Participatory video with Karrayyu Oromo pastoralists in Ethiopia

The doctoral thesis “By the community, for the community: an investigation of participatory video with Karrayyu Oromo pastoralists, Ethiopia” (2011, 291pp) by Beth Cullen examines the potential of participatory video (PV) as a way of facilitating collaborative research and thus making an ethnographic description of the pastoralist community, lifestyle and culture that is useful for community members as well as researchers.

The Karrayyu are one of the last Oromo groups to practise pastoralism and Oromo traditions such as the Gadaa system and Waaqeffata, the Oromo religion, but are struggling in the face of several pressures, including the introduction of a large-scale irrigation scheme seeking to convert them from pastoralism to crop farming.

Throughout the collaborative research, community members were involved from designing areas of inquiry to gathering data and analysis. PV was used as a tool to engage participants as co-creators of knowledge, thus shifting the power dynamics of knowledge creation away from purely researcher-driven enquiry. The research sought to generate an in-depth, critical and reflexive understanding of PV as a research tool, focusing on power dynamics and representation, indigenous knowledge, vertical communication and PV as a form of cultural brokerage.

The research also aimed to make a positive contribution to the Karrayyu community. PV enabled participants to convey their reality as they saw it, which was important for members of a marginalised group that has been denied opportunities to represent its culture and history, and had little influence over the policies that affect the community.

Bibliographic details: Cullen, Beth Selina (2011). By the community, for the community: an investigation of participatory video with Karrayyu Oromo pastoralists, Ethiopia. Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/926/

Posted on 3 February 2019 in Pastoralism & Culture, Pastoralism, Policy & Power, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition