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Multiple entanglements

Nile Delta: my current field site. Nada T.This
interview is in a series on the dilemmas and contradictions researchers
undertake in conducting research in the Middle East. These conversations
attempt to focus on questions of methodology, and the obstacles encountered by
researchers when doing fieldwork in enduring political upheavals. In this
interview with Nada T., Mona Abaza continues her exploration of how these
issues apply within the context of contemporary Egypt.

Mona
Abaza (MA): Nada, your
experience as a practicing journalist and as a social science researcher over
the past couple of years has been directly affected by the transformations in
the political environment from 2011 until today. You started your first year of
a PhD program two months after Egypt’s military coup in 2013 that resulted in
the removal of President Mohamed Morsi from power and the ascent of Field
Marshall Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. You spent the summers of 2014 and 2015 undergoing
preparatory fieldwork for your dissertation research in a Nile Delta village
that you first came to know through your work as a journalist. Tell us more
about your research.

Nada T. (NT): My research looks at the role of infrastructure in shaping collective
mobilization and issues of sovereignty and rights outside of Egypt’s city centers.
My initial research started out by looking at contestations surrounding state
infrastructure construction and failures.

I focused on a
small village of approximately 5,000 members who started a collective movement
in 2012 attempting to pressure the local municipal government representatives
to provide basic infrastructural services like a paved road, a school, and a
medical unit. The movement took place a year following the 2011 revolution but
had its roots in at least a decade prior to this when a collective disobedience
movement was launched that sought to achieve administrative independence from
their governorate.

In the absence
of these services, the village community members, mainly made up of a committee
of migrant youth in the village, had started over the past decade to fund and
work towards the construction of the missing projects.

Through my research, I sought to explore incentives for political action, the avenues
people took to foreground and gain rights, and the channels chosen for
negotiating and challenging power structures. I investigated how marginalized
rural communities outside of the urban centers of control used infrastructure
as a way to push for state accountability and recognition.

I therefore looked
at how infrastructure became the channel chosen by these rural communities to
claim rights and implicate state institutions and officials in their own demands
for increased sovereignty.

On a parallel
track, I was also following social and political changes in rural Egypt through
a focus on generations. I am interesting in monitoring how notions of
citizenship and rights are generationally determined. Rural Egypt has
experienced a number of significant political transformations over the past
couple of decades, beginning with the land reform in the 1950’s of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, whose policies redistributed land to a large portion of
the fellahin. Three decades
later however, Egypt under presidents Anwar Al-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak pushed
through economic liberalization policies that resulted in a direct reversal of
the agricultural land ownership system. As a result, I wanted to look at how
the different generations, primarily those who grow up under different
political regimes, view the state, as well as their role as citizens within it.

More recently
however, I have had to switch my research site to a different Nile Delta
governorate as a result of the research difficulties I faced. The switch to my current
site, a different rural community in the Nile Delta, aims to carry on addressing
the role of infrastructure by looking at transformations in rural Egypt over
the past six decades. Yet the research has been taking different routes as a
result of my newfound positionality in the new site.

MA: What kinds of difficulties did you face in your research?

NT: I chose the community I first came to know in 2012 to carry out
my dissertation research. My entry into the community as a researcher took
place relatively smoothly as I had these prior connections as a journalist. Many
of the activists in the community welcomed me into their community. They saw
this as the return of someone involved in civil society organizations
(primarily the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights) and together
with other media personnel in support of their struggle.

Despite an
increasing security clampdown following the summer of 2013, the real challenges
I faced with my fieldwork began in 2016. In the summer of 2016, I returned to
my fieldwork site to officially start my period of dissertation research. A
month after my return visit to the community, my fieldwork prospects were
prematurely cut short. It was on a weekend away from the village that I made
some calls to my host family out of courtesy to confirm my return. I received
no response for a few days, which was unusual from them. After about over a
week of no response, I called the human rights lawyer and activist in the
village, who was also one of my key interlocutors. It was through him that the
unfortunate news of my inability to return was relayed to me.

During my few
days’ absence, the local security forces had interrogated the head of my host
family. He was picked out in the village on the basis of a number of leads, including
his outspoken political views expressed mainly on his Facebook account. Another
reason used against him was his Islamist background. He identified as Salafi
but dissociated himself from official party politics; he had left the Salafi Nour
party a few months after joining in late 2011, over disagreements with the
official political lines of the party.

Another of the
main accusations used against him and prompting his interrogation was his
welcoming myself into their home and the village. The reasons, as relayed to
me, were in relation to my presence as a researcher in the village. Another cause
for suspicion was my affiliation to a foreign, specifically American
institution.

The
interrogators castigated them for responsibility for my presence, and for
naively opening up to outside researchers as freely as they had. Moreover, they
were indirectly threatened with the suggestion that I should no longer return in
order not to put myself in any danger. The village community members were told that
they would be directly responsible if anything happened to me, as had happened
to “the other foreign researcher”, a reference to Guilio Regeni. The village community members were told that
they would be directly responsible if anything happened to me, as had happened
to “the other foreign researcher”, a reference to Guilio Regeni.

Regeni’s case was
cited as a threat six months after his torture and disappearance, despite the
fact that to this day, the Egyptian authorities continue to deny any link to or
responsibility for his murder. My presence as a researcher was used as a weapon
against the community that had kindly opened up their homes and made time for
me. The lawyer in the village advised me to lessen any risk to the community
and myself, and discontinue my research in that village.

MA: Did you face other challenges in accessing information?

NT: Part of my project was dependent on carrying out archival
research and visiting sites where historical documents could be accessed. I
applied to do research in the Egyptian National Archives but when applying in
November 2016, was notified that no approvals had been granted for researchers in
approximately six months. Since November, I have been waiting for approval.

My research was
met with further suspicion at the Agricultural Ministry Library. During the
third day of visiting the library and looking at the documents in the rare
books section, I, along with my non-Egyptian friend undergoing archival
research, were summoned by the head of the library. The initial reason provided
was that no one had asked to see the rare books section in the library for several
years. Why were we seeking entry?

While we were questioned,
we were asked about our academic affiliations and were asked to show some proof.
Why were we so interested in the rare books section? I replied by asking the
library head why our access to a public library was deemed in any way  different from that of the many other students
who were carrying out their research unimpeded. His response was that the
current period in Egypt was very politically sensitive, requiring extra
measures, such as the background check he was carrying out now. This was
despite the fact that we had already undergone all the general procedures
carried out prior to entering the library, leaving our identification and
personal belongings behind and so forth. Since we were affiliated to a foreign
institution, he had to make sure who we were and what our incentives for
research were. The current period had seen a lot of unfounded criticism of
Egypt, he added, which especially justified such questioning.

This is even
more the case for researchers attempting to access primary sources to do with
the state and the economy. So now I found myself in a situation where not only was
my fieldwork viewed with suspicion but also my access to primary sources, even
if they were historical documents from an earlier century.

MA: How did you choose an alternative course of research to pursue
and did you find this very limiting?  

NT: Finding myself in a situation where the project I had prepared
for several years together with the theoretical framework from which it had emerged,
had to be abandoned, I knew I must find a practical, less risky proposal if I
wished to continue my fieldwork. This meant that shifting to another rural
context in a different governorate in the Nile Delta. The new site is one that
I have been familiar with all my life but not for research purposes. It is the
village my family originates from, both on my mother’s and father’s side. It is
also where my maternal uncle and grandmother reside. My uncle inherited a
leading position in the village and continues to hold that position.

I had to depend
on kin networks and local village-level affiliations to undertake further research.
Of course, while this alleviates the possible risks of running into security
threats or implicating the people I work with, other challenges must emerge.
The shift means that I have had to navigate power relations in the village in
order to carry out my research as smoothly as I can. Being affiliated to a
certain family name automatically limits and frames people’s responses to me in
a certain way. This move has also resulted in a shift of focus from state
contention to questions of local governance.

As a result, a
lot of my current research has had to move towards becoming more ‘domesticated’.
My presence in a public space holding a notebook let alone a voice recorder or
camera would cause immediate suspicion. In contexts where one is clearly an
outsider – standing out as an urban-based, single, female researcher – such
distinctions become especially magnified in such an increased climate of fear. I
still insist on making transparent my research, my background, and my affiliations
to my research interlocutors. However, I have realized that I have become more
careful about choosing whom to approach, and have as a result, practiced extra
caution in documenting information, relying more on memory, which I later record
when in a private setting. Practising fieldwork in the current period generally
comes with a sense of heightened precaution. One is forced to assess critically
one’s heightened sense of responsibility and the way we are implicated both in
the research and in the communities we work with, as part of the magnified consequences
of our multiple entanglements.   

Nile Delta. Author's own photograph.