Another Day with CAS Makes Me Wonder... Will My Critical Ability Be Compromised?

I had another wonderful and busy day today - after staying up until 4:30am writing, J woke me up at 10am to inform me she was picking me up in an hour and that we had a thousand places to go today.  We went to the Phansi Museum, the CAS office, the office of the Deputy Manager of Arts/Culture in the Umlazi district, the Durban Art Space gallery, a fabric warehouse (sadly, I didn't find anything there), and FINALLY we had lunch at 4pm.

The Phansi Museum houses a private collection of Southern African artifacts with an astonishing range of older (or "traditional" as they call them) and contemporary clothing, basketry, beading, pots, drums, dolls, and so much more.  Phumzile Nkosi is the curator of the Phansi and she walked us through the collection, including the amazing "life-size puppet room" where they display different clothing from groups in the KwaZulu-Natal area.  This photo shows women's clothing from the Sotho (or Basotho) ethnic group (who live in both South Africa and Lesotho).  I plan to return to the Phansi to speak with Nkosi about individual pieces in more detail, so I will write more about the Phansi and post more pictures then.  There is so much more detail I have already, but something else has been troubling me for the past few days.

When we stopped in at CAS's Palmer St offices I got to catch up with M to talk about the upcoming Parliamentary Millennium Project Workshop.  I described this project in an earlier post entitled, "What Does Democracy Mean to You?"  but the location for the workshop in March has changed.  Instead of being here in KZN, the PMP coordinators are planning the next one to be held either in the Limpopo or Mpumalanga province (both to the north of KZN).  When J and M said I could travel with them to attend and help coordinate, I suppose some questions I have been thinking through really came to the surface.  In the many hours I have already spent with J, M, and R they have quickly become my friends - in the car, over meals, and at the office we have talked about so much more than just the CAS project - including talking about ourselves, our backgrounds, and exchanging jokes I would likely blush about if I were to type them out (well, others might blush over them).  What happens when I have to start writing critically about the CAS Amaswi project when I recognize the people I'm writing about and will formally interview are also my friends?

Normally the PMP pays for the flight and accommodation of CAS workers during the workshops - when I asked if I would be able to attend and offered to pay for my own way, J insisted that the PMP coordinators would likely cover my expenses since I would be assisting in running the workshop.  Is it ethical for me to let the Parliament cover these expenses?

If anyone has any advice or knows of any readings on the subject of participant observation academic writing that has also been able to remain productive and critical, I would certainly appreciate it.  I suppose I am wondering how my interaction with CAS will be viewed if it also becomes one of the main case studies for my dissertation.

Comments

[c...]

the best piece i know is Virginia Dominguez's "For a Politics of Love and Rescue" ... I'll see if i can find an e copy and send it your way. But, i think pretty much everyone who does fieldwork runs into this issue ... any maybe it's not such a bad thing if it alters how you're willing to write about people (maybe, and this is part of Dminguez's point, it's actually pretty problematic to think that we should write utterly dispassionately and critically about people's lives and their life's work) ...

[Leo du Plessis]

Hello - where is the "Durban Art Space Gallery". I can't find it listed in Telkon's Phone Directory.
Leo

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[Diamond Drill Bits]

I think most of the people who does fieldwork runs into this issue..And this is a wonderful site..I would like to refer my friends..