STEPHEN M. SAIDEMAN
▶ FIELDWORK LOCATIONS: BRAZIL, CHILE, GERMANY, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA
My work has mostly been what I call “medium-n” analyses: I examine a number of case studies, often from multiple regions. Although my linguistic skills are not great, I usually end up researching a number of cases that would bedevil any scholar who is not fluent in four or five or six languages. My current project focuses on approximately sixteen case studies, asking both legislators and military officers about their civil-military relations. Coauthors have covered some of the cases, but I am responsible for the cases in Brazil, Chile, Germany, Japan, and South Korea—five languages. When doing a project on NATO, I could conduct most of the interviews in English. However, similar to my experience working on Hungarian and Romanian cases for a book on irredentism, wars of unification that did and did not occur in the 1990s, this time that was impossible.1 Instead, I have relied on various kinds of translators. In this chapter, I explain how I select translators, some of the challenges involved, and how I addressed them.
In these five countries, I generally followed two strategies: work with a partner or hire students. I did not choose a third strategy—delegate to others the job of interviewing. I could have hired professional translators, and did so for a few interviews in Japan, but I could not afford to do this for all of the case studies. I also prefer to hire people who have a good understanding of the political system because they can both help arrange interviews and give me feedback along the way. For most of the work in Japan, I relied on an academic who served as my partner in some of the research. The challenges that arose in this partnership are the same ones that apply to coauthoring: varying time commitments and pace of work, different senses of what is needed, and so on. As these are well known, here I focus on the process and challenges of hiring students.
For each case study, I contacted people I knew or that friends knew who could recommend students to me. By accident more than on purpose, three different kinds of students assisted me. In Brazil, I worked with graduate students who researched Brazilian politics and were very plugged-in to the politics and society of Brasilia. In South Korea, I was referred to a couple of students who were finishing their graduate work in interpretation. In Chile, I worked with two advanced undergraduate students who were from families steeped in politics. Each group of students helped to arrange interviews, often drove me to the interviews, and then served as interpreters. They also translated the consent forms and other documents as needed. I tried to pay the same rates in each country—the going rate for research assistance in my home country—but the interpreter students in South Korea had their own rates (somewhat higher than those I tend to offer). Offering less than what I would pay my own graduate students would seem to be an ethical breach but paying more was less problematic. To be clear, I only give coauthor credit to research partners. For translators and/or fixers, I not only pay them appropriately but also acknowledge them in every publication that results from their work. This leads to a key piece of advice—start writing the acknowledgments section as you do the research so you do not have to search through your emails later to figure out how to spell a name from five years earlier.
One of the challenges is that I cannot really say whether any of the translation was wrong or of poor quality because I did not understand the languages being spoken. My comfort level did vary because the professionally trained interpreters took notes and provided longer responses than those who were untrained. To compensate for variations in interpretation quality, I tried to get as many interviews as possible to triangulate not just the interview subjects but also the translations. Over the course of the interview period (between one and two weeks usually), I found that the translators became more comfortable, learning how to phrase my questions better in their native language and how to phrase the answers.
Not being able to speak the local language is not just a challenge for the actual interviews; it also complicates the logistics of getting to the interview. Most of the interviews for my current project involved people who work in a national capital, and one might think getting around would not be so problematic—and you would mostly be correct. Many transit systems have English as a second language, and Uber/Lyft—whatever flaws they have—allow one to get a ride from one spot to another without having to tell the driver where one is going. Because of the language problem, it was more difficult to use a taxi if I was not with my interpreter. In general, I prefer subways because they have reasonably good maps and one can GPS/Google-map from the subway to the interview location.
However, two complications arose over the course of this project. First, buildings in Tokyo do not have street names or numbers.2 This is not just a problem for wayward academics from North America but for Japanese citizens as well. When arranging an interview, one must ask how to get to the right building from a specific exit from the subway system (which is easy to navigate, unlike Tokyo’s train stations). While working in Japan, it is imperative to rent a smartphone or have one that can be used in Japan because GPS is absolutely required to address the absence of street names and building numbering.
The second complication was the fact that Chile’s capital is in Santiago, but its Congress resides in Valparaíso, a town on the coast about an hour or so from Santiago. This involved two practical problems: arranging interviews and traveling there. We had to save specific days for interviewing people based in Valparaíso because it was not feasible to go back and forth given the traffic problems that might occur. In some countries, it was pretty easy to line up a series of interviews back-to-back in a specific location, but the politicians of Chile were not so cooperative. We had to expend significant time and effort to get to Valparaíso for one interview with the hope of landing a second one. The first time we tried, we failed to get any other interviews. An effort to get an additional legislator to meet with us in Santiago also failed.
On my last day in Chile, with a flight late at night, my interpreters and I went to Valparaíso one more time to meet with one legislator. This went both really well and quite poorly. It went really well in that the interview took place right before a vote, and the politician’s aide then stationed us outside the chambers and corralled two additional interview subjects. We got what we needed thanks to coincidence and the generosity of this one aide.
Brazil was much, much easier because most of the government is within walking distance of the rest of the government. The only hang-ups I had there were trying to get a ride back from a military base on the edge of town (my interpreters came to the rescue) and impeachment. I had to cancel my first trip to Brazil because the people I wanted to interview were too busy impeaching their president to talk to me. I went the next year, and I was lucky to leave Brasilia just as protests broke out when people learned that the new president had bribed people during the impeachment vote of the previous year.
What went poorly? Getting back to Santiago. One of my interpreters drove us down in her mother’s car. On the way back to Santiago, we stopped to get gas. Her car was a diesel. It was a full-service station, and unfortunately those putting in the fuel did not bother to read the big “DIESEL” label on the gas cap. Oops. This meant we could not start the car for fear of damaging the engine. The car was pushed into a neighboring garage where mechanics took the fuel tank out, emptied it, cleaned it, and reattached it. Luckily, the mechanics had the time to do the work. We had to wait for a couple of hours, which then meant our return to Santiago was in rush hour. But we did make it back. Not quite as perilous as fieldwork in a danger zone, but it could have been a major problem if I could not get back to fly home.
Why not stay at home and subcontract interviewing entirely? Given my use of principal-agent theory, I am too well aware that I am not great at delegating. When I work with my own research assistants in Canada, I often give instructions that are vague or difficult to follow, so asking folks elsewhere to do the interviewing for me could be problematic. Plus other principal-agent dynamics could kick in as well—how do I know my researchers are doing what they say they are doing? (See chapter 13 by Cancian and Fabbe for a discussion on this issue.) More important, during these interview trips, I learn as I go along and can adapt and adjust the questions. I learn of new institutions or informal behaviors or examples that I want to ask about in subsequent interviews. A subcontractor could do that, but this person probably will not be driven to ask the same questions that come from my theoretical perspective and from my curiosity. I have repeatedly found myself in these interviews going in directions I had not expected. I simply do not trust that someone else would follow the same paths.
Doing fieldwork requires flexibility as well as grant money and good contacts. I feel guilty asking professors I do not know for assistance, but I try to pay it forward when people need help in Ottawa or in areas in which I have come to develop some expertise or contacts. When in the field, one must adjust on the fly and be calm when miscommunication happens or inconveniences arise. This project would not be possible if I did not have the grant money, if I did not lean on my network for contacts, and if I did not roll with the punches. Some trips produce more results than others, some interviews are utterly useless, and some are extremely useful. There is no one set formula for making this kind of research work. The only way it can work is to be decent to those with whom you work and to those who need your help because you will surely need assistance someday—and karma is a thing.
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Stephen M. Saideman is Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University and director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network.
PUBLICATIONS TO WHICH THIS FIELDWORK CONTRIBUTED:
• Saideman, Stephen M., and Philippe Lagassé. “When Civilian Control Is Civil: Parliamentary Oversight of the Military in Belgium and New Zealand,” European Journal of International Security 4, no. 1 (2019): 20–40.
• ——. “Public Critic or Secretive Monitor: Party Objectives and Legislative Oversight of the Military in Canada,” West European Politics 40, no. 1 (2017): 119–38.
NOTES
1. To be clear, I have not done any work in conflict zones, so my experiences are probably not helpful for those going into more dangerous situations. For an excellent discussion of those issues, see, in addition to other chapters in this book, Kate Cronin-Furman and Mille Lake, “Ethics Abroad: Fieldwork in Fragile and Violent Contexts, PS: Political Science & Politics 51, no. 3 (2018): 607–14, doi:10.1017/S1049096518000379.
2. Every address has three sets of numbers—reflecting the quadrant in the neighborhood that the building is in and then the subquadrant, and so on—but it is not an easy system to use. Many businesses automatically send directions to anyone interested in visiting them.