The Politics of Peacebuilding in Africa by Taylor & Francis Group

Author:Taylor & Francis Group [Taylor & Group, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032034928
Google: OOiGzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-01-15T12:36:53+00:00

Methodology

This chapter is historical and qualitative in nature. Information presented here was collected from both Tanzania and Kenya territories with a specific focus on the Kuria community as described in the introduction and illustrated in Figure 8.1. Historical approaches and techniques were used to collect information from both secondary and primary sources. The process of data collection was done in three major phases in 2018. The first phase began with a review of secondary sources which involved published and unpublished materials such as journal articles, books, and theses. The second phase involved archival research, while the third phase focused much on oral interviews. Archival research was conducted in the Tanzanian National Archives (TNA), Kenya National Archives (KNA), Lake zone archives in Mwanza (TNA – Mwanza), the University of Dar es Salaam main library archives, and local archives, specifically, the Record Centre at the Mara Regional Commissioner’s Office (RCMRCO). Various files comprising of minutes of meetings, the correspondence of various government officials, and reports of various commissions were accessed. Such documents provided information on how indigenous and state-designed institutions worked to manage and resolve conflicts in the colonial and postcolonial periods. They also indicated the official government perspectives regarding the use and integration of indigenous and state-designed approaches of resolving conflicts as well as the challenges encountered in that endeavour.

Face-to-face oral interviews were also carried out with different categories of people, mainly retired and non-retired government officials, traditional indigenous leaders who were considered to be the custodian of indigenous institutions of conflict management, and few non-indigenous leaders who were purposively selected based on their ability to recall and provide perspectives on the past. A snowball technique was used to identify potential interviewees, and the principle of diminishing return was used to set limits of the number of interviews. Based on the principle of diminishing return, also known as saturation, interviews ended when there was no new information in the data collected in subsequent interviews. Interviews were aimed at gathering information about the recent past, crosschecking information from historical sources, and filling in gaps observed in archived materials. Since this work is an outcome of historical research, data were continuously analysed during and after fieldwork, and especially during the writing stage. A thematic technique was used in data analysis to group and discuss related information, and triangulation of sources helped to enhance the accuracy, relevance, validity, and reliability of the information gathered.

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