Social Science Research Council

The "Field Building" research activity in Eastern Africa begun in November 2001 with the holding of an International Field Building Workshop that brought together scholars, practitioners, and indigenous knowledge custodians and practitioners. The idea was to bring the knowledge, skills, and expertise gained by each of these actors together so that they are accessible to all them in the area of security in pastoral communities. The Workshop was facilitated by a grant from the SSRC-GSC. The following reports were produced and issued for dissemination after the Workshop:

1. Interim Report on the Workshop
2. Proceedings of the Workshop
3. An extended bibliography on pastoral communities in the region

Following the Workshop, a decision was made by the participants to form research and study groups to go into issues on which collaboration could be established between these three groups of actors. These areas of study and research included:

1. Setting up of a Working Committee to continue to build up an extended bibliography and decide on the publication of the researched knowledge and how;

2. A reflection on epistemological, theoretical, and methodological questions which have arisen out of the problems of current research and the state of knowledge, especially examining how indigenous knowledge systems can be made more visible through research and its recognition, integration, and synthesisation with the other knowledge systems;

3. Establishing links between scholars, practitioners, and indigenous knowledge theoreticians and practitioners through common research activities building on those areas where there had been some institutional or individual collaboration and/or common approaches. Such institutional and individual collaboration was expected to build on existing work on a continuous basis so that the habit of working together to build a common pool of knowledge can be consolidated;

4. Training and deployment of community practitioners and local researchers in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan in order to encouraging original research on indigenous knowledge systems and making such knowledge more visible and applicable in tackling theoretical and practical problems of sustainable development in the communities;

5. Organising three Workshops, in which the work of the above activity could be reflected on, coordinated, integrated, and disseminated. The Workshops were to help improve and enrich the "Field Building" research activities undertaken by the researchers, who were to meet and share experiences. This was to enable them to revisit their research where necessary and enrich so as to prepare for a Conference at the end of the year, if funds could be found. The conference was then to set the agenda for the third phase, based on the experience gained in the second phase.

The above Field Building activities were embarked on during the year 2002 and this activity included the training of 40 community facilitators to involve them in participatory research on issues of security in pastoral communities. The research activity and the training were facilitated partly by the SSRC and partly by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation of New York. At the end of that activity, a Workshop was held in July 2002 at which the progress of the research activity was reported on. However funding for the conference was not raised and the conference had to be put off until such a time that funds were available. At the end of this Workshop a progress report on the research activity, including the results of exchange of views and research experiences was issued and circulated.

During the discussions in that Workshop, the participants had observed that the results of most research, even at a participatory level, never got reported back to the communities from where the knowledge was gained. It was felt that there was need in this kind of research to involve the communities in the knowledge they had contributed to through "research within research," i.e. by communicating back the knowledge gained in such a manner that they community can participate in the discourse. It was noted that such a discourse could lead to further interrogation of the knowledge, which was gained with such a result that the knowledge could be modified or used in different ways by individuals in the communities.

For this reason, it was decided that as part of the dissemination exercise, the results from the original research on the transformation of agro-pastoral conflict and violence be communicated back to the communities but in a style that seeks to "Field Build." Twenty such community facilitators were trained in drama in the month of January 2003 for it was felt that the most appropriate cultural means through which the majority of the community could understand issues was through drama. This was because the majority of the pastoral and peasant communities were illiterate and therefore translating written texts for them was not considered useful. These facilitators are expected o meet in the month of July 2003 to review the experience and report on the results of the dissemination. It is hoped that the communities will decide on getting engaged in further "Field Building" activity on a long-term basis on the basis of this experience. This training activity was facilitated by a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

Some limited funding was got from the fund for the above training so that it was possible to hold a limited conference to enable the researchers to report on the results of their 2002 "Field Building" research activity. This was done in February 2003. Karen Colvard, the Senior Programme Officer of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, attended the conference as well as the earlier Worksop of July 2002. At the end of this conference, it was felt that the participants had gained sufficient experience of what "Field Building" meant so as to form the basis for self-propelled activity by the participants. The conference participants decided to now break up into long-term Working Groups, each focusing on a particular issue/s that they could promote. Five areas of interest were agreed and the participants divided themselves into these areas of interest. These areas were:

1. Location and broadening sites of knowledge in which scholars, practitioners and indigenous knowledge experts can work together, building on the sites identified during the research experience. The participants who supported this group activity included the P'KWI Community Farm, Malera; the Clan Elders Council, Iganga; rural technology groups in Aduku, Lira; groups promoting traditional herbal medicine around Kampala.

2. Promotion of ICT in rural communities, especially aimed at promoting life long learning and their linkages to institutions of higher education. The institutions interested in this activity included the Afrika Study Centre, Uganda National Council of Science and Technology and the Islamic University in Uganda

3. Legal Protection of Traditional Intellectual Property as well as the study and application of African Traditional Systems of Governance and Justice, including Restorative Justice. Those interested in this activity included a High Court Judge, a Chairman of the National Law Reform Commission, a law professor and a director of Human Rights Peace Centre at the Makerere University as well as Afrika Study Centre.

4. Promotion of Higher Education, especially the establishment of the Pan-African University that can link communities to University education through life long learning. Those interested included Afrika Study Centre, Human Rights Peace Centre. Both of these institutions wanted to involve other actors who were not part of the research activity such as the Centre for Advanced Study of African Society-CASAS based in Cape Town (with main interest in African languages and culture) and the University of South Africa-UNISA based in Pretoria, South Africa.

5. Institutional Collaboration and Advocacy of the idea of Field Building. The four groups above expressed an interest in having a centre to collaborate their activities and to enable a conference to be held every year to check on the progress of the activity in each group and where possible promote new linkages and collaborations in new fields. Afrika Study Centre was asked to continue this task assisted by its original collaborations. These three produced a paper entitled: "Field Building through Institutional Collaboration," which was distributed at the conference. These collaborating are: Afrika Study Centre, Association for World Education, and Yiga Ng'okola Folk Institute. These three organisations provided the support to the application for funding to the SSRC-GSC, which resulted in the funding of the first Workshop.

With these decisions and formation of working groups, it was hoped that the practice of collaboration between scholars, practitioners and the communities would become a permanent feature of research work and knowledge production, which had to be institutionalised.

Report prepared by: Prof. Dani W. Nabudere Executive Director, Afrika Study Centre, P. O. Box 961, MBALE, Uganda