Different situations create different role expectations. Each role is affiliated with its own rights and obligations (Aase and Fossåskaret, 2007). This requires that the researcher keep track of “who is talking to whom,” meaning which role or ascribed status is active in the situation studied. Participant observation is about taking on a given status, the need to identify role expectations connected to the status being activated, and taking action according to the role expectations (Aase and Fossåskaret, 2007).
5.5.4.1 Role Awareness
When I joined ISAF as an officer, I moved into a situation that was defined by a number of specific rights and obligations. The sum of all these expectations
and obligations was my role or ascribed status in the operation area. Every time I moved from one situation or function to another, the expectations shifted. I was aware of shifting roles many times a day. An individual often activates more than one role/status in the same arena at the same time, which makes the role awareness very essential in the work of participant
observation.
As an officer, I met formalized rights and obligations which were determined by my status. But I also met informal, unwritten rules that formed the
expectations of the role as officer. Staying in a German military camp, I saw differences in Norwegian, Croatian, Latvian, Hungarian, American, and German role expectations for a CIMIC officer’s role. I also had to be aware of the possible differences in the approach towards a female officer, and try to understand what kind of expectations and associations the local people of Afghanistan had towards a female ISAF officer. The consciousness about these things was essential to understand my own position in the research field.
5.5.4.2 Balance the Role-Play
Every fieldwork role is a social interaction device for securing information for scientific purposes and a set of behaviors in which an observer’s self is involved (Gold, 1958). Gold argued that the more successful the field worker is in playing her role, the more successful she must be in taking the
informant’s role. Success in role-taking and role-playing requires success in blending the demands of self-expression and integrity with the demands of the role. Being a participant observer, one plays both the role of a field worker and the role of an informant. This implies attempts to master universes of discourses relating to many attitudes and behaviors, and, thus, it becomes vital to be introspective when raising questions and developing relationships in the field. Introspection will allow one to balance the role-demands and self-demands in the operational area. In some situations the self-demands of the role and the demands on the self are out of balance as a result of perceived threats, (as earlier mentioned, how easy it is to “go native” in threatening or
dangerous situations). Gold suggested that the balance can be restored by appropriate introspection, and this can be done in two different ways. Either you use the role to protect the self, or you use the self as a source of new behavior to protect the role. Gold explained this as follows:
The case of using role to protect self from perceived threat is one of acute self-consciousness, a matter of diminishing over-sensitivity to self-demand by introspectively noting corresponding demands of role. The case of using self to protect role from perceived threat is one of acute role-consciousness, a matter of diminishing over-sensitivity to role-demands by introspectively indicating that they are disproportionately larger than those of self. (Gold, 1958, p.218)
5.5.4.3 Role “Threats”
In the operation area, I had to play my role in varied situations, from having a barbeque together with colleagues, joking , having small talk, to being threatened by weapon at a checkpoint by (an assumed drugged) Afghan Policeman at night, or driving on dirt roads in a hostile environment where there were often IEDs, not knowing what could happen. According to Gold, playing a role in varied situations will from time to time result in threat experiences that impair the field workers’ effectiveness. He goes on to state that threatened or stressed situations can make the field worker unable to meet role-taking and role-playing demands, such as using experiences and
observations to raise meaningful questions and perceive meaningful answers.
This happened to me. This said, the threat in my case never came from the environment I was a part of during my research, it was most often a threat from the outside, a joint threat, which of course also made me closer to my studied colleagues in the internal environment.
5.5.4.4 Going “Native”
Instead of being threatened from the internal organizational environment, I felt a great degree of trust. This represented a new challenge, knowing that too much mutual trust can lead to what I, as a researcher, and my colleagues, as informants, may interact in a way that the informants identify too much with me as a researcher, and become too much of an observer themselves. Or, more likely in my research situation, I could tend to identify too much with the informants and lose the research perspective by “going native.” The knowledge that over-identifying with an informant or going native is more common when the researcher is inexperienced made me very aware of this aspect (Bernard, 2006). Still, I knew this would be difficult. Military
camaraderie is very strong, and is one of the pillars that make military education and thinking sustainable. With this camaraderie in ones
“backbone,” living in dangerous environment with many external threats, ties among the teams easily become very tight and strong. This increased the challenge to maintain my academic eye. What would happen if I went native?
Would my research be worthless?
Bernard (2006) asked whether going native means loss of objectivity. His own answer was: perhaps, but not necessarily. He suggested that objectivity, by definition is a myth, and one should worry more about producing credible data and strong analysis, and less about whether going native is good or bad.
Going native may also be a paradox because the researcher is seeking the viewpoint of the actors in the field, and at same time supposed to not go native. However, participant observation allows the researcher to “know” in a unique way because she becomes a participant in what is observed, and at the same time attempts to remain an observer of action and behaviors. Bernard argued that this maintains a certain distance between the people studied and the researcher.
It was important for me as a fieldworker to focus on and try to recognize limitations and potential problems in my own ability to develop relationships in various roles and situations, and to find out how to adjust my own role repertories to my research aims. I found some comfort in Gold noting: “when the researcher begins to utilize theory of role and reflects on her own assets and shortcomings in the field, a purposeful dealing with challenges in controlling own interactions with informants in all likelihood will occur”
(Gold, 1958).
Interviews 5.5.5
Wolcott (2008) suggested maintaining a distinction between the two major activities in fieldwork, participant observation and interviewing, although they are closely interrelated. Interviewing, in a broad sense, can include everything from casual conversation to the formal structured interview. By making the distinction among them, Walcott argued for the importance of interview techniques and the fieldworker’s conscious decision to decide how to use them.
5.5.5.1 Field Conversations and Interviews
During my second stay in the field, I chiefly conducted interviews, but was also allowed to join meetings. The fieldwork was limited to 14 intensive days with semi-structured interviews. I had already gathered data in 16
unstructured qualitative (explorative) interviews during my stay as participant observer. After coming home from my first fieldwork, grouping and analyzing my data, I had a better understanding of what I was looking for in this second round, though I was open to that upcoming data could influence the weight, importance or priorities in the data gathered. The interviews from my first fieldwork were more an interview as conversation, field conversation (Wadel, 1991), or an unstructured interview with a non-standardized format (Guba and Lincoln, 1981). These interviews lasted about two hours and were constructed around 5-6 main topics. Aase and Fossåskaret (2007) emphasized the
advantage of field conversations, which are dialogues characterized as natural conversations with the questions consciously selected in order to understand the setting more entirely. I started these field conversations very late in my deployment, because I needed to have an overall situation awareness and understanding. Besides, I needed to be accepted as a team-member and to know that the informants trusted me.
I had produced an interview guide for my interviews (Appendix 6 and 7). The interview guide listed topics I wanted to cover, though I had a very open dialogue to make it possible for my respondents to share knowledge they viewed as relevant. During the interviews, I decided to be flexible in order to adjust to the different personalities and create an atmosphere for trust. This way, I was able to get the information I needed and also allowed to gather potentially relevant information. I often let the interviewees tell me their story, including their good and bad experiences, adding my questions along in the story. This functioned quite well in order to have my interviewees open up, but could have meant that some valuable details could have been left out.
5.5.5.2 Timing and Access
In round two, I was more confident that I knew the environment, despite being familiar with the military view on civilians coming in from outside, which are often considered as an interference. The fact that I knew some
officers who were still in the area from my first stay helped me to get the needed acceptance also as a researcher.
Even if this was a chaotic and stressed period, I had put some pressure on the idea of going back to the area in February/March 2011 for interviews—when the main military rotation was ongoing. This was due to that I wanted to catch the people who had finished their deployment. They had fresh field
experience, and had probably mentally also evaluated their deployment.
This was a good approach, even though I would like to have been able to carry out more interviews, especially on the strategic and tactical level, to widen my understanding and discover more relations and connections.
Unfortunately, this was not possible due to the security situation. The Norwegian unit (NCC) made clear that if I was going anywhere, they had to do some assessment before making any decision on my freedom of
movement. From their point of view, I would be taking unnecessary resources since they had to accompany me when I was moving around in a bigger area.
Nevertheless, using these 14 days, I conducted 25 interviews, representing individuals focused on the tactical, operational, and strategic level. The operational level, RCN, however was the main focus due to the restrictions in my freedom of movement.109
5.5.5.3 Practical Execution
I never met anyone who refused to be interviewed; some interviews could not be conducted due to other obstacles, but the attitude towards my research was surprisingly positive. I never used a tape-recorder; all interviews were
handwritten, and most of them were transferred to my PC while I was in the field. Some of the interviews were conducted in a CIMIC office I was allowed to use as a base for my research, but most were conducted in the office of the interviewed, in the welfare area, or outside the barracks on a bench. Even if I was closely followed, I was always allowed to be alone with my informant during the interviews. I also conducted an interview on a flight from Afghanistan to Turkey. These interviews had a timeframe of approximately two hours; most often I asked for one hour, but it seemed that when we had
109 See appendix 5 for list of interviewed personnel.
been talking for some time, many of my informants became very talkative. I saw this as an engagement in their situation and tasks.
5.5.5.4 Atmosphere and Trust
I also noticed that as soon as the interviewees got known to my military background, the language and the terminology changed quite noticeably; the atmosphere became more relaxed and the talk more open. The fact that I was familiar with the military, the local jargon, and the humor made the
atmosphere of the interviews better. This was obviously one of my benefits to get information “behind the scene.” I also was trusted with information on which the interviewees did not want to be quoted. On the other hand, I had to address my preconceptions about what I perceived as a shared culture with the officers I interviewed; I had to be very aware of my proficiency in the military language and acronyms so I did not overlook nuances due to the more relaxed and known situation, compared with the situation during interviews with civilian actors.
Back home again, I conducted some follow up interviews. This was necessary to get vital contributions. I conducted 4 follow up interviews during the summer and autumn 2011, two by face to face meetings and two by phone.
5.5.5.5 My Informants
My informants were primarily RCN officers and civilians engaged in civil military coordination issues, as they were naturally the easiest ones to make contact with. These soldiers and civilians represented levels from RCN management to Tactical CIMIC teams (TCTs) operating out in the field.
Further, officers from IJC working with civil military coordination issues, information processing, and planning of projects were interviewed. PRT officers (mostly CIMIC officers) from the German, Norwegian, Swedish and Hungarian PRT were also represented in the interviews. This was to ensure the three levels from PRTs representing the ground level—RCN as regional and IJC as the Headquarter in Kabul—were represented. Further, civilian coordinating actors as representatives from the UN, USAID and GTZ were interviewed to illuminate how ISAF coordination efforts were perceived from a civilian point of view. Unfortunately, I did not manage to contact
representatives from the Afghan authorities for an interview. I planned to get representatives from the areas I considered important representing the ISAF organization and its counterparts (but due to unforeseen occurrences and the rapid changes and priorities which often characterize a conflict area, this was difficult to achieve.) My informants were young and elderly, less and more experienced soldiers, and represented both genders and several different ranks.