Introduction: Diversity in the Fulbright research experience Although the Fulbright program is well known in the US and around the world, I suspect that few people understand the degree of flexibility offered to program participants or the diversity of experience and method in research that the Fulbright program accommodates.
For some scholars, the Fulbright program is a means of supporting their previously established scholarship or of pursuing a specific project within their field. For those who, like myself, enter the Fulbright with a BA but no previous field work experience, the Fulbright program offers the opportunity to explore a discipline and to create a frame work for scholarly inquiry guided by oneís own thinking, insights, and understanding. This creates moments of great frustration, but also moments of exhilaration and accomplishment that make the hardships and wrong turns seem very worthwhile.
It is my hope that in describing my own process of ìfindingî my research focus over a period of many months in Sri Lanka, that perhaps those of you who are just now formulating your own research proposals will feel more free once you arrive in your host countries to be creative, to respond to local circumstance and current events, and to diverge from the path you had previously laid out for yourself. It is my strong belief that Fulbrightís emphasis on process rather than product is its greatest strength, providing the opportunity for Fulbrighters to both make mistakes and learn from them.
Writing the initial proposal When I submitted my Fulbright statement of proposed study in Sri Lanka in the fall of 2001, I had never been to South Asia, but was intrigued by what I had read about the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, a grassroots Sri Lankan development organization, as I researched my senior thesis in development studies at Brown University. I was interested in Sarvodayaís participatory development philosophy and its inclusion of spirituality as an important dimension of human needs and motivation, and I felt that the Fulbright program would offer a great opportunity to learn first-hand about Sarvodayaís work. I also had an idea that I might want to pursue a career in microenterprise, so I prepared a proposal merging my interest and minimal experience in the field of microenterprise with my curiosity about Sarvodaya. My proposal relied almost exclusively on correspondence with Americans who had studied or worked with Sarvodaya, who explained some of the technical aspects of the microenterprise projects that the Sarvodaya Womenís Movement was undertaking.
As I was formulating my research plans, I had little more than a basic awareness of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka. My attitude towards the conflict was that, as it was mostly confined to the North and East regions of the country, it most likely would not affect my work and I could carry on with my research while more or less ignoring the political situation in the country. Looking back, I can see what a naÔve attitude this was, but at the time it seemed like a safe and reasonable approach.
When I learned that I had been granted one of six junior Fulbright fellowships to Sri Lanka for 2002-2003 to pursue my research on Sarvodayaís microenterprise programs for women, I had no idea that it would take me a good five months in Sri Lanka to feel oriented, six months to come up with a solid research plan, and nine months (the entire length of my stay in Sri Lanka) to feel that I really had a grasp on how to conduct field research and what to expect from a field visit.
Settling in and taking stock The first thing I realized when I settled in at Sarvodayaís headquarters in Moratuwa, a half-hourís bus ride south of the capital city, Colombo, was that my entire research proposal was based on outdated information, and that the program I had proposed to study (the Sarvodaya Womenís Movement) was almost entirely inactive and was running only a few half-hearted projects.
I decided to spend the first three months of my stay living and working at Sarvodaya headquarters in order to gain a better sense of the various programs and initiatives that operated under the broad structure of the Sarvodaya Movement, and in order to regroup and identify a new area of study.
At first I was nervous that the Fulbright program would take issue with this approach, and that perhaps I needed to have a solid research plan that I could at least pretend to be following, but a meeting with the director of the Sri Lanka Fulbright program, Tissa Jayatilake, assured me that it was quite normal for Fulbrighters to revise their research proposals and that he had no problem with a revision as long as it was clear that I was engaged in the pursuit of a research topic.
At the same time, I was undergoing a political education that taught me a great lesson in thinking about the role of conflict in society. I slowly came to understand that the civil conflict in Sri Lanka, which has been ongoing for more than 20 years, in some way affected nearly every aspect of life on the island and that understanding the conflict was crucial to understanding Sri Lankan society.
Learning through apprenticeship and hands-on work experience Based on this growing understanding, I chose to apprentice myself to Sarvodayaís 5R unit, which coordinated programs and services in the conflict-affected areas of the North and East (named for the five ëRís: relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction, reconciliation, and reawakening ñ the latter being Sarvodayaís unique contribution, drawn from the Buddhist emphasis on ìawakeningî as an essential aspect of spiritual development), and spent the next three months assisting them with grant writing and negotiation and traveling as permitted to parts of the East coast to understand how the conflict had affected people at the village level.
[1] Through conversations about my work and research with other members of the NGO and research community in Colombo (both Sri Lankan as well as European, American and Japanese), I gradually came to understand the way that Sarvodaya was perceived by those involved with social services and research. The international NGOs viewed Sarvodayaís work with skepticism. They saw 30 years or so of various grants and funding from outside organizations with dubious results in terms of improved standard of living, increased participation of villagers, increased social harmony, etc. Sarvodaya claimed to be active in more than 50,000 villages island-wide, but had little in terms of documentation to back up this claim, and did not have a good track record of documenting long-term results of their work.
On the other hand, my own observation told me that Sarvodayaís membership and activities were very strong in some villages and weak in others, depending largely on the quality of local and regional leadership. The organization clearly contributed to improvements in villagersí well-being in some of the villages I visited, where Sarvodaya ran well-attended preschools of active, curious children or where a water project allowed villagers to collect their daily water outside their homes instead of walking for miles a day to the nearest well, as they had previously.
Some of the international NGOs also felt mistrustful of Sarvodayaís Buddhist and spiritual philosophy and orientation, although many NGO staff people simply felt that they did not understand the role that Sarvodayaís philosophy played in their work, and felt more or less neutral to it. Still, many members of the Sri Lankan and international academic community viewed Sarvodayaís Buddhist orientation with varying levels of skepticism and distrust, which in a society in which ethnicity was linked to religious belief, and in which the two major ethnic groups were engaged in civil warfare, seemed to be quite healthy.
(Finally!) Identifying a workable project It was through my increased awareness and sensitivity to the power dynamics in Sri Lankan society, and through my gradual understanding of some of the criticisms of Sarvodayaís Buddhist affiliation and Sinhalese leadership, that I finally identified my research project. After spending four months in the Colombo area with periodic field visits, I felt ready to spend some time in villages and, with the help of a translator, to interview villagers involved with Sarvodaya at the local level.
I decided to focus my research on the cultural interface between the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement and the three major ethnic groups in Sri Lanka: Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim. Sarvodaya claims to have universal appeal and application, but much of its philosophy is derived from Buddhist principles. In my village level research, I sought to answer questions such as: Do villagers perceive Sarvodaya to be a Buddhist organization? Has Sarvodaya successfully integrated itself into the multiethnic reality of Sri Lanka, and, if so, how? Do all ethnic groups participate equally in Sarvodayaís programs, meetings, and cultural events?
Creating a field methodology
Identifying my research focus was a major hurdle, but it was only the first of many. Next I had to identify a methodology, which felt to me like reinventing the wheel, as I had very little guidance as to what methods of field research would be most useful, which would be ìacceptedî by the academic establishment, etc. In consultation with my local academic advisor and one of the senior US Fulbright scholars, I gradually identified a research plan.
I selected a geographic area for my research that was multiethnic and in the central region, away from the areas most heavily affected by the conflict. In part, my choice was guided by the strength of the Sarvodayaís regional office, which I felt confident would assist me in my project, and which I believed to be likely to have village-level Sarvodaya groups that were active enough to be worthy of study. I found a translator who was willing to work with me for a nominal fee ñ a young Tamil man who had just started working for Sarvodaya but who did not yet seem to have a strong understanding of Sarvodayaís work (and therefore, did not have a strong ìbiasî), who spoke fluent Sinhalese and Tamil. I was aware that, in an ideal world, I would have separate Tamil and Sinhalese translators so that the individuals I interviewed would feel safer making comments and observations about ethnicity (as they would be speaking with someone from the same ethnic group), but I could not afford it and couldnít identify a good Sinhalese translator, so I accepted this limitation and went ahead.
I visited four villages in the Kandy and Nuwara-Eliya region of Sri Lanka: one Tamil village, one Sinhalese village, and two villages of mixed ethnicity that included Tamil, Sinhalese, and Muslim villagers. I stayed an average of three or four days in each village, interviewing as many villagers from a balance of the ethnic groups as possible in individual interviews, as well as conducting two separate ìfocus groupsî with men and women in each village. My questionnaire, which I had had translated in to Sinhalese and Tamil by a university professor and a scholar at a local research institute, slowly evolved as I understood which questions villagers responded to, and which they did not. I planned to expand my research to Puttalam district in the West, another multi-ethnic region, but ran out of time.
Conclusion: Reaping the benefits of flexibility
In the end, I felt moderately satisfied with my research experience and very satisfied with my Fulbright experience. Although my ìresultsî were, perhaps predictably, unremarkable and rather surface-level, I nevertheless was proud of having undertaken the process, making mistakes along the way and learning from them, so that I can now say that I have done field research, and I can also say that I would do it entirely different next time around. I am aware that Fulbright offered me a remarkable gift that most scholars never receive ñ the opportunity to test a discipline, to create from scratch a methodology, to make mistakes and come up with questionable ìresultsî that may never be published, but that have aided me immeasurably as a scholar and independent thinker.
Perhaps even more importantly, I also benefited from the hospitality of innumerable Sri Lankan villagers, including many Muslims who, in the first months of the US war in Iraq, welcomed me despite my nationality and answered my questions without hesitation.
Next time, I will conduct my research differently, but next time the circumstances will, no doubt, be completely different. I will, most likely, conduct research as a Masterís or Ph.D. candidate, under the guidance of a university department and under the pressure of having to achieve specific results (such as a thesis) ñ my focus will be much narrower, and I will, undoubtedly get more done, but I will have lost the freedom that Fulbright offered me to respond to what I found, to allow serendipity to be the primary guiding force in my research and my experience, and to allow relationships and friendships to guide the focus of my inquiry.
