Online workshop 10: "Creating data or gathering evidence? Knowledge and power in ethnographic research on policing" by Prof Olly Owen

IFRA-NIGERIA ONLINE WORKSHOPS PROGRAMME

As you may know, in accordance with the latest government statement regarding measures to contain the COVID-19 virus, IFRA-Nigeria's offices are closed until further notice, library included. However, IFRA’s team has come up with alternative solutions to continue its training activities.

We are hosting a series of online events using Facebook Live as a platform.

10TH ONLINE WORKSHOP: "CREATING DATA OF GATHERING EVIDENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND POWER IN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH ON POLICING"

This tenth online workshop on "Creating data or gathering evidence? Knowledge and power in ethnographic research on policing" will be facilitated by Prof Olly Owen. It will be held on Tuesday 16th of June 2020 at 1pm (Nigerian time) on our Facebook page.

Prof Olly Owen is a lecturer in African anthropology at Oxford University. His recent research has been an ethnographic examination of new transformations in revenue and fiscal governance in Nigeria, looking at taxation relationships between the state and citizens, and how questions of social contract and political accountability are popularly understood. Alongside this, he continues a focus on policing structures and practices in Nigeria, both engaging in comparative research on policing in the postcolonial world, and working with stakeholders in Nigeria to feed research into policy debates. His new research extends time horizons forward and backward, looking at the ways both future and past are imagined, for example through tropes such as infrastructure. (see more info on Uni Oxford website).

What is the workshop about?

This workshop will draw on long-term ethnographic research with the Nigeria Police Force to address the particular issues around doing fieldwork with people who are themselves very attuned to the importance of information and the power which it contains to do good or bad. We'll think about issues of who is in control in fieldwork interactions. We'll discuss the role of access to information, and understanding of worldviews, in constructing ideas about who can even be productively talked to; we'll discuss the difficulties of teaching, researching - and writing - the unsayable, and then something about the importance of self-examination, positionally, intersubjectivity - and most importantly empathy - in creating anthropological truth.

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