Documenting Continuity

The aim of my dissertation, as many of you area aware, is to understand how and why health and agriculture (in particular in relationship to each other) have changed from the 1930s to the present. Now, in order to understand changes over those eighty years, I have to actually know what changed and what did not. As a result, I spent a full two months working on gathering oral histories about health and agriculture with eight households, gathering point data for the mid 1950s, late 1960s, early 1980s, 1992-1994, and today.

Why not just look back at the health center and Department of Agriculture records you might ask. Well, when the government decided to stop funding the Pholela Community Health Centre and its medical director finally left in 1962, so too did its extensive records. So while the documentation for the 1940s and 50s is incredibly rich, information for time thereafter is virtually non-existent (in written form, that is until democracy in the mid 1990s.) According to the written record at least, nothing much happened. As a scholar there is a certain burden of proof that I must meet, and this includes finding some sort of evidence for this middle period. As a result, I embarked upon these oral histories to find out what had happened between 1960 and 1990.

I did, of course, have some hints – the form and extent of agriculture in the early 1990s was similar to the form and extent in the 1960s. Further, the biomedical infrastructure had changed little during that same period, though the quality of care had deteriorated markedly. As a result, I surmised that I was setting out to document continuity. Of course, there might be some minor changes, but overall, I was betting that this would be a period of relative stability.

Getting at this information, however, was more of a challenge than I had anticipated. First, I underestimated how boring documenting continuity can be. By this time, the (mainly) old ladies that we were continuously visiting were very comfortable with us and so they would point out, each and every week, that we were asking them the same questions, and further that they had already answered them once, twice, three, or even four times. In an effort to stave off boredom, we would attempt to conduct interviews in fields or kitchens; to try to help the old ladies to complete whatever chores they had. I also tried tactics like bringing baked goods so we could do an interview over tea and cake. While these distractions did, in fact distract, they didn’t really solve the boredom issue.

As I conducted this research I, of course, learned that my assumptions were both correct and incorrect. For one, I learned that one community had been entirely moved in 1975 in a government effort to stem soil erosion, and another had been partially moved in 1968. However, despite those moves, I learned that in general, households were cultivating fields and gardens, and herding livestock just as they had been in the 1950s.

Trying to maintain focus and interest was also difficult for me and Thokozile (my research assistant), as we had forty interviews to complete and eight narratives to keep in mind. However, while documenting continuity might be boring for both researcher and research participant, for a scholar thinking and writing about a place, it can be just as interesting as change. The time period which I am looking at (1930s to the present) is bookended with periods of immense change. In the 1930s it was the introduction of basic public health measures like pit latrines and sanitation that would lead to better health and in the late 1990s and 2000s it was the transition to majority rule and the onset of full blown AIDS. But in the middle is this period of continuity. Yes, communities move, but agricultural practices, yields, and labor changed little. Why? As a scholar, it strikes me that this is just as interesting as the change, even if it was far more boring to prove.

Ethical Research

When I envisioned this blog I never imagined that I would include a post on the ethical quandaries of field work. As I have mentioned in previous posts, this was a space for thoughtful, analytical reflection on topics of relevance to what will become my dissertation. It was not a space for musings about my personal experience.

However, after more than a year in South Africa, I have come to accept that the ethics of research are not simply a part of my personal experience, but that they are central to this very dissertation project. These ethical dilemmas force one to ask: “What is the point?” and “Who is this project for?” Both of which strike me as being at the heart of any dissertation.

Ethical quandaries and questions began almost immediately upon my arrival in South Africa. For example, I am conducting my research in three communities in the area formerly known as the Pholela District. I chose two of these communities because they were the first two communities absorbed into the focus area of the Pholela Community Health Centre in the 1940s. As a result, they have the longest set of historical records. I chose the third community because I wanted a place that was outside of the Pholela catchment and because I had heard that the people in that place still relied heavily on subsistence agriculture. By choosing three communities I felt like I was making my study *somewhat* more representative than had I chosen just one community. However, by choosing only three communities I have given only three groups of people a voice in the academic world. On a practical level I had little choice, but on a moral level I must recognize that this choice has consequences.

I confront other ethical questions almost daily. For example, not two days ago I was visiting one of the Mkhulus (Grandfathers) whom I regularly go and see. He and his wife were weeding their garden in anticipation of planting beans. We (Thokozile, my research assistant, and I) came by to talk to him about life, agriculture, health, and witchcraft in the mid-1950s. Because he was working we decided to just ask him questions as he weeded. We came to the topic of gardens and asked him what was in his garden in the 1950s and he listed several things. So we followed up by asking if they had planted any vegetables back then. He said no and that even now they could not plant vegetables because they did not have a consistent water supply. He said that a number of families in his section of Nomondlovu wanted to buy some pipes and a couple of tanks to deliver a continuous water supply, which would enable them to irrigate their fields. However, it will cost R40,000 (or just over US$4,000). Predictably, the conversation immediately turned to me and whether I can help them get this money, either by giving a donation myself (though there is some recognition that I could not give them R40,000), or by telling my friends and family overseas “how poor they are,” or, and this is the most favored approach, by leveraging my education, experience, and most importantly my whiteness to get the government to give them “the pipes for free.” After going through all the ways they could raise money for water pipes, this Mkhulu went on to say that I should give them a donation to show that I am not just using them for their knowledge and rather that I recognize that they are poor and need help.

And this Mkhulu is, of course, right; on so many levels.

First, I must fully recognize and accept (and hope) that I will gain professionally and as a result financially from this experience. (I have already and continue to gain personally.) And moreover, the people of these communities, especially the older people who I spend most of my time with, will likely not benefit financially from this experience. Second, I do have access to international financial resources that these people would never have access to without my presence. Third, these people are poor and though there are certainly degrees of poverty, poor is poor, and I am not poor. And finally, by virtue of my status (as a well-educated, white, American woman) I *might* be able to at least raise some awareness and interest with the government.

But there are other ethical concerns as well. When I received approval from the University of Wisconsin’s Internal Review Board (IRB), I agreed that I would not compensate my research “subjects;” that participation would be entirely voluntary. When I was conducting the household survey and taking 90 minutes of a person’s time, this seemed reasonable. Now I tend to spend most of my time talking to, working with, and learning from a handful of families. They have invited me into their lives largely because they are interested in my project, enjoy my company, and are happy to talk about their lives and their gardens. But I also suspect that many of them see the continued presence and interest of a white American as leading to benefits for their communities and possibly even themselves.

I have done everything right according to the IRB. I have explained what me research is, told people that participation is completely voluntary and that they can stop at any point, and explained that I have no money to compensate them. Everything is supposedly clear. There will be no compensation. At least today.

But the hope continues with the eight families I visit weekly and the communities they come from that by working with me, letting me enter into their lives, and teaching me about health and agriculture in these areas there will be a direct (monetary) benefit to the community.

This hope, this belief is ever present as I conduct research, both in a very direct way as in the case of the Mkhulu asking me to donate money for his pipes, and in indirect ways as people constantly ask Thokozile if she will go overseas with me and ask when my book will be published that will make them famous. The omnipresence of these expectations reminds me that I have a responsibility to these communities that goes beyond the academic realm. As a result, my dissertation must be meaningful to both academic debates about nature and society as well as to the improved living conditions of those societies and natures. While this adds a layer of challenge to the dissertation project, it also makes for richer work.

And although facing these expectations day after day can make me want to curl up in my bed with a novel, I know that with good work comes great responsibility and I can only hope that the enormous gift of time and friendship that these people have given me, which will no doubt launch my career, can in some way be rewarded with some help to their communities.

Those of us who work in places far from home and in situations completely different from the ones we are accustomed to constantly face a mismatch of expectations between the people we work with, the rules of the ethics review boards, and, to be honest, ourselves. But to do good work is not to choose one set of expectations over the other, it is to strive to fulfill them all. For as scholars it is both our professional responsibility to honestly represent the people and places we research and our moral responsibility to ensure that we give back to the very people who have given us so much.

What is Agriculture?

At first this question likely seems ridiculous, at least to my sensibilities.

Conceptually agriculture is unlike health. It does not include physical and mental aspects. It does not vary in meaning (though it almost certainly varies in practice) between places. It is the production of food.

But is it really that simple?

Shortly after my Christmas break I went to spend nine days in one of the communities where I am conducting research. I stayed with my research assistant at her home and had the opportunity to experience all facets of rural life. I helped to fetch water from a protected spring, wrote my field notes out long hand by candle light, bathed in a bucket, and helped to cook over the open fire. During our free time we visited with Thokozile’s (my research assistant) friends and family, we attended a funeral on Friday and Saturday, and church on Sunday.

In addition to experiencing every day life, we continued to conduct our research going with a couple of the Gogos to collect their monthly government pension, weeding in one family’s garden, and spending a day walking to the forest to collect muthis (traditional medicines) with a sangoma (traditional healer).

While invaluable in providing me with insight into the rhythms of rural life and into health and agriculture in this area, I had anticipated all of these experiences.

However, there was something very unexpected: food.

I hadn’t thought about it. I mean, of course I had anticipated (with a bit of anxiety) an unsettled stomach. However, I hadn’t thought much about how much I would learn by simply eating. I hadn’t really thought about how connected the act of eating is with agriculture itself. I hadn’t really connected production to consumption.

As we walked from household to household chatting with different people we would invariably stop and pull a peach off of one of their trees to see if it was ripe. As we visited different households, one family would give us a couple of plums to eat and another would give us a pear. It turns out that those trees that often line the periphery of a household’s garden are actually an important source of seasonal nutrition.

And so begins research via the stomach.

Through the simple act of snacking my original concept of agriculture as grain and vegetable crops in fields and gardens combined with livestock production expands.

Continuing on, in trying to understand the connections between consumption and production, we turn to food preparation.

Food preparation begins with gathering the ingredients. Because it is summer, almost every meal includes food from the garden as well as food from the shop. This much I expected. What I didn’t expect was the number of meals that included wild vegetables. These imifinos (green leafy vegetables) form the accidental ground cover of gardens, grow alongside rivers, and exist in forests. In summer they contribute valuable vitamins to people’s diets and are an integral part of a family’s summer menu.

Here again my stomach led me to an expanded understanding of cultivation; the inclusion of wild cultivars as a part of the subsistence side of a family’s diet expands ideas about subsistence agriculture to include non-cultivated, or wild foods.

Take this expansion of food and cultivation a step further and all of a sudden agricultural landscapes look very different.

Already some of these gardens seem quite different from the neat, rational, and scientific agricultural spaces of monocropped fields; they seem unkempt, even random in their planting patterns and varietals. If you add to this the trees on their periphery and the forests and rivers that sit on the edges of the community, suddenly the agricultural landscape is unrecognizable.

This newly expanded agricultural landscape brings us back to the question that we started with: What is agriculture? Does it require active cultivation on the part of people? If so, who is to say that by harvesting wild imifinos people aren’t “cultivating,” aren’t manipulating the environment so that imifinos grow consistently in these wild spaces? Does agriculture assume a limited spatial extent? If so, then are some wild imifinos (the ones that grow on their own in the garden) part of the agriculture system while others are not?

As seems to be the case more often than not, I’m not sure I have a good answer to this question. What I do know, however, is that when trying to understand how subsistence activities contribute to a household’s diet, and through that to their health, crops that grow in the garden, fruit that comes from trees, and wild imifinos gathered from the forest, the river, and the garden all must be included. So perhaps then agriculture does include wild spaces along with wild foods. Thoughts?

What is Health?

What is health? Where is health located? Is it in our individual cells? In our body parts – the liver, the kidney, the heart? Is it in each of us as individuals? Or is it located in our families? Our homes? Our gardens? Our kraals?

In conducting my research the question “What is health?” is very important. Indeed, it is fundamental to trying to understand how health and agriculture are related.

It is not, however, obvious.

From a biomedical perspective (the one that I am the most familiar with), health is located in the interaction between cells in individual bodies. To have HIV is to have a virus in your blood that attacks the CD-4 T-cells in your white blood cells, thereby compromising your immune system and making you more susceptible to opportunistic infections and ill health. If one could prevent this virus from replicating then one could stop HIV from affecting people. Medication is the answer.

But what about a public health perspective? From a public health perspective HIV is a sexually transmitted disease that needs to be addressed on the level of education and prevention. From this perspective working at the level of the community is crucial. Community education is the answer.

One would be loathe to find a medical professional that disagreed with either of these statements. Practitioners might not agree on where the emphasis should be placed, but they would agree that HIV must be addressed at the community, individual, and cellular levels. In this example, health is present on three levels.

As a geographer I spend a lot of time thinking about scale, and though it might take a moment of contemplation, I am confident that health can exists on multiple scales at the same time. This HIV-biomedical example makes this much clear. We can all see how microbes interact with individual bodies and individuals with each other to make an epidemic.

But what about other ways of understanding health and healing? What if a single medical practitioner, a sangoma, could treat an individual, a family, a garden, and a herd?

Last month, rather unexpectedly, I found myself interviewing a sangoma. We were talking about various health conditions and muthis (medicines) that she uses to treat them. More specifically, we were talking about how she protects the family; where she puts the muthi that helps prevent lightning and what she needs to do to spread it. And then I asked, “Is there a muthi to protect the garden?” And she said, “Yes.” And then, “Is there a muthi to protect the herd?” “Yes” again. Interesting. So the same medical practitioner that treats an individual’s illness also treats certain problems in the garden or with the livestock.

This, of course, makes less sense to my biomedically-oriented perspective. But surely there are alternative ways of understanding healing. And perhaps this sangoma provides a key link to help me understand how health and agriculture might be related

I am looking at nutrition, at the impact of vegetable gardens on people’s ability to fight of disease and on the relationship between home grown food, store bought food, and nutrition-related health. This is, of course, an important avenue for investigation, as nutrition has real affects on people’s health, and if agriculture is supplying those calories then agriculture has a real affect on people’s health.

So then, what about this notion that one healer can heal a person, a home, a garden, and a kraal? Does this idea even matter?

I would argue yes, if for no other reason than it motivates particular types of behavior, particular agricultural and herding decisions. Health affects agriculture.

If we accept the idea that understandings of health, which include agricultural health, for wont of a better term, can affect the decisions people make about their gardens and herds AND we accept that the nutrition people get out of their agriculture affects their health then we’re certainly moving toward some sort of agriculture-health relationship. However, we still haven’t answered the question: what is health?

Is it both biomedical and local understandings? Certainly. But what happens when the two come into conflict? Must we choose one over the other? Is one conception of health “more correct” than another? How can we combine them? Must we combine them?

The best answer I can give is that I don’t know. Surely at various moments one conception of health is better than another. But the conception that is better also surely changes depending on the particular moment. Both systems motivate practices, and the actions that result from those systems in turn affect agriculture and health.

So what is the way forward?

To talk to people. To stop talking to sangomas or doctors and to talk to the people who plant in their gardens, tend their livestock, and visit sangomas, inyangas, nurses, and doctors. For their understanding of health is more expansive than either the sangoma’s or the medical doctor’s; it includes both.