Defesa oral

Incumbe-me informar o estimado leitor deste caos-blog que tive ontém a defesa oral da minha tese de doutoramento. Tive examinadores cinco estrelas, que, além de não pouparem criticismos construtivos, não foram nada autoritários e fizeram-me sentir à vontade e deram me boas oportunidades para eu explicar e defender o meu trabalho. O meu examinador interno até agradeçeu que eu fiz este trabalho, que julgou ser importante.

Deus os abençoe...nesta passagem (para ser fiel aos bons costumes e crenças religiosas das Beiras que me criaram).

Struggle

Agora que sou tão ultra-especializada em desenvolvimento rural participativo e economia política agrícola já não consigo dizer uma frase sobre o assunto. Qualquer frase que queira dizer ou escrever sobre o assunto parece-me de tal modo incompleta que prefiro ficar calada... pois ainda não adquiri o dom de a) dizer frases incompletas, meias-verdades e ficar bem assim, nem b) conseguir articular frases completas, sensu strictu, sobre o assunto. Opção b) seria desejável. O pior é escrever frases introdutórias... Uma generalidade qualquer, que tem que ser bem fundamentada e apresentada como se fosse completa, como se não houvesse mais para dizer em relação ao assunto. Tipo "as redes de produção e distribuição agro-alimentar modernas seguem um blueprint industrial de maximização da eficiência económica." Que frase tão absurda. Faz sentido olhada de longe, olhando-a palavra-a-palavra começa-se a estranhar. Começam a surgir dúvidas. O que quero eu dizer com "redes de produção"? O que significa "moderno"? O que é um "blueprint industrial"? Não se deveria ser mais claro e explícito?...

Sitting

What's the most difficult about doing PhD?
Well, for me, at the moment...sitting all day indoors.

PhD cosmology

PhD is a warming-up exercise.

Shame or pride?

Yesterday I had to face again some interviews I designed this time last year. I instantly got a hot, red face. How could I possibly do such a rubbish work??? It is always very uncomfortable to look back at the places where we've once been, thinking everything was fine and doing very horrendous nonsense.

My friends encouraged me. One described the thesis process again: "No one says that, but a thesis is based on reverse engineering. Only once you have your results you decide on the research question. " Another said "Of course, you only put the good things into your thesis and don't even mention what went wrong."

Yes, yes...Maybe I should instead of being ashamed be amazed and proud of the fast learning progress; that something became completely outdated in less than a years time!...But if the learning continues "that fast" I will find all my results to be rubbish at the point when I have to start writing them up!...

P.S. - The best solution: I can use data that was supposed to serve a certain purpose, which it definitely doesn't serve, to validate and show something else instead. Cool.

The god damn 2nd year

This is to tell the world, and specially propsective PhD students, that the second year of PhD is hell. A little warning for friends.

Why?
Because all the illusions and optimism of the first year are gone. You have to reckon that you won't change the world in 3 years. You realize how much hard work and perspiration it takes to write 500 original and meaningful words. You feel bound by conventions, whose reason to be only slowly dawn to you. You have no vision of how the thesis could look like and what it might be good for. Your colleagues are doing fieldwork in all parts of the world and you find yourself left alone with a pile of interviews (to be conducted).

This is pure pain and suffering. In the second year of PhD you join a church if you haven't done so before. You stop believing in Positivism; we call it "enlarging the horizon", becoming more open-minded by force of circumstances. You realize that the world is far more complex than you thought before. You realize how limited science is to understand the world. When your supervisor doesn't help, you call on Nossa Senhora de Fátima.

That's the learning outcomes of the second year. As the second year comes to a close you hopefully realize that you have reached almost 25% of your work in 2/3 of the study time. That makes you very happy indeed, because you thought you had achieved even less.

Full of a new enthusiasm you draw plans for the remaining research, inlcuding a completely new literature review, learning new methods and approaching the whole problem from a new angle. It is worth a couple of years of work, but that doesn't matter. The good thing is that you finally know what to research, and accept that no one cares about your Why.

Of course it's a bit scary to see the mountains of work for the 3rd year, but nevermind. Promise to go to Fátima and be faithful.

References as proof?

My lovely friend told me she doesn't like the writings of a certain author because it seems they all stream out of his imagination, as he uses no references or anything standard used in academic writing. I have to say: "you have to find out for yourself if what he says is valid or not". Unlike in academic writing where you are supposed to believe, not to question, when for a statement a reference is used. That's authoritative truth: "Don't doubt! It's proven!" (however, what methods and biases they used to prove it usually remains unknown).

With more than 200 scientific references read word by word and stored in my "Reference manager" I reached a point where I'm delighted when it is assumed as obvious that I will think for myself and not take in anything just because someone stated it before (which I refuse to do anyways).

"Der freien Wahrheit nur zu Leben,
Frieden mit der Satzung,
Die Meinung und Empfindung regelt, nie, nie einzugehen!"

(Hegel)

It's getting exciting

I'm juggling around with some data I collected during fieldwork and trying to write a piece about my results. Of course there are a lot of little problems with the data and I have to make narrower and more humble conclusions than I would like to, but still: it's looking interesting and I know now what other data I need to collect to test a couple of emerging hypotheses.

At the same time I have to decide on the next fieldwork and there is A LOT I have to find out first to make my plans. But from the initial abstract "I want to know EVERYTHING!" I'm getting into a more concrete approach.

My summary was accepted for the Iberic Conference on Rural Studies - it's not Hollywood but it's okay :) Of course there is this big black cloud of doubt telling me: "But hey, this will not suffice to get you a PhD!", but hm: I might be on the right track. I hope writing this is not an act of hubris. ;)

P.S. - What I'm doing now goes under the title "Foodshed analysis", after all there's some sort of theory and frame that serves me (sometimes). :)

Ignorância Socrática

Ignorância Socrática é aparentemente o nome técnico que se dá a este estado que parece ser de uma decadência significativa: saber se que não se sabe nada. Diz-se que é bom sinal. Ao contrário do que se espera, o doutoramento frequentemente, quando levado a sério, leva a isso mesmo: saber se cada vez com mais certeza que não se sabe nada. E é de uma ironia total uma pessoa ser levada a apreciar o seu estado de total ignorância e então ter que escrever um tratado sobre a matéria de que menos percebe. É de uma crueldade infinita...

Sócrates (o do antigamente): "Só sei que nada sei".

Isto leva, no mínimo, a uma crise epistemológica.

Inspired

Long live my supervisor! He managed to inspire me once more and to set my feet on the Earth again.

Why does nobody tell us?

This is quite a metaphysical question. Why do we sometimes have to struggle so much in the dark when there are people around who could easily tell us how to proceed? Many times, with trials and errors, things are done by muddling through and at a later stage I see: "Oh, it would have been so easy if I had only known XY!". Why does nobody tell us?!

Legítimo: legitimizar o pensamento

O que é bom neste meio académico é que todas as perguntas são legítimas se estão por responder. Não há tabus, coisas que não se perguntam porque não.

Então não é considerado absurdo alguêm ficar enfurecido com uma ideia. Há coisas a descobrir. Também não é absurdo alguêm ter entusaismo por algo a que mais ninguêm liga. É legítimo. É válido investigar o ponto com seriedade.

Isso apazigua-me.

My realtion to Essex University

Sometimes I think Essex University is Hades, somteimes I think I'm on mount Olymp.
Probably I'm schizophrenic.
Or maybe it's only about doing PhD.

Planmaessig

"Ja, mach nur einen Plan,
sei nur ein großes Licht!
Und mach dann noch 'nen zweiten Plan,
geh’n tun sie beide nicht."

Der schoene Amadis

Als ich noch ein Knabe war,
Sperrte man mich ein;
Und so saß ich manches Jahr
Über mir allein,
Wie im Mutterleib.

Doch du warst mein Zeitvertreib,
Goldne Phantasie,
Und ich war ein warmer Held,
Wie der Prinz Pipi,
Und durchzog die Welt.

Baute manch kristallen Schloß
Und zerstört es auch,
Warf mein blinkendes Geschoß
Drachen durch den Bauch,
Ja, ich war ein Mann!

Ritterlich befreit ich dann
Die Prinzessin Fisch;
Sie war gar zu obligeant,
Führte mich zu Tisch,
Und ich war galant.

Und ihr Kuß war Götterbrot,
Glühend wie der Wein.
Ach! Ich liebte fast mich tot!
Rings mit Sonnenschein
War sie emailliert.

Ach! wer hat sie mir entführt?
Hielt kein Zauberband
Sie zurück vom schnellen Fliehn?
Sagt, wo ist ihr Land?
Wo der Weg dahin?

J.W. Goethe

Trost

"Se não tivesses tantas perguntas e dúvidas não te queriamos cá a fazer doutoramento" disse-me hoje a minha orientadora! ;)

Amazing...

When I started PhD I was rather skeptical about having to do something original, at whatsoever cost... Now I'm eager to fully understand the literature, to be able to put some new ideas forward. Wouldn't it be amazing to come up with a really relevant and original insight?

Over all, I'm starting to surrender to ideas I didn't like much, I'm becoming so conservative!... I'm really afraid that to me could happen what happened to the hero from Orwell's "1984": when he was assassinated , in the moment of death, he felt himself filled with love for the Big brother... In my case this would translate as complete surrender to...hm...Pharmacia or Cargill?

Am I progressing at all?

Now it is 6 months that I'm working on this Ph.D. Sometimes I ask myself if I progressed in any way. It seems that until now I've only done "diffuse" background work...Reading, writing the literature review, sitting under a tree and looking at the fields, dreaming of papers, and...mainly, and most of the time: writing down and summing up my questions. I've not yet progressed in finding answers to my questions. I just found some questions pointless and got much more other questions without knowing yet which of them have been solved already by someone else.

Subsistence farming doesn't exist at the level of the national economy. But the fields are planted and corn, beans, potatoes are ripening without ever reaching the market. The new Policy Plan for Rural Development gives special support to the maintenance of farmers in less favoured mountain areas: farms with more than 1 ha of Utilized Agricultural Area receive an area payment. But...which farms in the mountain area of central and northern Portugal have 1 ha of UAA? And would the maximum payment of ca. 300€/ha/year make the difference to keep the farm? With other words: this state support for marginal areas seems to miss the target.

A big part of the economy in Portugal is like the Violet - like the plants that flower in hidden places ("wie das Veilchen, dass im verborgenen blüht"). Thanks to the grandmas all over, that produce potatoes and cabbages to feed their relatives in the towns! This sort of self-reliance doesn't exist anymore, or only to a very reduced extent, in central and northern Europe.

Sometimes I think it is the difficulty of "catching up" and "modernizing", improvisation instead of organizational capacity, that are at the heart of the very best assets of the country. Do "we" really want to overcome them? Do "we" want people to become entrepreneurs and rational profit maximizers? It is said that Julius Caesar was talking about the Lusitanos when he stated: "On the Iberic Peninsula, there lives a folk that doesn't rule itself and that doesn't allow anyone to rule it" / "Na Península Ibérica existe um povo que não se governa e não se deixa governar".
Now, this might be true for the older generation, but is my generation not already entangled in the "Nike/Coke/Coolness" trap of consumption?

I just have to think at the ultra fashion hairstyle of teenage boys now, to give up hopes for a better future! :) I mean, there is apparently little joy and such a deep need to belong to the stylish crowd. It seems that when the connection to nature is lost, also the connection to our own nature is weakened. Maybe practical work could help (see below) to retune thought and actions, to provide a path for finding out about the non-monetary worth of things.

I mixed all different topics together, this are alcaline pH reflections.
Still the question remains: have I progressed at all since I started PhD? Am I muddling through, or is this "Flexible Design, typical of Real World Research"?

"Mid term review"

What have I been doing since 15th January 2007? It's now 4 months that I've started the PhD and I would do some things differently if I would have to start again.
Until mid February I tried to improve my research proposal, with little effect I would say. Since then I'm working on the literature review, which is due next week.
I need to say that I depart from certain assumptions which make my research question topic relevant. And I have not yet dared to search for the articles which could render my question insignificant. What would I do then? So I just read the papers and reports that further my impression that only mediocre things have been researched and nothing relevant really has been done in my area of inquiry. I proceeded like this for a long time, when I discovered that it is actually much more enjoyable to read articles with positive news. But my search for positive action reports has started so recently that it will be hard to be included in the literature review, and I will continue to keep the real impression of being an old chaotic "anti-tudo" / against everything reactionnaire.
But it is in fact impossible to read all the relevant literature when analysing such a complex topic as agricultural marginalization, and I would need to read 24h non-stop until the end of my PhD if I wanted to get a reasonable grasp. Yes, exagerations are also part of my literature review, they make reading it more amusing, but certainly scientifically less accurate.
I chose to work on the "reconstruction task" rather than the deconstruction task (e.g. on bringing the real dirt of industrial farming and agricultural politics to light), because my bad character instinctively drives me towards deconstructing everything (if someone would offer me red roses I would immediately mourn they come from hydroponic agiculture, yes!). Therefore I don't need to built deconstruction and critical thinking into my research. However, I think this tendency of mine is not very original, but rather too widespread.
I still find it hard to have my little agenda and to keep it for me. I want to say things straight forward and naively believe that rational argumentation may lead to the best outcomes...
Well, maybe you're interested in knowing what I'm actually planning to do. I want to do a hard data driven part to make sure my work doesn't become completely messy and unreliable and I also want to do a very action-oriented agroecological approach thing. Isn't that clear enough?