Conducting field research in Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular, comes with some complexities. There are certain research approaches we take for granted as African researchers based in African countries, posing hurdles in our quest to co-create knowledge. Some of the research strategies and tools we teach in our research methods modules, or use in our own researches, need to be analyzed and contextualized. Harras,1 for instance, analyzes the complexity of collecting and using the life-history approach in ethnographic writing in Africa. He raises two crucial questions:
- Can we say that the narrator is the only true speaker in the life account?
- When he says ‘I’ or ‘me,’ is he really talking about himself [or herself]?2
Indeed, we have taken these research approaches as a given without necessarily juxtaposing their usefulness vis-à-vis the social field, particularly in African contexts.
It is within this context—the of complexity of social research—that I reflect on the usability of totems based on my recent fieldwork experience. The driving question asks how useful African totems are as a research method. Alternatively, this question delves deeper, asking the extent to which we can even rely on African totems as a research method. Having carried out field research amongst the Dandawa Korekore of northwestern Zimbabwe since 2006, and belonging to that ethnic group and chiefdom, I had developed strong social connections with both the older and younger generations. According to Bourdieu, ‘the social field can be described as a multi-dimensional space of positions’ that is characterized by complex social relations that come in varied ways.3 One such is relying on totems to create social connections and penetrate the field. Despite belonging to Dandawa community, I was not known by the larger percentage of the population because I was more of a visitor than a resident. I did my secondary and tertiary education hundreds of kilometers away. Things changed when I began doing field research to gather the Dandawa people’s oral traditions and later their memories of the liberation struggle. From then on I found my way around the creation and maintenance of social relationships through totem connection.
Over the years, I did not even have a single moment to reflect on the usefulness of totems as a research method for gathering data creating and cementing social relations. Totems have been analysed within the context of taboos and environmental conservation in African social science research.4 In this essay, I reflect on totems in the context of social relations and as a research method within the broader body of knowledge of totems in African societies. Thanks to the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) for the Individual Research Fellowship (IRF) (2023-2024) award that supported my research on ‘Memory and the Dynamics of Social Conflict’ in Dandawa., I found out that totems were a splendid way of strengthening the social relations and field research networks that I had established since 2006. I approached the same field for my APN research in October 2023. This time around, reality struck regarding the complexity of totems as a research method whether used intentionally or unintentionally. Wainwright5 notes that ‘every person who develops an interest in history does so for a reason.’ We can expand this to include everyone who comes into our social networks during field research. As researchers, we are oblivious to this reality; we sometimes take the field of social relations for granted.
By way of totems, I identified with people of the Nzou Samanyanga (Elephant). I strongly fit into their kinship structure and, by extension, I assumed extended social relations with people of other totems. As such, I immersed myself into the complex web of everyday social relations of this community – as a son, brother, nephew, brother in-law, father in-law, or an uncle. This illustrates how wide my social relations circle became. Consequently, this social network became a challenge – a spiderweb that entangled progress in conducting my field research and the politics of existent relationships in the community. I became erroneously drawn into battles involving kinship and social relations, which I unknowingly stumbled upon in the name of establishing trust and respect through totems. Ideally, the moment you begin to co-create knowledge and history with communities is when you are embraced by said communities through their shared history, particularly when totems are invoked. This is because totems create easy access and are a good entry point. Unfortunately, it also represents unintentionally involving oneself in family and community feuds and day-to-day activities.
There were four related villages of the Nzou Samanyanga totem in Fuleche, one of the territories in the Dandawa Chiefdom. As I became deeply immersed into the network of totems, it did not occur to me that I had been directly sucked into a wave of social conflicts in the community defined by serious accusations and counter-accusations of witchcraft. I entered the social field of research oblivious of the fact that the community had its everyday interactions that were likely to affect my research activities. As an accepted member of the community, perceived as educated and reasonable, I was presented with various narratives of what had and is happening among the Samanyanga villages. There was an expectation that I was supposed to either take a side in the social conflict or be the voice of reason that would make parties to the conflict come to their senses. The expectation was exacerbated by the fact that I was researching social conflict. Without any preparation for such a huge task, I was prematurely thrown into the deep end of the social conflict among the Samanyanga villagers – all because of the totem research method. I was presented with a huge dilemma, one that defined the complexity of the totem research method I adopted. On the one hand, there were groups that expected different responses from me: take a side in the conflict or simply assist with mediation while remaining neutral. On the other hand, if I recused myself from the conflict entirely, I risked t tampering with the social networks, trust, and the respect that I had created and maintained over the years. It was a catch-22 situation that invited a serious reflection on the benefits and limitations of employing totems as a field research method.
The complexity of being drawn into the social conflict proved that the divide between ‘educated’ researchers and ‘researched’ communities, in the African and Zimbabwe context in particularly, is a mirage. The very moment we enter the social field of our research communities, we unintentionally participate in the daily lives of the communities. Allen and Montoya6 note that ‘historically there has been a desire from universities to separate themselves from the communities either to protect themselves or to study in “splendid isolation.”’ Studying in splendid isolation is almost impossible because the social field presents different categories of people and situations that we have to deal with. In Fuleche, I had to act as a son to some members of the Nzou Samanyanga; be a brother in other circumstances; or a nephew tasked with calming the anger of the elders. The greatest challenge, however, was direct involvement in the social conflict that had older brothers and sisters on one side, younger brothers on the other side, and the Samanyanga elders in the middle trying to bridge the divide. I had to give a listening ear to all parties, while simultaneously risking being identified as biased and a sellout.
Conclusion
As African researchers, we need to ask ourselves two critical questions:
- To what extent can we use or avoid our cultural practices when we enter the social field to conduct research?
- Are we able to study African communities in ‘splendid isolation,’ as noted by Allen and Montoya?
These and other crucial questions present a significant challenge to research strategies that, in one way or another, interact with or challenge cultural practices. Most importantly, the rapport and easy networking, which cultural practices such as totems create and promote, raise serious questions about the supposed good embedded in research methods and tools. Totems, in my case, did show the social field is not to be underestimated. They enabled me to step on historical and social minefields that require in-depth research. At the center of the social conflict was the issue of witchcraft, a spiritual phenomenon which underpinned accusations and counter-accusations, fist-fighting, and the perceived desire to protect oneself from harm associated with witchcraft. Totems presented “a game of thrones” in which I became a participant by default, all in the name of responding to the social dictates of the field of research. As African researchers, we need to critically think about some of the research methods that we employ, especially those which tap into our cultural connections and practices. This reflection shows that totems offer an impactful community engagement platform. Totems give an insider perspective and practical understanding of societies that can benefit African social science research, but which require serious scholarly analysis in terms of the positives and limitations.
Endnotes
- M. El Harras (2011), ‘Life History and the Writing of Ethnography: The Case of Morocco’, in J.B. Ouedrago and C. Cardoso (eds), Readings in Methodology: African Perspectives, Dakar, Codesria: p149.
- Ibid.
- P. Bourdieu (1985), ‘The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups’, Theory and Society, Vol. 14, No. 6, 1985: p724.
- E.J.O Ndubisi (2021), ‘Totemism in Igbo-African Society and the Preservation of the Ecosystem’, in I.A Kanu, African Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Systems: Religion, Philosophy and the Environment, Association for the Promotion of African Studies; K.L. Mandillah and G. Ekosse (2018), ‘African Totems: Cultural Heritage for Sustainable Environmental Conservation’ in Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage.
- A.M. Wainwright (2019), Virtual History: How Videogames Portray the Past, Oxon, Routledge, p9.
- B.B. Allen and F.A. Montoya (2019), Practicing Oral History to Connect University to Community, New York, Routledge: p1.