Our voice is our data
Researching innovation in the informal sector requires engaging with communities to understand the nature of their businesses, which often includes household enterprises ‘hidden’ from view. One approach is to use participatory visual methods, which allow researchers to involve communities in the entire research process, often using digital technology. In March 2019, experts discussed key principles that underpin this approach at a policy seminar in Sweetwaters, a semi-rural area in KwaZulu-Natal. Dr Il-haam Petersen reports.
Digital technology has enabled faster and more effective communication between people from all sectors of society. In research, it has enabled participatory visual methods whereby researchers and participants co-produce knowledge with the help of digital technology. Such engaged research has the potential to produce meaningful data with deeper social impact. At the seminar, five key principles emerged to guide such approaches.
The first principle is participatory inclusion. “In the community, we are the experts and our voices are our data,” said Ntombozuko Kraai, founder of local NGO African Women Rising.
When we engage community participants in the research process from the start – that is, from the process of refining the research topic, questions and design – we improve the usefulness of the knowledge collected. Thereafter, fieldwork, analysis and dissemination become processes of engagement and co-production.
By involving community participants, we can increase the chances of conducting research that addresses practical questions and can be used to address development challenges that are important to them.
The impact may be as big as a shift in mindset or a solution for improving service delivery, or as small as facilitating linkages in the community.
A second principle is reflexivity. Prof Heidi van Rooyen, the executive director of the HSRC’s Human and Social Development programme, summed up a key message of the seminar: the value of challenging ‘traditional ways of conceiving of how we know’. Participatory approaches force researchers to think critically about their own assumptions about the concepts they are using and the topics they wish to address.
Presenting the findings of a project on engagement and knowledge flows, researchers of the HSRC’s Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) highlighted how, through a participatory approach, an innovation hub located in a Cape Town township can be seen as more than just an infrastructure development.
It is a space where people from different sociocultural backgrounds, and with different identities and needs, interact and shape how the hub is used.
Photo-stories (photographs accompanied by narratives) co-produced with the research participants revealed some of the unintended barriers to access and the ways in which people worked around them to make the space useful to them.
The project identified specific ways for improving the contribution of such hubs to small business development and youth development in townships.
This is my story
One of the digital stories produced through the research was played at the seminar. The storyteller, Grace Dila, an informal business owner from Philippi township in Cape Town, proudly stated, “This is my story”, and impressed the audience with a detailed description of the ways in which she had drawn on formal knowledge and used innovation to grow her business and employ people.
Since digital storytelling emphasises participatory engagement, reflexivity and co-production, the team has built strong relationships with locals working in the informal business sector.
The individual stories informed the questions of the standardised questionnaire and fieldwork tools for CeSTII’s baseline survey on innovation in the informal sector. This points to the third and fourth principles of flexibility and openness to change and learning from and with participants.
Useful tools for empowering community-based actors
Diana Sanchez Betancourt, a senior researcher in the HSRC’s Democracy and Governance programme, emphasised the value of unintended positive impact on individuals.
A challenge is that interventions and research are often designed around what can be scaled up. Sanchez Betancourt described the value of a community scorecard methodology, piloted in Cape Town, which underscores the importance of the relational and human aspects of technological tools.
Through the community scorecard methodology, the research team could develop a set of indicators, in collaboration with the local municipality and the community, which could be used for improving service delivery and, with the use of technology, enabled citizen engagement and real-time feedback on services.
Creating linkages and building local networks stimulate the development of local capabilities. The fifth principle is to find ways to promote agency. Creating platforms for community-based actors to voice their opinions and share their stories is a key way to do this.
For example, through a consortium of European and South African universities, an online platform has been developed where individuals can showcase their digital stories on their social innovations. The initiative was funded by the European Union Erasmus+ Capacity Building initiative, said Dr Deidre van Rooyen of the University of the Free State.
‘New’ role for the HSRC?
Bibi Bouwman, the chair of the South African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum emphasised that it is part of universities’ mandate to learn from and engage with the communities around them.
But, how much consideration has been given to the importance of engagement for science councils to perform their mandates? And is applied research the same as engaged research?
The research presented at the seminar showed how, through engaged research, the HSRC has acted as an intermediary by stimulating linkages to improve the usefulness of knowledge produced, and contributed to building local capabilities.
Have we considered this potentially new role for the HSRC in fulfilling its mandate in the inclusive national system of innovation envisioned in the 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation?
The five principles highlighted at the Sweetwaters seminar are potentially useful pointers not only for how we can “include community voices much more strongly”, as Van Rooyen noted, but for how we can improve the usefulness of our research and thus our impact on the lived realities of people in our communities.
Links to the YouTube videos of the seminar:
Author: Dr Il-haam Petersen is a senior research specialist at CeSTII and leader of a National Research Foundation-funded project investigating the capabilities of universities and science councils to generate useful knowledge and the capabilities in communities to use formal knowledge to improve their living conditions. The research discussed in this article is based on this project.
ipetersen@hsrc.ac.za