getting back on the horse

Well it's been over a year since I last posted. Though it's been a busy year, the main reason I have not written has to do with my Nana passing away in June. She was the only person I know of who read this blog faithfully. Right after I would post something should would email within a day or two to say how she had had a hunch I had posted, hurried to the blog, and saw she was correct! Often when I've written here, I've written with her in mind. Once she was gone, there seemed no point in continuing, since no one else was reading as far as I know. I couldn't even think about the blog without getting a little choked up. But now that some healing time has passed, I think I will get back to writing in order to pursue my original goal of this blog: to keep a record for myself of some experiences and important trends in my thinking that I can look back on. I will continue to think of Nana, but I can thank God that my thoughts of her are now accompanied by a peace that I did not possess a few months ago. Still, it is hard to think that she will not be reading this, and I will not go visit her on my arrival home from England.

It's been a pretty eventful year, with the standout event being my wedding and marriage. It's a real feeling of bliss, to be permanently bound to someone you love, and to have a companion who knows you deeply. All my stressing about the wedding seems pretty frivolous to me now. It was a lovely day (though I was exhausted from 2 sleepless nights before it) and it was nice to see so many of our friends and celebrate with them, but at the end of the day, the marriage part is just so much more important, it really dwarfs any concerns about flowers or favors, etc. So my advice to future brides is to stay focused on the real event (starting your life with someone) and don't get too upset about the day it starts. I'm also glad we didn't spend more money than we did!

Living in London has been great. There are always new shops and parks to discover, and what a huge assortment of vintage! I should probably get a side job just so I can beef up my vintage collection before we leave. Our church is so young and vibrant and there are always people who want to hang out. My program has focused on lots of topics I have always been curious about, and has also really helped me to understand certain macro economic concepts much better. I've developed a real interest in fiscal policy, especially on the revenue generating side of things. My dissertation will hopefully examine why Latin America has never relied as much on direct taxation as the Western "rich" countries' governments do. I wish there was a way to turn this interest (or my interest in international trade and multinational corporations) into a good job as an economist! We shall see.

Okay well I don't mean to make this a long entry. I merely wanted to start blogging again to break the inertia against it. I will try to write again soon. Perhaps I will use it as a study tool like I did a little last year.

starting point for development

Today while doing my readings (which I doubt I will ever finish, since there are more than 100 each for two of my classes and 70+ for the other 2) I got to thinking how much my views of human nature inform my views of (economic) development. How much goodwill and pure motivations can/should we ascribe to the people involved? I was so frustrated by one of my readings today I had to put it down several times and pause, give myself a pep talk, and then continue. The particular paper is "The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal" by Robert Chambers. The first problem was that it was poorly written (he is clearly not an economist) and completely biased. Bias is normal and many academics have opinions and agendas they're pushing, but this paper was just ridiculous (it paid faint lip service to being self-critical but then left no room for the possibility that the unsupported assertions it was making could be quite untrue).

The paper's purpose is to sing the praises of a particular method for doing development research that doesn't wait for future policies based on the research to have an impact. It strives to empower the people being researched. In fact, the whole point is that the people themselves are to do the research and then analyze it, and present a report to the 'outsider' researchers (or at least heavily influence what is considered to be the findings). At first thought, this all sounds very good. We like the idea of empowering poor people. Who better to tell us what the situation is like than the people who live in it? It seems that unless the people themselves draw the conclusions, some misinterpreting outsider is going to draw the wrong conclusions based on their 'western' bias. The other approach--household surveys with limited possible responses-- seems prone to miss important local information and very 'extractive' in nature.

However, the very elements which are so praised by advocates like Chambers are probably the reasons we should be skeptical of it. Return to my earlier point on the philosophical foundations of our development approach. Can we really assume, as the PRA approach does, that a rural community will come together and come to a consensus on the priorities and actions necessary to make life better for the worst off in their society? Isn't the usual economic assumption of rational self interest much more likely to hold, the type of self interested motivations that will simply make the PRA process a manifestation of current local power structures and discrimination? I agree that getting all the stakeholders together to voice their views and creative suggestions can be productive (especially in the case when what is best for the poorest is also best for the richer), but when there are strong divisions or when the poorest are afraid of future repercussions of contradicting large landholders and other important figures in the community, what appears to be consensus may be quite far from it. The richer people in the village may be altruistic and want to help the less well off, but they may also be prejudiced and think that the poor are poor because they are lazy or deserve it somehow. Certainly the researcher can not bring back a report that the people put together that says 'the poor are poor because they don't work hard enough' and yet, if certain dominant members of the society that hold that view are able to exercise their influence over the PRA process, such a crazy conclusion is within the realm of possibilities. When researchers walk into a village to do some PRA, it is not a neutral and blank slate. Why should the politics which govern daily life in the village cease to influence behavior when some researchers come to town?

A second and related argument can be made against the empowerment objective of PRAs: disappointed hopes. The PRA process is incredibly demanding of people's time. It asks them to sit in discussion groups and draw diagrams and put seeds in piles to show how good one harvest was compared to another. It asks them what they most want to see changed and by seeking to empower them to take action, implicitly suggests that they can and will see the changes made. This leads me to ask three questions. As just discussed, whose change will be implemented? The loudest voice need not speak for all. Second, what happens when change doesn't happen, when the root of the problem is deep (lack of access to credit institutions, widespread disease and food poverty) and requires more resources than can be conjured at the community level, and the government doesn't come through? Perhaps the disappointed hopes argument is not convincing, because we like to think that now that they are aware of the situation, perhaps that will empower them to keep pushing until the situation really is improved. That seems to be the hope of the advocates of PRA. Yet perhaps this makes me uncomfortable because these 'outsiders' are not only coming in and asking for information (as in household surveying), but they're coming in and telling me to how my society views me compared to others and that I should be creative and dream up solutions for change. And then they seem to go a step further and support a certain view that emerges from the 'consensus' and help draw up a plan to do it. The researcher is no longer an observer but an agent of change. This is what the participatory people love and many economists shrink from. Isn't it a little arrogant to come into a village for a week and claim that you've sifted through all the nuance and helped them pick the best plan of action? What you've done is taken a side. For in most every action there will be people who wish to protect the status quo and those who want change. Any those who want change, will usually want change that helps them somehow. The sheer complexity of these dynamics should make practitioners cautious to 'pick a winner' since they cannot have perfect information. Perhaps it comes down to job description, and I tend to think people collecting information are different from the Peace Corps.

The proponents of this approach argue that it is more cost effective and faster than the survey method. It is quite possible that funding a few researchers to live for a few weeks in a few villages will be less expensive than funding the larger number of researchers and technocrats necessary to conduct a nationally-representative household survey using rigorous and time-consuming (for the researchers) techniques to make sure the results can be used to make statistical inferences. Thus in terms of researcher time (and wages) it is quite possible and even likely that the PRA exercises will be a cheaper way of gathering information (though of a different kind) about local situations. But what about the people's time? Are the days of participating in discussions and drawing Venn diagrams costless? Their time has an opportunity cost. Since studies tend to shy away from paying people to participate (feeling this sends the wrong message) this type of study requires an awful lot from a wide group. It also raises the concern that those in the village who cannot afford to stop working to participate will not have their voices included in the findings. However, if the study was well planned and comes at a less busy time (such as after the end of an agricultural season) it seems that this issue could be minimized. Still the time cost required from the local people should not be overlooked. Depending on the number of people involved, and for how long, these costs could easily exceed what is required to conduct interviews for household surveys.

The first 2 arguments were assuming that the PRA functioned as designed, i.e. it was participatory in all dimensions. I think there is reason to question to what extent this is true in reality. The researchers are meant to act as facilitators while the analysis falls to the community. Surely rural communities do analyze things continuously. They have social hierarchies and leaders who make decisions and likely have mechanisms for ascertaining the level of wider support. Farmers experiment and act creatively on their land. Yet the proponents of this approach suggest that to question the local people's ability to analyze the findings of the PRA is to claim that western researchers are superior and people can't be trusted to make their own decisions. But this is far from the truth! The art of the summary is something American children practice in school constantly because summarizing is not actually that easy to do. After several days or weeks worth of diverse activities a huge amount of summarizing is necessary to make the information meaningful. Summarizing inherently involves a value judgment in the sense that 'this is worth mentioning' and 'this is not worth mentioning.' Therefore after researchers have spent years reading books and journal articles and learning how to suck the marrow from them and leave the rest, summarizing starts to come easier. I am not suggesting that many of these rural villagers could not become expert analysts with some training, but I am saying that 'analyzing the findings' is quite a challenge, and in reality is probably done with a huge combination of prompting and eventual editing by the researcher/facilitator. Therefore a large portion of the value judgments fall to the researcher to decide what is important and what is not. Perhaps she is very concerned with gender issues. She might prompt lots of questions on that subject and dwell on it in her final report, even though the villagers may not have considered it a major issue on their own. Thus saying that the villagers 'generate and analyze the conclusions' is certainly a stretch, and I venture to say a lie by Chambers, because in this paper he is unwilling to acknowledge these caveats.

I could continue with my critique but will instead shift now to the merits of this approach because I do think that certain tools and methods of the PRA perform useful functions and fill in some holes of the survey approach. They will both work better when they are used in combination - each one performing the function it is better suited for. Here are some ideas on how they could be combined.

Since surveys can be criticized for being rigid or too difficult to code the responses of when unexpected responses are given, it makes sense to use participatory approaches before the piloting stage. Even still, the PRA will pick up on special local circumstances that are unlikely to have their own coding. One example my professor gave of when he was conducting a survey is that all the men seemed to be missing from the village. What sort of male-less village is this? he thought until he asked one of the women and she said that a certain type of wildlife had been spotted in the forest and all the men had gone to hunt it together. Despite the likelihood that the survey would be affected by the lack of men in the village, there was no way to incorporate that into the results. Surveys will frequently miss the nuances of daily life. The PRA can also attempt to understand nuances within the family while the surveys are much more limited since the household head is most likely answering the questions.

Surveys can also be criticized for being a snapshot. Indeed past studies have shown that the longer the 'recall period' the more people forget and leave things out (which can make poverty look worse than it is). Therefore when it comes to food, they usually ask what food the family consumed in the last week and for clothes purchases and other less frequent events they might ask about the last 3 weeks or 3 months. Still, those 3 months might have been a particular tough patch for that household (perhaps because of an illness of the income-earner or a failed crop) or a particular lucky patch --the survey doesn't ask how their current consumption compares to past periods (though I think that it should, despite the expected measurement error). Panel surveys come back and talk to the same family after some time has passed (usually one or two years) but this can also miss out on the seasonal dynamics. PRA, especially the seasonal calendars and time lines and trend analysis tools, are useful for looking at these time issues. Additionally seasonal calendars could be useful in determining the right time to survey (if you didn't want to come right at harvest time when people are all well fed or when their food stores and opportunities to generate income were at their lowest- making the situation look worse than it is the rest of the year).

Additionally using oral histories and ethno biographies, especially of people who were once very poor but now have enough to eat, or of people who have enough some years but not in others (the transiently poor), can help development researchers 1) understand how and why people move in and out of poverty and 2) can help them better design survey questions that ask about the right dimensions of a person's life.

The thing I find most interesting about the participatory approach (or RRA for that matter) is that it provides the opportunity to ask 'why?' Surveys can ask why on certain matters that have short standard answers that can be coded. Open-ended interviews and discussion groups can listen to a person tell you they stopped sending their daughter to school this year, and the researcher can say "and why did you do that?" and hopefully receive a rich answer that reveals the opportunity cost of having their daughter in school and how much they value that. Clearly asking open ended questions to a few people in a few villages should not be used beyond its limited function--the answers can be illustrative but you cannot make statements that they are representative. Still, it seems like PRA can be a useful tool both before the survey, and afterwards for asking the 'why' questions about surprising and important survey results. If it is a panel survey and revealed lots of movement into and out of poverty, the PRA can check to see how real this movement is (or if it is just a statistical artifact of measurement error) by asking people how their wealth and status has changed over the period.

Well this has been very useful exam preparation for me so thanks for wading through my disorganized thoughts on PRA vs. household surveys. Perhaps I will post some more exam prep, so you can learn a little bit of what I've been learning as well.

post in distress

Perhaps a blog is not the best forum to write about my migraine which is currently in its second day of unrelenting pain and nausea. Nana and whoever else reads this, please don't be concerned. There is a whole range of emotions which I only feel at times like this, and since this one refuses to go away or let me do anything that requires thinking or movement, I will try to jot down some feelings here so my healthy self can read later and appreciate its most wonderful health.

In my class on Income Distribution and Poverty in the developing world, my teacher asked us if we could only have 1 of these three things: decent standard of living, an education, or health, which would it be? The class was near unanimous in desiring health. In this state, I have oceans worth of sympathy for those who are sick and suffering. In the moment I feel like there is no difference between me lying on my bed completely helpless against the pain and the kids starving in Zimbabwe - what can we do? I feel a sort of bond with all the deprived that in my healthy state I would not be capable of feeling. It is for this reason (alone) that I value this pain. Otherwise, I put myself with the others who have cried out to God, why? Who can profit from this terrible and fruitless pain?

But I cannot lose sight of all God's many many blessings in my life (a huge one being that I get to marry my best friend on July 25th) and also my wonderful family and unexpected opportunities. And of course I realize that so many have had it worse, how blessed am I that my pain is physical and not emotional, though the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability that accompany my migraines (never knowing how long they will last, and if I will wake up feeling good or bad) do definitely affect me emotionally. Still, they do no lasting harm, and for this I can be thankful. The economist in me says, think of the cost of days in bed and lost productivity, for example I could not go to class today and fear tomorrow morning might be the same, and missing the last class before exams is never a good idea.

Well clearly this post is just rambling and I don't want to edit it. Don't think me a drama queen. If you've never had a migraine, try to be compassionate towards those that get them - it's really not just a headache.

the whirlwind named engagement

It has been an incredibly long time since I last posted. I think it's safe to say that the more eventful my life is the less I post, so yes, the months from November-February have been very eventful!

I November I was working hard at school and really feeling the weight of the marriage decision. How can we be prepared to make such a huge decision? It was exciting for sure, and yet scary because the next 75+ years hold so much uncertainty. And yet I felt (and do feel) ready for that amazing partnership called marriage. And it is so comforting to know that whatever storms come, we will be facing them together. And on the sunny days (like today in Nottingham) we can just enjoy each other and this beautiful world God has made.

I had a lovely break at home during Christmas. On Christmas Eve Stephen proposed (and what a ring!) and we reveled in our engagement bliss for a few days before setting down to business. The need to get to work right away felt unfortunate but necessary since I don't live in CT anymore and it's hard to do a lot of things from a distance. We weighed the options on when- before or after I finished my second year in England- and decided we wanted to start our life together right away rather than deal with a whole extra unnecessary year of long-distance engagement. So the current plan is, summer wedding and Stephen moves to London with me!

January was probably one of the toughest months I've ever been through, which seems ridiculous considering there was no real tragedy that occurred, but my emotions had been at a feverpitch since November at this point, and 12 hour days at the library and 3 very important exams and 1 project and planning a wedding in the back of my mind left me exhausted. Knowing I would get to marry Stephen in the summer did so much to get me through! Months like January make me wonder if a Ph.D. is really the right plan for me, at least in the immediate future.

February was filled with its own stress- wedding stress. This was surely better than January's academic stress, though it was an emotional roller coaster all its own. Everyday I found a venue I liked or a dress, only to find the next day that it was too expensive, unavailable, or the posted information had been a mistake. It was literally happening every day- it's actually comical. And yet February was a pretty great month. I enjoyed going to afternoon tea with the ladies in my church small group, stayed at The Burn (an old scottish mansion) for a weekend with some fellow marshall scholars and did lots of great hiking & walking, and discovered that I'm really interested in the newest theories in International Trade Economics.

I thought that class might be boring because I took Trade at UConn, but the material is drastically different and very current. For example one of the topics we studied was how productivity differences between firms may be responsible for their internal decisions to export to foreign countries or establish affiliates there whom can serve that market directly. This has big implications for globalization and perhaps explains why multinational corporations are so much more productive than firms that just serve their domestic markets. Another closely related topic is firm organization: do firms want to vertically integrate (i.e. do everything 'in house') or outsource? And will they outsource or integrate within developed countries like the US or UK, or will they outsource or integrate in the developing world? The Trade literature suggests that these decisions are the result of productivity differences as well. I'm planning to do my masters dissertation on something in this field.

This brings us to March, the present. I can't believe it's already March! My first year in England has gone by so fast (and I know the countdown to the wedding will too). After lots of drama about when we can get married (since getting my visa for next year has become complicated) we finally found a place and a caterer this week. I have never been so excited to hear from a caterer in my life (perhaps not surprising). We haven't signed contracts yet so I'm not going to mention specifics since I have too many times seen promising things fall through, but suffice it to say I am pleased and excited. If our current arrangement works out, I'll be Mrs. Michelle Parlos in 143 days.

And now I will confess, my amazing power of concentration which has served me so well in all the years of my education, my super ability to focus and block out distractions for long hours on end, is now failing me miserably. It has become such a struggle to focus on economics for more than 45 minutes at a time. I'm hoping this was temporary and now that we've found a place and date things should get back to normal. But I still need to find a dress (and they're too expensive over here with the exchange rate), a photographer, bridesmaid dresses, florist & centerpieces, favors, ahhh the list goes on and on! I'm going to need to be more disciplined going forward.

One area of my life that has improved dramatically in the last few weeks is my health & fitness. I've been on a fresh fruit & veggie spree for about 2 weeks now and exercising multiple times a week for more than the last 3 (this is a huge improvement over the previous situation). I have to say, I feel pretty good (though much hungrier!) One drawback to the wedding anxiety was that it was really cutting into my sleep, though this week has been better. Stephen and I are excited to get fit for starting our lives together, sort of as a commitment that we will not 'let ourselves go' now that we're "stuck" with each other forever :) I'm excited about us both being healthy and it's fun cooking with fresh foods. There is one main issue when it comes to my cooking : sauces. I don't really like the store-bought sauces I've tried but I just don't know how to make good sauce myself. I have learned recently how to make risotto, which is pretty easy and always provides me with several meals. I'm trying to stick to a plant-based diet as much as possible (less meat, more fruit & veg) because I've heard this is much healthier and certainly couldn't hurt.

I can see why it helps to have a long engagement (so much to do!) but I'm very thankful we're getting married this summer. Days like today when it's so sunny I can actually close my eyes and feel the sun's warmth on my face, I get to reflecting on how everyone is so wrapped up in their own life story (for example, hearing if a caterer has my day open means soo much more to me than basically anyone else) and we're all walking around, hopefully interacting a bit, but our lives can be so different. Through it all, God's story is the meta-narrative. Perspective, that valuable mind-state, is so crucial to keeping our priorities in line- this is definitely one of the lessons I've learned in the past 4 months. I am looking forward to the upcoming day when we two will become one, and our life stories will be so completely intertwined. I am by nature a very independent person who is not afraid of spending time alone, and I think God has used this in the past. Yet the companionship of marriage (which seems so completely different from a long distance relationship) looks so sweet. I cannot wait for it to begin & grow.

(Hanging out at The Burn in Scotland)

Beeston love

This morning I had to run a few errands before class and walked out my door to discover my little village main street all in a flutter. There was a mini circus happening in the park across the street. Walking a little further, there were people walking in and out of all the little shops and calling out to their friends ("Oh Sheila is that you?!"). To give a more accurate picture, I should specify that the majority of those chatting it up in the middle of the pedestrianized street were probably over the age of 70 (my happy borough seems to be the preferred part of Nottingham to retire in - and also to start a new family as there seems to be a high proportion of young mothers about- but of course these observations are probably just a result of what time I usually walk in the street). The organic grocery store was selling giant pumpkins. The multiple flower shops had their wares out, providing a little extra color to the scene. There was a gentleman playing an accordion, supplying the tunes. The public works projects that have been fixing up the brick street since I arrived finally got rid of their ugly metal fences, and I found a new cement monument instead (of a man sitting on a bench next to a hedge). The town seemed very much alive and people seemed pretty happy- I felt it was contagious and found myself in a good mood as well.

I am pretty proud of the lunch I made myself today, and more broadly, the improvement in eating habits that it represents. I heated up some perfect-for-autumn butternut squash soup and paired it with some buttered toast and a spinach salad with balsamic vinegar for dressing. Of course I can't leave out the tea (today happened to be twinnings blackberry and nettle tea). As I sat there practicing my calculus and eating this tasty lunch, I felt a confidence starting to emerge that has generally been lacking- namely that I have the ability to play hostess, and do it fairly well. As background I should say that I've been cooking many more complete meals than I ever did at UConn, that I try for a nice balance of colors and nutrition, and that I'm no longer just eating to get some calories in my system. I'm enjoying my food a lot more. Perhaps it's all the cooking shows we've been watching here!

Well my program continues to be challenging. At this very moment I am procrastinating some serious studying, but I am justifying it by the fact that I haven't posted in a while. My goal is to work through several questions from past years' exams, so I know what I need to do as I continue to go along. I would also really like to pick a topic for my data analysis project. If you have any suggestions on what might make for an interesting cross-sectional (aka one time period) data source or some relationship between variables that you've always been curious about, do post a comment!

I can't believe how fast the time is flying by. Stephen's flight to England leaves 3 weeks from today!

Visitors!

There is so much I could update about- and perhaps because of the paralysis of too many options- I will write very little tonight. Suffice it to say that I'm getting on very well, have had weekends filled with visitors, and spent 7 whole days without an internet connection at my house (or any nearby coffee shop). I am also obsessed with the BBC mini-series of Jane Austin's "Emma."

Here are some pictures of my recent adventures in Nottingham.

Nottingham's Market Square

Marshall girls that came to visit, from left to right: Kelcie, Emma, Me, Sally

Out for a drink at Canal House (the canal is literally flowing through the middle of the pub) after the Robin Hood Beer Festival.

The beautiful Wollaton Park (complete with tudor mansion which is now a great natural history museum).

The giant slide at the park... the guys convinced me to try it and it was definitely worth 80p.

rambling in the Peak District and settling in

Today is my third Sunday in Nottingham. I am officially "settled in" to my own satisfaction, having finished unpacking/buying new things on Friday. My room is comfortable and cheerful. Last Saturday I bought a swivel chair, rug, lamp, and duvet cover at IKEA, and had previously bought small flowers for my windowsill, a bin for extra clothes, quality comforter and pillow. My previously shipped suitcases arrived last Friday night and I was too busy to finish unpacking them for the week following. What have I been busy with you ask?

I finally finished the scarf I started knitting in Sweden (!) and am already a foot into the next one. I've been attending math and econometrics reviews daily (for about 4 hours a day, with a 1 hour lunch break in the middle). Walking everywhere makes transitions lengthy (i.e. 30 minutes to school in the morning, 30 minutes home), so that takes up time. Grocery shopping, laundry (we have a washer but I dry some clothes at the laundrett down the street), and bank-related errands take time. I take a lot of tea and coffee breaks- usually with new friends.

Last Saturday I went rambling in the Peak District, aka I went hiking (about 1.5 hours away) in some really beautiful terrain. For those who are familiar with Pride and Prejudice, this is where Elizabeth went on holiday with her aunt and uncle, and a scene of her standing on the hill, wind blowing in her hair, was filmed very near to the hills we climbed. We left campus at 9, started hiking about 10:30 and finished about 4:00, and had some tea and scones before heading home. See lovely pictures below:

Starting out across green fields...

Walking towards the hills we would climb.

Standing at the top with Annie!

Ben and Rose really enjoying their Devonshire cream tea!

This weekend was again wonderful, but again, it leaves me feeling more tired than before it began! I went out with some economics students Friday night, and picked up some fellow Marshalls at the train station in the morning. It was great to hang out with Sally, Emma, and Kelcie and get to know them (and Nottingham) better. We did the touristy things, sat in coffee shops, cooked a delicious dinner, and quite enjoyed ourselves. Today we attempted to go to Wollaton Park, but couldn't find the entrance on foot and gave up after about 45 minutes of walking.

Tomorrow would be the first day of real classes, except that I don't have any classes on Monday. Instead I will do some "maths" as they call it here, and hopefully make a productive day of it. Wednesday I start horseback riding lessons with the riding society :)