Methods in research: Faith Gara's fieldwork experience

Following a frustrating attempt to have a structured research process that builds on a mapping process[1] to highlight major infrastructures using  Google Earth images, archival planning data, and trace material flows (including currencies and currents)[2] in the  Cape Flats critical zone. I have since realised that my usual anthropological research methods have made me more attuned to various ways the "life-worlds of infrastructure shape habitability in my research areas. One personal challenge or weakness I encounter in transdisciplinary research and studies is that I often forget to build on my strengths and focus more on the "technical ways of knowing" as I overcompensate since these methods are usually learned from doing. Latour (2014) describes critical zones as areas that require a specific response involving attention, the capacity to feel, and the necessity to be cautious, careful, thoughtful, and informed differently. Such attention requires presence, a slow process of reflecting and engaging in mundane conversations with strangers while waiting for the bus or service in a clinic line. These engagements also require humility, the ability to improvise when unscheduled opportunities arise, and the flexibility to work with what is available, for life in such precarious environments is never certain.   

In contrast to the comfort of working in an air-conditioned library or office doing desktop research and digging for or through archival records, that is well needed for me to produce a comprehensive dissertation. It is through the unease processes of "hanging out”[3] in unusual places, such as the Golden Arrow bus from Cape Town to Kuilsriver or Makhaza, passing  Gugulethu NY3a that I have come to experience the burden of time spent travelling to access essential services such as well-resourced high schools in the city centre. Walking in different sections of the Cape flats, I am amazed by the work on the ground by dedicated community groups and individuals to transform toxic environments into productive spaces that were never planned for and the transformative activities that differ entirely from previous strategies. I am deeply humbled that various interventions for habitability are in plain sight and inspired to facilitate processes through my dissertation that acknowledge these so-called "illegitimate spaces" and advance avenues towards co-creating and planning socially just living environments.

This season of doing fieldwork has ironically made me thankful that I do not have a car to drive to fieldwork sites and that many Uber drivers are not quite keen to take a trip to most areas in the Cape Flats as this has brought out some situated knowledge and made my engagements more genuine and empathetic. I also sincerely appreciate that l cannot carry my smartphone whenever I go for fieldwork as  I can be present without the distractions from WhatsApp communications and Emails. The above experience also highlights the challenges of inherited spatial distribution, including the prevalence of crime and the burden for many students and breadwinners who must travel long distances to access resources.

In my quest to explore the multiple forms of infrastructure and technologies,  i.e. effective, toxic, or lacking, I have also come to appreciate the efficient and effective services of the Cape Town bus service - Golden Arrow. I am thankful for a season of slow bus rides, slow conversation, and engagements  - slowly shaping this study's socially engaged research objectives.