Long term anthropological fieldwork(s)

A decision to answer the research questions through data about the changing goals, practices and actor experiences in the different elements of the yearly cycle of the program made the choice of performing a long term anthropological fieldwork relevant. With this general methodological approach and as a consequence of applying a reflexive ethnography and critical realist perspective as discussed earlier, it was sought to produce deeper insights and understandings of the social relations and material frameworks for the interplay between the pedagogical practice and the youth agency, learning and identity formation.

The longest period of fieldwork took place in 7 sequential months and covered the initial recruitment process of the youth, the 10 week extensive ‘spring internship’ and the 7 week intensive ‘summer job training’. After the fieldwork followed a period of 2 months of working with the data material, primarily transcribing interviews and systematizing of field notes. After this I returned to the field and a further period of fieldwork was performed in the last 2 out of the 7 weeks of the extensive ‘fall business management positions’-program phase. Finally, a longitudinal follow-up study was performed in the fall of the following year.

For the first 7 years of its existence the program had been managed by 2 core staff that founded the program. Both were trained as organic farmers and had several years of experience from different food and social justice organizations. During the fieldwork year, two more persons were part of the

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team of adult staff. One was a Food Corps²⁰ volunteer that began her first of a 2 year function in the program. The other was hired as a substitute to one of the original staff members that went on a 4 week parental leave in the beginning of the summer program. Introducing these 2 new persons into the program structure and practice made the specific program year atypical in the sense that staff was in a role of having to communicate the practice of the program pedagogy to these two new colleagues. This I saw as a big advantage for the study as it meant that I was able to take part in a number of presentations and discussions of the program pedagogy that may not have been explicated in the same way had it only been the two ‘old’ staff persons that were running the program alone.

In the following, I will reflect upon how the long term fieldwork as a basic methodology was applied, how the research focus on ‘pedagogical practice’, ‘agency’, ‘identity’ and ‘learning’ have been guiding perspectives in participant observations as well as in ethnographic interviews. The reflections will illustrate the challenge of moving from theoretically informed research questions to the design and practice of a researcher role that can constructively interact with the actors in the field and become a co-constructor of the empirical reality. I will also include reflections on how, during the fieldwork process, I have worked analytically and dynamically refined and expanded my focus between the long period of fieldwork in and in the follow-up study one year later.

Figure 1: Cycle of main program activities covered in the fieldwork

Prior to making the final decision on which sites to include in the study it was considered to also incorporate the high school context in order to explore youth perspectives on the relation between the formal high school and the more informal learning context of the program. It was decided to have the program as the primary site to incorporate the potentially relevant significance of the high

20 FoodCorps is an American non-profit organization whose mission is to work with communities to "connect kids to healthy food in school." Source: https://foodcorps.org/about. “FoodCorps places service members in limited-resource communities where they spend a year working with teachers and students to establish farm to school programs, incorporate nutrition education into school curricula, plant school gardens, and engage in other initiatives to improve school food”(Bittman 2011).

Outreach and recruitment in local

high schools (February)

Spring Internship 3 hrs/week for 10 weeks between March and June App. 50 youth

Summer Job training 28 hrs/week for 7

weeks between June and August

App. 20 youth

Fall Business Positions Between 3 and 9

hrs/week September/October

through November App. 20 youth

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school environment in the ethnographic interviews with the youth. This choice of the program as the primary site for the fieldwork did not mean, however, that the study turned out to be mono-sited. A central part of the pedagogical practice is to situate several of the activities in different locations in the local community - to contextualize the learning in specific ways. The study therefore de facto turned out to be multi-sited.

This next part of the section will present and reflect on the different perspectives on participation observation as a continuum and researcher positioning and how these have guided me. The actual application of participant observation in the study situates itself with reference to main three main points in general methodological discussions about argument for the value of this method:

The first point is that the researcher can identify the possible discrepancies between what informants say they do and what they actually do, and through these questions to how meaning is constructed and attributed to social action.

The second point is the discussion on applying different methods in pursuit of methodological triangulation in order to produce a more substantial perspective on the situations and practices in this study by using concrete events as a frame of reference in the interviews, and to design the interview guides. This will be discussed below.

The third point is the discussion on participant observation as a continuum, as discussed by Davies (2008:83): “Complete observer; observer-as-participant; participant-as-observer; or complete participant. These four roles are “sometimes conceived as if on a scale measuring degree of acceptance by the people being studied, gradually achieved in the course of long-term fieldwork”

(Ibid). An important point is here made by Davies in the way she refers to classical anthropological discussions of this continuum where a degree of full participation was seen as an ideal sign of acceptance in the field –thus supporting an argument of the study as resulting in less reactivity.

Davies’ point here is that a better indication of good research is “the nature, circumstances and quality of the observation” (Davies 2008:83) and further that “Such observation must also include reflexive observation – that is, the ethnographer needs to be sensitive to the nature of, and conditions governing, their own participation as a part of their developing understanding of the people they study. Complete participation, even when the researcher’s identity is disguised, is not a guarantee that the researcher is not unduly influencing the data” (Ibid).

In the relation to researcher role design and positioning, I aspired to develop a role sensitive to ethical considerations – and expectations towards me as a participant that did not disturb too much

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– following the concerns of staff to let me in in the first place. I decided to focus on the co-worker role and then slowly introduce and practice the researcher role. My strategy was thus not to avoid to

‘go native’ but actively strive to being accepted – by staff as well as by youth by approaching the program activities with sympathy and a strive to be immersed into it, engaging my own body in the work, and at the same time maintain a degree of critical reflection on this process.

This reflective positioning of the researcher was framed by choosing apprenticeship as the essential method and a strive to be accepted as a co-worker along with the youth through participation in all the same practical tasks and slowly build new skills around farming and cooking as the dominant program activities. Apprenticeship as an essential method has been argued by different anthropologists as a channel for achieving social inclusion and opportunities to navigate and chart interpersonal power, access to emic types of knowledge, first-hand experience of the pedagogical milieu and avenues to require cultural proficiency – and because apprenticeship includes mechanisms to socialize emerging skills it encourages informants to collaborate with the ethnographer and allow for critique and locally-meaningful feedback of the ethnographer’s performance in familiar, locally-meaningful ways (Downey, Dalidowicz et al. 2015).

In relation to the concrete way I participated in the program activities, some specific reflections are important to mention as they are central to an understanding of how I interacted with the youth and ended up having ‘recruited’ a group of youth as key informants.

It turned out to be of crucial and positive significance that the participation took place in a very practically and embodied context, very different from how the research would’ve been in a class room. The general and diverse character of the program activities gave many opportunities both for me to make choices in how to participate actively in the practical tasks around farming and cooking – and for the youth to make choices to work with me.

In the context of the more theoretically oriented workshops, I often chose to maintain a more observant role but not holding back if staff wanted to use me as an example – “how do you do this in Denmark??” - or asked me to be part of one of the 2-4 person groups of youth that often were assigned to make small presentations etc.

An essential factor for my positioning springs from the both applied and scientific foundations of the research and how this was concretely communicated as a part of my introduction to the youth. A central element here was the way I was introduced by the staff as coming from Denmark to study the

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program both as a researcher and an educational practitioner with an emphasis on my hope of using the research to establish a similar program for Danish youth.

The actual performance of my researcher and participant role was also reflected upon by the staff regularly as part of the weekly staff planning and evaluation meetings where a returning theme on the agenda was staff giving each other feed-back. The forthcoming ethnography chapter will present a number of tales with descriptions and interpretations of this.

With these general reflections on participant observation and researcher positioning, I will proceed with a brief overview of the concrete and different activities in which I participated with a special focus on the development of the participating and observing researcher role and the dynamics of my positioning. The following ethnography chapter will provide a more detailed description, contextualization and interpretation of these phases with a focus on the pedagogical practice.

- The outreach process: participation in introduction meetings in high schools and the subsequent recruitment meetings with the local contact teachers where it was discussed which of the applying youth that should be hired. Participation in this phase gave insight into the values and challenges that staff and contact teachers express and navigate in relation to and during the process of selecting the youth. The dialogue between the director and the teacher also gave insights into a consensus about the learning impact of the program in the way this was related to a discussion about whom to hire in order to decide for the ones that would ‘have the most to gain’.

- The spring internship: Participation in the first meeting in high schools with the newly hired youth.

At these meetings staff also presented me and I presented myself and the purpose of my presence during the weeks to come. As it will be later described and discussed, the spring internship is the entry point to the program and positive completion of this as the prerequisite for the possibility to choose to apply for participation in the following phases. As such this program phase is a period, where the youth are introduced to the programs main activities and forms of learning in a kind of extensive way where the following summer program continues with the same framework but in a much more intensive way. Thus the spring internship is a period of introduction and trying out – and that with a social dynamic of getting to know each other through the different activities that are performed. A methodological point here is that where this was a period where youth and staff learned about each other, it was also a social process where I as a researcher got to know the youth and the staff and vice versa. As earlier agreed upon in the negotiations with the staff, my initial role in this phase was to ‘find my legs’ as an intern – not as staff and not as youth but something in between - with different practical assignments. A very practical role for me in this very early phase of

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the fieldwork was assigned to by the staff who asked me to pick up youth from two different high schools in my car and drive them to the farm two afternoons every week. In general I participated in all of the activities in the spring internship: the games and ‘ice-breakers’ that opened every program afternoon, the different workshops and the practical work with farming and cooking – all with the ambition of being accepted as a natural part of the picture and slowly build the trust and gain the acceptance necessary for the further development of the researcher role. Further reflections on the researcher role and recruitment of key informants for the ethnographic interviews will be presented below.

An element parallel to the trajectory of the spring internship in which I participated was the training of a group of youth that had completed the program cycle the previous year and now had been hired as ‘junior staff’ as a form of peer-to-peer’ educators. Outcomes of participating in this process is also described and interpreted in the next chapter.

- The summer job training program

The participation in the ‘summer job training’ mirrored the intensity of this part of the program. Here a group of 20 youth were hired for a 4 work day schedule spanning over 7 weeks that thus covered the majority of the high school summer holiday. The basic framework of the spring internship with farming, cooking and workshops was continued but also expanded with further elements especially around public speaking, presentation, communication and feed-back techniques.

An element where I also participated was the weekly planning and evaluation meetings for adult and junior staff which gave an opportunity to follow how the staff was reflecting on the general and daily practice and how the function of junior staff was performed, for example how staff encouraged the junior staff with feed-back on reflecting on individual youth in need of special assistance.

- The fall business management positions

In the phase of the ‘fall business management positions’ I mainly participated in the ‘harvest job’, the

‘farm stand job’, the ‘flower business job’ and in the ‘blast job’ – the latter taking place in different school and community gardens in the county. This participation had two purposes, one being to get first-hand insight into how this program phase was practiced and experienced by staff and youth and on this basis formulate and add specific topics for the round of interviews that were scheduled in this phase. Another purpose was to reconnect with the youth prior to the actual conducting of the interviews, one aspect being that I had been away from the field for 2 months and thus acknowledge

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the potential need for boosting the relations and the trust that was built during the spring and summer.