Contribution short abstract

Drawing on leftover field materials (photos, audio, diary notes), I explore ambivalence in researching Addis Ababa’s vegetable food system. The presentation highlights messy, situated, and feminist ways of knowing that reveal the city’s unfolding urban political ecologies.

Contribution long abstract

Throughout a research project, particularly toward its anticipated “finish line,” we often aim to produce a clear argument supported by orderly, interpretable data. Yet in contexts of high complexity, where layered politics, intersecting power imbalances, and diverse knowledges converge, such clarity is difficult to achieve without sidelining unresolved, plural, and contradictory insights. I see ambivalence as one such underacknowledged dimensions: Reflecting upon my doctoral research on the urban political ecologies of Addis Ababa’s informally shaped vegetable food system, ambivalence was an omnipresent methodological, empirical, and personal condition. Four years of fieldwork unfolded amid shifting access to sites, intercultural and linguistic hurdles, and evolving ethical boundaries. My transition into motherhood further introduced new layers of vulnerability, affective negotiation, and reorientation of research priorities. Empirically, ambivalence saturated the field: women’s labour appeared simultaneously exploitative and empowering; informal infrastructures offered both autonomy and instability; and urban transformations opened opportunities even as they marginalised low-income actors.The panel spoke to me immediately, as I have been searching for a place to explore these unresolved and complicated accounts. For this presentation, I want to explore “left-over data”, including photographs, audio fragments, personal notes, and field diary entries, to work through the ambivalences that shaped my research and explore how they might thicken our understandings of (urban) political ecologies. I also see the panel’s theme as connected to conceptual entries shaping my dissertation, including Southern and feminist urban theory, Simone’s improvisational urbanism, and calls for “otherwise” and “dirty” research that foreground messy and ambivalent forms of knowing.