood what I was doing so Baba G’s input (thankfully, because she’s leaving tomorrow) was minimal.

A group of 8 girls should have arrived at 12:30, but instead I got two groups of four girls. I made sure to supply some biscuits, in an attempt to make the atmosphere a little more welcoming, although the girls were very shy to take them. Padma was very good at keeping the atmosphere light and friendly, with a lot of smiles and laughter. I drew the curtains back before the session to let in some factory light as I’m aware that natural light is limited in the factory itself, and I turned on the air con too, to keep the room cool – again, a luxury that’s not so available on the factory floor itself.

Generally, the girls understood what was being asked of them, and although being a little shy, they did understand what was being asked of them and I don’t think they were suspicious of job security or anything like that. Some had a few queries that were either corrected by companions or by Padma. I’m planning on holding three more sessions like this, and if time and if it’s successful, then maybe I’ll be able to do more. However, as each session is for 8 girls, after another three I’ll have data for 32 workers, which I feel is a decent amount. I’ll see how things go.

I spent some time with Baba G last night reviewing how the sessions would run, and we cut out quite a lot of steps that weren’t really necessary, so this ensured there was no need to rush in the session today, which was good. We were finished with plenty of time left over, so although there were no major issues today, if there are any misunderstandings or unforeseen problems with the method, then I will have contingency time in future sessions to deal with it.

To try to break the ice further, I introduced myself I Sinhalese and asked their names in Sinhalese. I’m also trying to get a couple of girls from my packing section into each session, so that there are at least some girls I know who will feel more comfortable and who may then be able to help others in the group.

I’ll think more about any potential improvements tonight, but having thrashed the method out thoroughly with Baba G last night, I feel things went pretty well today. Also, because I’m so conscious of the language constraints, I really have made sure that all instructions are as direct as possible, and that there are no unnecessary steps. We made a few minor changes to the steps today – taking out a little bit of wording here or there. This means that there aren’t too many opportunities for confusion. I’m heading back into work now for the tea break (despite not having worked in packing today… Feel a little guilty but the girls asked me to come along so it would be rude not to), and I think then I’ll stay there until the end of the day. I’m not going to work tomorrow, as there are buyers coming to look at the factory and I think the managers are a little nervous to see what the buyers’ responses would be to seeing an untrained white girl working in the packing section. So, that should give me plenty of time to catch up on here, get some photos up, tell you about a few little things that have been going on here recently, and review my plan of action for the next few weeks. The next mapping session’s on Wednesday.

Logistics, logistics, logistics…

This past week has been spent in the factory, participating, observing and learning, and my goodness I’ve learnt a lot, and I’ve come on leaps and bounds in terms of my relationships with the employees. But now it’s time for me to move onto putting into practice all the research methods I talked about in the run up to this. I still have so much data to collect, and so much yet to find out. In order to do so, I want to hold some focus groups and, what I’m most excited about, participatory mapping sessions.

The factory environment is not an easy one in which to organise this sort of thing however, and the workers don’t live in the town, as I had initially expected they would. The vast majority live in dispersed outlying villages, and go to and from the factory on buses. From the time they arrive until the time they leave, they have a 15 minute break, and a 30 minute break.

Logistical Hurdle No. 1: Time

Also, despite my efforts to learn little bits of Sinhalese here and there, and the workers’ attempts in return to speak English, communications are still largely centred on body language, mimicry and facial expressions, with key words thrown in from time to time. All too often, my exchanges on the factory floor will end in hopeless headshaking and laughter, as any form of understanding flies out of the window. As far as translation is concerned, Baba G has been wonderful, and if there’s anything key that I need to say or find out, she can find out for me in a flash and is on good terms with the workers, so they trust her. But, Baba G is leaving for Colombo on Tuesday, so I’m going to be ‘alone’ in Ampara, with very few people around who can speak English fluently. Some of the men in the factory can speak pretty good English, but as the focus groups and participatory mapping sessions are going to be solely women, I don’t want to bring a male in for translation. Also, many of the males who can speak English are in management, which is highly likely to inhibit what I might find out.

Logistical Hurdle No. 2: Language

And where to hold my focus groups and participatory mapping sessions? In the canteen, during the half hour lunch break? If the other workers’ behaviour so far is anything to go by, then within 2 minutes of initiating a session there will be an entire crowd gathered to see what’s going on, which would be distracting and would virtually eliminate any chance of later transcription. On the factory floor, maybe, on the large packing tables? Possibly, but again, there will be noise to contend with, other workers’ to deter, and I highly doubt food would be allowed anywhere near where garments are going be placed.

Logistical Hurdle No. 3: Location

Some of the production lines are mixed ethnicity, whilst some are solely Sinhalese. I need to somehow select workers of a mixture of ethnicities, whilst still ensuring that they come from roughly the same area in the district, to make mapping viable and meaningful. Also, the 30 minute lunch break is staggered, so I need to recruit workers of mixed ethnicities, from similar areas in the district, who are all on the same lunch break.

Logistical Hurdle No. 4: Recruitment

The sheep have been jumping over these hurdles time and time again as I’ve been trying to get to sleep, and last night especially, goodness knows how many times I turned things over in my head. With time pressing, though, today I had to come up with a final plan for how on Earth things were going to be successful. And with Baba G’s help, here are my solutions.

To combat the time issue, I’m left with very little choice apart from just immense organisation and preparation. As far as focus groups are concerned, I will start just be holding a very informal one tomorrow with Chamila and her friends, and Baba G will be around for translation. Time is more of an issue for mapping. The lunch break is half an hour. This needs to involve eating time, and freshening up and washing hands and all the rest. So, as much as possible will be prepared in advance. Any aspects of the mapping that can be done prior to the session will be done, so instead of asking the workers to create the map (which would have been fun), I will prepare a skeleton outline of the district, including main towns and the sea. Instructions will also be kept brief and to the point. If clarity is maintained, and the session well prepared for, then hopefully, although brief, I will be able to get some data collected for my time geography take on the movements of Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese employees through the district on a daily basis.

Hurdle No. 1: Jumped

I’m losing Baba G to Colombo, and I don’t want to use a male employee, but there is a very kind lady in HR who speaks good English and seems very approachable, so Baba G is going to ask her to join the sessions and translate for me. I’m also going to hold a pilot run of the participatory mapping session on Monday, with the girls from my packing section. They know me, and Baba G will be there to explain exactly what’s going on, and the HR lady too with any luck, so that she will know the drill for future sessions. Also, if this first pilot run is successful, and the girls from my packing section ‘get it’ (I’m going to try not to be too obscure… a common trait of a human geographer, I fear), then I’m going to recruit a couple of them to be my research assistants. One girl is half Sinhalese and half Tamil, so I’m really hoping she’ll be able to help with translation in later sessions if any of the Tamil workers need further explanation. She’s shy though, which is my one concern right now. I hope she agrees. I will also write up the ‘instructions’ for the mapping session in very clear, simple language, so that then it can be translated into Sinhalese instructions, which will limit the talking I need to do. Things said during the session by the workers can hopefully either be translated by the HR lady or filmed for later translation (with the participants’ permission, of course).

Hurdle No. 2: Jumped

I don’t think the factory floor or the canteen will work as locations, but Baba G and I quizzed Mrs. G at lunch time today, and it’s been decided that a meeting room near the canteen will be okay. Food can be eaten there, and we shouldn’t have (too many) interruptions. And there’ll be air conditioning, which is just a small bonus for me, because I find the factory floor very hot and I’ll probably be a little flustered during the sessions anyway.

Hurdle 3: Jumped

As I mentioned, I’m hoping to recruit some of my packing line to be my research assistants. By the end of the session on Monday, I hope they’ll be very clear about what on earth I’m doing. Chamila and Tamhara didn’t seem fazed when Baba G was explaining things today, so I’m hopeful. I need to stop saying hope. It’s asking for trouble really, isn’t it!? Anyway, I’m going to ask them to find recruits for future sessions from lines who have the same lunch times, and they are already starting to get that I need a mix of ethnicities. In fact, I think work of my research is starting to spread through the factory. One girl came up to me today, and with a big smile on her face, simply said, “Tamil!” I laughed and thanked her very much, and asked her name and told her mine. I feel this bodes well, if girls are not shy about what ethnicity they are and are eager to contribute, then this is going to make the whole thing a lot simpler. I’m planning also on having a day in between each session, to give my research assistants time to find recruits for the next one – there should be about four in total.

Hurdle 4: Jumped

My hurdles seem to be dealt with. The sheep can remain peaceful tonight. Although, really, there is just so much space for everything to fall to pieces. I’m just praying that if and when disaster strikes, the result is nothing worse than laughter! It’s going to be a manic week.

Ad Hoc Interviewing

This is a write up of the things I learnt from the spontaneous interview I had with Bandula Sir yesterday.

These are some notes I was able to take down from the informal, unrecorded, spontaneous interview with HR manager Bandula Sir. He told me, contrary to what Gihan Sir had told me earlier, that there are 1640 employees, of whom 350 are Muslim, 127 Tamil and the rest are Sinhalese. This is because the Ampara District is a predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese District, with just a few Tamil and Muslim settlements closer to the coast. Some of the production lines are more mixed than others, as they try to arrange production lines around location, so that everyone on the same line can come on the same bus. I had been starting to get a little worried about holding participatory mapping sessions, as employees come from such a large catchment that I could have been dealing with just several employees, but so far spread out that I wouldn’t have been able to get much meaningful data. As it is, I should just be able to hold participatory mapping sessions with members of just one line, in the knowledge that they will all be from the same vicinity.

I asked again about relations between Tamil and Sinhalese employees, and just like everyone else I asked, I was told there are no problems between employees caused by ethnicity. I’ll touch more on this point in a later post, because it’s forced me to do a lot of thinking recently.

Ampara itself is about 95% Sinhalese, with only 3% Muslim and 2% Tamil. During the civil war, the town itself had very few problems – it tended to be coastal areas that were more affected, but only by ‘small, small’ incidents – conditions were much worse in the North. The East was used mainly as a base for the LTTE, where they could store supplies and from where they could attack Colombo. Some of the workers are from those areas, but they didn’t have any problems apparently. Although, this said, apparently on some days Tamil workers couldn’t come to work, but Sinhala and Muslim workers could. There were many checkpoints that buses would have to drive through, and Tamils were wary at first of working in Ampara, until they were guaranteed security when travelling. Mrs G has told me previously that in fact, many employees were affected by the war, losing husbands, brothers, fathers. Many mixed messages, so it’s difficult to extract reliable information, and Baba G tells me this is the sort of thing that I’ll never read about online or in a newspaper – the only record of these events is that held in people’s memories and reproduced verbally.

The LTTE is still present, but everything is peaceful. Nobody knows who the LTTE are now – they are living life just the same as everyone else, working in offices or wherever. I decided to ask if any of the employees had any relations to the LTTE, and he threw up his hands as if to say ‘how on Earth would I know?’ If people are in any way related to the LTTE, he told me, they will not say. If they say, they will immediately be taken by the police or the army. But none of our girls are.

Despite telling me that Ampara had not had many problems during the civil war, Bandula Sir mentioned a couple of events. One was a small motorbike bomb, and the other was a large bomb at the bus stand. He told me nobody died, just small injuries, and limbs lost. He did keep repeating the word small, even when telling me that people had lost legs. ‘You know, small, small things’. Mrs G had previously told me that 3 employees lost their lives in a bombing in Ampara. He also told me about a bus that blown up after it had left the bus stand, as it was driving past an army camp outside Ampara. Apparently nobody knows whether it was the government or the LTTE who were responsible for that one, and Bandula Sir said that in this one, 9 or 10 workers lost both legs, but again, nobody died.

I probed further about problems between Tamil and Sinhalese people, and again, he was telling me no problems. There were some tensions further south in the fishing industry, because Sinhalese people were allowed to fish in Tamil waters, but Tamil people weren’t allowed to fish in Sinhalese waters. This leads onto the issue that Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim areas are very separate to one another. Only now are Sinhalese people starting to move into Tamil areas, in order to buy land and build houses. Whilst there are small amounts of movements between the three religions, with some Muslims and Tamils filtering into Sinhalese areas, most areas are still predominantly if not exclusively Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim, with Sinhalese making up the vast majority. These areas may be close to  one another, a matter of a couple of hundred metres even, but they are separate nevertheless.

I asked Bandula Sir how the Tamil employees could speak Sinhalese if everything was kept to separate like this, and he shrugged and just said that it was through experience in the factory: practical experience gives Tamils knowledge of Sinhalese. I also asked why the three ethnicities remain so separate. He said that Tamils just live in certain places only, and Muslims are the same. Sinhalese are everywhere. And it’s been like this for maybe, three or four hundred years. It took me a little while to latch on to what he was saying, but then it clicked that of course, these Tamil and Muslim settlements would have sprung up when the British imported workers from the Empire to the then almost exclusively Sinhalese country, and it just hasn’t changed since. They would have been like pockets of another culture embedded in a Sinhalese landscape, and by what Bandula Sir was saying, it doesn’t sound like it’s changed terribly.

I went on to ask why even Ampara still has such a concentrated population of Sinhalese – I would have thought that naturally through rural-urban migration the numbers of Tamils and Muslims would have increased. The answer I got was a real surprise. When the British built the Inginiyagala Dam, 50 or 60 years ago, they brought workers into the area. They gave construction jobs to Sinhalese, driving jobs to Muslims, and office jobs to Tamils. From what I gather, the Sinhalese and local government were less than impressed with this distribution of jobs, and since then, ‘new people’ are not allowed to settle in the town unless they are Sinhalese. The only Tamil and Muslim people in the town are ‘old people’, who were there before these regulations were introduced. There are only two Muslim shops in the town – all the rest are Sinhalese. There are ten Buddhist temples, three churches, but only one Hindu temple and one mosque. I can’t understand why these rules haven’t changed, but it would be interesting to find out.

I asked again about problems that the workers faced, and about any underlying tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese. Bandula Sir simply said that relations are all okay now. 5 years ago, perhaps, there were some problems, but everything is okay now. This confused me again, because despite his insistence that none of the workers had any problems with each other, he managed to hint that maybe there had been problems after all. Perhaps he just meant generally in the area though.

To summarise, there has been no previous conflict between workers, but the ethnic groups in the District are very separate. There are laws preventing non-Sinhalese from settling or setting up businesses in Ampara, and only now are the ethnicities starting to blur the borders a little, as limited migration has commenced in their respective areas. Whether there is or was conflict between the workers is hard to tell for certain, but it’s looking like there hasn’t ever been. What is conflicting is the information I’m receiving. Much work to be done!

Day 9 Observations

One of the managers of the factory, Lahiru Sir, gave me a detailed tour of the factory today, and showed me the nearby washing plant. Although Baba G has also given me a tour of the factory, I decided it would be good to get a tour from Lahiru Sir too, so I could ask him questions as we walked around in a walking tour style interview. Lahiru Sir was very keen to show his knowledge of the factory though, having only been employed for a week or so, so much of the tour was taken up by him explaining operational functions of the various parts of the factory.

I managed to ask a few questions as we were going around. He says about 95% of the workforce are women, and that men are generally employed to do the jobs involving heavy machinery, which are higher risk. Women employees are mostly young, although a few are older. A lot of the women are wearing fine gold jewellery, and most have long hair, tied back in braids or pony tails. In the washing plant, as it’s much more heavy duty machinery, the vast majority of the 200-strong workforce are men. Some of the employees come from Colombo, but these tend to be those in management, who will live in Ampara for work but commute back to Colombo once or twice a month to see their families. I later asked Bandula Sir why their families didn’t move to Ampara too, and he explained the education system was better in Colombo, so it was better for his family to be there. The factory has 25 production lines, with roughly 45 employees to each production line, including 35 machine operators, 3 helpers, 2 checkers, and then a leader, time checkers and a supervisor.

All three religions are employed in the factory: Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala. At one point Lahiru Sir called over a Muslim girl from one of the production lines. She must have wondered what on earth was going on as she stood next to us whilst Lahiru Sir spoke to me about the communications between the workers. He told me they can’t speak English very well, and that I could ask simple questions to them but they might not understand. He said some words to her too in Sinhalese, although I’m not sure what, and then let her go back to her machine. All I could do really was smile reassuringly at her, and she did smile back, but I mentally kicked myself afterwards for not even attempting to introduce myself to her in Sinhalese. I know how to say ‘My name is Lucy’ now, thanks to Baba G – I’ll make sure to put it to practice tomorrow in the packing line! Despite this girl’s apparent lack of understanding of English, Lahiru Sir said the girls could speak English well enough to understand factory commands, especially seeing as there are minimum qualification entry levels required for employment in the factory. I noticed that many of the women would take umbrellas with them if they ventured outside, to keep the sun off them.

Once the tour was finished, Lahiru Sir introduced me to Gihan Sir, a manager in the HR department. He provided me, verbally, with a few statistics regarding employees. There are 1572 employed in the factory, of which 321 are male (although later I was given different figures). They recruit people aged between 17 and 35, although most of them are at the younger end of the age scale because many join straight after they leave school. They will allow new recruits who are older than 35 if they have certain skills, but will not recruit unskilled workers above this age. Gihan Sir told me that of the workers, 350 are Muslim and 300 are Tamil (although again, I was told different figures later). The factory is structured so that there are 23 managers and deputy-heads, 8 assistant managers, 24 supervisors, 20 leaders and 200 sub-leaders. Working hours are 7am until 5:30pm 6 days a week, with regular tea breaks and a lunch break. Work doesn’t actually start at 7am though – I’m to experience the morning routine tomorrow… A few hundred employees live in Ampara, and the rest are collected on company owned buses, of which there are 15 in total.

I glanced through some employee files too, and asked Gihan Sir if he had a map of the bus routes, which he said he did:

Lucy: “Do you have a map of the bus routes? Where the buses go?”

Gihan Sir: “You want math?”

L: “No, map.”

G: “Math, yes?”

L: “No, map.”

G: [Head waggle and smile]

L: “…A map…? Bus routes…?”

G: “Oh! M. A. P. Map! Yes, yes, we have.”

He asked one of the women who work in the HR department something, and we waited for about 15 minutes, although I’m not entirely sure what for, and then he changed his answer and said they didn’t have a map. Aiyooo, language problems!

I noted, whilst walking up and down the production lines, watching the workers watching me, that they would only smile at me if I smiled at them, but when I did smile at them I got huge smiles in return. A reminder that smiles can go such a long way, and the phrase ‘Smile, and the world smiles back’ is often very true.

I recognised one man from yesterday: a checker at the end of one of the lines. I only just glimpsed him out of the corner of my eye, but then made sure to pause and smile and nod at him. He looked genuinely pleased when I recognised and acknowledged him, which made me think how important it is, in a factory so large, to be noticed and remembered. I think that because of the way the production lines are arranged, with a team set-up, employees are less likely to feel like faceless production units, but I think it’s still important that I try to remember and acknowledge as many workers as I can.

The production lines are set up in a long line, with pairs of workers in the long chain. Each worker has a specific role, be it ironing pockets flat, or sewing belt loops on, to make the process as efficient as possible. It also means that there won’t be much if any rotation of position, so communication is limited to the four people closest to you during operative hours, and even then communication must be a little difficult as their heads are often bowed over their machines in concentration. This said, I wandered back through at around 10:30 and workers from four of the production lines had vanished, lights were off, and machines deserted. I asked where they all were, and it was one of their tea-breaks. Tea breaks really do seem frequent.

I was shattered today; couldn’t get to sleep last night, and woke up itching because mosquitoes have decided to attack my feet. I quite literally have two bites per toe. I thought I’d be asleep by 9pm tonight, and I lay down trying to sleep for a good hour, feeling very tired, but my mind was buzzing still. This is one aspect of social research that I hadn’t really considered or expected; the research very quickly takes over so that you’re always thinking about it, making it very hard to actually shut down. It’s now midnight and I’m really not looking forward to a 6am start tomorrow.

I had an ad-hoc interview with Bandula Sir, another HR manager, later on in the afternoon, after I’d taken a trip into town to see if I could find a map of the Eastern Province (no luck). It was a really helpful, interesting interview, which I shall endeavour to tell you about in the next couple of days. I had thought it would be a negative thing, to hold a spontaneous, unrecorded interview, and was initially reluctant to get into any long discussions with him. I wasn’t able to write down everything Bandula Sir said, but I was able to get most of it. He seemed in no hurry to get anything done, and we were sitting in his office. He’s a long serving manager in the factory, and is quite senior now and very sweet. He didn’t rush me to think of questions, and I didn’t rush him for answers, so there were lots of long silences as I thought about things and wrote down notes. This didn’t seem to matter in the slightest. The long but unawkward silences actually seemed to prompt Bandula Sir to think more about his answers and my research topic, so after long pauses, he would add in extra bits of information. We were also waiting for some print outs of employee statistics, and once we’d both had a cup of tea and had been chatting for well over an hour, I really couldn’t come up with any more questions.

If you have any questions for me, please do fire away! For now though, it’s attempt 2 at getting to sleep. Important day tomorrow!

Day 7: Heading out East

At long last! I have been nagging and nagging Family G (poor family) to let me go out to Ampara as soon as possible, and urgency doesn’t really seem to register in Sri Lanka. I’ve been trying to explain to them the importance of time in social research, and through sheer repetition I think it is starting to sink in. At least the past week has given me time to prepare, and I actually managed to conduct an interview with Mrs G this evening which I felt was definite progress. They almost tried to delay Ampara by another few days, to which I quietly but firmly protested, explaining that I really want and need as much time in Ampara as is possible. I’ve spoken to Mrs G again about actually working in the factory, and she thankfully still seems in favour of this idea. It’ll be something blissfully simple, like stickering, or folding, which should give me plenty of opportunity to get to know factory and workers.

The interview was interesting – I learnt a little more about the factory and its employees – I’ll try to post up the outline of the findings soon. Mrs G was having a pedicure done at the time; I wasn’t putting too much pressure on Family G regarding interviews because I know they’re busy, but I told them I’d like to conduct an interview before heading out to Ampara. Baba G reminded her mother I wanted to ask her some questions, so Mrs G suggested I come to ask her the questions whilst she was having a home pedicure done, as part of a monthly salon home-visit. I wasn’t given much warning for this, so I scrambled together all of my things, cleared my camera memory as I don’t yet have a Dictaphone sorted, and ran upstairs to the covered rooftop where Mrs G was relaxing with her feet in a bubbling footbath, whilst the beautician clipped and painted away. It seems like a very obscure situation in which to hold an interview, but in retrospect, Mrs G was relaxed, she was in her own familiar home environment, and she wasn’t preoccupied with other things so I had her full attention. There were some disruptions as maids came and went, and she would often just stop talking to pick up phone to make a phone call to goodness knows who, but she always came straight back to the point, so I don’t think the interruptions were actually too disruptive. One downside was that, being in open air, there was a lot of background noise, and even with audio editing software on my computer, I couldn’t quite remove all the birdcalls and occasional gusts of wind, so some bits of the playback were a little unclear. Also, perhaps because she was relaxing, Mrs G was speaking quite quietly, making some things hard to hear. I transcribed almost as soon as the interview was finished. I say almost. I procrastinated for as long as I reasonably could, and then fiddled with the audio for a silly amount of time. Transcription is so dull, and it’s important to note everything about a conversation, from a slight pause here, to a few ‘ums’ there, to that chuckle at the end of that sentence. It took a while, but it’s done at last. Next time, I know I need to put the Dictaphone closer to the respondent, and hope for a location with less background noise and fewer interruptions.

Right now I should head downstairs to get my things packed up for Ampara, and get a few hours of sleep before a very very early start. We’re going to drive over via Kandy – apparently there’s a nice temple there. Then I get the afternoon to explore Ampara and see the factory! If you’re lucky, I may even post up some photos at some point, as I’m very well aware of the slightly unfavourable word to image ratio on here.

Geographer’s Paradise

A Selection of Fat Coloured Marker Pens, Multiple Sheets of Blank A2 Paper, Tape of Different Widths and Colours, Lots of Plastic Sheeting, A Nice Big Colourful Map… Is this the beginnings of a children’s arts and crafts session? No! It’s a geographer preparing for research! That’s right, she went shopping…

Geographer’s Paradise

The (rough) plan is this:

The large blank pieces of paper will be used as kind of ‘basemaps’ – using online resources and local knowledge I will create some very simple basemaps of the Ampara area – to avoid bias in this I will try to do this collaboratively, perhaps by holding a focus group with members of the local women’s foundation to see what they think should be put onto the basic map.

Then, during participatory diagramming sessions with around 6 factory employees at a time, the plastic sheeting will be placed on top, layer by layer, as members of the sessions add in details, using pens and coloured tape and whatever other materials they see fit. This way, detailed maps can be built up of the community, according to what the employees choose to map. This should help to get an idea of the places in the community that hold some meaning, so I can gain a little more of an understanding of the places of meaning to the Tamil employees and to the Sinhala employees. I wonder, will they be the same places, for the same reasons, or different places, for different reasons? I’m expecting, obviously, that if places of worship are plotted then these will be significantly different for the Tamil and Sinhalese employees. But what about shopping locations? Routes to and from work? The bus stop, the clock tower, the park?

I will also use maps in other focus groups as ways to stimulate discussion and prompt memories, as thoughts and opinions are very often, at both conscious and subconscious levels, linked to space and place.

As I build up the layers of the plastic sheeting, I wonder whether it’s better to remove each sheet before the next participant/group adds their layer to the map, or to leave it in place so that they can see what the participant/group before them has done. I still have time before any of this is actually implemented, so thoughts and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

Time Geography

In the midst of revision for exams at the mo, but – need to find out more about time geography – it’s popped up a couple of times now and looks like it could be relevant. I think Rose has done work on time-geography in a feminist geography context, and also Latham, in an urban context. Definitely something to look into once exams are out of the way!

A Postcolonial Method

I’ve just made a new page outlining the “postcolonial method” as discussed by Rhaguram and Madge in their 2006 article. Please click on the link below to be taken to the page!

https://lucydoesgeography.wordpress.com/a-postcolonial-method/

Observing. Carefully. And more.

One of the methods I want to use throughout the project is participant observation. In essence, watching. But with some very important ingredients thrown in. Firstly, as Charles Darwin notes at the very beginning of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, it’s more than just noticing what’s going on. It’s about observing things carefully. Secondly, participation. This is the key element. I’ve already decided on a participatory approach, hence why I will be pursuing some intensely qualitative methods, and participant observation can provide very insightful data. So how to participate in a garment factory in Sri Lanka?

Work there.

Initially I was led to believe that I would only be allowed to ‘cut thread’. Now, however, it would seem that the packing team are always enthusiastic for more people. Feeling chuffed at having been promoted!

On a serious note, there are considerations, such as language barriers and how I will be received by the other employees. I am hoping that by joining the women in the factory, some of whom will (hopefully) be participants in later research such as focus groups and participatory diagramming, I will be able to start building up a positive rapport with them and diminishing any constrictive power relations between us.

It will also provide me with an introduction to factory employment as they see it – the tasks performed during the day, the social interactions within the workplace, the attitudes towards one another and so on.

I hope that also, once it gets to holding participatory groups activities such as focus groups and participatory diagramming, there will be fewer barriers to communication, less uncertainty among the participants about who I am and what I am doing, and a more relaxed and familiar atmosphere.