CODESRIA
Sub-Regional
Methodology Workshops for Social Research in Africa
2013 Session for
East and Southern Africa
Theme: Fields and
Theories of Qualitative Research
Date: 23
– 27 September 2013
Venue: Nairobi,
Kenya
Call for
Applications
Introduction
One of the major
weaknesses of contemporary social research in and about Africa is its lack of
careful attention to epistemological and methodological issues. This weakness
has made itself manifest at a time when the increasing complexities of the
social dynamics that shape livelihood on the continent and the wider global
context call for a greater investment of effort in the refinement of the
procedures and instruments of investigation and analyses, with a view to
achieving a more accurate and holistic assessment of rapidly changing
realities. But instead of such an investment of effort, we are increasingly
witnessing an astonishing neglect or misapplication of theory and method on
such a scale and with such a frequency that calls for intervention.
At one level, the neglect that has taken place has comprised a serious
trivialisation of basic research protocols and their reduction to a fetishistic
evocation of superficial recommendations, thinly disguised with ritualistic
appeals to rigour that are not reflected in the analyses undertaken. At another
level, methodological issues have simply been instrumentalised in ways that
ensure that narrow ideological considerations and pre-determined outcomes take
precedence over science. Furthermore, it is not uncommon nowadays to come
across studies in which methodological questions are outrightly ignored in the
name of an alleged specificity or immediacy that amounts to the exclusion of
African social realities from universal debates on the validity of scientific
frames of analyses. The result is that in those debates, studies produced on
Africa come across as a mix of purely literary discourses without an empirical
anchorage, or anecdotes hidden under a “scholarly” discourse that is not only
pretentious but also vacuous. Consequently, the knowledge produced is bereft of
heuristic value and simply becomes an element that, wittingly or unwittingly,
justifies a predetermined set of economic, political and social policies.
This is clearly not an acceptable state of affairs, even if only because it
impoverishes African social research. It is, therefore, high time that the
social research community revisited and discussed the methodological
foundations of current knowledge about Africa in order to, first, put an end to
scientific impunity as it manifests itself within and outside Africa, and then,
give a new impulse to the African social sciences through support programmes
targeted at younger researchers.
The future of
young social researchers begins with an excellent mastery of core research
processes and their patient application to concrete situations as demanded by
their work in the field, the archives and the library. Unfortunately, the
combination of the prolonged crises in African higher education systems and the
poor example set in the writings of an increasing number of Africanists, who
have succumbed to the temptation to take liberties with methodological rigour,
mean that younger African researchers are poorly served in matters of training
for independent social research. It is for this reason that CODESRIA has
decided to take young African researchers through workshops on epistemological
and methodological issues in social research, designed to fill the gaps in
their formal and informal training. The workshops are meant to serve as a
critical space that would offer experience-sharing in the basic epistemological
and empirical prerequisites for rigorous scientific imagination. The workshops
will not only offer insights into the current state of the art but also provide
an occasion for a critical review of contemporary research procedures, tools
and theories as seen from an African perspective. The major question which the
workshops will address can be summarised as follows:
How can the
researcher productively establish a link between dominant theoretical
approaches and concrete situations in the field whilst simultaneously taking
into account the state of knowledge, the techniques to be mobilised, and the
evolution of African societies?
In answering this
question, the workshops will privilege qualitative research methods and tools
on the basic premise that the popular tendency to oppose quantitative and
qualitative methods is due to a wrong assumption that the former offers an
exactness and “hardness” which the latter is supposedly too “soft” and “fickle”
to match. Without diminishing the importance of quantitative research and
methods, participants in the workshops will be encouraged to explore
qualitative methods of capturing African social dynamics which do not always or
often find expression, fully or partially, in figures and which are, therefore,
lost to those who are wedded to rigid and exclusively quantitative approaches.
Organisation
The 2013 session
of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the
conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in
African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social
research disciplines. These disciplines are uniformly confronted with broadly
similar difficulties of understanding social reality and the challenges posed
by techniques of data collection and analysis, which, on account of their
“qualitative” nature, are suspected by some to be seriously lacking in
scientific rigour. Each workshop will have the following concerns at its core:
1. A
critical assessment of the distinction between “quantitative” and “qualitative”
research with particular attention to the question of measurement in the social
sciences. Participants will be taken through presentations and exercises aimed
at showing that the mode of processing data that is collected depends both on
the field constraints encountered and the paradigmatic options of data
interpretation that are available. The procedures for the “quantification” of
“qualitative” approaches will also be reviewed through discussions on the
distinction between the non-metrical and “comprehensive” presentation of data
and the more mathematical renditions favoured by the quantitativists.
2. A presentation
of the methodological principles of “object construction” which enables the
researcher to transcend the illusions of immediate knowledge and undertake a
hypothetical reconstruction of social reality. This demands that the status of
the researcher, as well as the systematic role of theories and tools be
subjected to intense epistemological control.
3. An assessment of
various techniques of data collection and “fact-finding”
instruments available to the researcher. The usual tools of
qualitative research such as interviews, observation, archival studies, and the
less usual ones such as photography, will be reviewed, so as to locate their
potentiality for construction of successful research projects.
Eligibility
The East and
Southern Africa edition of the methodology workshops is designed for doctoral
and masters students and young, mid-career African researchers resident in East
and Southern Africa.
Working Language
The language to
be employed during the workshop is English.
Co-ordination
The workshop will
be directed by a senior scholar who will work as the scientific coordinator,
assisted by a team of two lecturers, all with an acknowledged expertise in the
application of social science research methods. Senior researchers who would like
to be considered for a role as resource persons are hereby invited to send
their applications, indicating their interest, with their current CVs and
outlines of issues they would like to cover in three lectures. The outlines
submitted should be detailed enough to enable the scientific coordinator of the
workshop to compile a syllabus for the guidance of the resource persons and
laureates. Apart from the actual preparation of lectures and field visits, the
resource persons will also be expected to submit a bibliographic list of texts
relevant to the theme of the workshop and which can be made available to the
laureates.
Application
Procedures
Scholars and
younger, mid-career researchers who wish to be considered for participation in
the workshop, are hereby required to each submit an application that should
comprise the following:
1. A letter of
motivation which should also clearly indicate the area of research or topic on
which they are working;
2. A statement of
their research project (maximum of three to five pages) stating clearly the
problematic that is being addressed, the kinds of field research to be
undertaken, the theoretical and methodological
framework being
used, as well as the methodological and epistemological problems encountered;
3. A detailed and
up-to-date curriculum vitae;
4. Two reference
letters, one of which must be from the thesis supervisor and the other from the
head of the department in which the applicant is registered. The reference
letter from the supervisor is expected to address the relevance of the research
project, the state of progress of the research and the theoretical and
methodological approaches used, as well as the results expected. The reference
letter from the head of the department is expected to attest to the qualities
and academic potential of the candidate; and
5. A letter
confirming the institutional affiliation of the applicant.
6. A copy of the
passport
Oral Presentation
All selected
applicants will be expected to give a presentation on their proposals to
resource persons and other laureates during the methodology workshop.
Applications will
be selected on basis of the innovative nature of the research question being
addressed, a commitment to gender balance that is central to CODESRIA’s
institutional strategy, and the desire for a geographical diversity that will,
in itself, constitute an important aspect of the learning experience at the
workshops. All applications, accompanied by all required documents must
reach the address below, latest by 28 June, 2013:
CODESRIA
Sub-Regional Methodology Workshops
(2013 Session for
East and Southern Africa)
CODESRIA
P.O. Box: 3304,
Dakar, CP 18524 – Senegal.
Tél.: +221-33
825.98.22/23 — Fax: +221-33 824.12.89
Web site: http://www.codesria.org/
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