social structures and expectations. The event in itself does not tell us that; the contextualisation of the event does that.
The main task during your fieldwork preparation is, thus, to understand and study the possible contexts in which your object will occur, micro as well as macro. This will expand the range of recognisable things – not everything will be totally strange and unexpected – and lower the risk of asking the wrong questions and behaving totally out of order. It lowers these risks, but does not eliminate them, of course. If you intend to do fieldwork in a primary school in a country called Absurdistan, for instance, it is good to know
(1)That there are in effect such schools in Absurdistan.
(2)Some basic and general things about how such schools operate (do they have daily and full-day sessions, for instance? How large are the classes? Are they gender-separated? What is the language of instruction?).
(3)Whether there are regional divisions, or urban–rural divisions, that could be important foci of research (you cannot draw conclusions about ‘education in Absurdistan’ if there are very deep differences between education in different parts of the country – in Africa it is, for instance, good to keep in mind that outside the cities, many parts of many countries do not have any education provision to speak of).
(4)Some general things about the legal provisions for such schools, and about their institutional structure. (e.g. Are all schools state-controlled or is there a division between public and private schools? Is there a ‘secondary’ market for education – private tutoring, evening schools, commercial internet or correspondence courses, etc.?)
(5)General information about Absurdistan, its history, social structure, politics, major languages, media and so forth.
(6)The tradition of scholarship on education in Absurdistan, the major centres for research, and the major researchers, policy makers and authority figures in the field.
Therefore your preparation is about getting to understand what Bourdieu called the ‘field’ of education in Absurdistan: the whole complex of surrounding conditions in which a single school becomes part of a system and a society, including historical, social, cultural, linguistic, political backgrounds. It is an attempt at constructing ‘normal’, expectable and presupposable patterns, things you can reasonably expect to meet in the field. All these things matter; researching them pays off. If you would have overlooked point (1) above, for instance, you could find yourself in the embarrassing situation of not having a field to do fieldwork in. Having spent substantial sums of money and even more substantial amounts of time, we would prudently qualify this as a serious problem (certainly if you are scheduled to complete your doctorate in the next 16 months ...).
That is obvious, but even inquiries into (5), for instance, may provide immediate answers for other parts. Imagine that Absurdistan would be a People’s Republic with a rather radical communist government; that would immediately trigger an expectation that the education system in Absurdistan would be fully state-controlled. Your research would then by definition focus on work in state-controlled schools, working (probably) with a unified curriculum and employing teachers who have had a very similar training. If, now, you discover the existence of a flourishing but clandestine private education market during your fieldwork in Absurdistan, this insight gains importance, for one can expect this to be at odds with the policy provisions and dominant ideology of the country. It would mean that people perceive the formal education system as deficient, or realise that what they learn in schools is not enough for the kinds of social trajectories they have in mind, or even that there is a lot of dissent in the country, and that education is a focal area in organising this dissent. You may, then, have found the existence of two parallel and complimentary systems of education, one formal and another commercial, around which people organise different views, expectations and patterns of performance. This, of course, would be a major finding, because ‘education in Absurdistan’ now becomes a highly complex thing, and your observations in official schools should be balanced against observations elsewhere.
Take another example. You find out that Absurdistan was a communist People’s Republic until three years ago, when the regime changed to a capitalist multiparty system with strong ties to the United States and the EU. These new partners have since become very active in the field of development support, and the education system has been overhauled by American and European technical advisors. You now know that you will in all likelihood encounter a very complex and perhaps paradox-ridden education field, in which teachers trained to be good communists have to induce their pupils into the virtues of pro-Western capitalism (but might not know very well how to do that), in which people would constantly compare the ‘old’ versus the ‘new’ education system, and in which you would probably see a rapidly increasing class division between private, urban elite schools and old-style public schools. Your research would then, in all likelihood, be compelled to address these features of transition and contradiction.
A lot of this documentary research needs to be done prior to departing for the field. Some parts of it, however, may only be possible over there. You might need access to specific archives, for instance, or some things can only be found out by going to the local Ministry of Education and asking people there. As said, it is important, because it leads to, and helps you in, more practical aspects of preparation. For instance, and very importantly, it can help you decide whether the topic you had in mind is
(1)Worth researching: Is it big enough as a topic, is it promising in terms of findings, are there specific documentary/empirical and theoretical issues that may be addressed through fieldwork there?
(2)Researchable: This is very important: many topics are very much worth researching, but practically, legally or otherwise unresearchable. There may be ethical restrictions, legal and political ones (authorities not releasing crucial information, or not granting research permits for particular forms and topics of research), material ones (fieldwork would be too expensive or would require a massive research infrastructure) or others. Research in a war zone, for instance, is as good as impossible, even if the situation in that region cries for thorough and sustained research and even if people there would be genuinely helped by your work. The same goes for many ‘slum’ environments around the world: they are extraordinarily fascinating places and we absolutely need a clear and detailed understanding of life in such environments, but the conditions for research are such that researchers could expose themselves to serious danger even entering the area. There are also people who might put you in grave danger when you decide to do research with and on them – think of gangs or rebel movements.3 Researchability is a major decision you need to make during the preparation phase, and thorough preparatory research is essential in making it.
In addition, preparatory research of course helps you in deciding issues such as the general target(s) of your research, the patterns of work you will develop – observations, interviews, single-site or multiple-site research, etc. – the number and kinds of informants you would probably need in order to get your findings, the amount of administrative procedure you need to follow (visa requirements, research permits, ethical clearance, local reporting and so on). It helps you select the schools you will work in, establish first contacts with local people in schools and communities, find out a bit about what goes on there prior to your arrival, and establish interaction with local researchers or institutes. Good preparation helps you to be realistic in all of this.
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