clico.org

I started my PhD in March 2010. Full of enthusiasm, I thought everything to do with my research would be incredible fun. I couldn’t wait to start work for the CLICO project and, ignoring the comments of my supervisor how boring data collection could be, everything seemed very exciting to me. The plan: we were going to compile a new data set on domestic water-related conflict and cooperation. Easy and straightforward! We started by hiring four research assistants and dividing the countries to be coded among the people from PRIO and ETH. I had never met the people from PRIO but through our email exchange, they soon became quite familiar to me. After discussions about the source we would use and some minor methodological questions, we were ready to start phase one of the work at the beginning of April: downloading of all the relevant media entries for the allocated countries. It soon became quite clear that this was not going to be the fun part of the whole work. The only body part that was actually in demand turned out to be the index finger. Some of us indeed claimed that they could feel a beginning tendinitis in their fingers after hundreds and hundreds of media items. But eventually, we were lucky and finished the downloading before we suffered permanent injuries.

Sure enough, now that the boring work of downloading was finished, the interesting second phase was about to begin: the coding of our 78’000 something media items. 78’000 something media items sounds like a hell of a lot of work and it turned out to be exactly that. The coding is, however, much more interesting than the downloading. I started with Algeria and I can say there is really something going on in that country. The attractive part of the coding is that you learn quite a bit about the individual countries even if you are only looking at very limited aspects. It also turned out that some prejudices were verified while others could be completely rejected. After covering half of the time period of a country, some actors even appeared to be like old relatives; some of them seem quite likeable while you don’t want to meet others in person at all.   

However, after some months of coding, I begin to believe my supervisor’s comments about data collection. It’s not all just fun! It can even be a bit frustrating when you think you are about to finish a country’s coding and it turns out that there are an above-average amount of items in the last six months of the final year. Far from having finished my part of the coding, I can say that I see the end of coding appearing at the horizon. The moment when we finish will be worth a good bottle of something bubbling. To finish this entry, I would like to share some of the coding highlights with you. Well, at least I experienced them as such.

Husni Mubarak in an interview explaining the conflict in Darfur on 8 April 2006: “Darfur area is equal to the area of France. It is a vast desert. Since early history there have been two large tribes in Darfur. One has rain and the other has drought. The second goes to the first in search of food. They quarrel but finally hold an annual peace conference and everyone will then return to his original place. If it rains here and does not rain there next year, they will do the same. This has been happening for years.”

Editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi website London on 24 December 2008: “The Egyptian army has transformed from a source of pride for Egypt and the Arab nation into an army of bakers and workers digging irrigating canals and tending to chicken farms.”

I asked myself whether sometimes it is not more preferable to have people raising chicken and preparing for irrigation instead of fighting. But I agree that this is my personal opinion.