an issue of representation

It was either I continue with my transcription duties or sit and write a blog entry. I figured blogging would be way more interesting than trying to make my fingers type as fast as the voice I was hearing on the other side of my headset. I think I'm at my most distracted when I have to transcribe or listen to recorded interviews. Anyway, to help get myself out of the mountain of un-transcribed interviews I've allocated a specific day for each freaking interview - a make shift roster in the hope that this will spur me on to finish this boring task and get on with the analysis. A draft case study needing writing awaits! Due date 15 September.

But I also needed to write up my supervision notes, which meant I had to listen to the recording I made -see no getting away from listening to recordings this week - and of course I get a more refined, sophisticated sense of the discussion from the 'second reading/listening'. An important issue raised during supervision, and one which has occupied me for a while now, is how I'm going to approach how I represent my participants in my thesis. On a simple level I need to make a decision about how I will anonymise my participants - even though many of them weren't that bothered about me protecting their identity. But they signed a consent form that says I would do this, so I have to do it. Some even picked their own pseudonyms. So will I chose to de-gender and de-racialise their identities or maintain this aspect and simply change their names? The more fundamental issue of course, and the one that concerns me most, is what are the consequences of such a choice in relation to how participants come across or how they get represented in the thesis, as reflective of the broader socio-political context that is South Africa. Will they then simply become yet another example of how black-african, coloured, white people or women 'behave' within an educational context, maybe reflective of rampant stereotypes about how they should or shouldn't, do or don't, behave? Will my thesis simply reinforce negative, destructive, one-dimensional views and perceptions of these different groups and is it my duty as a responsible, ethical researcher and South African to ensure that how I portray my participants doesn't perpetuate such stereotypes. I don't have a answer to these questions and concerns, I've been reading around the area of race and representation within the SA context and I'm interested in exploring post-colonial theorisation more in the hope that I will come to some workable solution. And I haven't even included the debates I need to have about how I will represent myself in my thesis.

What is clear is that an additional angle, for inclusion in my thesis, has been raised by this concern; namely the need for a substantial discussion of research ethics, especially the contradiction that lay between theory and practice when applied to the issue of confidentiality and privacy within different contextual realities - a discussion I think that started way back in my MRes year.

 Goodness, guess what? I'm talking about my thesis as if it is a reality...wow! It really has begun.