Researching in a Favela

For a long time, I believed that research was primarily about gathering knowledge.

Later I began to understand that research is also about encounters between human beings.

Sometimes difficult encounters.
Sometimes warm encounters.
And occasionally encounters that change the way one understands both the world and oneself.

My experiences in Brazil taught me something about this.

When we began our research in the favela areas outside Vitória, I carried with me a great deal of academic baggage from Norway. I was used to a particular way of thinking about research:
systematics,
method,
distance,
analysis.

None of this was wrong.
But neither was it enough.

Quite quickly I discovered that there is a difference between researching people and researching among people.

In the favela, this became clear every single day.

We entered areas marked by poverty, violence, and profound social problems. Yet we did not primarily encounter “problem areas.” We encountered human beings.

Mothers.
Children.
Grandparents.
Workers.
Young boys trying to find their place in the world.
Women holding families together under conditions that would have broken many others.

And gradually something began to happen to my own way of seeing.

The numbers and statistics did not disappear.
But they acquired faces.

I remember the first home visits together with the medical students from the university. We walked through narrow streets between small brick houses and fragile shacks. Dogs slept in the shade. Children ran after us laughing. Music drifted out from open windows. Above us electrical wires crossed between the buildings.

Life was dense there.

Close to the body.
Close to one another.
Close to sorrow.
Close to joy.

Sometimes we sat around simple tables covered with plastic cloths. Other times we spoke with people outside their homes while the heavy sun rested over the neighbourhood. The students asked questions about health, work, finances, and family situations. Notebooks were filled with numbers and observations.

But often something more happened.

The conversations began to take on a life of their own.

People spoke about children they worried about.
About violence.
About illness.
About dreams they once carried.
About hopes that still remained.

Gradually I began to understand that research is never entirely neutral.

Not because researchers necessarily wish to influence people.
But because relationships emerge.

A human being opens the door to his or her home.
To a life.
To a story.

And in that moment, responsibility also appears.

I believe modern academic environments sometimes underestimate this.

We speak much about methodology and ethics.
Less about presence.

Yet I believe presence is essential when researching among people living in vulnerable conditions.

Human beings very quickly sense whether they are being approached as persons or as material.

In Brazil this became especially clear to me.

I remember a discussion with some of our Brazilian colleagues. We wanted to anonymise informants according to research ethics standards. This was, of course, important. Yet the reaction from some of the Brazilian researchers surprised me.

They reacted to how people almost disappeared behind categories and numbers.

“This is not simply informant number four,” one of them said.
“This is dona Maria.”

At first I did not fully understand why this was said with such force.

Later I began to realise that this was not only about methodology.

It was about one’s view of human beings.

In Norway we are accustomed to thinking relatively individualistically. Human beings are often understood as independent individuals detached from larger relationships. In Brazil I experienced that people were much more clearly understood through family, neighbourhood, history, and social connections.

No one stands entirely alone.

Perhaps this was also why research there acquired a different character.

The researcher’s role became less distant.

Not necessarily less academic.
But more humanly present.

This made a deep impression on me.

For I gradually began to understand that we were not only researching within a society.
We were also researching as part of a society.

The people we met did not merely see a researcher.
They also saw:
a foreigner,
a Norwegian,
a man,
a representative of a university,
perhaps even someone associated with privilege and power.

This could never be fully separated from the research itself.

Perhaps this is something all research should become more conscious of.

For the researcher never stands completely outside the world.

Hans-Georg Gadamer writes that understanding always takes place within a horizon. We never encounter the world without pre-understanding. Our experiences, language, and cultural traditions accompany us into every meeting with another human being.

I believe Brazil taught me something important about this.

It taught me humility.

For many times I discovered how easy it is to believe that one has understood something, while in reality one has only translated another person into one’s own concepts.

This could happen in research as well.

We asked questions about economy and health.
Yet beneath the answers often lay something else:
dignity,
shame,
pride,
belonging,
fear.

What was most difficult to measure was often what mattered most.

I especially remember an elderly woman we visited. She lived alone in a small shack. The house was simple, almost temporary. Yet she welcomed us warmly. Before we left, she returned carrying a large plastic bag filled with mangoes which she wanted to give us.

I still think about this encounter.

For within our questionnaires she would primarily appear as poor.

But that was not how she appeared to me.

She appeared as a human being with pride and generosity.

Perhaps this is something research easily loses:
the living human being behind the categories.

Numbers are necessary.
Statistics matter.
Yet human experiences can never be fully reduced to variables.

In the favela this became clear every single day.

We researched health, poverty, and violence. Yet gradually I began to understand that we were also researching hope.

How do human beings hold on to dignity under difficult conditions?
How do people create community when the society around them is marked by unrest?
How do people preserve care and compassion while living with fear and insecurity themselves?

These questions could never be answered through numbers alone.

They had to be lived close to.

I also believe the encounters with the medical students deeply affected me. Many of them came from social environments very different from those of the people living in the favela. Yet they walked from house to house and tried to listen.

Some of the students themselves seemed changed over time.

Perhaps because reality acquired faces.

It becomes more difficult to think abstractly about poverty after sitting inside a small home drinking coffee with a family sharing the little they possess.

Perhaps this is also something education should concern itself with more deeply.

Not only knowledge.
But formation.

Not only analysis.
But human experience.

In Norway we often speak about professional distance. This is important in many contexts. Yet at the same time I began asking myself:
Can one move too far away from the people one is trying to understand?

For if research loses its closeness to lived life, it also risks losing part of its human significance.

This does not mean that research should become sentimental.

Quite the opposite.

Perhaps it simply means that research must also be willing to be affected.

I believe this was one of the most beautiful aspects of the CEPAS project.

The university did not merely attempt to produce knowledge.
It also attempted to remain present within a local community.

Not from above.
But in the middle of life itself.

There was something quietly radical about this.

In modern societies, knowledge is often separated from the people it concerns. Experts analyse lives from far away. Reports are written. Numbers are collected. Conclusions are drawn.

But in the favela we sat inside people’s homes.

We felt the heat.
The smells.
The silence.
The unease.

We saw the children.
We heard the laughter.
We sensed the fear.

Perhaps this was why the research also began to change us.

For when one encounters human beings face to face over time, it becomes more difficult to reduce them to theories.

I believe this is also something practical philosophy tries to remind us of:
that human understanding is always greater than the systems we attempt to place it within.

Human beings are more than diagnoses.
More than statistics.
More than economic categories.

And perhaps this is precisely why research must begin with a form of respect.

Not respect understood merely as politeness.
But as a willingness truly to see another human being.

This is more difficult than we often believe.

For research also gives power.
The power to describe others.
Interpret others.
Define others.

Then humility becomes important.

Not as weakness.
But as the recognition that no one fully understands another person’s life from within.

Sometimes I think back to those warm afternoons in the favela.

To the students walking between the houses with notebooks in their hands.
To Professor Pedro speaking with people as though he had all the time in the world.
To the children following us through the streets.
To the mangoes we carried home.

And I think about how these experiences gradually changed my own understanding of research.

Perhaps research, in its deepest form, is not only about gathering knowledge.

Perhaps it is also about learning how to see.

To see human beings behind the numbers.
To see dignity in the midst of poverty.
To see hope in the midst of violence.
To see community where others see only problems.

Perhaps all true understanding begins precisely there.

Not in distance alone.

But in the meeting between human beings.