From a quantitative background to interpretative approach

40

or fund raising ceremonies for the „guests of honour‟. Otherwise, chicken are kept as alternative sources of income sold to meet the daily monetary needs (e.g. to buy sugar, cooking fat or soap). Besides, with limited land acreage in Ukambani, keeping chicken is preferred because they require little space. In addition, unlike cattle, sheep and goats, their prices are more stable and they are easier to feed regardless of the season. What is more, among the Kamba, ownership of chicken is used as a benchmark upon which one could determine how „badly-off‟ a household is. In other words, it is the minimum that a family should own. A „very poor‟ person is often said to be one who “does not even own a chicken”.

Among the Maasai, one is regarded that poor if he does not own any cattle although that is said to have been a long bias expressed by the cattle-owning section of the Maasai, against gatherers or iltorrobo and those who tilled the land, the ilmeek (Spear, 1993: 4). This variation should not be construed to mean that the Maasai had „higher‟ standards in setting the

„poverty line‟. These „limits‟ have to be understood within each group‟s social, cultural and economic milieu. For instance, a Kamba household could „function‟ normally without any cattle. That would be inconceivable among the Maasai. This is not to say that cattle have no significance among the Kamba. In fact, Ndolo shows that even during the colonial period, the semi-pastoral nature of the Kamba economy diversified their income base making them more averse to wage-labour compared to the Kikuyu who occupied more arable land (1989: 117).

Apart from the distribution of livestock, another attribute of distinction is polygyny. This is more common among the Maasai. According to the Kenya Welfare Monitoring Survey III published in May 1996, 8.6% of all married men in Kajiado (Maasailand) were polygynous (had more than one wife) compared to 1.7% in Makueni. As noted earlier, the Kajiado figures would even be much higher if migrant and entirely monogamous groups like the Kikuyu and Kamba were excluded from the statistics. The same survey also showed that Ukambani has more women-headed households.

2.3.2 Application of the ethnographic research methodology

41

and knowledge systems. Anyhow, the partner‟s views or presentation of his life-world should reflect on the broader society in which he is a member.

Bourdieu‟s book, Logic of Practice, was particularly helpful in expounding on the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research. He begins by pointing out that social science is divided into what constitutes subjectivity and objectivity (Bourdieu, 1990: 25) and notes further that although there is antagonism between these two modes of knowledge, there is the subjective experience of the world and also the objectification of the objective conditions of that experience (see also Schutz and Luckmann, 1973). Bourdieu argues that “social science must not only...break with native experience and the native representation of that experience but also, by a second break, call into question the presuppositions inherent in the position of the objective observer who, seeking to interpret practices, tends to bring into the object the principles of his relation to the object, as is shown for example by the privileged status he gives to communicative and epistemic functions, which inclines him to reduce exchanges to pure symbolic exchanges” (1990: 27-36). The observer has to distinguish the discrepancy between the practically experienced reasons and the “objective” reasons of practice. The study adopted an intersubjective approach, in which, actors‟ subjectiveness attained „objectivity‟ in as far as they were assumed to be shared by others within a given space and time frame.

Everyday life-world was taken as intersubjective (as a “social world”). It was assumed that actors‟ life-worlds were subjectively motivated and articulated purposively based on their particular interests and what is feasible for them (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973: 15-17).

Similarly, Moore (1994: 3) notes that human experience is intersubjective and embodied, not individualised and fixed but “irredeemably” social and processual.

Bourdieu criticised “context” or “situation” approaches which sought to correct the structural approach. He avers that these approaches have fallen back on the “free choice of a rootless, unattached, pure subject” and argues further that the so-called situational analysis “remains locked within the framework of the rule and the exception” (1990: 53). He critiques the objectivist view that tends to look at social practices from their “state of pure appearance”

rather than “as it is lived and enacted”(1990: 104).

The methodology debate, which has preoccupied social scientists for decades, remains a bone of contention in my own department at the University of Nairobi. Most of my colleagues in the department of sociology are schooled in the quantitative approach in the generation of social knowledge and although qualitative research methodology is taught as a course, it is basically treated as a „supplementary tool‟ that should at best be used to enrich quantitative data. What is more, qualitative research methodology is not taught at graduate level. A

42

colleague who researched on how tourism impacted on agriculture along the Kenyan coast proposed to use qualitative research methods. His professor had nothing against it but he said to him: “Just use quantitative methods to avoid unnecessary questions”. It was clear to the candidate that the supervisor was not exactly sure how the methodology would be defended during the oral examination. I still recall an incident in 1994 where, a PhD candidate who had used the grounded theory approach in her research on „teenage sexuality‟ faced serious problems with one of her supervisors, who dismissed her rich narratives and biographies as

“journalistic” insisting that for a doctorate thesis, “hypotheses have to be rigorously tested”.

With the support of the other supervisor, she defended her position and was finally awarded the doctorate degree. Admittedly, the thesis remains one of the most spectacular works ever presented before a board of examiners in the faculty. Nevertheless, that experience did not deter some of my colleagues from asking why I was not using questionnaires for data collection. Severally, I had to defend my methodological approach in departmental seminars. I stressed the importance of developing analytic codes and categories developed from field data rather than preconceived hypothetical codes (see Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Apart from my area of study that called for an ethnographic approach, and therefore ruling out the use of a questionnaire, qualitative research is generally more suitable in most African settings where settlements are not lineally organised, modes of production and relations are quite complex and data bases are scanty and far between. The guiding principle was to seek reflections from individual respondents and groups. The functioning and dynamics of the Kamba and Maasai societies was constructed by following closely the day-to-day activities of some its members.

I was keen to capture what was typical in a given area or situation as well as allowing room for variations. An attempt was made to see reality from the standpoint of actors or research partners which made it possible to acquire the vantage point necessary to see not only patterns of interethnic coexistence but also power structures.

I remember discussing my research methods with a respondent named Mutua.⁴⁶ He had asked why I was not using a questionnaire and wondered why I was seeing him severally. On the issue of the questionnaire, I recall telling him that I did not want to end up “testing” my own ideas but rather I was seeking his. He sought more clarification. I tried to explain how participant observation and oral interviews elicit more reliable data compared to a questionnaire. I suggested to him that he could, for instance, give a very accurate account about his close friends, family, parents or close relatives whom he shares in their daily lives

46 Mutua is a Kamba and school drop out, worked for a Maasai pastoralist as a cattle herder. More details about him can be found in chapter five (5.1.3). His inquiry on methodology is also revisited on the section on

“methodological challenges” (2.3.3).

43

and yet he has never administered a questionnaire to them. That appeared to make sense to him. He agreed that if he would have access to a questionnaire that had been administered to his family members, he would most likely find certain pieces of information that may not reflect their real life experiences as he knew it as a co-associate.