The politics of narrative: Methodological reflections on analysing voices of the marginalized in Africa

Abstract

This Research Note reflects on the question of representing marginalized people's voices by discussing field research based on open-ended narrative interviews with rural populations that had been displaced by natural resource extraction in Mozambique. It highlights the methodological challenges of representing narratives of the marginalized by discussing several aspects of the politics of narrative. On the one hand, narratives that emerge in fieldwork encounters are contingent articulations of oneself that unfold through the implicit negotiation process between a researcher and a research participant. On the other hand, these narratives are embedded in broader socio-material relationalities. Through this discussion, the Research Note demonstrates how these methodological aspects of the politics of narrative should be reflected upon as a way to navigate complex ontological narratives that emerge in one's fieldwork, as well as highlights how this narrative reading overcomes the potential danger of fetishizing individual agency and/or overlooking broader structural inequalities.