I met with Dr. Conca on Tuesday, December 4th from 2:50pm to 4:00pm regarding the progress I’ve made on my research project. The weekend prior, I emailed him my Interpretivist Research Design Sketch, as I decided on Interpretivist discourse analysis as my methodology of choice moving forward in 306. I asked for advice on how to analyze text in order to decipher to meaning-making symbols and representations. Dr.Conca, recommended that “interrogate the text”—a term quite common among interpretivist researchers, meaning that a researcher would treat the text as through it were an interviewee. A tool used in this interrogation would be a questionnaire, much like the questions outlined in the Carabine reading on lone mothers which we analyzed in class.[1] The questions that make up this questionnaire should act as a filtration device, for example: What does this text tell me about the abilities of local people? Is there an underlying criminality imposed on slum dwellers? How does the UN and the World Bank speak about the employment and livelihoods of slum dwellers? What does building back “better” specifically entail? These questions are mere examples, but I know that if anytime I see something in the text that connects to the contents of my questionnaire, I should “bag it and tag it.”
Another concern I brought up with Dr. Conca was how I should address the counter-narrative. My interpretivist design sketch is a bit unique in that it focuses on one specific discourse—the official discourse of “build back better” imposed by the United Nations and World Bank. I did not necessarily know how to incorporate narratives that opposed it, or even the extent by which I was required to do so. Dr. Conca said that doing a full-blown comparative analysis of the official narrative and the counter-narrative would be too overwhelming and advised to instead use the counter-narrative to interrogate the official narrative: Is “building back better” actually producing “better”? By whose standards? To learn more about the counter-narrative, local discourse, Dr. Conca recommended I read a book titled The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster by Jonathan M. Katz.[2] I will be doing this over the break.
Furthermore, regarding further planning to consider, I was recommended to seek further expertise from the AU Community. Among the people he recommended was my International Development professor, Dr. Freeman—who has done extensive ethnographic studies in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. In addition, there is a graduate professor in the School of International Service, who helped create the Flash Environmental Impact Tool used by USAID in post-disaster recovery for rebuilding physical infrastructure. I will need to ask for approval in order to formally interview them for my research project.
Work Cited
[1] Carabine, Jean. “Chapter 7. ‘Unmarried Motherhood 1830-1990: A Genealogical Analysis’ 3.2,” in Discourse as Data, 2001, 267.
[2] Katz, Jonathan M. The Big Truck That Went by How the World Came to save Haiti and Left behind a Disaster. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Bibliography
Carabine, Jean. “Chapter 7. ‘Unmarried Motherhood 1830-1990: A Genealogical Analysis’ 3.2,” in Discourse as Data, 2001, 267.
Katz, Jonathan M. The Big Truck That Went by How the World Came to save Haiti and Left behind a Disaster. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
