PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 4 Trades in different worlds: listening to refugee voices

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 4 Trades in different worlds: listening to refugee voices Rachel Hinton Introduction random sample of women aged 15-45. PRA exercises were carried out with the same Rehearsed in anthropological methods and informants, some before and some after survey interviews for comparative purposes. assuming that my questions could best be explored through participant observation, I Observations were recorded (see Figure 1) to arrived in Nepal in 1993 to spend a year amongst Bhutanese refugees1. As an enhance interpretation of the information. This anthropologist, building trust and relationships paper focuses on how these methodologies were a priority. Together with my neighbours, differed and explores questions of validity, I built a hut and began to learn their language, appropriateness and complementarity. spent time in their homes and became part of Shared worlds, shared interests? the community. In the process, it became apparent that they had expectations about what I could do for them. They had questions too. Each of us has our own life experience that Displaced and disempowered, denied access to shapes the way we make sense of and are decision-making structures, they wanted a understood by others. These experiences, and channel for their views. My ...