Baraza as method: Adapting a traditional conversational space for data collection and pathways for change

Introduction

Culturally responsive researchers recognise the limitations of dominant paradigms and consider how knowledge is created and understood. By recognising the power dynamics in researcher roles, it is possible to co-construct knowledge within the research setting (Rodriguez et al., 2011). Conducting culturally responsive research requires scholars ‘ … to understand how people assume, … are … given, and co-construct multiple positions across contexts, depending on a host of forces that include local communities’ practices and history … ’ (Arzubiaga et al., 2008: 319).

The significance and implications of research results can be fully understood only when the physical, sociocultural, and historical contexts of the researchers and the participants frame the work (Artiles et al., 2010). This requires co-creation in the framing, design, implementation, and dissemination of research through participatory approaches where democratizing processes for knowledge creation can be documented (Janes, 2016). This is part of the larger project of decolonisation. Only in a purely utopian view, would applying culturally responsive methods of data collection equate to democracy for all involved. However, adapting and using methods that indigenous people consider relevant to their lives will create opportunity to reach consensus on decisions for change as a step towards the aim of decolonising knowledges. Keikelame and Swartz (2019: 1) consider decolonising research as “an approach that is used to challenge the Eurocentric research methods that undermine the local knowledge and experiences of the marginalised population groups”. This article contributes to these efforts by focusing on a context-specific method of co-constructed data collection. In this example, locals gathered, analysed, and disseminated data in partnership with a university researcher — representing a pertinent step to decolonise knowledge produced through research processes by making space for diverse ways of knowing, or what Dei (2009: 105) refers to as ‘multicentric knowing’.

We report on one element of the methodology from a study that aimed to investigate intergenerational experiences (with emphasis on young people’s experiences) of sexual and reproductive health and related programmes in a particular community. The community was willing to address the challenges but lacked spaces where young people could question and engage meaningfully with complex sexual wellbeing issues (e.g., early sexual debut, high incidences of exposure to sexual violence, HIV, and STI risks). Our research team (a university researcher and young adults involved with a local NGO in the community) worked closely with community members to adapt a traditional conversational space (in this instance, the baraza) for intergenerational dialogue.

Despite the study reported in this article focusing exclusively on a baraza – a traditional East African conversational space – in the Kenyan context, several countries have similar indigenous social processes and spaces for dialogue. These lend themselves to culturally responsive adaptations that can increase engagement in research and as a result enable pathways for change that are driven by community members (Balay-As, 2019; Barnes, 2010; Ghelani, 2010; Green and Waiti, 2014, Vanner C. 2015). Kenya and Tanzania both employ mabaraza, while South Africa has two indigenous social processes — indaba, which are part of Zulu culture in Kwazulu Natal, and imbizo or lekgotha in the Eastern Cape. Zimbabwe have padare, while usos y custombres are found in Oaxaca, Mexico and community assemblies in Peru and Nigeria. In Ghana, these processes are known as district assemblies. The Kankanaey peoples in the Philippines have bonfire sessions known as at-ato, and the First Nations population of Canada have sharing circles. The sub-continent of India also has two traditional spaces in different regions—manji in Punjab and addaa in West Bengal. In New Zealand, hui is part of the social fabric of traditional Māori culture. As such, we posit that the innovative use of a traditional Kenyan conversational space for data collection purposes, as reported in this article, will be relevant to several international contexts where adapting existing conversational spaces with community members for culturally responsive data collection will elevate multi-centric ways of knowing produced through such processes.

The limited scope of this article does not allow for reporting on the study as a whole. Aspects of design and cross-cultural learnings from the study are covered elsewhere (see Chubb et al., 2021; Home et al., 2021). We will focus on the evolution of the baraza as a traditional space and the innovative use of the baraza for data collection and dialogue as potential pathways for change before we present principles for adapting traditional conversational spaces for research. We argue that this adaptation aids decolonising research and advances the co-constructed nature of knowledge, thereby centring non-Western ways of knowing.

Baraza: A traditional conversational space

Baraza (or its plural form mabaraza) is Kiswahili for a type of group gathering space for dialogue traditionally used in the East African context. Loimeier (2005) traced the roots of mabaraza back to Zanzibar, a small archipelago now part of the United Republic of Tanzania. He defined the practice of gathering in this way based on spatial, social, and temporal characteristics. Socially, mabaraza can take on both formal and informal structures, from a council of elders deliberating on county budgetary issues to a group of individuals debating the outcome of a football match over a cup of kahawa (coffee). Well-established mabaraza are generally held in the same location with similar hours and processes, thereby inhabiting a distinct history over time (Loimeier, 2005). Mabaraza can be intergenerational and function as forums for welcoming community members and to debate and resolve community issues. These gatherings can also serve as a means for local or national governments to inform or consult their constituents on political matters (Naanyu et al., 2011). However, mabaraza gathering spaces are embedded in indigenous social processes, ¹ which are complete with cultural rules and traditions that reflect the communities in which they are practiced (Naanyu et al., 2011).

Mabaraza have existed in the East African region for many centuries. The earliest usage of the term baraza on the Swahili Coast is linked to small benches outside homes during the Portuguese colonial era (beginning in 1505) (Kresse, 2007). These spaces were usually dominated by men, who congregated in the evening without women to conduct their ‘daily informal meetings’ (Kresse, 2007: 56). In Kenya, mabaraza were part of Mombasa’s political structure, where the leaders (always male) from each of the 12 main tribes of Kenya dominated the ruling order before the administration was colonised by the British in 1895 (Kresse, 2007). Pre-colonial forms of mabaraza were a means for addressing and finding solutions to community issues, including resolving legal or political matters and addressing issues of deviance or social stability (Kenyatta, 1961; Loimeier, 2005; Naanyu et al., 2011). The most common evolutionary form of mabaraza, the ‘Chief’s Mabaraza’, has been used for well over two decades to determine how best to distribute local resources, localise government policies based on community opinions or resolve disputes.

Community members participate in mabaraza to this day, but like other facets of the social fabric, use of the baraza was not able to escape its colonial cast where the dominant political and or societal agenda of the time was pushed in the space. At times, mabaraza focus has shifted from a community-wide forum to enhance social welfare to an arena where leaders rally for public support and consolidate political leadership (Kresse, 2007). Such mabaraza were led only by local leaders (district officer, chiefs, deputy-chiefs, village elders, or persons with high standing in the community) with the general public having little control over agenda direction. As recently as 1985, mabaraza were often a gathering of local wazee (intellectuals), and the baraza was equated with a ‘Swahili University’ (Kresse, 2007: 74). Mabaraza were also spaces where myths and fables were shared. The spaces were directed at persons with shared interests, group memberships, or economic interests. Sometimes, invitation was based on belonging to a community.

In the present day, especially concerning education in East Africa, mabaraza are utilised either as a structure for participatory governance where decisions are reached through community consensus, or as a means of obtaining health information, and disseminating it to, communities. Communal mabaraza, such as the one used in our study, are associated with specific accessible locations, do not restrict attendees to certain groups, and typically have gendered seating arrangements. Members are expected to be respectful and maintain good manners. The Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (n.d.) jointly published a handbook on conducting community public meetings which described the baraza as ‘ … a platform for empowering them [the community members] with information and knowledge that can enhance their ability to participate in their governance; claim their rights; and ensure that duty bearers fulfil their obligations to the communities’ (n.d: 6) speaking to the consciousness raising potential of the space. In this way, mabaraza emphasise self-determining practises where decision making is driven by the community. Naanyu et al. (2011) bolstered baraza as a viable way for engaging communities because it ‘ … promotes community learning through an exchange of information embedded in powerful personal stories … ’, is easily replicable, and ‘ … deepens social discourse and learning for community action’ (23) as those involved in the dialogue begin to think more critically. A baraza can therefore be ideal for research, because researchers can meaningfully engage large groups of participants over an extended period to collect information, but more importantly raise consciousness and consider pathways for change.

Evidence of the use of baraza in research

We examined the limited literature available on the application of mabaraza in different research-related contexts. Recent adaptations point towards the value of the baraza as a programme evaluation tool. Naanyu et al. (2011) provided one of the first detailed studies of the baraza in Kenya as a tool for social health research. The authors drew similarities between mabaraza and focus groups. To point out the value of the baraza over a focus group, the authors stated that it was an

 … indigenous social process, is usually much larger (as many as 50 or more participants), and takes more than two hours to complete … the baraza methodology acknowledges the importance of social context and allows—or even promotes—social influences on participants in the event itself. Paying attention to social context is crucial because it has implications for interpretation, understanding, and application of data collection. (Naanyu et al., 2011: 17)

Inui et al. (2009) used mabaraza as a means of gaining community member, patient, and programme staff perspectives on an HIV programme in Western Kenya in 2006. Seven village mabaraza were used to elicit evaluative perspectives, with 25–50 participants attending each baraza for 2–4 hours. Similar to Inui and colleagues’ work, our study emphasised Freire’s (1998) conceptualisation of dialogue, where topics come from the community with exchanges that are participant-driven and mostly unstructured.

As a tool for evaluation of health programmes, several studies indicate that mabaraza processes are beneficial (Inui et al., 2009; Knopf et al., 2014). Knopf et al. (2014) designed a study to evaluate a one-off, community-level intervention as a means of preventing infection with HIV. Mabaraza were used in conjunction with focus groups to assess adults’ evaluative perspectives of the intervention. Mabaraza were also employed by Kamanda et al. (2013) who sought to examine the effects of the caring environment on household socio-economic indicators and on the health and well-being children in Western Kenya. The researchers conducted their mabaraza as consultative sessions, enabling the research team to do on-the-spot assessments of community members’ understanding of their research and to elaborate where necessary. Similarly, a Western Kenyan study used mabaraza to gain community perspectives on research protocols regarding informed consent and biomedical research (Vreeman et al., 2012a). Vreeman et al. (2012b) further tested this approach to elicit Western Kenyan community members’ perspectives on vulnerable children’s participation in health research.

In other studies, mabaraza were used as a means for community sensitisation on specific issues (e.g., typhoid, malaria, HIV/AIDS, youth participation in HIV programmes etc.,) and enabled community members to become comfortable with taking part in research through these traditional conversational spaces and the subsequent programmes resulting from the research (Ho and Holloway, 2016; Mwakanenile, 2010; Naanyu et al., 2011; Vreeman et al., 2012b). A handful of studies described involving community members in health education through mabaraza but provided limited details about the dynamics that unfolded within these spaces (Bauni, 1994; Mwai et al., 2016; Vedanthan et al., 2014). Further investigation of a baraza as an iterative data collection method using dialogue leading to pathways for change in communities is worthwhile. The unique adaptability characteristics of mabaraza as a data collection method are explicated in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Core adaptability characteristics of mabaraza for data collection.

Processes

▪ Operate according to traditional rituals of encounter— viewed as a recognisable part of the societal fabric and thus, familiar to the participating community.

▪ Role and respect for the village elder is embedded in rituals of encounter.

▪ Mostly unstructured, participant driven conversations stemming from a theme rooted in community stories.

▪ Mabaraza about the same topic can extend several hours or be re-engaged over multiple days.

▪ Can predictably take place in the same location with similar hours, using limited resources.

Setting

▪ Occur in natural and informal community settings.

▪ Allow for the influence of social context (embedding the conversation in existing power structures).

▪ Can incorporate different activities or methods.

Stakeholders

▪ Are typically intergenerational.

▪ Involve large numbers of community members who represent multiple stakeholders, inclusive of a variety of community collaborators with no restrictions on who can attend — ‘. . . those who are affected by or can affect a decision . . .’ (Usadolo and Caldwel, 2016: 2).

Purpose

▪ A staged, iterative feedback loop, enable sharing of information and assessment of understanding.

▪ Increase comprehension of community perspectives and relevancy of future action plans (Naanyu et al., 2011).

Each of these characteristics were considered in the adaption of mabaraza for the study in terms of specific processes, the setting, stakeholders involved and overall purpose. Together, these elements encourage dialogue on a community concern and opens space for reaching consciousness and consensus to pathways for change.

Method: Adapting the baraza for data collection

In the spirit of authenticity and respect, our research was completed with the collaboration of members from a small group who are from, and work within, rural communities in Kenya’s Coast Province. Mabaraza were adapted for data collection within a multi-method, community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) study as part of the first author’s doctoral research. CBPAR is premised on the notion that a study will respond to concerns of a particular community and is typically done in partnership with a core group from the area. For an in-depth description of the study’s research team and roles see Chubb et al. (2021). The principles of CBPAR have been covered widely elsewhere (Naanyu et al. 2011; Travers et al., 2013; Wallerstein et al., 2008). The meta-question directing the doctoral study was, ‘How can a traditional East African conversational space (i.e., baraza) be adapted as a safe space for intergenerational dialogues on sex-related issues in a rural Kenyan community?’ Addressing the lack of space for sex-talk was communicated as a community concern by the head of a Kenyan NGO deeply embedded in work in the area and with whom the primary author had a longstanding partnership.

The study unfolded in four iterative cycles that involved:1) ethical approval, community access, and research team training; 2) documentation of the sexual learning and exposure experiences of young people and separate accounts of how adults in the community perceived young people’s sexual wellbeing rights and risks; 3) adaptation and trialling of multi-gender and gender-specific mabaraza for data collection; and 4) adaptation of mabaraza for dissemination and action where consensus was reached for an intergenerational action plan. Approximately 300 members of the community, of all genders and ranging in age from 10 to 75 years, were engaged over the course of these four cycles. Cycle 3 is the focus of this article.

In adapting mabaraza as a traditional conversational space for use in this research, four elements are evident. First, mabaraza holding iterative mabaraza sessions left room for familiarity and trust to grow amongst participants around the defined concern. Second, community members gained critical awareness to the complexity of issues sexual and reproductive health journeys young people were navigating. Similarly, through sharing stories of sexual learning and exposure in their storyboards (constructed in the previous cycle of research and described in Home et al., 2021), young people were affirmed they were not alone in their experiences, curiosities, and challenges. Third, deep dialogue for raising consciousness moved the conversation from a position of ‘sex is bad’ and ‘we can’t talk about those things’ to ‘what supports do we, the young people and adults in this community, need or currently have that could be improved to walk alongside each other in these sexual learning journeys?’ Given mabaraza are predominantly facilitated by community leaders or persons in positions of tribal power, these spaces have potential for traditional knowledge production and transfer to be more likely, but they still require cautious use so that power-sharing does occur. Finally, with mabaraza’s long history in East Africa’s social fabric, they were recognisable meeting spaces, widely accepted and cost-effective.

Adapting mabaraza for research purposes reflected the decolonising element of reciprocity. Traditional processes and knowledge were at the centre of the data collection activity and cultivated with the goal of creating responsive community change. To be both a conversational space for change and data collection method, two major adaptations were explored: 1) demographic considerations and 2) process considerations.

Demographic considerations: Intergenerational, gender, and multi-stakeholder

Three demographic considerations were pertinent to data collection in a baraza—namely, the intergenerational nature thereof, the gendered nature of the baraza, and the need for multi-stakeholder engagement. These will be discussed in turn.

Kaplan et al. (2017) stated that “intergenerational” implies an orientation for working with generation-diverse populations and activating new relationships (sometimes in the way of reciprocal learning experiences) that are rooted in the interactive processes between generations’ (14). Expanding on this definition, intergenerational dialogue focuses specifically on those interactions between more than two generations in the same space. In this context, it is paramount to consider young people’s readiness to contribute in such an intergenerational setting. Amzat and Razum (2018) noted that cultural notions can pose a dialogic paralysis between young people and adults where sensitive or taboo issues, such as those pertaining to sex, are discussed and youths are expected to practice respect in front of their elders. This was an unavoidable situation in the context of our study. To ensure young people had the opportunity to share their experiences anonymously, storyboards offered a medium to enact their agency. As part of an earlier cycle in the research, young people selected photos and accompanying descriptions from photo-journals they each had constructed. The young people worked with us to create individual storyboards that captured their different sexual learning and exposure experiences (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Four storyboard examples.

Youth stories were presented on their behalf in mabaraza by a research facilitator. This enabled enough distance for young people to remain respectful, but also prompted dialogue with adults around their experiences. While this did not remove full control from adults over young people’s agency, the process remained in line with cultural values for respectful conduct.

Mabaraza evolved from male-dominated spaces and almost always retained this domination in later iterations. Thus, adapting mabaraza to ensure females and young people are given equitable opportunities is important. The community researchers anticipated apprehension about gendered power when different community collaborators come together in the same space. Based on recommendations of Kenyan young people in Naanyu’s et al. (2011) study, we purposefully used gender-divided mabaraza. We also tested these against multi-gendered mabaraza to gauge if power-sharing was more present in one type than the other—confirming Naanyu et al.’s (2011) assertions.

CBPAR highlights the importance of multi-stakeholder interactions to widen the reach of initiatives. In the case of mabaraza, the space ensures larger groups or entire communities can be engaged as compared to other data collection methods, such as focus groups, which typically involve a smaller sample of a stakeholders. The mabaraza were therefore characterised by widespread, multi-stakeholder community engagement. Our team implemented mabaraza with the assistance of key community contributors such as elders and chiefs and not only engaged community members, but also representatives from different service providers.

Findings: Learning from adapting the baraza

Several insights developed from adapting the baraza as a method for collecting data that also raise consciousness to community-wide concerns and eventually community readiness for change. Hierarchies of community knowledge were still evident in the multi-gendered mabaraza where the village elder, responsible in part for mobilising community members to attend, was first to speak to most themes before inviting others to engage. When he spoke, the community members hung on his every word because there was a respect and acknowledgment that he was a keeper of cultural and community wisdom. This was valuable, as he demonstrated a strong commitment to the study and a willingness to be a strategic ally in any future rollouts of projects while inviting community members to envision how they could be the drivers of change.

Hierarchies were also noted when representatives from some of the service providers were present. For example, employees of community organisations were noticeably more silent in one baraza than they had been during previous informal conversations. Their silence was potentially linked to anxiety around the possibility their employers may identify them in the data. Similarly, women took longer to begin actively contributing to dialogues than did men. We attributed this to the community’s normalised gender codes, whereby males have a dominance established in conversation and women abide by established gender codes. Moreover, it is not considered decorous to speak openly on taboo topics, especially in front of the opposite sex. Equally, young people were less vocal than any of the other community contributors for similar reasons.

These were anticipated challenges. Women’s participation was mitigated in the mixed-gendered mabaraza by addressing women first, when spring-boarding a dialogue topic, or by handing the recorder to them directly, thus offering an opportunity for them to take the ‘stage.’ When questions were posed to young people, they responded. When some participants, including employees from organisations in the community, were reluctant to speak the local research team members drew on themes from data analysis in a previous research cycle to reignite conversation. When community members chose to participate in discussions on sex-related issues, they did so through methalis or misemo (Kenyan proverbs or sayings). In this way, difficult topics were discussed, debated, and questioned through analogous language, preserving respectful protocols for broaching such topics.

Since the Western research team members struggled for self-expression’ (Vanner, 2015: 7) due to language barriers, they used the opportunity to witness local research team members navigate the in-between spaces of insider-researchers having shared experiences with community members. At times, this resulted in their domination of parts of the dialogue, where they recounted their lived experiences. While this could be perceived as researchers leading the direction of the dialogue, it frequently contributed to the dialogue’s richness. Observing these dynamics provided meaningful insight into adapting traditional conversational spaces for future research endeavours.

The use of this context-specific research method is likely to address the wants and needs of a community, which is at the core of culturally responsive research practice (Berryman et al., 2013) and a step in the right direction for the decolonisation of knowledge. Biermann (2011) highlighted principles to follow for the decolonisation of knowledge., including principles of equity, social justice, and dismantling oppressive systems and structures. The latter focuses on the potential of incorporating indigenous (and we would also include non-Western) knowledge into research practice to help produce knowledge that is situated in context. We see this principle of engaging with indigenous and non-Western ‘ … philosophies, knowledges and processes’ (Biermann, 2011: 387) as enhancing the capacity for researchers and the communities with which they partner to respond more effectively to the challenges of our time. Advancing these insights, we posit that developing a traditional conversational space as a decolonising data collection method should encapsulate six elements as presented in Figure 2: permission, participation, partnering, perceptiveness, power-sharing, and patience.

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Figure 2.

Principles for adapting traditional spaces for research.

Discussion

We recognise there might be several and different starting points to consider adapting a traditional conversational space as a decolonising data collection method. Within the context of our work, we see two. The first is to concede academic systems globally—as gatekeepers of scholarly knowledge—are ineffective for a large number of populations whose ability to access knowledge in this space still remains out of reach. Academe (including the intellectuals within) should pursue to a greater extent one of the reasons for its formation—to build and foster wider benefits to society. This recognition should prompt researchers to value transformative impacts for participating communities more than, or at least equally to, the metrics of their publications. A second starting point is a centring of the goal to preserve stories and knowledge evolution in ways that make sense for communities and the environments in which they reside. This assertion echoes Naude’s (2019: 23) quotation of Membe (2015: 9) who articulated the marginalisation of non-Western thought for framing how we experience and describe our worlds as the ‘Eurocentric canon’ being “ … a canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production. It is a canon that disregards other knowledge traditions”. A move away from the Eurocentric canon could be achieved in two ways. First through co-constructed decolonising ways for collecting data rooted in recognisable structures in which partners in research can see themselves, but more importantly, by encouraging ownership over driving actions resulting from dialogues in such spaces.

Data collection methods that are shaped within unique social processes can generate knowledge in pragmatic ways to benefit local-level transformative impacts. Using such social processes and traditional spaces in research, honours traditional ways of knowing and srengthen ownership over decisions about changes in the communty. Knowledge produced in this vein is less bound by Western frames of knowing. In research, taking steps to decolonise our designs and processes serves to bring mutli-centric ways of knowing into the academe. We see decolonisation of knowledge produced through research as something that is never fully ‘reached’; decolonisation is not a state, but a project or “quest” (Naude, 2019: 23). Decolonisation of knowledge producing processes as project requires continuous engagement, especially given the omnipresent globalising forces shaping and reshaping our ways of being in the world. This works toward the ongoing challenge of creating fully decolonised knowledge and ‘reaching’ decolonisation. However, as we see it, one can never be completely decolonised, especially when referring to the mind.

It would be imprudent to assume that all culturally responsive, decolonising, data collection methods are automatically democratic for all—such a utopian concept for a data collection method with indigenous communities does not exist without limitations. However, prioritising the principles of permission, participation, partnering, perceptiveness, power-sharing, and patience works towards remedying the ethical dilemma of unbalanced power relations in research deemed participatory (Janes, 2016) and research with communities more generally. This meaningful incorporation of indigenous and other non-dominant epistemologies is an important way forward to support diversity of perspectives within learning institutions. We argue that awareness of a data collection method embedded in traditional rituals which adheres to accepted community processes is a huge step towards encouraging researchers to join the decolonising project. That is, participating in different ways of decolonised thinking and working.

Conclusion

As we have pointed out, several traditional spaces similar to the baraza exist worldwide. In the research context, these spaces offer a means to engage with research communities more authentically as partners. This article makes a unique contribution in that we are offering a means to cautiously and contextually develop decolonising ways for working in partnership with communities. We argue that attention to the principles for adapting traditional conversational spaces for data collection and action is a means of working in partnership with indigenous communities to share different ways of knowing—a solid starting point for shifting dominant epistemological traditions.