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The Professional Geographer

ISSN: 0033-0124 (Print) 1467-9272 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpg20

A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies:Interviews, Mental Maps, and Photo Voices on theUrban Farms of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Leslie McLees

To cite this article: Leslie McLees (2013) A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies: Interviews,

Mental Maps, and Photo Voices on the Urban Farms of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, TheProfessional Geographer, 65:2, 283-295, DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2012.679449

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2012.679449

Published online: 21 May 2012.

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies: Interviews,Mental Maps, and Photo Voices on the Urban Farmsof Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

∗

Leslie McLeesUniversity of Oregon

To examine a postcolonial approach to urban experience is to inquire about how cities and people operatebeyond the structures and analytical frameworks that have emerged from Western urban theory. Much of theemerging research in the field is looking for ways to valorize the myriad efforts that residents put forth to liveand thrive in the city. Many methodological approaches, however, are still directed by the researcher, whodetermines the data-collection activities and the guidelines by which they are carried out. Using a case study of urban farmers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this article is an effort to articulate a postcolonial methodology where the research and data collection methods were designed to give voice to the people marginalized by

narrow definitions of the city, who are often seen as victims rather than as active agents constructing their ownlives. This approach reveals the very real and tangible experiences and relationships that constitute daily lifefor the urban farmers of Dar es Salaam. Key Words: mental mapping, photo voice, postcolonial methods, Tanzania, urban farming.

Examinar un enfoque poscolonial a la experiencia urbana es inquirir sobre c ´ omo operan las ciudades y la gentem´ as all´ a de las estructuras y marcos anal´ ıticos que han surgido de la teor´ ıa urbana occidental. La mayor partede la investigaci ´ on emergente en este campo est ́ a buscando v ́ ıas para la mir´ ıada de esfuerzos que los residentesacometen para vivir y salir adelante en la ciudad. Sin embargo, muchos de los enfoques metodol ´ ogicos todav ́ ıa

est ́ an dirigidos por el investigador, quien determina las actividades de recolecci ´ on de datos y las gu´ ıas sobrec ´ omo debe desarrollarse ese trabajo. Usando un estudio de caso de agricultores urbanos de Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, este articulo es un esfuerzo para articular una metodolog´ ıa poscolonial donde los m ´ etodos deinvestigaci ´ on y recolecci ´ on de datos fueron dise ˜ nados con la intenci ´ on de dar voz a la gente marginada porla estrechez de las definiciones de ciudad, quienes a menudo se ven m ´ as como v ́ ıctimas que agentes activosque construyen sus propias vidas. Este enfoque revela las muy reales y tangibles experiencias y relaciones queconstituyen la vida cotidiana de los agricultores urbanos de Dar es Salaam. Palabras clave: mapeo mental, voz foto, m ́ etodos poscoloniales, Tanzania, agricultura urbana.

C ities of the Global South are often framedin calamitous terms: chaotic, crowded,sprawling, and representative of a growing ur-∗I am extremely grateful to my research assistant Ummy Munisi and the farmers of Dar es Salaam who shared their experiences with me. I wouldalso like to thank Easther Chigamura and Lindsay Naylor at the University of Oregon and two anonymous reviewers for their most insightful andhelpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

ban crisis (Agnotti 2006; Robinson 2006; Roy 2011). Large portions of these cities are cer-

tainly poor, but people readily function outside

The Professional Geographer, 65(2) 2013, pages 283–295 C Copyright 2013 by Association of American Geographers.Initial submission, June 2011; revised submissions, August and November 2011; final acceptance, December 2011.

Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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284 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

and beyond the political and economic struc-tures imposed by governments and multilateralinternational donor agencies. The dystopianimages result from developmentalist oreconomistic approaches to cities, which focus

on urban informality as a sign of failed eco-nomic and urban development (Davis 2006). As Robinson (2002) stated, “Understandingsof city-ness of come to rest on the (usually un-stated) experiences of a relatively small groupof (mostly Western) cities, and cities outsideof the West are assessed in terms of this pre-given standard of (world) city-ness, or urbaneconomic dynamism” (531–32). Postcolonialmethodological approaches are needed toilluminate how these daily realities create and

influence a different kind of city, even if it is onethat does not necessarily fit within the framework of the city as understood through West-ern urban theory (Robinson 2002). A post-colonial approach in urban studies allows us toquestion what we see when we look at cities:

. . . [I]t seems crucial to find a way to valorizethe many efforts that residents make to use thecity as an arena in which to say something about what it means to be alive and to practice what-

ever forms of aliveness they might eke out fromthe city. If we pay attention only to misery and not to the often complex forms of delib-eration, calculation, and engagement through which residents try to do more than simply register the factualness of a bare existence, do we not inevitably make these conditions worse?(Simone 2010, 333)

Rather than seeing cities for how they fail, interms of infrastructure and economy, we need

to approach them for the multiple relationsand practices that constitute how they work.Postcolonial urban scholars are theorizingcities to reflect the conditions of cities indifferent regional contexts, often focusing onthe ephemeral, the informal, and hybridity as ways to interrogate urban space and practice(Roy 2006, 2011; Immerwahr 2007; McFarlane2010; Simone 2010). To understand theseprocesses, scholars utilize methodologies that foreground the construction of knowledge(McEwan 2009) and focus on the variousconnections and negotiations that are a part of everyday life. These approaches provide in-sight into the very real processes and practicesthat influence people’s lives. The methods

discussed here are drawn from participatory approaches but adapted to a postcolonialapproach to data collection. They are designedto give voice to people marginalized by narrow definitions of the city that exclude the ways

that people actually live in cities. This approachsees people not as victims of urbanization but examines how they construct their own lives.

This article provides a case study that buildson two decades of work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, examining the demographics, eco-nomics, practices, and environmental impactsof urban agriculture (Sawio 1994; Jacobi1997, 1998; Mlozi 1997; Dongus et al. 2009;Kihampa and Mwegoha 2010). This work hasinfluenced the attitudes of public officials and

their policies governing the practice (Slater2001). Rather than focusing on agriculture,however, this project seeks to examine the roleof informality and daily practice in constitutingan urban life that does not necessarily conformto standard narratives of the city. I employ the term informality here beyond its economicimportance and instead use it to refer tothe heterogeneity of social relations (Simone2004). Informality operates in the daily life of

everyone, from the elite to the poor, revealingthe dynamic negotiations in cities betweenthe legal and illegal, the legitimate and ille-gitimate (Roy 2011). As such, the ephemeralconnections and social relationships withinand across social and economic classes providethe foundation for urban life. The focus of this article is on the methodology employedto explore these relationships and practices onthe urban open-space farms of Dar es Salaam.

The methods described here facilitate an un-derstanding of urban farming as a vibrant prac-tice that relies on relationships both within andbeyond the farm that are constantly being rene-gotiated. In the following section, I provide abrief background of urban open-space culti- vation in Dar es Salaam to contextualize thefield study. A discussion of each of the meth-ods, which include semistructured interviews,mental mapping, and photo voice, follows, andI examine how each contributes to a postcolo-nial methodological approach to urban studies.I conclude by discussing how these methodsbuild on each other to provide insight into theurban experience for farmers in the city of Dares Salaam.

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 285

Background to the Project

Ninety percent of the leafy-green vegetablesconsumed in Dar es Salaam, a city with apopulation of about 4 million people (UN-HABITAT 2010), are grown in the city (Mougeot 2005). In contrast to urban homegardening—usually done on small plots nearthe home—open-space farms occur on vacant land in the urban built-up environment wherefarmers cultivate several plots of vegetables tosell at the market (Dongus et al. 2009). Sev-eral farmers work in an open space, have mul-tiple plots each, and grow different crops at various stages to provide continual income. The open-space farms generally have some

form of group formation to provide social sup-port and communicate issues between farm-ers and often to negotiate with landowners tosecure access to land (McLees 2011). Studiesthroughout sub-Saharan Africa have repeat-edly demonstrated that most farmers in thecity are not recent migrants relying on ruralskills but are well-established urban residentsfrom across economic class lines (Rakodi 1988;Sawio 1994; Foeken 2006). In Dar es Salaam,

aerial photos revealed that approximately 650hectares of the city were used for vegetableproduction in 1999 on open land rangingfrom a few square meters to several hectares(Dongus 2001). In 2000 the Ministry of Landsand Human Settlement Development formally incorporated urban agriculture into zoningguidelines, making Tanzania one of only afew countries in Africa to legalize the practice(Hoogland 2003; Mlozi 2003). Despite this, thecity of Dar es Salaam contains no areas zonedfor agriculture, and the practice remains effec-tively illegal, yet highly visible, in the city.

Methodological Approaches

Data were collected from nine open-spacefarms in the city, selected from a total of elevenfarming groups we were introduced to throughagriculture extension agents. The groups werechosen to represent diverse locations in the city and based on the willingness of the farmersto work with us. Each farming group had aleader, though some groups were more cohe-sive than others, a dynamic we had to constantly navigate. My research assistant and I workedclosely with the leaders, ensuring that we inter- viewed a range of people that represented the

group as a whole with respect to age, gender,and experience. Not every farmer in any givengroup agreed to speak to us, either because they had work to do or because they distrusted themotives of an outsider. We were regular vis-

itors to these farms, which reduced the dis-traction of our presence, and eventually we were able to build a familiar rapport and trust with many farmers. For this project, we con-ducted eighty-two semistructured interviews,and of these twenty-five farmers drew mentalmaps and twenty participated in a photo-voiceproject. These methods are each discussed next.

Semistructured Interviews

To examine how farming influences daily life in cities, I utilized in-depth interviewsthat were responsive to the interviewee’slead, facilitated dynamic interactions, andestablished relationships based on mutualtrust (Rubin and Rubin 2005). This approachemphasizes spending time getting to know the participants, observing their daily prac-tices, and using this to inform interviews(Whatmore 2003). Interviews were embeddedin ethnographic observations; the research

assistant and I spent time on farms and wereable to convey our awareness of the farmers’experiences in ways that let them see that we understood them despite our obviousdifferences (Bondi 2003). More informalinteractions also allowed for “looking awry,” aconcept that refers to asking questions orobserving participants when they were lessguarded while working or relaxing with others(Proudfoot 2010). This technique draws from

psychoanalytic theory and examines how iden-tity and meaning are expressed not just through words but with other forms of nonverbal ex-pression (Thomas 2007). Embodied emotionis difficult to articulate, and hence interviewersneeded to “listen for the unconscious” duringconversations and other interactions andobservations (Thomas 2007, 540). This refersto the process of observing people’s responsesto situations and practices, such as frustration with work, joy at discussing children, orpensiveness when thinking about the problemsfarmers face in the city. It is important torecognize that watching work, techniques, andinteractions with both the people and the envi-ronment provide ways to observe the embodiedact of farming and insight into how peopleexperience their roles on the farm (Bingley

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2003). This required close attention to farmers’activities during multiple site visits and havingdiscussions with my research assistant about the context of farmers’ words and actions.

Interviews were conducted on the farms,

in Swahili, with both me and my researchassistant, and generally in a shaded area wherefarmers often rested during the day. Theinterviews provided background demographicand economic information, but they were alsodesigned to get people to construct a story of their lives and how it related to the city andfarming, rather than to answer questions. Wefocused on ideological discussions about urbandevelopment, what a city should look like, and who it is for. Deflecting the discussion onto

broader issues allowed farmers to express theimportance of farming not only economically but in the creation of social networks; stability;a sense of enjoyment, pride or frustration; andthe urban experience itself. Often in interviews,other farmers, customers, or friends would join the conversation for a few minutes. Weencouraged these interactions to keep thefarmers comfortable but also to observe thedifferent ways farmers interacted with people

and spoke about issues in different contexts.Interviews revealed a range of interactions

and relationships that constitute everyday lifeon farms that were represented in the variety of people who moved through these spaces every day: government officials, landowners, police,customers, seed-sellers, tea vendors, and otherpeople who walk around providing everythingfrom shaves to phone cards. There is also in-formal regulation on who can use the space for

what purposes. When asked about areas wherefarmers gathered during the hottest parts of theday to relax, we often heard a variation of thephrase “not just anyone can sit there,” despitethe many different people moving through thefarm each day. Also important were the formaland informal groups; while formal groups hadmeetings to discuss issues, women would haveinformal groups to collect money to help eachother, and the men might gather in one cor-ner to drink beer at the end of the day. Cliquesof farmers gathered to relax or help each otheron their plots, and in several cases, farmers hadrelatives working on the same farm who helpedeach other out. These various associations, andhow they had changed over time, were exploredin interviews, giving us a slice of the nuance of the social dynamics on farms.

It can often be difficult, however, forpeople to express intangible, ephemeral, orunconscious practices and meaning in a formalinterview setting (Dirksmeier and Helbrecht 2008), especially in an interview partially

conducted through a translator. Farmers rarely expressed the more ephemeral motivationsfor, and influences on, daily farming life ininterviews. This was expected, as farmers wereused to talking about economics and the prob-lems they face as farmers, not the intricaciesof group dynamics and associations with space.Further, because of my interest in farming,it was difficult to push people to discuss how their lives are influenced beyond the farm. Ineeded different methods to gain these insights

into practices, performance, and everyday-nessbeyond a formal interview. I wanted thefarmers to have the opportunity to frame theirdaily practices in a way they would have morecontrol over, where they could guide the story,and hopefully reveal more about how they negotiate space and associations in the city andon the farms. The following two methods weredesigned for just this purpose.

Mental Maps of Farms

Mental mapping of spaces and relationships isa technique that provides perspectives on spa-tial understanding (Brennan-Horley and Gib-son 2009). This technique is often associated with participatory research, but it was used hereto provide another way for farmers to con-struct relational spaces and illustrate less mea-surable forms of experience that farmers have

on farms (Green, Shuttleworth, and Lavery 2005; Pavlovskaya 2009). This privileges spa-tial practices that are often hidden by land-useresearch and top-down planning policies, suchas social connections or informal economicactivities (Elwood 2006; Brennan-Horley andGibson 2009). Mental maps also add to therichness of interview data by allowing re-spondents to visually express different ways of describing the places in which they engage(Darbyshire, MacDougall, and Schiller 2005). Although this is a method drawn from partici-patory approaches used in communities to mapresources or spaces, we adapted this techniqueto a postcolonial framework and asked individ-uals to draw maps of their farms with the inten-tion of understanding farms as spaces and how they function in daily life.

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Figure 1 A mental map of a farm with very strong community cohesion, drawn by a male member of

a group with strong social cohesion.

After twenty-five interviews on three farms,I invited farmers to individually draw maps,asking them to focus on important pathways,practices, and activities. This usually took thirty to forty-five minutes, a significant time com-mitment, although some farmers asked to takethe paper home and complete the map there, which allowed more time for reflection. Thesethree farms were chosen because after inter-

views and observations, they represented a widerange in levels of group cohesion and the waysthat people seemed to move through the farmsevery day. Farmers were concerned at first that I was asking them to draw an exact, scaled mapof the area, especially as many are not used tothinking about their farms or the city from anallocentric (top-down) perspective. We had toquickly develop a way of explaining the processthat alleviated their fears about drawing anexact representation, namely, by not usingthe Swahili word for map and describing theprocess as drawing. Farmers were asked to work by themselves to create the map, but invariably others would offer suggestions, andas the purpose was to examine the constructionof spaces and experiences, we considered thesebeneficial interactions. They seemed to pro-

vide confidence in the project and stimulatedthe participants to think of other details.

These maps were created after interviewsthat asked people to describe their lives as ur-ban farmers, which undoubtedly influenced thetypes of maps they constructed. Their knowl-edge of dynamics on the farms is constrained,however, by their own personal experiences.No two maps were the same, but there were

significant similarities within, and differencesbetween, farms. The farming group that con-sistently self-reported as very cohesive and sup-portive produced maps that were fairly similar,especially in the structures deemed important to the group members, such as the pump houseand water tank that served as a meeting and so-cializing place (Figure 1). All of the maps fromthis farm were oriented the same way, lookingout to the main busy road at the top of the page, with the pump house as a central feature. Noplots are marked for individuals as they were at other farms; rather, they just show that thereare plots. When we asked the farmer who drew Figure 1 why he drew his map this way, he re-sponded: “This is our farm. If one of us fails,then we all fail. This farm is for all of us.” Thismental map gives an illustration of farms that

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Figure 2 A mental map of an urban open-space farm with very little cohesion. These maps often show

important nodes in daily life, rather than important shared spaces. This map shows the home (nyumba),

the path to the farm (njia kuja shamba), cars on the busy Kawawa Road, the well for irrigation (kisima

cha maji ya kumwagilia), the shop where they buy soda (duka), the farm (shamba), and the coconut tree

where the farmer and her plot neighbor rest (mnazi).

belong to the group as a whole, emphasizingthe conviviality of the groups and the farmers’sense of a shared future.

Conversely, on a farm where there is lessgroup cohesion, farmers only showed where

their plots were and any spots where they rested or chatted with plot neighbors or wherethey found water, rather than the entire farm-ing area (Figure 2). This farm has an officialgroup of about fifty farmers and a leader who

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communicated with the local ward (a politi-cal area) leader, but he was not communica-tive with many members of the group. Meet-ings were rare and the women were often left out. People usually knew their plot neighbors,

often resting together while waiting for cus-tomers, but the farmers lived in adjacent in-formal settlements and would instead go hometo take care of duties there, rather than relaxand socialize on the farms. The maps from thisfarm show the limited importance of sociabil-ity with other farmers, but they do show thenodes of their daily networks. All maps have atree of some kind where farmers rest, and they show the pathway by which farmers obtain wa-ter for their plots. Some of the maps show the

nearby stand where they buy their daily sodaduring breaks from work. A major road nearby is drawn in relation to farmers’ paths to andfrom work, at least by the farmers who haveplots near it. When we discussed the differencesbetween maps with the farmers, one farmer re-sponded by shrugging and saying, “We all dodifferent things from each other. Our draw-ings will show that.” With the lack of a sharedor communal gathering space and group cohe-

siveness, there was little need for a shared placetoward which these farmers could orient theirdaily lives.

There was a marked contrast between thestyles of maps drawn on the two farms, despitethe similar instructions we gave to all farmers.Discussing the maps with them provided anopportunity to explore group cohesion, espe-cially the subtle ways people (both farmers andnonfarmers) are included and excluded from

collective life on the farms. Although the sub- ject of group dynamics had been explored in theinterviews, these maps illustrated the real waysthat these associations influenced how peoplemoved through farms and who and what they interacted with. The maps provided one way totalk about components of group life by givingpeople a visual aid to refer to in our discussionsand prompting them to explain their own part in constructing them.

Photo Voice and Focus Groups

Photo voice is a social science method drawnfrom the arts that emphasizes social justiceand change by providing disempowered peo-ple, such as the homeless, children, HIV/AIDS

patients, and women, with an avenue to il-lustrate and exhibit their daily realities to a wider audience (Darbyshire, MacDougall, andSchiller 2005; Mitchell 2005; Fournier et al.2007; Miller 2009). This method is important

because it can be used to literally show theplaces where the eyes of artists and social scien-tists cannot go (Keenan 2007; Packard 2008). The power of this method in the social sci-ences is that it allows participants to generatedifferent ideas than from verbal or written in-terviews alone by appealing to the most pow-erful sense for many people: the sense of sight (Darbyshire, MacDougall, and Schiller 2005).People frame places to record their own per-spectives and experiences and further generate

knowledge of their own lives beyond what theresearcher has identified as important (McIn-tyre 2003; Nowell et al. 2008; Gotschi, Delve,and Freyer 2009). Although photo voice hasbeen primarily employed as a participatory re-search method, this study used it to allow farm-ers to literally frame what they wanted to show me about daily life. The ways visual images areexperienced is culturally and historically spe-cific, and implementation of this method in a

postcolonial framework needs to facilitate waysfor individual photographers to interpret im-ages on their own terms. This shifts the uti-lization of photographs in research beyond acolonial approach where the researcher takespictures, literally constructing the scene andinterpreting it, and instead puts the respon-sibility of framing places and practices in thehands of the people who have those experiences(Poole 1997). Farmers had control over the

camera and they took pictures of each otheror of significant places (or both), and they usedthose pictures to challenge what they know tobe dominant perceptions, by both outsiders andurban elites, of themselves and their farms asdirty, poor, backward, and unintelligent.

Four open-space farms were chosen basedon their willingness to participate in the study,their social and economic diversity, and theirrepresentation of four farms from different ar-easofthecity.Wehadspentagreatdealoftimeon these farms, and working through the groupleaders we asked five people from each farm toparticipate in the project. The farmers wereeach provided with a twenty-seven-exposuredisposable Fuji camera. We asked them to doc-ument their lives as urban farmers and asked

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Figure 3 This photo by a male is from a market where some of the farmers were selling their vegetables.

The caption reads, “Farmers are not treasured like other businessmen. We also need to be treasured

like other businessmen.” (Color figure available online.)

them to take about twenty pictures associated with urban farming, including their lives out-side the farm. The emphasis on taking picturesof their lives as farmers was not to minimizetheir other roles in the city. Our presence wasoften disruptive to daily activity, and we askedthis because we wanted to see what was hap-pening on the farms when we were not there.

Farmers defined their existence as urban farm-ers more broadly, taking us off the farm to mar-kets and into homes, revealing other roles they occupy in tandem with being a farmer. We en-couraged them to take about seven pictures that did not relate to farming, which was partially a gift to ensure that they would have printedpictures that were meaningful but also to gaininsight into other roles important in their lives.Cameras were collected after a week and devel-

oped at local facilities. When we brought back the prints, we gavethe farmers twenty minutes to look throughtheir pictures. Farmers were excited to look at the photos, and the conversations that ensued were rich with description and exclamations;

these first impressions were some of the most important in the project. Farmers laughed at pictures where they carried heavy loads, sighedat pictures where they were redigging a well,or expressed how proud they were of a ma-ture, green plot. Their expressions providedopportunities to look awry and see how thesespaces and practices contributed to their em-

bodied daily urban experience. Farmers alsotook pictures of families and homes, partly as incentive to get pictures of them but alsobecause they described their roles as mothersand fathers, vendors and customers, homemak-ers and home builders, which were intricately connected to their roles as farmers. Undoubt-edly my role as a researcher of urban farmsinfluenced their interpretation of these photosfor me, but their expressions and articulations

to each other certainly indicated that these rolesare important, often more so, than their role asan urban farmer.

Studies utilizing photo voice rely on obtain-ing insight into the meaning that the photog-rapher ascribes to the pictures, often by having

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Figure 4 This picture was taken by a farmer who took a picture of his family inside the house that

his income from farming allowed him to build. “The money I make from the farm allowed me to build

a house for my wife and children. We can buy nice things and have shelter over our head because of farming.” (Color figure available online.)

focus groups (Young and Barrett 2001; McIn-tyre 2003; Fournier et al. 2007; Castleden,Garvin, and Huu-ay-aht First Nation 2008) orinterviews utilizing the photos in open-endedinterviews (Blackbeard and Lindegger 2007).I wanted farmers to instead take time individ-ually to reflect on the pictures. We taped the

pictures in steno books and gave participants a week to write captions for the pictures. To findout who was literate, we offered to write cap-tions individually for each farmer, but nineteenfarmers said they could write. The one illiteratefarmer had a friend offer to help, but to ensure

that the captions reflected his perspectives, weasked him about some of the captions beforethe subsequent focus group discussion. Thehigh rate of literacy is a product of free primary education in Tanzania and meant that individ-ual reflection was possible. In places with lowerliteracy rates, interviews based on the pictures

would be needed to gain individual reflection.Other studies in sub-Saharan Africa have uti-lized focus group sessions in rural communitiesor in children’s groups to have captions orally presented (Young and Barrett 2001; Gotschi,Delve, and Freyer 2009). When we asked the

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Figure 5 This is a customer helping to water the plot of the farmer who is taking her picture. The

caption reads, “This is a customer who is also my friend helping me water the plot. This shows how important our customers are in daily life on the farm.” (Color figure available online.)

farmers whether they preferred one-on-oneinterviews or whether they wanted to takethem home, they almost universally preferredto take the pictures home. We preferred this,too, as it gave the farmers more time forindividual reflection. This is a primary differ-

ence between photo voice as a participatory method and one that can be used to generatedata that reflects an individual construction of knowledge, experience, and place.

The pictures by themselves provided individ-ual frames of daily life that I could not other-

wise observe, often because our very presenceat the farms disrupted daily activities. Althoughthe technology mediated their framing of daily life, in informal discussions with some farmersafter the project they talked about how they took ownership of the project, often organiz-

ing themselves into pairs or groups to take pic-tures of each other doing activities and evenignoring the guidelines of how many picturesto take from different aspects of their lives. My relationship with many of the farmers madethem more comfortable to take a broader range

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of pictures than they originally felt I wanted. They showed me the positives and negativesof farming and defined the ways the practiceinfluences their lives beyond the farm.

The photos provided a more nuanced ex-

amination of how farming influences the ur-ban experience for farmers. Figure 3 shows thefarmers at the market, but the caption writtenreveals how farmers feel marginalized in thecity. The farmers know that people look downon them as poor or backward despite their im-portance in providing the city with food. Fig-ure 4 shows the house that one of the farmershad built with earnings from farming in thecity, which took him about one year to com-plete. When discussing the photo later in focus

groups, he claimed that his physical strength asa farmer allowed him to build the house with-out any help, a serious point of pride. Figure 5shows the customer of a farmer helping to wa-ter plots. The farmer became friends with this woman because she is a frequent customer. If she stays a while to socialize, she often helps thefarmer with her work, giving them more timeto talk.

The photos in this project demonstrated the

materiality of how farming influences urbanexperiences. Rather than merely being spacesof labor and extraction, farms have a rangeof influences on people that pervade the daily life of the people who use them, both on andoff the farm. Providing this alternative way to express their urban experience revealed just how intricately woven the farmers’ livesare with those of their cofarmers and thesurrounding areas and how it influences their

roles in the city. This method provided a way to literally see beyond colonial images of poverty and dystopia that characterize informal work in cities of the Global South and insteadreveals the intricate relationships, social safety nets, and sources of pride and pleasure in daily urban life. The importance of photo voice ina postcolonial approach in urban geography is that it enables the participants to frame andarticulate their experiences, rather than that being left to the colonial gaze of the researcher.

Conclusion: Constructing an Urban

Experience

Economistic and developmentalist approachesto urban life in cities of the Global South

have often meant focusing on the poverty andmarginalization people experience when they lack access to the formal economy. Informalactivities are often framed as coping with orresisting the formal economy, but this simpli-

fies the realities of people’s experience withina narrow developmentalist framework (Robin-son 2002). This is not to say that people donot live hard lives, to reduce the sense of emer-gency that people feel in cities every day (Si-mone 2010), or to downplay the real economicand nutritional importance of a practice suchas urban agriculture. Instead these approachesallow us to examine what constitutes informal-ity, rather than merely examine it for what it lacks. Here I have focused on the ways that

methods drawn from participatory approaches,but adapted to a postcolonial framework, cancapture a distinctly urban experience, to widenthe scope of how cities are analyzed by examin-ing how informality, as a heterogeneous socialexperience, operates in cities.

Semistructured interviews are a commonmethod in qualitative studies and allow partic-ipants to provide their own narration and per-spective on an issue. It can still be difficult, how-

ever, to overcome the difficulty that people canhave in interviews with articulating the nuanceof daily movements, practices, and relationshipsthat create the foundation of their experience.If the research project calls for an understand-ing of how people engage with urban space andhow this influences or is influenced by theirdaily activities, then other methods should beutilized to illuminate people’s experiences in a way that moves beyond the simplistic designa-

tion of informal workers as poor and marginal-ized. Complementing interviews with methodssuch as photo voice and mental mappingemployed through a postcolonial approachto data collection provides multiple ways forexperience to be expressed and understood.

This methodological approach reveals thematerial and very tangible experiences andrelationships that construct daily life for infor-mal workers. Farmers certainly work hard andface challenges such as poor market conditionsand a lack of land tenure, yet this is not how farmers define themselves. The methods hereprovide farmers ways to construct and frametheir own experiences to reveal their ownsources of power, pride, and capacity in cities. Although the experience is mediated through

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technology and a researcher, this approachturns on its head methods that perpetuatethe colonial framing and interpretation of subjects in the Global South. These methods,drawn from participatory approaches but

employed through a postcolonial perspective,are appropriate for answering the call for abroader understanding of the urban experienceacross regions to better understand what citiesare and who they can be for.

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LESLIE MCLEES is a PhD candidate in the De-partment of Geography at the University of Oregon,1251 University of Oregon, Condon Hall #107, Eu-gene, OR 97402. E-mail: [email protected]. Sheis currently finishing her dissertation focusing on ur-ban open-space farming in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,

to examine the social and environmental features of the urbanization of agriculture and how informality operates in an urban system beyond Western plan-ning theory and frameworks.

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