Talanoa as empathic apprenticeship

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 55, No. 3, December 2014 ISSN 1360-7456, pp319–330

Talanoa as empathic apprenticeship Trisia Farrelly* and Unaisi Nabobo-Baba† *School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. Email: [email protected] †School of Education, University of Guam, Mangilao, GU, USA. Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Talanoa has been defined as ‘talking about nothing in particular’, ‘chat’ or ‘gossip’. It is within the cultural milieu of talanoa that knowledge and emotions are shared and new knowledge is generated. Talanoa has recently been taken up by development researchers and others as a culturally appropriate research method in Pacific contexts. However, talanoa is often treated as synonymous with ‘informal open-ended interviews’ and tends to gloss over the deep empathic understanding required in such exchanges. Highlighting the connection between talanoa and empathy is vital in ensuring that development practitioners and researchers are implicitly aware of the political dimensions, cultural appropriacy and socio-ecological impact of their research methods. This connection is also critical in illuminating how talanoa as a method may decolonise research in the Pacific, inform the decolonisation of research in other cultural contexts, and contribute to ethical and empowering development policy and practice. We will argue for the merits of what we refer to here as ‘empathic apprenticeship’: an intentional, embodied, emotional, and intersubjective methodology and process between the researcher and the participant. An empathic apprenticeship has the potential to enhance shared understandings between all human beings and is essential if talanoa is intended as a decolonising research methodology. Keywords: talanoa

decolonising, empathic apprenticeship, empathy, Indigenous, methodology, Pacific,

Rooted in oratory tradition, talanoa is a concept recognised in many island nations across the Pacific, including Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Niue, Hawai’i, the Cook Islands and Tonga (Prescott, 2008). For Halapua (2008: 1), talanoa may be understood as ‘engaging in dialogue with, or telling stories to each other absent [of] concealment of the inner feelings and experiences that resonate in our hearts and minds’. Tongan academic, Timote Vaioleti (2006), relates the two different, though related parts of the whole word, to interpret tala as ‘inform, relate, or tell’ and noa as meaning ‘nothing in particular’. So for Vaioleti, talanoa literally means ‘talking about nothing in particular’ without any particular framework for that discussion (Vaioleti, 2006: 23) or ‘[a] personal encounter where people story their issues, their realities and their aspirations’ (Vaioleti, 2006:

21). According to Indigenous Fijian education researcher, Unaisi Nabobo-Baba (2007), it can also mean ‘to offload’. Emotions and empathy are essential elements in talanoa methodology. For example, Otsuka (2006) states, ‘In talanoa research, researchers and participants share not only each other’s time, interest, and information, but also emotions . . .’ (p. 4). This is also eloquently expressed by Vaioleti (2006) who describes talanoa research as ‘holistically intermingle[ing the] researchers’ and participants’ emotions, knowledge, experiences, and spirits’ (p. 24). Similarly, Nabobo-Baba (2007) has expressed the embracing of spiritualities among people, especially related peoples. So Fijians may refer to a certain talanoa as vakamosi yalo (painful to the spirit-soul) or vakamarautaka na yalo (causing happiness to one’s spirit-soul). Latu

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emphasises that talanoa brings together a complex combination of sociality including emotions: ‘The content of talanoa are [sic] political, historical, geographical, educational, cultural, personal, spiritual, social, structural, constructional and emotional . . .’ (Latu, 2009: 2). While it is clear that empathy and emotions are central to talanoa and talanoa research, the challenges associated with applying empathy in talanoa research, particularly when the researcher is non-Indigenous/an outsider, is nowhere addressed. In this article, we1 provide further support for the teaching, learning and application of talanoa as methodology to a broader public audience. We argue that only by attending to empathy as a core element of talanoa, can researchers and practitioners apply talanoa methodology towards the decolonisation of Indigenous research and provide transformative action towards just development policy and practice. This requires a move away from a Western ideology of subjective empathy to an intersubjective empathy (Zhao, 2012) which ‘creates an active subject to subject relationship that potentially subverts the power imbalance’ (Zhao, 2012: 60) between researcher/participant and practitioner/participant relationships. We will present the merits of what we call ‘empathic apprenticeship’ as a way to contemplate and articulate how to ‘do’ or apply the ideology of intersubjective empathy (the kind of empathy already inherent in talanoa). Empathic apprenticeship is an intentional, embodied, emotional and intersubjective process between the researcher and the participant. Engaging in empathic apprenticeships in our work is necessary to breach the boundaries of Western empathy to allow for social justice and action to emerge from this co-constituted research process. While we acknowledge that empathy is essential to Indigenous research methodologies across the Pacific (and indeed, an element essential to all research conducted in the humanities and social sciences), we will also argue that empathic apprenticeship cannot be universally applied and must account for cultural difference, not only across the nations of the Pacific region, but also within the region’s cultural groups. The way empathic apprenticeship is practised, valued and understood, and the language used to give 320

meaning to it will rely on the characteristics of the cultural landscapes in which it is applied. As a reflection of our research experience, in this paper we refer broadly to Fijian examples to highlight some of these cultural specificities when applying empathic apprenticeship as a decolonising Indigenous methodology. Simultaneously, we recognise the difference within the Fijian examples provided in this paper and note that these should be viewed with this in mind. Talanoa as decolonising methodology Pacific and other Indigenous communities have endured generations of research based on Western science, and this research has arguably resulted in little improvement in social or economic well-being (Hattie, 2002; Vaioleti, 2006). It is erroneous to assume that all Indigenous cultures share the same epistemologies and ontologies, and there is plenty of evidence of disempowering research conducted by those who apply culturally inappropriate methodologies and analytical processes which have rendered research data meaningless, ngaue tae ‘aonga (worthless work/wasted effort) (Vaioleti and Vaioleti, 2003), or worse, harmful to participants and others. It is particularly the application of surveys and other objective quantitative methods that positions the researcher as a selector, director, interpreter, and editor of the participants’ life stories and projects (Bishop and Glynn, 1999): They [the researcher] may interpret [quantitative data] within an overt theoretical framework, but also in terms of a covert ideological framework. They have the power to distort, make invisible, to overlook, to exaggerate and to draw conclusions based, not on factual data, but on assumptions, hidden value judgements and often downright misunderstandings. They have the potential to extend knowledge or perpetrate ignorance (Smith, 1999: 176).

Recently, however, there has been a shift towards a diverse range of qualitative methods and methodologies that more accurately reflect Indigenous cultures. During the ‘Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples’ (1994–2004), Indigenous scholars demanded that the academy decolonise its

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scientific practices based on Western epistemologies and methodologies (e.g. Smith, 2000; Henry and Pene, 2001; Pihama et al., 2002). Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) classic, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, broke the shackles of a long history of Eurocentric scientific practices in Indigenous contexts. Notwithstanding the burgeoning interest in emancipatory research practices this work has generated, there has been a dearth of research applied to culture-specific research methods in Oceania. To date, the small number of localised methodologies presented in Oceanic academic literature have been heavily weighted towards Polynesian cultural contexts including kaupapa Maori (e.g. see Grande, 2004; Denzin et al., 2006, 2008); kakala metaphor (Thaman, 1992)2; fa’afaletui (Tamasese et al., 2005); tivaevae (MauaHodges, 2000); and the teu le va research paradigm (Anae, 2010). Of these, only kaupapa Maori has been specifically focussed and developed as a comprehensive Indigenous research method. A number of scholars have written about culture-specific epistemologies, ontologies and pedagogies specific to the Pacific region, yet much of this has been captured in education literature (e.g. Gegeo and WatsonGegeo, 2001; Thaman, 2003; Gegeo, 2004). In Melanesia, Nabobo-Baba’s (2007) Vanua Research Framework is conspicuous as the only comprehensive framework for understanding specifically ‘Fijian’ Indigenous research methodology. Since his presentation in Honolulu where he presented talanoa as a potential mode for conflict resolution following the 2000 coup, Sitiveni Halapua has led a growing number of Pasifika researchers to re-imagine talanoa as a culturally appropriate Oceanic research methodology. Talanoa research is now arguably the most prominent research methodology applied across the Pacific and is applied almost exclusively in education research. Talanoa as a research methodology does not simply entail applying the principles employed in the common ethnographic method of informal interviews. Nor is it synonymous with chatting or informal discussions outside of Indigenous cultural contexts. Talanoa is not all about ‘what you say’ or even just about ‘how one says it’. Nabobo-Baba (2006: 94) reminds

us that in Fiji, even silence is far from empty: it is a way of knowing: ‘there is eloquence in silence . . . a pedagogy of deep engagement between participants’. What we wish to emphasise here is that talanoa research is undertaken with the understanding that it is a culturally and emotionally embedded reciprocal exchange between researcher and participants. It requires a deep, interpersonal relationship and emotional sharing between all parties involved (Morrison et al., 2002). Most writers have referred to talanoa almost exclusively as it is applied in a formal public forum (e.g. Halapua, 2003; Robinson and Robinson, 2005; Nabobo-Baba, 2006). In Indigenous Fijian contexts, there are different forms of talanoa, including that which is formal and instrumental (veivosaki) and more informal and even serendipitous forms of talanoa. There are also a vast variety of protocols and expectations required for each form. This depends, for example, on whether you talanoa with tabu kin, the sick or chiefs. However, for the purpose of this paper, we wish to focus specifically on talanoa as private informal ‘chat’. This is because these forms of talanoa provide opportunities to (at least in Farrelly’s participants’ words) ‘talk straight’, not otherwise afforded in formal talanoa. For Halapua (2003: 18), talanoa is a philosophy involving ‘an open dialogue where people can speak from their hearts and where there are no preconceptions’. Talking straight from the heart opens up space for greater empathic understanding – this is the emic perspective sought by all good ethnographic researchers. Informal talanoa provides opportunities in which more intimate sharing may take place under the right conditions (see Farrelly, 2009, 2010, 2011). In this process, ‘conscientizing’ or advancing critical consciousness (Freire, 1968), creativity, passive resistance (Scott, 1985; Cohen, 2004), and negotiation of new skills, knowledge and values, can be played out without the restrictions of avoidance or tabu relationships, and free from fear of retribution (Farrelly, 2009, 2010, 2011). This paper progresses this thinking to consider how a researcher or practitioner may consciously reflect on the intersubjective empathy inherent in talanoa and work collaboratively towards a social justice outcome in development practice and policy.

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Empathy anxiety The dominant Western rhetorical paradigm of empathy that Terada (2001) refers to as ‘white mythology’ often dismisses emotions as irrational, personal, inferior, illogical and dangerous (Zhao, 2012). This is because the Western ideology of emotion is based on subjectivity as autonomous, private and isolable. Empathy within Western ideology and rhetoric is defined as ‘the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions: the ability to share someone else’s feelings’ (Empathy, 2014) or ‘walking in another’s shoes’. This is what Zhao (2012) describes as a ‘passive’ and ‘subjective’ form of empathy. Subjective empathy, he posits, is detrimental to intercultural communication because it is based purely on the feelings of the receiver rather than on cultural meanings. While we may vicariously feel sadness or elation for our participants, we may not have ‘read into the immediate, extended, and larger contexts of [our participants] to know why he feels sad, how sad he feels, what this emotion means to him and so forth’ (Zhao, 2012: p. 66). Thus, this form of empathy privileges the emotional reactions of the researcher rather than those of the participant. Subjective empathy also ‘makes no room for mutual exchange . . . and, consequently, multiplies the challenges in fully understanding the emotions of others in intercultural encounters’ (Zhao, 2012: p. 66). Zhao (2012) refers to subjective empathy as ‘passive’ because it does nothing to create transformative interaction or action such as changes in development policy or practice. Stueber’s (2006) ‘basic’ empathy is synonymous with Zhao’s (2012) subjective empathy and helps illustrate the Western empathic model. Basic empathy suggests that we can ‘directly recognize what another person is doing or feeling’ when observing her facial expressions or behaviour (Stueber, 2006: 147) since we, too, express the same emotion in the same way. In other words, we recognise that the other person is fundamentally like us (human with capacities for expressing emotions more or less similarly). However, while basic empathy tells us that a person is angry, it does not tell us what has made that person angry. Therefore, basic empathy is insufficient for a 322

sound understanding of others’ emotions when conducting cross-cultural research. Working within this Western ideological model has led some researchers and practitioners to voice their concerns about the degree to which the researcher/practitioner can put themselves ‘into the shoes’ of others when they come from different cultural backgrounds filled with life experiences vastly different to their own (Green, 1982; Devore and Schlesinger, 1996; Ibrahim, 1991). The method and level of accuracy implied in achieving ‘[a] first person-like, experiential understanding of another person’s perspective’ (Halpern, 2001: 85) is highly controversial. This has created a kind of ‘empathy anxiety’ across the social sciences. The consequence of this anxiety has resulted in a dearth of empathy research (Duan and Hill, 1996; Hollan and Throop, 2011). For example, we were concerned that we were unable to find any research that considered emotion or empathy in research methodology in development studies literature. Social anthropologists, too, appear to be nervous of the limitations of empathy since Clifford Geertz (1984) argued that any claims of empathy created misunderstandings of our participants’ thoughts and feelings, and that any declarations of empathy were merely the projections of researchers’ own feelings onto their subjects. Regardless, a small number of social scientists remain dedicated to the analysis of this fraught topic (e.g. Frank, 1985; Rosaldo, 1989; Gieser, 2008; Wikan, 2009). Considering we work within the social sciences, we are surprised that emotion and empathy (those very things that distinguish us from other species, at least at high levels, and according to non-Indigenous ontologies) as methodological considerations are conspicuously absent from social science work. What we can be left with is research that is sterile, impersonal, disconnected, reductionist, objective and instrumental. The consequence of this is that research results may reflect something far from participants’ lived realities. Conversely, research methodologies that bring us closer to understanding others’ emotions, feelings and attitudes provide us with a more complex and intimate understanding of cultural and social forms. For Lutz and White (1986), attending to emotions in our work is important because ‘emotions mediate social action: they arise in social

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situations and carry implications for future thought and action’ (p. 419). In addition, empathy ‘. . . can reanimate the sometimes robotic image of humans which social science has purveyed . . . Incorporating emotion into ethnography will entail presenting a fuller view of what is at stake for people in everyday life’ (Lutz and White, 1986: 431, emphasis in original). One question we wish to open up in this paper is, ‘How do non-Indigenous or “outsider” researchers apply talanoa research (with a focus on empathy as a core component) in such a way as to contribute to the decolonisation of research in the Pacific?’ We are acutely aware that the method and level of accuracy claimed in any attempt to empathise with our participants, particularly cross-culturally, are highly controversial. But we are not alone (e.g. Stueber, 2006: 195–218) in arguing that, despite the challenges associated with empathising, an empathic understanding of our participants is essential for social justice. While no one can claim to fully understand the inner thoughts of another person, when we collaborate with our participants and co-researchers, we are obligated in our work to do everything we can to further our understanding of others’ perspectives – at least as one human being to another who shares and similarly embodies emotions such as pain, love, fear, hope and despair. Applying culturally appropriate research methodologies in our work is a step towards an ethical and decolonising research approach. A way forward: Empathic apprenticeship We have drawn on Gieser’s (2008) ‘apprenticeship of attention’ to develop what we will refer to here as an ‘empathic apprenticeship’. Empathic apprenticeship is based on the phenomenological principals of intersubjective empathy (Husserl, 1960; Heidegger, 1962; Stein, 1989). While phenomenology is grounded in European philosophy, it has often been applied as a decolonising research approach (McCabe, 2008; Braun et al., 2014). Thus, a phenomenological approach to empathy is ‘good to think with’ when teaching talanoa as research and when reflecting on our research practices in the Pacific. Phenomenology holds that emotion is only known through interaction with others (Terada,

2001: 51), and intersubjective empathy considers relationships with other humans and nonhumans as fundamental to human thought and action. Western subjective empathy allows researchers to ‘project their own emotions and framework of others’ emotions and creates an asymmetrical, passive, subject-to-object’ relationship (Zhao, 2012: 60) and produces ‘no action toward justice but situates the powerful Western eye/I as the judging subject, never called upon to cast her gaze at her own reflection’ (Boler, 1999: 159–161). Intersubjective empathy, on the other hand, attempts to move beyond this subject–object relationship to recognise and allow mutual recognition of difference and commonality towards a transformative intercultural communication. An empathic apprenticeship assumes that emotion is integral to perception and therefore to knowledge. Embodiment, emotion and empathy come together to fine-tune our perceptions and actions towards ‘an education [apprenticeship] of attention’ (Gieser, 2008: 300) to the lived and felt realities of our participants. This is a conscious and intentional process whereby one adopts the stance of a learner but also of a co-producer of knowledge. The researcher must acknowledge the power dynamics between researcher and participants (and the socio-political context in which the apprenticeship takes place), and how this impacts on emotions and knowledge sharing. The principles on which an empathic apprenticeship is based are strongly advocated by those who criticise the dominant Western model of subjective empathy as ‘problematic, limiting, and misleading’ (Zhao, 2012: p. 65; see also Rogers, 1961; Solomon, 1995; Boler, 1999). For example, an empathic apprenticeship addresses Rogers (1961) ‘interpersonal empathy’ (as a counter to subjective empathy), and his call for the researcher/practitioner to empathise through the emotional patterns and frame of reference of the participant rather than through their own: [E]mpathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without losing the ‘as if’ condition’ (pp. 140–141).

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In order to empathise from the participants’ frame of reference, it is essential that the researcher/practitioner develops a nuanced understanding of the cultural milieu situated by the research participants/co-collaborators. Broader cultural context Ethnographic research is uniquely positioned to apply an empathic apprenticeship because of its enduring concern for the emic perspective, ‘for understanding situated meanings, for acknowledging multiple voices and realities, for grasping the other’s frames of reference, for verstehen [meaning of action from the person’s point of view]’ (Clark, 2000: 2–3). The aim of the researcher is not just to recognise how someone feels from a detached and objective standpoint. In other words, it is not just about ‘emotional knowing’ (Finlay, 2005: 272) (e.g. recognising that someone is feeling angry). Rather, the aim is to find out why the person feels and acts the way he/she does at the present time. In other words, we should not only be listening for ‘feelings’; we need to take this further to opening up an awareness of underlying cultural ‘meanings’ (Green, 1982) causing those feelings. This requires a fuller understanding of the sociocultural mileu within which the individual is embedded. For us, empathic apprenticeship addresses our concerns with the ways in which talanoa has been presented in the literature to date. One of those concerns is a tendency to present talanoa research as an Oceanic universal. While a talanoa is widely recognised as a way to share, test and construct knowledge across the Pacific (see Gibson et al., 2010), we also wish to emphasise difference in the ways talanoa and talanoa research is performed and imagined within the socio-ecological particularities of a cultural context within the Pacific. An attention to spatial–cultural specificities within the Pacific region will deconstruct the dangerous myth that a regional or sub-regional research ethics and methodology exist (e.g. Vallance, 2007, 2008). We often hear students and researchers saying that they want to apply talanoa research when embarking on a short fieldwork stint. However, only with prolonged periods of participant observation can the trust and mutual understanding and respect required of meaning324

ful, ethical and empowering talanoa research be developed. Further, an extended period of residence is necessary for our participants’ multiple truths to be exhumed. We wonder, is the mere effort to apply this approach enough or do short stints in the field have the potential to produce potentially invalid or even harmful research data? Meo-Sewabu (2012) indicates that the latter may be a legitimate concern and that the academy’s ethics processes require a cultural and critical re-evaluation. This currently somewhat abstract research practice called ‘talanoa research’ is likely to be endorsed by university ethics committees as ‘culturally appropriate’ despite time constraints for fieldwork because the way it has been conducted in the past has gone largely unchallenged. Hollan and Throop (2008) state, ‘Empathy must always be studied within the much broader context of the ways in which people gain knowledge of others and reveal, or allow, or conceal knowledge of themselves’ (p. 389). To do this, we first need to develop a comprehensive understanding of our participants’ ‘personhood’ (Lutz and White, 1986), and how this personhood is understood in relation to their broader social realm. An empathic apprenticeship must also involve a deep appreciation for specific cultural understandings of personhood and identity. Indigenous Fijian ‘selves’ are commonly understood as more socio-centric than egocentric due to the epistemological and ontological connectivities inherent in the vanua concept as a framework for knowing and living. While the vanua concept is too complex to go into in any significant detail here, understanding the vanua concept as a framework for living and knowing is essential if we are to learn anything about our Fijian participants and co-researchers. Acknowledging that the vanua concept must be understood within its locally specific context in Fiji if we are to engage in an empowering co-productive empathic apprenticeship, the following provides a basic understanding of how it might be broadly conceptualised. Ravuvu (1983, 1987) and Ratuva (2002) describe the vanua as incorporating three interrelationships: the territorial sphere including soil or land (qele); social kinship (veiwekani); and its cosmological dimensions (yavutu and vu¯). In Indigenous Fijian contexts, empathy is central to

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vaka vanua (the Fijian way of living). This is a life lived according to the prescriptions of kinship (or na i vakarau ni bula vaka veiwekani) and it is exemplified in acts of compassion towards kin (Toren, 1999: 272–273), vital for maintaining social solidarity. The performance of the social and political body is informed by social relationships. Relationships are exceptionally important in the Pacific. The following quotation emphasises the importance of trust and emotional sharing needed in the development and maintenance of relationships required to conduct research in Tonga: Making a connection on an emotional level with people who are not yet known, is an important part of building relationships. It is often felt by Pacific people that the development of the relationship is integral, and this takes precedence over the importance of the issues or the business at hand. In order to make such a connection, it may require the researcher to shed a powerful professional identity and ‘de-role’ from a ‘professional identity, to connect on a personal level (Otunuku, 2011: 47).

Mageo (2011) argues that empathy becomes realised specifically through attachments to people and things. In the Pacific, empathy works through attachment to living kin, deceased ancestors and land, whereas in many developed European nations, attachment is directed to a smaller set of intimate relationships. It is through these lines of attachment that class and status are distinguished and thus power and politics are illuminated (see also Hermann, 2011). During Farrelly’s (2009, 2010) doctoral fieldwork, her participants understood the intentionalities of ancestors to be disclosed through the health or affliction of a person’s body or ecological impacts such as a healthy or poor crop. These intentions were often symbolic of whether or not an individual or the whole community was following ‘the straight path’ (see Katz, 1999) (na sala dodonu), that is, life lived vakavanua (the vanua way). This may include whether kin were respecting tabu/ avoidance relationships, caring for one another, acting for the good of the whole community, and sharing or not. These revelations influenced

individual and group decision-making. Nabobo-Baba’s (2008: 149) Vanua Research Framework requires that the following epistemological questions guide the nature of talanoa. All these questions are based on the cultural context within which the research is conducted and includes the complexities of kinship relationships prevalent at the time: 1 How do we approach people appropriately in order to request their knowledge? 2 How do we ask questions without being seen to be abrasive? 3 How do we seek knowledge? What are the appropriate protocols, structures and processes that are in place that determine the way knowledge seekers ask their questions? 4 Who can ask and answer the question asked? Who are the depositories of knowledge in the cultural set up of the study? 5 Who will speak on behalf of the clan? How will the selection of the sample be done so that the insider researcher does not exclude nor insult important people in the process? 6 Where is/are ‘clan boundary/boundaries’ and how does this influence the process of research and talanoa? This is in terms of what can be disclosed to the researcher and what cannot be disclosed. Information shared in talanoa and how this information is shared are done so in consideration of the wider cultural milieu of participants’ social existence and how a person sees himself/ herself in relation to others. This includes the kinship, ethics and customs that constitute an individual’s world. Hollan emphasises the differences not only in what ‘empathy’ means cross-culturally, but also the meanings behind feelings required for empathic understanding. For example, Pacific peoples’ semantic and behavioural empathiclike responses resemble more closely what English speakers would refer to as ‘love’, ‘compassion’, ‘sympathy’, ‘pity’ or a combination of these (Hollan and Throop, 2011). Additionally, empathic responses are not passive emotional responses in the Pacific. Rather, these are expressed through pragmatism: through service offered or material exchange. This pragmatism emphasises the importance of empathic apprenticeship as an active process. Conversely, non-participation or non-action can signal contempt. Drawing on the work of other Fijian

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researchers (Ravuvu, 1983; Seruvakula, 2000; Tuwere, 2002; Nabobo-Baba, 2006; Qalo, 2006), Nainoca (2011) lists five ethical values based on the Fijian vanua concept that are required of anyone wanting to employ culturally appropriate research in an Indigenous Fijian community. These all require what English speakers may refer to as ‘empathy’: • Veidokai (Respect) • Veidolei (Reciprocity including time, energy, and knowledge) • Vosota (Patience) • Veimaroroi (Protectiveness) • Veivakatorocaketaki (Enhancement: The research must benefit the community the ultimate goal being empowerment for selfsufficiency especially in terms of livelihood. The results should be communicated back to the community in their own language in a manner that is meaningful and useful) How these values are interpreted, performed and valued depend on where, when and with whom the research is conducted. An important element of empathic apprenticeship as a practical research process is the embodiment of talanoa. Talanoa is an embodied mode of communication. Thus, anyone wishing to conduct talanoa research will need to embody talanoa if they are to develop cultural proficiency and the refinement of intersubjective empathy. The embodiment of talanoa towards a more accurate empathic understanding may be expressed as ‘attunement’. Attunement Traditionally, the body was the instrument through which history was orally recorded and transferred (Becker, 1995). Thus, talanoa and the body contributed to the production of knowledge and identity. Talanoa remains a central process in the production of knowledge and identity, and through talanoa, the social and political body is the site of passive and active resistance, resilience and innovation (Farrelly, 2009). While talanoa is widely understood as involving shared emotion, the embodiment of knowledge and emotion and the way that we might access that emotion in others are nowhere explained in talanoa literature. As a result, talanoa research is in danger of reinforcing mind/body, nature/culture dichotomies 326

where they do not culturally apply. Emotions, body, society and environment should not be so easily disconnected just because it best fits with non-Indigenous scientific rigour. Emotions involve cultural meaning and bodily feeling. These feelings are socially and symbolically produced, expressed and felt. Lutz and White’s (1986) Anthropology of Emotions posits that perspectives that prioritise inner bodily experiences have been persistent in the literature because this approach is aligned with Western epistemologies and ontologies that reflect our individualised notion of personhood. Conversely, Michelle Rosaldo argues, ‘[e]motions are not things opposed to thought’ as is often assumed in Western science, rather emotions are ‘embodied thoughts, thoughts seeped with the apprehension that “I am involved”’ (author’s emphasis, Rosaldo, 1984: 143). Because empathy is imaginative and emotional (Halpern, 2001), an empathic apprenticeship involves sharing a person’s emotions while imagining what things must be like for them. It also involves ongoing affective attunement. Attunement is perceptual ability and the primary way in which humans communicate. If we accept that 60–65% of all human communication is non-verbal (Burgoon, 1994; Engleberg and Wynn, 2007), attunement is one way of tapping into both the spoken and the unspoken word, and empathy is one of the key elements of the process of attunement. Because attunement is experienced and does not rely on a shared language, it is ideal for enhancing empathic understanding in cross-cultural communication. At the same time, the complexity of learning culturally specific non-verbal cues is not underestimated. Attunement may also enhance empathic understanding across insider–insider and insider–outsider positionalities. Otsuka (2006) alludes to the need for attunement when he states that both verbal and non-verbal cues are essential for meaningful talanoa research. Attunement is an intentional skill that takes time to develop. The researcher interacts with their participants in a variety of situations over a long period of time. The researcher must learn about the political, cultural, environmental, spiritual, economic and historical connections of the lived context of an individual or group. All the while the participant moves in and out of the subjective and intersubjective spaces

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between researcher and participant. Over time, the researcher and participants give and receive embodied emotion with uncertainty (intensified in intercultural exchanges). Gradually, through this process of emotional sharing, transformation, co-creation, differentiation and recognition, a deeper empathy and understanding between participant and researcher may be realised. In Fijian, Nabobo-Baba et al. (2012) have referred to the intersubjective empathy that may be developed through attunement as a key element of an empathic apprenticeship as kauwai. Kauwai is deep empathy in which the two parties involved are engaging in deep spiritual attunement. This emanates from kin-based or other relationships that connect life experiences, histories, and especially shared or disconnected values. Attunement facilitates empathic learning for both researcher and participant over time and the co-production of knowledge. It also helps us to recognise when to remain silent and how others give meaning to silence (Halpern, 2001). Empathic apprenticeship as an ongoing and active process Hollan (2008) argues that even the most admirable efforts at attunement are not enough for empathic understanding. What is needed, he argues, is ‘on-going dialogue as . . . [an] . . . active investigation into the ways people in different times and places ‘promote or discourage understanding of themselves’ (author’s emphasis, p. 475). This ongoing dialogue as intersubjective process distinguishes empathy from mere projection (i.e. the attribution of one’s emotional reactions and perspectives to another) (Margulies, 1989). Hollan (2012) furthers the argument for the ongoing intersubjective process of participant observation for an empathic apprenticeship. Longitudinal participant observation gives us the time and space necessary to confirm or deny our initial assumptions about our participants’ feelings, needs, desires and perspectives. We need to check that our bodily reactions and imaginations of how someone perceives his/her world are as accurate as possible. Nabobo-Baba’s (2008: 146–148) Vanua Research Framework, for example, provides a series of steps through the research process: Na

navunavuci (conception); Na vakavakarau (preparation and planning); Na i curucuru/na i sevusevu (entry); Na talanoa/veitalanoa (multilogue/dialogue/monologue/story collection); Na i tukutuku (reporting/analysis/writing); Na vakavinavinaka (gifting/thank yous); I tatau/ (departure); Vakarogotaki lesu tale/taleva lesu (reporting back, revisiting site for the purposes of presentation/informing chiefs and people researched of completion); and Me vakilai/me na i vurevure ni veisau se na vei ka e vou ka na kauta mai na bula e sautu (transformative processes/change as a result of research reports). All of these steps require varying levels of talanoa, but ever-increasing levels of empathic understanding. They also highlight the ongoing and processual nature of talanoa research as opposed to what may sometimes be misunderstood as a ‘one-off’ conversation or even a series of conversations. Empathic apprenticeship as an active and ongoing process means that a purely verbal exchange ‘on the mat’ is not sufficient to achieve sound research data from talanoa. Everyday talanoa takes place everywhere, and those who conduct longitudinal participant observation will find themselves ‘doing’ talanoa research while fishing, working in the teitei (plantation), walking down the road or hanging out washing. The notion that talanoa as an empathic apprenticeship is a continual and sometimes time-intensive process also assumes that the process of empathy is never entirely error free. How people feel about things change over time, and our attempt to empathise may even affect the way people had initially felt about something. Because we cannot deny that our presence in the field influences those with whom we work, perhaps we should be quicker to accept the mutually constituted nature of the research process. Conclusion The job of the development researcher/ practitioner is to understand our participants’ needs – from their perspective. Unless we provide the conditions in which our participants feel they can ‘talk from the heart’, we are letting them down. We can do better. It is our responsibility to allow our participants and coresearchers to lead us in the best way to conduct

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research. In other words, our research methodologies must reflect the knowledge making and knowledge sharing of our participants, not the other way around. Talanoa research must reflect the specific socio-cultural contexts within which we conduct research. The process and content of talanoa research are intersubjectively constituted by past experiences, imagination, the environment, emotions that occur through remembering, and each person’s bodily and verbal responses to one another (and to that remembering). The product of talanoa research, therefore, is found at the nexus of shared knowledge-sensation-emotion. An embodied, holistic and critically reflexive process whereby researchers take the time through longitudinal participant observation to enhance their understanding of their participants’ needs, hopes and desires (and, as a consequence of this process, themselves as researchers) through an empathic apprenticeship will contribute to the decolonisation of research, and by extension the decolonisation of development policy and practice in the Pacific. Notes 1 A Pa¯keha¯ social anthropologist and an Indigenous Fijian educationalist. 2 The kakala metaphor was later modified to form the kakala research framework (KSF) in 2005 by Taufe’ulungaki and Johansson-Fua.

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