Well probably yes! It’s amazing what wearing a suit and tie and hanging around the Foreign Ministry can do to change people’s perceptions of you!
The fieldwork is still going well and I thought it was time to write an update today after I set foot for the first time properly into the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for what I am cautiously going to describe as my first ‘interview’ with an official.
It was an interview, despite part of me thinking it wasn’t. I didn’t give him the Jeremy Paxman treatment and it was more an organisational meeting to help me get contacts inside the Ministry for what I will call ‘the interviews proper’. But all my meetings so far with academics, former ministers and now current officials have been really useful. I have been given lots of contacts and have already learnt a lot about how Portuguese foreign policy is understood by the Portuguese. Most but not all of my suspicions and hypotheses have been confirmed. The good thing about my research is that I am coming at it from the perspective of an outsider, but that does leave me open to potentially missing something major and obvious. But so far, so good.
It’s getting towards the business end at last, so lots of interviews to schedule. I only have 2 months left in Lisbon now, so will have to work fast. It’s also difficult to judge how many interviews I could realistically cram into a short space of time as I need time to reflect and analyse as I go. I have a ‘system’ where I scribble my notes down during the meeting and then write them up in ‘best’ in my field diary later. Usually there is still stuff in my head which I remember to jot down. So I am blessed with not recording and transcribing things, but it does mean I have the nightmare of trying to organise my notes into a logical order after the meeting has finished and picking out the key things. But it seems to work, although it is a little time consuming but I guess this is because I am mixing in analysis as I go. Some might say it is a methodological tightrope I am walking with no clear indication of what words are my interviewees and what are my interpretations. But frankly that doesn’t matter, I’m the one writing the thesis! If research training has taught me anything, it is that you can worry too much about methodology!!!
I also had a good trip up to Braga, only really a flying visit. But I got to sample Portugal’s high speed tilting train (and the superb amount of leg room!) and the views from out of my window as well as Braga city centre and all its old churches.
Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now. Doubtless I’ll have lots to update you on some time soon!