Toolbox

Urban Governance

Research focus & objectives

The research focus of this project is the water flows, environmental justice and land subsidence in Semarang, Indonesia with the objective of (i) describing everyday practices and knowledge enacting land subsidence as an effort to better understand land subsidence in its complexity, (ii) exploring how the identified practices and knowledge take part in the imagined futures of the sinking areas, (iii) reflecting on how land subsidence is known for multiple groups and how scholars can research and take into account pluralized knowledge, and (iv) contributing to the debate about the futures in Semarang ‘sinking’ areas – beyond the “technological-fix” of land subsidence

Methods applied

Qualitative research methods, mostly ethnography: shaped by two strands of literature, first francophone anthropology, notably the work of Olivier de Sardan (1995; 2000), whose description of anthropological work as being able to “use their own presence as a researcher as a method of investigation” is part of an anthropological ‘savoir-faire’” (1995:6). Second, feminist theories helped frame the research as an effort to produce partial and situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988). This approach emphasises the accountability and performative aspect of research; researchers are unavoidably participating in the reality they attempt to research rather than uncovering a reality or a truth ‘out there’.
The topics of positionality and reflexitivity are central to ethnography, feminist science, and other literature relevant to my work – in particular Urban Political Ecology and Science and Technology Studies. Works that guided my reflections and helped to better understand my positionality and what roles I am making for myself as an early-career researcher are from Fahrana Sultana and Annemarie Mol.
I found the suggestion of Povinelli to advance research as an effort of “obstinate curiosity” oriented towards what others political ecologists call “situated solidarity” (Goldfischer et al. 2020; Povinelli 2012) particularly exciting.References:Goldfischer, E., Rice, J. L. & Black, S. T. (2020). Obstinate Curiosity and Situated Solidarity in Urban Political Ecology.” Geography Compass 14, (2) [link]
Haraway, D. (1988) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14,(3), 575–99 [link]

Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.

Latour, B. (2003). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press. Deliverable 6.2 25

Law, J. & Mol A. (2020). Words to Think with: An Introduction. The Sociological Review 68(2), 263–82 [link]

Mol, Annemarie. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Edited by Barbara Herrnstein Smith and E. Roy Weintraub. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384151.

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 1995. “La Politique Du Terrain: Sur La Production Des Données En Anthropologie.” Enquête, no. 1 (October): 71–109. https://doi.org/10.4000/enquete.263. Olivier De Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 2000. “Le ‘Je’ Méthodologique: Implication et Explicitation Dans l’enquête de Terrain.” Revue Française de Sociologie 41 (3): 417. https://doi.org/10.2307/3322540.

Povinelli, E. A. 2012. “The Will to Be Otherwise/The Effort of Endurance.” South Atlantic Quarterly 111 (3): 453–75. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-1596236.

Sultana, Farhana. 2015. “Reflexivity, Positionality and Participatory Ethics: Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 6 (3): 374–85.

Analytical tools & literature

Transcription: Whisperscript [link]
Analysis: ATLAS.ti
Visualization: Gephy

Recommended resources

On positionality in the PhD research: Barnacle, Robyn, and Denise Cuthbert, eds. 2021. The PhD at the End of the World: Provocations for the Doctorate and a Future Contested. Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives, volume 4. Cham, Switzerland.
On ethics in authoritarian/conflictual fields: Glasius, Marlies, Meta De Lange, Jos Bartman, Emanuela Dalmasso, Aofei Lv, Adele Del Sordi, Marcus Michaelsen, and Kris Ruijgrok. 2018. Research, Ethics and Risk in the Authoritarian Field. Cham: Springer International Publishing [link]
On whiteness in the field and politics of research in "Global North-Global South" relations: DeLuca, Jaime R., and Callie Batts Maddox. 2016. “Tales from the Ethnographic Field: Navigating Feelings of Guilt and Privilege in the Research Process.” Field Methods 28 (3): 284– 99 [link]
Mayer, V. (2005). Research Beyond the Pale: Whiteness in Audience Studies and Media Ethnography. Communication Theory 15(2), 148–67 [link]
Tilley, E. & Kalina, M. (2021). ‘My Flight Arrives at 5 Am, Can You Pick Me Up?’: The Gatekeeping Burden of the African Academic. Journal of African Cultural Studies 33(4), 538– 48 [link]
On language and translation/ working in multiple languages: Law, J. & Mol, A. (2020). Words to Think with: An Introduction. The Sociological Review 68(2), 263–82 [link]
On the role of scientists (with an urban political ecology lens): Povinelli, E. A. (2012). The Will to Be Otherwise/The Effort of Endurance. South Atlantic Quarterly 111(3), 453–75 [link]

Reflections and recommendations by the researcher

My PhD project emerges from the deliberate choice to give a central place to the activities and objectives of activist partners located in Indonesia. This is where ‘situated solidarity’ as walking the intricate, but hopefully productive, tensions of reflexive work in collaboration with nonacademic partners, informs my conceptions of politically relevant research.

I am aware of the many structural biases enclosed in research inspired by theories produced in the socalled "Global North" to study urbanisation in the "Global South". The design of my research is inspired by several research projects in which scholars established a dialog between indigenous knowledge and practices on one hand, and knowledge and practices endorsed by international organisations on the other - see Dominguez and co- authors (2017) about water efficiency logics, and Taylor and co-authors (2019) about principles of water governance. Contributing to the reflection about how scholars can research multiple knowledge are the works of science and technology studies (STS) scholars. Recent studies in the field of STS and anthropology reject the idea of ‘perspectivalism’ – that multiple knowledge are different perspectives on a single world – and consider that different practices enact different realities or worlds (Mol 2002; Blaser and de la Cadena, 2018). In another manner, urban political ecologists have engaged in the promotion of counter-narratives to dominant discourses based on local knowledge (Lawhon and Murphy, 2012). Inspired by these debates and following Donna Haraway’s way of considering knowledges – including knowledges produced in this research project - as situated, partial and particular (Haraway, 1988), my intention is not to compare different practices and knowledge but to try to learn from their encounter. Thus, this research aims to investigate how land subsidence practices and knowledge can be recognized as plural, and under which conditions the encounter between multiple practices and knowledge can inform more inclusive processes of urbanisation.

To fellow researchers of any disciplinary background I recommend a self-review of citational practices on the model of the document written and published by Angela Okune (May 2019). See: https://zenodo.org/records/3066861.

References:

Blaser, M. (2013). Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology. Current Anthropology 54(5), 547–68 [link]

de la Cadena, M. & Blaser, M. (eds.) (2018). A World of Many Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Guzmán Domínguez, C., Verzijl, A., & Zwarteveen, M. (2017). Water Footprints and ‘Pozas’: Conversations about Practices and Knowledges of Water Efficiency.

Lawhon, M., and Murphy, J. T. (2012). Socio-Technical Regimes and Sustainability Transitions: Insights from Political Ecology. Progress in Human Geography 36(3), 354–78 [link]

Mol, A. (2002). The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Edited by Barbara Herrnstein Smith and E. Roy Weintraub. Duke University Press [link]

Taylor, K. S., Longboat, S., & Grafton, R. Q. (2019). Whose Rules? A Water Justice Critique of the OECD’s 12 Principles on Water Governance. Water 11(4), 809 [link]

Publication(s)

We invite you to read the paper published as part of this doctoral research:

Belland, M., Kooy, M., & Zwarteveen, M. (2023). Destabilizing the science of soils: Geoscientists as spokespersons for land subsidence in Semarang, Indonesia. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0) [link]

Researcher

Marie Belland

I am an early-career researcher trained in political science whose main research interest is environmental urban politics. My PhD research project investigates land subsidence in the city of Semarang in Central Java, Indonesia. More precisely, I am studying multiple ways to know land subsidence and live in subsiding areas using ethnographic methods, and I actively engage in the pluralization of subsidence knowledge and practices. My research is informed by urban political ecology and science, feminist science, and technology studies theories.