WORKING GROUP REPORTS Tuesday, June 20th, 2000

Theme: Quantitative Methods and the American Eel Fishery   Working Group A June 20th, 2000 Developing Research Questions What People Know About Ecological Knowledge? 1. Definition of Domain, Boundaries 2. Focus of Research, facts and/or processes, implications for research methods 3. Who are the Actors? Who would like to be involved? Indirect and direct actors Need for ability for comparison Marginal groups 4. What is the ecological discourse? Political relationships and power struggles 5. How to represents findings? Models Shared knowledge and conflicts 6. Context of knowledge? e.g., experience of high catches of lobster 7. Existence of core cultural knowledge 8. What are the engines of knowledge? e.g., processes behind the facts Development of Research Methods 1. Interview Frameworks: Unstructured __ Structured Qualitative ____ Quantitative Exploratory ___ Explanatory Identification of actors through the exploratory phase. Meaning of repetition of ideas How to allow informants to speak their own ideas? e.g., Videos, autophotography 2. Methods acceptable to informants Joint utility Agenda of researchers? (Perhaps part of the stages - building of partnerships, etc.?) 3. Insiders and outsiders in a research team Impact on methods and acceptance of research by informants 4. Building a level of trust More comfortable at the unstructured level? Follow up with more structured? 5. Different entry points (e.g., structured and unstructured) for different groups? Possibly not 6. Use of a research teams? 7. Use of unstructured and semi-structured techniques to allow use of informants own language. 8. Loss of information in the structured phase? Possibly only marginal information? Design methodology to include this information if desired Role of marginality Stratification of samples Relativity of marginality 9. Mapping Different maps needed for different informants and purposes Conceptualize problem to define maps Are maps accepted by the informants Maps are one form of visual aid Tools of assistance in interviews Cognitive mapping and self drawing Problem of scale? e.g., concentration of lobster traps in small area. 10. Elicitation techniques Sentence frames (see p.143 of Additional Resources) Concepts and statements taken from semi structured interviews and used as prompts in a structured phase. Possibility of untruths? Allows models of logical relationships (arrived through use of matrices). Text analysis Follow unstructured and semi-structured phase 11. Observation through socialization Knowledges and understanding through social interaction Need and understanding of the underlying processes and networks   Group B Tuesday, June 20, 2000 Group Meeting: Focus: Section 2,4 -Lobster & Eel. Section 4: Methods: Historical Methods kinds of historical methods. Timelines have to be established Themes have to be established. I.e.) Generally World-Events: i.e.. World War and subsequent changes Technological Shifts and Impacts: in fisheries Legal Regime Changes : policy changes Land-Use shifts Scales of reference have to be established: Temporal and spacial Acknowledge the shifts in the historical paradigms/perspectives. (way that the information was collected at a particular time) -Acknowledge strengths and weaknesses in the particular collections. -One of the important issues is the "Accessibility" of documents.. what is available, what has been restricted and why. Oral History I.e.) Contemporary interviews 1) Collect the Memory of ecology 2) Memory of Community/ Institution/Agency at a certain time 3) Ground these memories in archival source references: through newspapers, court-records, Government records/Scientific Archives (Data and reports), church records, other contemporary sources. 4) Collect Individual Biography - interaction with the resource. Ethnographic Methods: Geneological - individual & at least 3 members of family, in relation to boats definition: Construction of life histories through interviews. Location on a timeline is critical. Occupational timeline Family Trees (spacial and occupational patterns) Intellectual/Science/ geneology - i.e.)who is on the committee Management involvement geneology as a Method and its relation to Ecological Knowledge. locating people within social conditions i.e.) Birth Order certain conditions may dictate what you learn and how you learn it Systematic Approach is necessary -Soft Entry: people care about this Advantage - Can provide something for the family -Where knowledge is located within a social structure. Community (Local and Scientific) Entry: New topic for discussion Identify Gate-keepers -those that stand in the way of access. *Be aware of local political issues/tensions CAUTION: DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Local Collaborators matter. I.e.)who you know affects your relationship with the community Biologists: where they work, location identification important to the community Key Informant - new method for discussion Issue: how do you identify? *may not always be on boats (merchants, processors, consumers.. crew as well as skippers) Snowball Technique: how to find person/s Definition: A Systematic qualitative method CAUTION: Must have a systematic way of doing this, selection of key informants (justification is necessary) *Multiple entry points 1. People in positions of power w/in the community 2. People who are respected by the Community 3. Age 4.Sex differentiation and access within fisheries 5. Level of education -formal and personal, professional experience. *applies to institutions/agencies as well as communities Participatory Methods: New topic for discussion Definition: What is contained in the FAO document, means inclusion(community organizations, etc. and the social researcher/team ), a process. -work out the approach methods. There is a dynamic and a dialogue between the two. Condition: cannot be an exercise in confirmation, must be designed in order to have use. Way of developing capacity, not just a one-off situation Example: (Side-bar Insert) Case study of the Teachers and the Oil industry/Conditions of the Workers in Louisiana. *Using teachers who were part of the community as researchers to go into the communities via identification process through the students & interviews. -presented their findings to levels of the oil industry: social scientists by osmosis/training. -project had templates: i.e.) outline for areas of inquiry. -occupational timeline with responses. Methodology: Training is an issue. Researcher becomes facilitator. Participant Observation: New topic for discussion Researcher becomes directly involved in the process to learn about the existing conditions...working on the boats, harbour. Issue: Can get a sense of how the players locate themselves in the process. -can get a sense of the local knowledge of the area from the participants as well as further knowledge of research leads/issues. i.e.) what to ask. -when it is a part of subsistance - tendency to gather information concerning community seasonal patterns. -Issue: Participant Observation concerns private knowledge that usually stays within the community. Researcher has to know WHO to send in order to get genuine access to knowledge. -potential grey area? -Participants observation is useful for the understand of the transmittal of ecological knowledge especially in the conjuror mode. -Long-term method of sociology of Science. Learning the language and culture of the specific culture/ related to ÔLab Studies' Q:- How to avoid asking questions which are none of our business?? Guideline Insert: Ethics of Gathering Information A:- Example: Traditional Use Study from the Mi'kmaq Nation. -Individual knowledge kept separate for personal/economic reasons, but aggregate is OK to share within the Nation (what is common) A:-Example: Fishery Ground may be bounded. People examine the actions of other (viewed). Community understands but will present another picture to external viewers. Methods for Understanding Transmittal of Knowledge. a.k.a. Network Analysis -Tracing specific pieces of information within and between communities. -Has to do with political identities and economics. Related to Macro structures of development. Comparative Analysis: Controlling for X, Y & Z/A, B, C, Mapping is an important issue...   Group A: Plenary Discussion Tuesday, June 20, 2000 Started by talking about how we can develop research questions. What do people know about EK, stages go through to develop questions. 1. Definition of domain (boundaries) 2. Focus of research-focus on facts or processes and implications for research methods. 3. Who are the actors? Who would like to be involved? Indirect/direct actors-who we think is involved, who might like to be involved. Need for ability for comparison, symmetry in methodology. Inclusion of marginal groups as well. 4.What is the ecological discourse: power struggles and political relationships. 5. How to represent findings? Models? Shared knowledge and conflicts-use to show this re people and their types of knowledge. 6. Context of knowledge-experience of high catches of lobster as an example-current lobster fishers so the context of their knowledge is high catches of lobster. 7. Any core cultural knowledge shared among most of the group-other knowledges around it, might overlap with this. 8. Hat are the what are the processes that are working behind the knowledge-process versus facts collecting information that is factual about ecological matters or trying to understand how people collect intellectual models about the ecology what drives them to do this, shapes the outcome of this process- what informs the cognitive maps that they have. If someone had a chaos theory of ecosystems versus homeostatic theory? -also distinguished between idiosyncratic knowledge. Maritimers sometimes think the most nb thing know about a person is where they are from-ask that first because have a cognitive map like that, beginning of a conversation, what causes these people to think that where you live is nb-social factor-not enough to know the geographic landmarks, not knowledge of landmarks, what they mean, also the process that makes them significant (the landmarks).   Development of Research Methods. 1. Interview frameworks: Unstructured-------------structured interviews Qualitative----------------Quantitative interview Exploratory__________Explanatory Identification of actors through the exploratory phase? Meaning of repetition of ideas-in later phases, if an idea is repeated might reflect core knowledge 2. How to allow the informants to "speak their own ideas" without too much influence-videos? Autophotography? Videos might be a problem all watch t.v. because of this definite ideas about the language tv uses to speak to us, videos, language mediated by corporations, etc. Jeff which is auto photography-give the informants cameras and they go and take photos of what they feel is important and then respond to them later-risk: use of cameras might frame what participant thought was important. 3. Methods must be acceptable to the informants-joint utility agenda of researchers? Needs to be known to the informants, perhaps in the later phase of actually building the research and developing partnerships. 4. Role of insiders and outsiders in a research team and impact on methods and acceptance of research 5. Building a level of rust, more comfortable at the unstructured level, follow up with more structure once trust 6.Different entry points for different groups but possibly not. If have very set questions, only allowed to respond to these, possibility some information lost, only marginal? If that is the case, need to be some way during research to identify marginal knowledge 7. Use of research teams? 8. Mapping; different maps might be needed for different informants and purposes, conceptualise the problem to define the map and will the maps be accepted by the informants or not. 9. Map only one form of visual aid. Can be used in different ways, can present to informants or they can present you with a cognitive map. Problem of scale-example: if got thousands of lobster pots in small area-hard to show on the map. 10. Elicitation techniques: sentence frames - pg. 143 of additional resources. In this some of the concepts and statements taken from semi-structured interviews and used as prompts in a structured phase. Possibility of untruths from individuals, groups as a whole. Not too likely here? Allow models of logical relationships arrived at through the use of matrices. 11. Text analysis following un or semi-structured phase. Interviews analysed for certain key words and phrases and relationship to words in the or to context. 12. Use of observation through socialization: direct observation communicated through people socialization, another type of knowledge that can be tapped, to understand needs to be recognition of the underlying processes and networks. Petter-first question-what is that question-intent: in these setting, what do people know about the settings, is there a way to talk about this in an introduction. Johannes model-where do observation on the actual grounds, the grounds, boats to elicit information, shape discussion. And co-authorship. Or taking transcripts back, this is what you said-I think you mean this but...-collaboration and going backwards and forwards when to get the demographic information that you need for sampling?-   Group B: Started discussing the different methodologies-We focussed on methods. Tried to give the strengths and weaknesses, etc. historical methodologies-symmetry, shaping oral histories, ground truthing anthropological perspectives techniques-snowballing, key informants community: participant observation participatory research. Public private spheres of knowledge Did not talk at all about quantitative research-from context through to ethnographic records to key informant. We spent a lot of time on geneology, interdisciplinary methodology. Fleshing out weaknesses and precautions. Moving in the direction of wanting to deal with maps and wanted to deal with quantitative approaches and comparative approaches. Only touched on network analysis as part of such research. No time to spend on analysis or on formulating questions.