A Step Forward in Methods for Arts-based Research in the Anthropocene: A Series Reflection. 

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Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: In this seventh and final post in a series on Arts-Based Research in the Anthropocene, series editor Amrita DasGupta reflects on the importance of arts-based research and what inspired her to organize this series.

The traditional research methods are so widely accepted, to the extent that there is rarely any space for innovation or introduction to new methods. Such constraints rise from disciplinary rigidities. What is an acceptable method of data collection for one stream is unacceptable for the other. This results in curiosities about the authenticity of everything published and produced around us. To be specific, the process of data collection in history through archival research is often held higher than anthropologic fieldwork and oral history collection. The discipline seems to need to fall back on archives to support the ethnographic evidence or counter them. Yes, through such negotiations you can also prove the colonial archives to be wrong, malnourished, and manipulated. However, I believe, it is urgent to question the traditional ways of doing research, but better late than never. I also espouse the need to break down the disciplinary barriers and move towards an interdisciplinary approach. It cannot hurt to have many perspectives to solve one issue at hand. Several perspectives only enrich the research. These ideas inspired this blog series on Arts-Based Research in Anthropocene. 

Each piece in the series was carefully selected to reflect the range of work being done within the scope of arts-based research. There are many other variations of the method that the blog series could not showcase, but my hope is that the series will start the much-needed conversations of what is and can be considered ethical methods of research. 

I would like to propose some food for thought to explain why we need arts-based research methods. It is often advised and considered to be the best practice to detach oneself from their research communities (i.e. to be as unmoved as possible when collecting data from communities one works with). Before I explain the problems with this approach, I want to underline my grave distaste in using the word “on” when referring to research communities. I assert, we do not work on people and their lives, we can only work with them. If our research communities do not welcome us and make us a part of their lives and homes, we will be incapacitated. Human relations need more effort than what our research methodologies teach us during a theoretical coursework. Human relations, I want to make clear, is not limited to what is practiced between humans. It stretches its ambit to include the non-humans and the environment too. In this context, I am tormented by a few questions, how often is it possible that the researcher does not get affected by the emotions of her research participants? Is it true human nature to be able to remain unmoved? If narratives of trauma leave you unmoved, are you human at all? What is the inevitable necessity to convert qualitative data to quantitative? Because removing emotions is something that takes you to being more “objective” or “rational,” which makes the quantitative word “statistics” to ring in my ear. I am also not in favour of using words like “data”. Data sounds like “numbers”. It is not okay to reduce people to just numbers. It is not okay to find people in the archives who are recorded and remembered as numbers. This is inhumane. To be researchers do we need to be inhumane? The questions did not evolve from the void. They evolved while I worked with the marginalized and ostracized sex workers of Bangladesh for my PhD research. 

My research community are trauma victims. It would be inhumane and unethical for me to put them through the same trauma of narrating their life experiences by taking interviews. Going against the norm of accepted research practice of taking structured or semi-structured interviews, I proposed arts-based research. In a six-month long workshop, the sex workers drew their life experiences. They explained their drawings to me. Those explanations were the stories of their life and psyche. The sex works of Baniashanta, live on the cost of Passur River. Their land is being gnawed off by the escalating river water. In their paintings, they draw their present and future. In Figure 1 you see how the water engulfs all and in the Figure 2 you see how everything is just a green field. Drawing their life experience and fears of the future, gave them the space to do something other than their occupation—a method where the research participants had all the control. They had the time to think about what story they wanted to tell and how. They were not contracted to reply to what was specifically asked of them. 

Figure 1: "Present Plea" Painted by Hamida (name changed according to ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations). The picture is titled "Present Plea". The plea written in Bengali is translated into English. The black boxes are an artistic statement to hide the names of the sex workers who live there. This is done according to ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations. Source/ curator: Amrita DasGupta.
Figure 1: “Present Plea”
Painted by Hamida (name changed according to ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations). The picture is titled “Present Plea”. The plea written in Bengali is translated into English. The black boxes are an artistic statement to hide the names of the sex workers who live there. This is done according to ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations. Photo by Amrita DasGupta.
Figure 2: "A Colourful Future?" The picture is drawn by Sofia (name changed in accordance with ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations). The black box is an artistic statement to hide the name of the artist, in accordance with the ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations. Source/curator: Amrita DasGupta
Figure 2: “A Colourful Future?”
The picture is drawn by Sofia (name changed in accordance with ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations). The black box is an artistic statement to hide the name of the artist, in accordance with the ethics of safeguarding the identity of people from ostracised occupations. Photo by Amrita DasGupta

Our relation to the world at large is not statistical; we cannot convert everything to numbers. We have been living the “big data” life for long and have been doing a grave disservice to our research environments. It is time to think differently and provide respect, care, and compassion where it is due. I believe each piece of the blog series offers new ways to think about how we can do it differently. 

Covering the name of the artists in black pains me. But ethics of research calls for it. My research community should not live in darkness, because they have done nothing to deserve such marginalization. It is us, the people of the gentlemanly society that push them to obscurity. I do not want to reduce them to just colours, so as a part of arts-based research I leave with you their voices taken from the recorded ethnographic theatre they did as a part of my project. Their voices talk of life, joy, fear, pain, and hope. I can only hope we start the conversations about breaking down the rigid methods of doing research, as soon as possible, and not at our leisure!

Arts-based Research in Anthropocene. Presentation by Amrita DasGupta, Women’s History Month 8 
March, School of Oriental and African Studies. The voices are recorded with informed consent of the participants. Source: Amrita DasGupta 
Feature image: The arts workshop in Baniashanta Brothel. Photo by Amrita DasGupta.
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Amrita DasGupta

Amrita is a third year PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is also a visiting researcher at the King's India Institute and a guest teacher at the London School of Economics (LSE). She completed her MPhil titled ‘Bonbibi’s Sundarbans: Tiger Widows and Water-Prostitutes’ from Jadavpur University. It interrogated the impact of/relation between animal-attack widows and the changing norms of widowhood in relation to sex work in the Sundarbans. Her PhD examines transnational water borders of the Indian Ocean World and trafficking in humans, especially in the mangroves ecosystems expanding from India to British East Africa.  Amrita's short documentary, “Save the Sundarbans”, was awarded the cinematography award, script and editing award. She has published in journals including the Economic and Political Weekly, Gitanjali and Beyond. As a SOAS Digital Ambassador Amrita regularly writes for the SOAS blog.  Some of her academic works are listed below:   2021   1. “The Need for an Anti-Trafficking Act for Sexual Servitude” (5 February 2020), SOAS  COP policy Briefing.   2. “Sars of History” Gitanjali and Beyond, Issue 5: Creativity Special  Issue: The Unity of All Things; ISSN 2399-8733.    2020     1. “Hydrocultural Histories and Narratives from Sundarbans”, INSEEEES 3(2), July 2020, New Epistemologies of Water.  2. The Pandemic, A cyclone: (De)Politicising the “Private” in Bengal” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 55, Issue No 39, 26 Sept 2020.

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