One of the classes that I am taking this quarter is about Field Methods in Geography. In this class, we discuss the various approaches of collecting stories from the field. One important aspect that was introduced was that a 'field' does not necessarily mean a place that is away from the home organization of the researcher. A field can also mean the environment of the researcher, a library, or the archives. Any place where the researcher conducts research can be called as a field. I found this an interesting way to understand how research is conducted. Sometimes, research comes out of poring documents for long hours, and sometimes by spending hours in different locations.
One of the assignments for this course requires us to conduct archival research, and curating objects that are important for our research. Initially, I was not very happy with this assignment because I did not know how to access a suitable archive for my research. (My research deals with issues of governance and institutions in watershed management programs in India and the U.S.). Since the past few days, had been spending a lot of time on Twitter to kill some of my boredom. I had increasingly become fascinated with the viral spread of information by the re tweets (RT), modified tweets (MT), opinions, and the verbal diarrhea of 140 characters. That is when I thought that Twitter could be a perfect place to be used as an archive.
An archive is any place that holds a vast array of material with a lot of documents, pictures, videos, diaries, ledgers, journals, letters, newspapers, reports, and the list is endless. Twitter provides us with all this, and the best part is that it is accessible by all. I also came across a New York Times article here that says that in 2010, Twitter donated its archive of messages to the Library of Congress with continuous updates.
My Twitter Account of interest was the @Indiawater (India Water Portal), developed and run by Arghyam, which is based in Banagalore. India Water Portal is a digital commons initiative. I have always been a great fan of the India Water Portal Site because I have easy access to a lot of articles, information about watershed projects, conferences, workshops, research papers, and videos. My first thought was to use the India Water Portal Website, but I preferred using Twitter because it was more easy to sift through the information that I was particularly looking for. And the best part was that I did not have to read through piles of information to get to what I needed. Because of the constraints of 140 characters, tweets were concise enough for me to decide whether I had hit my jackpot or not. At the same time, I was also learning about the different water sectors, which were not particularly relevant for my research, but topics such as hydropower, dams, urban sanitation, and privatization, which deeply interest me.
I was not disappointed. There was plenty of information for me to use, and I ended up finding very useful articles for my reference. The assignment needed us to curate 5 objects. I collected links to an article on water rationing through public participation in Rajasthan in the Hindu, a conversation about what determines access to water (power relations, which is the one of the parts that I will be studying), research papers, evaluations of watershed programs by non-profits, and a video and presentation by the Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom (who also happens to be my advisor's advisor :)). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lecture had been organized by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), where I had conducted research for my Master's Thesis.
I ended up enjoying the assignment because of all the discoveries and the connections that I made. The feeling of scratching out another 'to-do' from the list is good. Another day in gradschool :)
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