How the structural analysis of narratives is relevant for recasting pastoralist development

I

To think of policy and management narratively is to think about narrative structure(s) from the get-go.

It’s not that a policy brief is shorter than the policy report upon which it is based. Things are left out in the former for reasons other than its shorter length. A policy brief and a policy report are different genres, like a novel compared to a play. Their respective styles, voice, conventions, audiences, and even what they take to be details (formally, their granularities) differ significantly. This means that what’s narrated in one but not repeated in another has implications for policy and management.

II

A wonderful example of why and how narrative structure matters for real-time policy and management lies in comparing two fine publications recently released by the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University:

One is “Policy Briefing: Community Solutions to Insecurity along the Uganda-Kenya Border” (https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/18207/IDS_Policy_Briefing_214.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y).

The other is the report from which the policy brief drew, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Pastoralist Researchers on the Uganda/Kenya Border (https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/18123).

III

The differences in narrators’ voice is made explicit and obvious via the two documents. The policy report has been written by a local research team in a first-person voice, while the policy brief has been edited from the report in the third-person voice. For that matter, the personal and conversational “we” of the report doesn’t appear at all in the brief, and this is not surprising as its editors include those who were listed in the local research team.

IT MUST BE UNDERSTOOD THESE DIFFERENCES ARE NOT A FAILING. It could be that both brief and report had the same point of view, albeit other genre differences remain. What is crucial is that the genre differences pose a huge opportunity for those readers who are policy analysts and managers.

That a brief and a report have been written for different audiences, fulfilling different requirements and expectations, would be a banal observation, where it not for one fact: What each genre takes as “the specifics”–to repeat, the respective granularities–are nevertheless both relevant for real-world pastoralist policy and management.

IV

Here’s an example. At one point in the report, a side comment appears: “An old man asked us where we are coming from, and we told him we had come from the office of herders. That is good, he said.”

This notion of an office of and for herders is picked up later in the report’s section, “What can pastoralists do?”. Note the voice and specifics in following passage:

The stories we have heard from women, men, and young people, have affected all of us. We will call for policies that everyone knows and follows. We’re thinking of an office run by pastoralists, with people from each community — Bokora, Jie, Turkana, Matheniko, Dodoth etc. When there are issues, the people from that place know how the issues are arising. . . .

The office should deal with any issues related to pastoralists, not only raids. The representatives would be like teachers, organising meetings, bringing awareness to people what they should be doing. Giving information to the government and NGOs.

The kraal leaders should form a network. The first to know about drought and animal disease is the herder. The herder reports to kraal leaders. Kraal leaders negotiate resource sharing with other kraal leaders. If they agree, they act. If they need further permissions, they go to the broader pastoralist association. If they need further help, they then can reach to government. Success will come if we all believe that any problem that comes has a solution within us.

“Office” is not mentioned in the policy brief, nor is “kraal,” nor is that “network” of leaders. NOR WOULD I EXPECT TO SEE THIS TYPE AND LEVEL OF GRANULARITY IN A POLICY BRIEF. For my part, I think the proposal of such an office is a great idea. I wish I had thought of pastoralists-as-reliability professionals in this way.

But that is not point of this blog entry. Rather, it’s a methodological lesson to be drawn by those who treat narratives seriously in pastoralist development: Actionable granularity is not and cannot be the province of only one genre in policy or management. (Had I recourse to the transcripts of the local research team, I might have picked a more or a differently detailed example.) The authors of both the report and the brief are to be commended for making this lesson so evident.