Baixa - Cardoso 300 MT

Chove torrencialmente. Na praça onde normalmente apanho os táxis não está nenhum. Espreito os txopelas, também não está nenhum. Vou para a praça alternativa mais próxima, onde por sorte está um único táxi. Caminho apressada, por baixo das árvores, esperando que nenhuma seja atingida por um dos muitos raios que iluminam o céu incessantemente. Oiço trovões esporádicos, antes de chegar ao meu destino.
- Boa noite. - digo entrando apressadamente para me proteger da chuva.
- Boa noite.
- Peço para a ir até ao Cardoso.
- Hotel Cardoso?
- Sim. Quanto é?
- São 300 mericais.
- 300?! É por causa da chuva?
- O combustível também subiu...
Seguimos em silêncio pelo tráfego cumulativo das chuvas e da hora de ponta.

Ethnography: Provocation

by Andrew Shryock

This article is part of the series Correspondences: Ethnography

We Need More Ethnography, Not Less

Imagine that you shouted “That’s enough about ethnography!” at the top of your lungs, and took thirteen pages to do it in a very popular journal, and then everyone who heard you started talking compulsively about ethnography all over again. Would you feel good about it? Probably not, unless you were up to some very serious mischief. Tim Ingold tells us that his anti-ethnography manifesto is appealing to young scholars and unconvincing to older ones. I can see why. His essay has a beguiling, almost Pied Piper-ish quality, with strong elements of the bait and switch. His bad ethnography is not the kind most of us did, or will do, and his good anthropology is not one he’s prepared to show us how to do. Methods are of minimal interest to Ingold, even as craft. Instead, he offers us a glistening array of attitudes, doctrinal stances, and metaphoric imagery. Boats are launched into the unknown. Melodies are coupled. Subjects and objects become verbs. Hyperbolic arcs are reversed to form an ellipse. It’s heady stuff. One wonders what a budding anthropologist who has not yet done fieldwork could rightly make of it.

Ingold says anthropology is about education, so it’s fitting that he reproduces in his essay a pedagogical trend deeply ingrained in our disciplinary culture: he tells us almost nothing about doing fieldwork, doing ethnography, or doing anthropology. It’s a mystery, the doing part. With mystery comes Ingold’s awesome display of mastery—and the need for it, really. Some of us are adept at making sense of ethnography and fieldwork, but few of us are any good at teaching others to do it. There’s a common belief that the experience is individual, life-changing, and that no method or form of engagement will work the same way everywhere. You learn by doing, and good advisors will leave you alone to do it. This sensibility is evident in Susan MacDougall’sexchange with Ingold. Whenever she invites him to comment on practicalities—how to prepare for fieldwork; how to avoid doing bad ethnography; how to deal with trauma—he heads to higher ground or he implies that anthropology is just like the rest of life, which it’s clearly not.

Tonally, there is something “off,” something misdirected about Ingold’s complaint. Its productive tension depends on its many sharp and flat notes, and the one that most troubles my ear is the relentlessly negative portrayal of data-gathering. Equating this activity with normal science, or empiricism, or analytical distance, and setting it apart from participant-observation, seems to miss an essential point about our ways of working. We tend to do our best ethnography when the people we work with have developed their own sense of what we are doing and why it is important. Data-gathering (both as representation and description) is often what they expect us to do, and to do well. Closing the gap between the imagination and everyday life might be our existential homework, as professional anthropologists, but when we do our fieldwork, people want us to get things right, and to focus on the right things. Indeed, data-gathering is an activity that forces us to do what Ingold wants us to do: pay attention, care, and create correspondences between how we work—and how people work on and with us.

I say all this because, in writing this Provocation, I broke one of Ingold’s cardinal rules. I turned my colleagues into subjects of study. I asked eight talented young ethnographers, all of whom I’ve worked with, for reactions to Ingold’s essay, and for their thoughts on fieldwork, its challenges, and how to prepare for it. Their answers were heartfelt and honest. Most of my ethnographers were surprised by the emotional toll they paid in the field, but were glad that they paid it. They were lonely, or they socialized to the point of exhaustion. Some had to fight the urge to hide in their rooms. Others had to deal with the sense of betrayal that came when the people they wrote about disagreed with what was written. Some felt advantaged because they were shy, or outgoing, or well-organized, or floppy and open to suggestion. A few emphasized the importance of being vulnerable, of not imagining themselves as inordinately powerful people with special abilities to harm or, just as important, to help. Condescension lies down either road, apparently. Most had a feeling of being co-opted or put to use by their hosts, and being rejected by others because this was happening. It was hard to leave. It was hard to come home.

What I found most intriguing about these responses is the extent to which personal travails were directly linked to data-gathering. My respondents often doubted that they would have enough material to work with; they feared the material they were gathering was not very good, or that no one would appreciate the effort that went into collecting it. They often felt they were wasting their time, and other people’s time. The turning point, for most, came when they found interlocutors who understood what they were after, or had similar interests. These co-conspirators helped them and held them to high standards. Time and again, it was specific forms of data-gathering that gave these ethnographers a license to be there, to participate in social worlds that were not conventionally their own or, in a few cases of so-called “native anthropology,” to recreate themselves as observers of a legitimate, locally-valued type. Putting up museum exhibits, attending weddings, archiving old Yiddish books, dancing with Turkish and Greek tourists late at night, learning how to box up shrimp, exploring the nuances of academic gossip, recording conversion narratives; this is what people expected, even wanted, these ethnographers to do as part of a writing and representing project.

In each case, data-collection and problem-oriented research led to the kind of anthropology that Ingold desires. Ethnography is not something done after the fact. It begins before fieldwork, is renegotiated during, and continues to evolve beyond periods of intense, face-to-face interaction. It resembles kinship in that way, and ethnographers often acquire new relatives while doing fieldwork. As a way of living and working with others, good ethnography depends on asking questions, coming up with convincing answers, and doing so collaboratively. Anthropology, ethnography, and fieldwork are not separate in the way Ingold suggests. They are all happening at the same time, across the discipline and into the world. An intellectual tradition unfolds as a result. Ethnography is crucial to that tradition. When Ingold implies that there is something base, something ill-conceived and inadequate about ethnography’s empirical dimension, he steps into a standard role. He is the high priest who conceals and celebrates the mysteries of fieldwork. Or, less flattering, he is the parent who can’t talk honestly to her kids about sex. 

“Well, honey, it’s about attention, and care, and correspondence.”

“I guess,” the cringing youth thinks, “But how do I . . . do it?”

Ingold’s essay is part and parcel of why we routinely underprepare anthropologists for fieldwork. It encourages the sniffy attitude toward methods training we see all around us; it misdiagnoses how important collecting, pursuing, and searching are to the "figuring out of things" that lies at the heart of all good fieldwork and all good anthropology. Yet Ingold is right, and profoundly so, when he invites us to eliminate the perfidious distinction between those we study with (our colleagues) and those we study (our subjects). When I asked my small set of ethnographers how they would prepare students for fieldwork, they emphasized themes very similar to the ones that define good Ingoldian anthropology. They want to be interested in the work of their students and use their own experiences to connect and teach (“attention”). They want to be alert to the conditions—political, personal, and intellectual—in which their students work so as to help them engage those conditions effectively (“care”). They want to think alongside their students, sharing ideas and building links between their own findings and those that, through comparison, constitute larger fields of anthropological knowledge (“correspondence”). These are desires animated by fieldwork itself, and by the moral lessons learned while doing ethnography. We need more ethnography, not less. We can’t have Ingold’s anthropology without it.

Shryock, Andrew."Ethnography: Provocation."Correspondences,Cultural Anthropologywebsite, May 3, 2016. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/871-ethnography-provocation

Baixa - Museu, 150 Mt. In the threshold of legality - "the Municipality only makes things hard for us" (o Município só nos dificulta)

I left later from work today, around 8 pm. I saw a "txopela" in a corner close to where I work. The driver was busy texting on his phone. I approached and asked if he was waiting for someone. He looked around and pointed to the other side of the road while explaining that he was with a client, but I could take a "txopela" just across from him.

-"Take one of those, you can take one of them", he said solicitous.

I crossed to where two "txopelas" were parked. One seemed empty, so I approached the one with a driver inside. As I looked inside the driver turned around and unzipped the plastic "door". The driver of the other "txopela" stepped out and I was told to get in.

I asked the price for taking me home, and explained where abouts "home" was. We exchanged a few city markers and he said he knew where to take me and confirmed the price, 150 Mt. When he started driving I commented that it was a bit late and asked him how late did he usually stay . He said that he usually stopped working at 8:30.

-"But it is practically 8:30", I said.
-"This will be my last ride, then."
-"What about your colleague?" - I wondered.
-"He will wait for a client, so he has an excuse to leave."
-"What if no client comes?"
-"He will eventually give up."

He explained that this time of the year it is difficult to have clients at night, because of the school break. When it is school time they have clients from ISCTEM and Escola Nautica. I thought it was a long way for people to come from Escola Nautica. He explained that there were no "txopelas" between where they were parked and the school, so the students would in fact walk to them.

I asked if they were a formal square, and commented that there seemed to be quite a few stops where "txopelas" would congregate, all within the same block. He confirmed that his was a square, and that they were waiting for the Municipality to demarcate the place to make it a formal square. He also agreed that there were two many "spots" for concentration. He gave me an example of a group that would stop across the street from them. The Municipality requested that they all congregate at the corner. At the same time there was a case of a square that "txopelas" requested for themselves, and the Municipality after demarcation attributed it to taxis.

Licensing is not easy, he explained. Usually companies with at least five "txopelas" take precedence. Placement in squares is also difficult because when they go to the Municipality they say that there is no place in the existing squares. So the "txopelas" take the initiative and stop where they think they will get the best business. Once there are enough of them they request the spot to become a square.

They also organise in queues like taxis. Even though it seems they are parked haphazardly, they know who has been there first. At his square, they even have a notebook where they sign the name as they arrive to avoid skirmishes when a client requests a service. Once one leaves, the others erase the name from the notebook. When he comes back he registers it again.

-"And when all leave, who holds the notebook?"
-"It stays there. There is a young man who sells King Pie. He is always there. He holds on to the notebook."

A 'patrão' never loses

Today, on my way to work I saw a curious "txopela". Instead of the habitual yellow and green colors, it was painted blue and branded by Bosch. I couldn't resist. I stopped to talk to the driver. He a young man in his mid twenties. As I was in a hurry, I took his number and promised to call him later. I called him mid-morning and we agreed that he would come by my office's building at lunch time. He came by as promised. I was in a meeting, so we agreed to meet later on, after he ran an errand.

He wasn't sure what my intentions were, and I had to explain again. I had done it once during our morning encounter. I assured him that his identity would remain anonymous. I asked to tape our conversation, and he reluctantly agreed.

My main curiosity was to understand how was it that the company had approached him to advertise on his "txopela".

-"These bikes here belong to a company", he explained.
-"Oh, it is not yours?"
-"Some 'whites' bought these bikes, and [than] they talk to a certain company, so they do the advertising, set up this and give to people who have a contract, for them to work. But this advertisement is paid to them [the owners].
-"And you, who work for them, do you take what you make or do you have a salary?"
-"We don't have a salary" - he laughed nervously.
-"You don't have a salary? How is it, then?"
-"In the bike, it is a contract. They determine the time. They say: 'for this set of time you will give me this much daily, when the time is up the bike is yours'."
-"Ok! And during that time you get nothing?"
-"You get nothing."
-"And how long do you have to stay with the bike?"
-"Two years."
-"Two years... without receiving anything? Isn't it something like... I have heard from others something like this: during the day you make something that you must give him, the remainder is yours."
-"That's it. That's exactly it."
-"It's the same system?" - I asked. He nodded in agreement. "Ok", I added "for two years... how long have you had this bike? How long do you have left?"
-"Hey... There is still a long time left, because I only have it for six months."
-"Six months? There is a year and a half to go." - I laughed.
-"There is still a long time to go", he insisted laughing along.

I then became curious about how he had become a driver.

-"Through a friend... he gave me the number of the 'boss'. I talked to him, pressured, and he ended up accepting me. Then I went to take the bike."
-"Does he have many bikes?"
-"He has Milo, Nido, Bosch, 'Maheu'... I think aroung 40 or 30 something..."
-"Bikes?", I asked surprised. "Him, just him? And when someone gets a bike [after the stipulated period], does he buy a new one?"
-"Exactly."
-"And he always does a rotation?"
-"He actually has some bikes that are about to be let go."

I moved on to his work station.

-"You told me before that you don't have a square. How do you do it? Do you have your own clients?"
-"I have a square!", he laughed out. "It's just nowadays it is difficult to manage."
-"Manage what, a square?"
-"No! It is difficult to stay in one place. You can stay there 2, 3, 4, 5 hours without anyone coming and getting on."
-"So, how do you do, then? Do you prefer to drive around?"
-"I prefer to drive around."
-"Yes, I saw you had a client there and another..." I pointed to two opposing directions.
He laughed wholeheartedly and explained that he had to pick up a package in one of the points.

-"So, are you done with your day?" - it was just before 3 pm.
-"Not yet", he laughed again.

He had been dropping a women in the morning, and then another at lunch time. I moved on to types of clients.

-"Who exactly are your clients? Women, men, students?"
-"It depends. But I have set clients who call me every day."
-"And what are your prospects in this work?"
-"I usually say that three months ago it helped. Now it is very difficult."
-"What is the problem?"
-"There is no money!"
-"There are no clients?"
-"There are clients, but actually I can say that there are no clients. Because, those who used to get on [now] don't because there is no 'dough'. You go around and see: 'this one got on to the 'txopela' yesterday, today he is..."
-"...on foot."
-"Walking, yes."
-"Three months; things started getting worse three months ago..."
-"Yes, the situation is a bit chaotic."
-"So, how do you see your future?"
-"I don't know, but I hope it will improve."
-"How did you adapt? These three months when there is less money, did you change anything or do you work as you used to?"
-"No, I had to change something... Like what? Sometimes I go home at 10 pm."
-"They don't complain back home?" - I asked looking at his wife who was sitting in the back of the 'txopela' throughout the interview. She looked at me with a half smile.
-"Complaining or not, she sees the situation", he said laughing nervously. "There is no option, I have to double the effort."

I thanked him and we both went our ways. I learned much in the 5 minutes that lasted our talk.

Sommershield - Museu, 200 Mt

Came out from a long needed waxing session undecided whether to get a transport or walk home. But the winter darkness setting in early decided for me. As if by fate, I saw in the dark the unmistakable flashing blinker of a "txopela". Likely it was waiting for someone, because it wasn't parked properly, and it was flashing as if ready to leave. 

Got near him and stroke up a conversation. He was indeed, waiting for a client. Was willing to call for a colleague that would have to come from the direction I was going to, and that would take a while. Unfortunately, he didn't know of anyone who worked in the vicinity, but advised that I could probably just sign a "txopela" down at the main road down the block.

I doubted, because I had tried once before and I walked a long way before I could find a "txopela". Most of the ones passing were already carrying clients. But, I thanked him anyway and prepared to go on my way. I asked if he had a card. He asked for my number so he could message me with his number. I might get him another time.

I headed down the block to the main road. When I drove past this road earlier, it was full of taxis. I had even commented to my colleagues in the ride that when I needed a taxi in that road I could never find one. And as I had expected, now there was none to be seen. As if reading my mind, a voice in the dark shout out: "taxi"? I turned around surprised and repeated "taxi"?

The man, who was sitting on a side-walk bumper jumped up and confirmed if I really wanted a taxi. I asked if there were taxis there, because I could see none. He pointed to a car in a different color than the standard yellow and green. I walked to the car, agreed on the fee and got in.

"Are you disguised"?, I asked as soon as he started driving. He laughed and explained that the car was new and he hadn't had the time to paint it over. In any event, the taxis available at that time worked mostly with set agreements with companies, and now they were just "in the corner hanging out, passing the time and talking among friends." 

-"But is there a taxi square there"?, I continued.

-"There is", he responded, "it's just that the Municipality hasn't painted over after it arranged the sidewalk. But there is one from a long time ago".

He was talkative. Told me he was in the business at least three years. The square was there for at least seven years. He preferred to work for companies. I assume that it means a steadier income. I told him I was doing research on hired transport in Mozambican cities. He explained that the life of a taxi driver is not easy. "One needs to have the head on the right place, in order to manage the income", because there are days that one doesn't get a single ride. I told him I knew some people worked for other people. He agreed that indeed some managed to get a second car , and so hire people to help. But it was not ideal, because "you need to make your money and than the money for the 'patrão', as well. For example you can work for a week and make a lot of money, but still owe money."

-"So the goal is always to get your own car"?

-"That is the goal."

-"I heard of examples in which that can happen in 6 months, 1 or 2 years..."

-"Maximum 2 years. If you are really focused, that can happen in 2 years."