Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the question of what a problem is through the practice of asking questions in development research in Afghanistan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the question of what a problem is through the practice of asking questions. Based on fieldwork as an evaluator of the Dutch military and developmental intervention in Afghanistan, I explore different modes of asking questions to show how problems do not translate into self evident, single questions and answers. Rather, the practice of asking questions in evaluation research - designing questionnaires and conducting interviews - shows that questions are part an ecology of questions (Savransky 2013) in which each require different kinds of work to get question and problem straight. In the process of both the design of questionnaires and the conducting of interviews distinct worlds are built in which not only the respective question/problem make sense but also who can ask, answer, how and why. The last part of the paper addresses a different way of questioning or raising problems: critique. In this last part I will discuss how the mode of critique- in this particular setting of how questionnaires and interviews are supposed to relate - ask questions and do problems in yet a different way.