Scribbling the Voice of a Tende: An Ethnography on the Women of Eskaya

Scribbling the Voice of a Tende: An Ethnography on the Women of Eskaya

Reviewing an ethnographic study

Revisiting the Research

Background and objectives

Perhaps because I have always been enamored with the idea of the “anthropologist’s” way of life – spending time with people in a different setting and learning more about them in a less “obtrusive” manner, that is why, I jumped at the first opportunity that came my way as a faculty researcher in the University I was teaching then. A neophyte in the field of research on women with meager desk knowledge on ethnography (as my background was political science and law), I embarked on the study of the women of Eskaya with more audacity than theoretical and methodological tools to guide me through the subject that I wanted to research on.

The Eskaya in Bohol, Philippines is regarded as a cultural minority but legally considered as an indigenous group of people. The many suppositions put forward regarding the Eskaya added to my interest on the subject aside from my growing interest in women’s studies at that time. Some of the literature written about them argue that the Eskaya are a remnant of the original indigenous settlers in Bohol[1]; that they migrated to Bohol from Sumatra in the seventh century A.D.[2]; that they are descendants of the resistance groups that fought under Francisco Dagohoy[3] who led the longest revolt in the history of the Philippines; that they are a cult[4] or secret society[5]; or that they are a conscious reconstruction of an imagined pre-colonial society[6].

I conducted an ethnographic study on the Eskaya community between April 2001 and January 2002 particularly anchored on a feminist perspective in the hope of serving the immediate and long term interests of women. I have learned previously that while many of the ways of the Eskaya are common among the island’s rural folks, they strictly observe segregation of sexes in their activities. This had caught my interest thus I sought out to discover how similar or different the Eskaya woman is from other women.

Methodology and methods

Guided more by sheer will, I went to the area with this objective in mind and a mental note of what ethnography should be based on my limited desk encounters with the discipline. Thus the conclusions of the study were based on various strategies of collecting information such as observation, participation, interviews on family life with a wide variety of informants, conversations, a focus group discussion, and the use of secondary and primary data. Also, the life history method played a very essential and large part in soliciting the experiences of my women informants. I used those range of methods to paint a portrait of the tende (Eskaya woman).

Narrating the fieldwork process I went through, I wrote in a monograph of my research,

“In the course of my fieldwork, I found myself "feeling my way through"the Eskaya community of Taytay, Duero. I had little problem with the language because they already spoke Cebuano. The Eskaya language is only spoken among the Eskaya adults. Upon knowing my research intention, the barangay captain offered me a room in their house which I gratefully accepted. I tried to eat, drink, sleep and move like I was a resident around the community during field visits. I roamed around the community as much as possible when I was not engaged in activities with the family I was staying with. I talked to women at the tanke (water source), at the mini-stage, the basketball court, by the road, at the waiting shed, at the store, and other places where women usually gather or spend their lull periods at different times of the day. I went out of my usual reserved way to approach and talk to people, young and old, women and men. I visited my women informants at their own convenience and time availability. My questions were random and exploratory at first and later on, more directed. I jotted down notes most of the time as the tape recorder was more of a strange mechanical intrusion which only emphasized the boundary between researcher and informant. It was only a hindrance to openness so I only used it to record some other information. The field notes and the recorded conversations were then transcribed and verified. I joined in the daily routine of the family like pulling weeds in their sayote farm or watching television. I tried to do my share of cooking and washing the dishes but this was always with more insistence on my part because they felt it awkward for me to help prepare the meals and clean-up. I too felt awkward in the process. I later became less of a stranger and researcher to some of the women after being a fixture in the community for the duration of my research “(Estorba, 2006).

Writing and presenting the research

It was my desire to explore the world of the Eskaya woman, to let her speak through my descriptions of her world. I wanted the voice of the Eskaya woman to emerge, with my own faintly following through as she describes her perception of her world and as I, on my part, explore and scribble it for her. Scribbling the voice of the tende was my own approach to an ethnographic representation of the Eskaya woman.

Reviewing Theories and their methodological implications

This section presents two selected readings: (a) ‘The Interpretation of Cultures’ by Geertz (1993), and ‘Ethics, reflexivity and “ethically important” moments” in research’ by Guillemen and Gillam (2004). I present a summary of these two readings and in the next section; apply some of its methodological implications for the research under study together with some insights from other course materials.

Valuing “thick description” in developing an interpretive theory of culture

Geertz’s article discusses the characteristics and value of ethnographic description in developing an interpretive theory of culture. Geertz delves into an understanding and appreciation of “thick description” explaining such as not to “generalize across cases but to generalize within them” in the process of constituting an explanation of social action. He argues that theoretical development of cultural interpretation is made more difficult because of one, the need for theory to stay rather “closer to the ground” which denotes relying on the rigors of fieldwork, and two, that cultural theory is not “predictive” which means that “any theoretical framework which an interpretation is based on must be made capable of continuing to yield defensible interpretations as new social phenomena swim into view”. Thus the function of ethnography is to provide a vocabulary of symbolic actions, “guess” its meanings, so that the role of culture in human life may be explicated.

The emphasis on “thick descriptions” as the ethnographers way of “inscribing” not only the actions of people but going beyond, from social gestures to construing meaning to social gestures, informs analysis of beliefs or actions of people. Thick description is more than mere data collection. Ethnographers have to recognize the “signs” and “symbolic meanings” of people’s beliefs and actions in order to understand how and why these are so shaped but also have to be careful not to fall into problematic models of understanding which tend to generalize a “remote locality as the world in a teacup”.

Encountering “ethically important moments” in doing research

The article by Guillemin and Gillam examines the relationship between reflexivity and research ethics. It is organized within a comparison and the relationship between procedural ethics and “ethics in practice” and focuses on what the authors refer to as the “ethically important moments” in doing research.

Guillemin and Gillam argue that procedural ethics and “ethics in practice” are not divorced from one another. They elaborate that procedural ethics serves a valuable function in forcing researchers to consider and reflect on the fundamental guiding principles that govern research integrity. They also proposed the expansion of the meaning of the notion of reflexivity which points to a researcher acknowledging the ethical dimensions of ordinary, everyday research practice, being sensitive to “ethically important moments” in research practice, and having or being able to develop a means of addressing and responding to ethical concerns if and when they arise in the research (including a way of preempting potential ethical problems before they take hold). This points to reflexivity as a tool for the conceptual change of the idea of ethics that varies in the different and specific particularities and contexts of and between the knower and the known.

Present Reflections on Ethical Dilemmas in the Case Study Research

Epistemological concerns

I would like to look back at the research work I had done and reflect on the ethnographic research process using the insights I got from the selected readings and discussions in the course. It is important to note what Scheyvens et al (in Scheyvens and Storey 2003:139) stated that ‘fieldwork [...] can give rise to a plethora of ethical dilemmas, many of which relate to power gradients between the data collector and the data collectioned [sic]. Combined with this are complex issues of knowledge generation, ownership and exploitation’ (Cameron, 2009a). This note is demonstrated in the reflections that will follow that will hopefully articulate the exercise of reflexivity in the practice of research.

On hindsight, the first point of note is that I had pre-conceived notions of gender differences and set out to see whether it was also observed in the community under study. The research then started with pretty much a positivist outlook that is, proving something out there in the field, looking for empirical evidence to the question. Such preconceived notion also came with the assumption that all women in the community are the same, are similar in their experiences with the segregation of sexes that bind them and are just passively following the rules of the community or even feeling repressed by such. In this sense, there was a lack of consideration, perhaps imagination for undifferentiated categories such as age, position in the community, education, exposure to the outside world of the community or any semblance of agency held by such women. Nevertheless, the openness to discover new issues and see reality from the point of view of the examined subject in a way revealed some of these nuances along the course of the research and moved from a positivist to perhaps a social constructivist point in the epistemological spectrum. For example, I had initially in mind interviewing women informants but as the research progressed, I realized that I inevitably had to talk to the men as well. In a methodological sense, I may have treaded into that aspect of qualitative research that is as termed by Mikkelsen (2005:174) “deliberate naivete”, where I exhibited openness to new and unexpected phenomena that came along the way, rather than having ready-made categories and schemes of interpretation.

The descriptions of women’s life in the community which supported the question as to the life of the Eskaya woman tackled some power relations including the public-private divide and proffered the idea that the women are redefining themselves amidst the influx of cultural changes. A key question here however, is that whether the study has generalized social roles, social positions, and social relations based on the characteristics/life stories of individuals; by stating that the study is an ethnographic representation of the Eskaya woman.

Recalling Geertz’s precaution regarding “thick descriptions” in which he advises avoiding generalization across cases but may generalize within them, perhaps the closest that this insight may be applied in the research is found in its title. In using the term ‘scribble’, the research informs the audience/reader that the study is limited to only some vignettes of women’s life in the community. This may still be contested nonetheless especially if one keenly deconstructs the tone and language of the writing, particularly in the conclusion part where I speak of how the Eskaya woman is redefining herself vis-à-vis her role in the community. Nevertheless, it was not the intention of the research to generalize the women of Eskaya; rather the intention was more on getting a glimpse of the life of an Eskaya woman. The important lesson here is that cultural interpretation is no easy task, and having thick descriptions guaranteed by staying ‘closer to the ground’ and providing a vocabulary of symbolic actions can only provide as much vignettes of life as possible but never enough, if at all, to be able to generalize.

There is also less clarity whether the conclusion of the research should have ended on a prescriptive note given the remote objective of initiating social development work in the area while tying up the analysis of the social relations obtaining in the community with the concern of contributing to long-term interests of women. The research may not have been successful in developing a grounded theory on women and culture as desired or it may have lacked the analytical presentation connecting the descriptions of social relations in the community to theoretical/conceptual framework (e.g. Foucauldian notion of power, Bordieu’s concept of habitus and doxa, or feminist explanations of household relations).

Methodological concerns

Reflecting on informed consent, it is said that “only if participants understand what you tell them about the study and their participation can they give ‘informed consent’” (Cameron, 2009b). I had to go through the standard procedure of informing the municipal local government unit where the community is located and more importantly made a prior visit to the community before the study began to inform the community leadership (both the barangay chairperson and the chieftain) of my research purpose to establish “legitimacy” of my presence in the community for the duration of the research and so it would not come as a surprise to the rest of the community members. The community, however, was not new to researchers coming to them ever since their “discovery”. After which, I was now faced with the challenge of asking my women informants to tell their stories to me. This required establishing trust between me and my informants. I asked permission not to anonymise them when I shall present my research as I was uncomfortable speaking about real people with false names. Although they have agreed at that time and they were present and were introduced during the public presentation of the research, it occurs to me at the moment whether I may have missed out some signs of indecision or un-comfortability on their part. Thus, it may be again an ethical question as to ask whose comfort or convenience should be given priority in similar situations.

I was well aware of my outsider status in the community and even if I had more or less become familiar with them as I went to and from the area for a number of times and living there in brief periods; I believed I had not really come to such a point of familiarity as would merit an insider. I say this with less certainty but there seems to be a cultural element that had facilitated the welcome that I gathered in the community -- the propensity to be hospitable to visitors that is so common among people in the area and as for my women informants – the moment to share life stories that otherwise may have been mundane or rarely talked about by them among themselves. But even when these moments came naturally, I always came with a careful thought when to ask which questions, which directed me towards asking more salient points as the opportunity came along to keep the process in its natural course. This had required also talking and being with the informants in their daily activities which further required effort in being less obtrusive as well. I recall that what was supposed to be a formal focused group discussion among young women as to their thoughts, constraints, and aspirations turned out as an informal afternoon of cooking, chatting, and eating in the kitchen of one young woman informant as they were bonding for the last time in the summer; some of the girls were leaving for the capital (Manila) to work as house helpers.

Jotting down notes and reflections in my journal came mostly during evenings again having in mind to keep the “naturalness” of the encounters and conversations. I had to rely on my memory for the most part which is at the same time a risky option.

Going beyond the field, interpretation of data is another hurdle. I would recall that the idea of interpretation as an exercise of power in itself and hence an ethical dimension was not yet that strong in me. The clearest manifestation of power relations for me then were between persons within the community such as between the barangay chairperson and the chieftain as their political turfs may have been less delineated at some points or between men and women as they negotiate through the rules of the community. I only had it at the back of my head that the fact that I am an outsider from the city and a teacher from a known University in the area may somehow affect the extent of acceptance in the community. This reminds me of Abbott’s (2007:213) realization that “data gathering cannot be divorced from local political realities and histories; therefore, research methods have to adapt to the specifics of that, and not the other way round”. I did grapple with articulating that I did intend to let the voice of the Eskaya woman emerge with my own faintly following through and this perhaps was the inner struggle of the power relations between the researcher and the researched that I was not able to articulate fully well at that time. Also, questions about which data to use and what not to use, who to quote and how to quote, how and when will interpretations be shared with participants, where data and findings will be stored, were not highlighted and this perhaps comprise as a weak point in the study.

Thus, reflecting on the points raised by Guillemen and Gillam (2004) on research ethics, the importance of ethical preparedness as an aspect of reflexivity can not be overly stated. I have presented the ethical dilemmas I have encountered both during the research and more recently as I am given this opportunity to reflect on past research experience. It is a rigorous exercise which requires clarity as well as transparency of the research purpose coupled with accountability for human action.

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References

Abbott, D (2007) ‘Doing incorrect research: the importance of the subjective and the personal in researching poverty’, in Thomas, A and G. Mohan (eds) (2007), Research Skills for Policy and Development, Sage, London, pp. 208-228. (scandocs)

Cameron, J. (2009) 3303 Block 2: Techniques of Collecting Ethnographic Data, their Analysis and Reporting: Powerpoint presentation, ISS: Development Research

Estorba, R. (2006) ‘Scribbling the Voice of a Tende: An ethnography on the women of Eskaya’, Kinaadman, retrieved June 21, 2009 from http://www.hnu.edu.ph/main/publication/kinaadman/0320061714.pdf.

Geertz, E. (1973) ‘The Interpretation of Cultures, Chapter 1: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, pp. 17-30 ca6720, Fontana Press, London. (scandocs)

Guillemin, M. and L. Gillam (2004) ‘Ethics, reflexivity and “ethically important moments” in research”, Qualitative Inquiry, 10/24, pp. 261-278 ca9050. (scandocs)

Mikkelsen, B (2005) ‘Methods for Development Work and Research’, Chapter 5 Data Construction and Data Anyalsis of Qualitive Data, pp. 169-182, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Sage Publications, London. (scandocs)

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[1] Zoë Bedford. "Maintaining Cultural Difference: An Insight into the Visaya-Eskaya of Bohol". 2003.

[2] Jes B. Tirol. "Bohol and Its System of Writing." UB Update. July–September 1990. 4, 7.

[3] Perseus Echeminada. "Ancient Tribe in Bohol Draws Savants, Psychics." The Philippine Star. 1 March, 1989. 3

[4] Logarta, Margarita Torralba. The Eskaya Cult: Children of a Lost Language. Who. 5 September, 1981. 22–27.

[5] Hector Santos. "Eskaya Script" The Philippine Leaf. Accessed 9 August, 2005.

[6] Martinez, Ma. Cristina J. "Gahum ug Gubat: A Study of Eskayan Texts, Symbolic Subversion and Cultural Constructivity." Unpublished manuscript, 1993. 67