1 Introduction
This article uses Cotterrell’s theorisation of a moralistic conception of ‘trust’ to discuss how to conduct an empirical fieldwork project. Cotterrell’s 1993 ‘Trusting in Law’ paper is the point of departure through which I centre my analysis of how ‘the legal concept of trust might aid better understanding of general social or moral notions of trust’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, Reference Cotterrell, Piška and Gibson2024, p. 231). The main aim is to give socio-legally oriented academics who are embarking on overseas empirical fieldwork of the informal environmental economy tools to think about how to do this well based on my own experience.
I define the informal environmental economy as one in which informal actors conduct an environment-related economic activity that involves both formal and informal actors with little or no compliance with law and regulation. Informal economy here includes activities which are capable of being lawful and excludes illicit activity (International Labour Office Recommendation 204 of 2015, Art. 2). Lawful economic activity is compliant with the necessary legal requirements for it to take place, whereas illicit economic activity refers to activity which is forbidden by law for ethical and moral reasons, for example human trafficking and the production and sale of illicit drugs (International Labour Office Recommendation 204 of 2015, Art. 2).
The informal environmental economy is informal by necessity or convenience (Chen Reference Chen2012, p. 5), and is characterised by some type of value extraction. Extraction here refers to the taking or creating of value from things that are either discarded, as a signifier that their value is no longer required by the owner, or being buried or embedded, and need to be uncovered or separated through a process (Bridge Reference Bridge, Richardson, Castree, Goodchild, Kobayashi, Liu and Marston2017). This includes, among others, the informal fashion waste economy, the informal mining economy (artisanal and small-scale mining) and the informal solid waste management economy, which includes waste pickers, who have a fraught relationship with the law.
The analysis here is unique in its focus on the informal economy, an economy that is historically understudied within law generally, and more so from my chosen approach, economic sociology of law (ESL) (Zelizer Reference Zelizer2011, p. 8). ESL encompasses a plurality of perspectives, which are rooted ‘within the broader tradition of sociology of law’ and that can be applied to a ‘wide range of methodologies and substantive fields’ (Ashiagbor et al. Reference Ashiagbor, Kotiswaran and Perry-Kessaris2014, p. 260). Within this diversity, ESL systematically analyses the inseparable and interconnected legal, social and economic aspects of life (Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris2015; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003). My research project, guided by ESL, investigated the economic, social and legal aspects of the informal environmental economy, allowing for a combination of empirical methods and approaches from different disciplines (Ashiagbor et al. Reference Ashiagbor, Kotiswaran and Perry-Kessaris2013, p. 5; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003).
Fieldwork required me to be cognisant of the interpersonal trust that Cotterrell says creates uneven power relations between the truster and the trusted as he or she seeks to build meaningful interactions with research respondents (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 94). The need to develop sufficiently trusting relationships with my research respondents, which I discuss in detail in Section 4, meant that I remained flexible to adapt to the ever-changing fieldwork conditions. As part of my reflection on these conditions, I focus on three methodological challenges encountered during the process of undertaking fieldwork-based research: positionality, observation and the production of a documentary film.
My findings can be a resource for socio-legal researchers undertaking the ‘challenging balancing exercise’ of choosing the right concepts and methods when designing an interdisciplinary research project (Foblets et al. Reference Foblets, Gaudreault-DesBiens and Graziadei2022, p. 913). More specifically, my findings on methods can be applied to other informal environmental economies, and the informal economy more broadly, in the developing country context, as my analysis injects some rigour into the business of doing quality empirical environmental law scholarship, of which there has been a dearth (Fisher et al. Reference Fisher, Lange, Scotford and Carlarne2009; Vaughan Reference Vaughan2024).
The article has the following structure. The second section sets out the rationale for the study of the informal environmental economy in the developing country context and why I used an ESL approach. The third section discusses empirical methods for an ethnographically inspired study of an informal environmental economy, and analyses how Cotterrell’s concept of trusting in the law enhances such a project. The fourth section explores how three methodological challenges that arose during fieldwork on waste pickers and sustainable development in South Africa can be addressed. The article concludes that when combined with an ESL framework for approaching research, Cotterrell’s theorisation of trusting relations involving uneven power dynamics provides researchers with strategies for how to deal with inevitable fieldwork challenges.
The first challenge discusses how the advantages and limitations of positionality help shape the researcher’s access to data. The second challenge pertains to the issue of the unavailability of participant observation as a research method. The third challenge relates to how to produce a non-traditional output, a documentary film, that remains faithful to the research findings and preserves the dignity of the research respondents. Each challenge creates numerous issues of trust in relation to power and vulnerability because the research respondents are hard-to-reach informal environmental-economic actors. Finally, the article concludes with a nod to Cotterrell’s call to study legal ideas sociologically, systematically and empirically (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, p. 183). In this case, the study investigates the economic, social and legal character of the informal economy.
2 Why study the informal environmental economy empirically?
Research on the wider informal economy, including the informal environmental economy, has taken place since the economic anthropologist Keith Hart coined the term during his 1970s study of urban employment opportunities in northern Ghana (Hart Reference Hart1973, p. 61). Since then, legal scholarship on the informal economy includes a variety of perspectives from both the Global North and Global South (Ashiagbor Reference Ashiagbor2019; Blackett Reference Blackett2019; Choudhury Reference Choudhury2022; Khan Reference Khan2018). In relation to the informal waste economy, on which the examples discussed are drawn, the field is not well developed, with studies considering questions of environmental justice (Perry-Kessaris and Anderson Reference Perry-Kessaris and Anderson1996), law and development (Dias and Eslava Reference Dias and Eslava2013), labour law (Routh and Borghi Reference Routh and Borghi2016), sustainable development (Lindner Reference Lindner2025) and international law (Alessandrini et al. Reference Alessandrini, Pilar Cortes-Nieto, Eslava and Yilmaz Vastardis2022). Studies of the informal waste economy are mainly found within geography, anthropology and other disciplines, with research emanating from field sites including in Mexico (Guibrunet Reference Guibrunet2019), Egypt (Fahmi and Sutton Reference Fahmi and Sutton2006; Fahmi and Sutton Reference Fahmi and Sutton2010), Indonesia (Kristanto et al. Reference Kristanto, Kemala and Nandhita2021), Brazil (Rutkowski and Rutkowski Reference Rutkowski and Rutkowski2015), India (Chaturvedi Reference Chaturvedi2003) and of course South Africa (Godfrey and Oelofse Reference Godfrey and Oelofse2017; Ngcobo Reference Ngcobo2022; Samson Reference Samson2017; Samson Reference Samson2020; Simatele et al. Reference Simatele, Dlamini and Kubanza2017; Yu et al. Reference Yu, Blaauw and Schenck2020). Much of this research uses some combination of ethnographic methods and socio-legal theoretical analysis.
There is good reason to study the informal economy in its African context. Over 60 per cent of all people over the age of fifteen worldwide work informally (International Labour Office 2023, p. 15). In Africa, this percentage jumps to 84 per cent (International Labour Office 2023, p. 81). One cannot properly study the continent’s economic activity while ignoring its most prevalent form. Many of these people live in poor socio-economic conditions, which is correlated with a lower incidence of formal job opportunities, a lower Human Development Index value and a lower level of Gross Domestic Product per capita (International Labour Office 2018, pp. 19, 45; International Labour Office 2023, p. 15). The economy exists in legal borderlands, which lends itself to empirical investigation because so much is unknown about the informal economy in the literature (De Soto Reference De Soto1989, p. 132).
Economists such as De Soto and Ostrom have wrestled directly or tangentially with the question of how to conceptualise the legal regulation that governs the informal (environmental) economy as a substantive economic form (De Soto Reference De Soto1989; Ostrom Reference Ostrom1990). Ostrom investigated intra-informal environmental economy relationships that manage common pool resources (Reference Ostrom1990), which helped her to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009. De Soto’s much critiqued study on the informal property rights in Peru was a key point in his career, which, along with the work of Lopez, La Porta, Shleifer and Vishny, led to the World Bank’s focus on formalisation as part of its ‘Doing Business’ agenda from 2004 to 2020 and the now ‘B-Ready’ (De Soto Reference De Soto1989; International Finance Corporation and The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 2009; La Porta et al. Reference La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny1996; La Porta et al. Reference La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny1997; World Bank 2021; World Bank 2024, pp. 2–3).
A comprehensive socio-legal study of the informal environmental economy cannot be undertaken without an understanding of the major regulatory objectives that generally govern environmental economic activity. In my empirical study, formalisation and sustainable development are explored as normative ideas that inform the major regulatory objectives governing the South African waste management economy. A better understanding of how these regulatory objectives operate can contribute to our understanding of how the informal environmental economy thrives at the periphery of the law, and can help to determine what level of bureaucratisation is needed for it to be incorporated into the formal economy. For instance, after experiencing a 90 per cent failure rate of waste picker co-operative formation, the South African approach has involved waste pickers in the design of formalisation programmes to ensure waste picker buy-in and regulatory compliance (DEFF and DST 2020, p. iii; Godfrey et al. Reference Godfrey, Strydom and Phukubye2016, p. 3).
A full discussion of the value of an economy that is informal is beyond the scope of the article. The focus here is on the methods that will result in an accurate understanding of the contours of this economy, which, because of its continued existence in a unique economic, social and legal structure, is often studied using empirical methods. Therefore, this article responds to the need to better understand the socially embedded and legal character of this economy by using Cotterrell’s socio-legal theorisation of the role of trust in social relationships.
Cotterrell deems law a form of social knowledge that, because it helps to construct social reality, must be understood using relevant tools from the other social sciences (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, pp. 175–76). This includes insights from sociology and economics, which have helped to produce his idea that a social network of community, rather than society, is the social unit on which to base an investigation of legal and economic phenomena (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, Reference Cotterrell1998, Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 56). He eschews purely doctrinal analysis for its lack of attention to the inherent social character of law (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, p. 173), and orthodox economic analysis for its inability to capture complex interplays in socially embedded markets (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 56).
The interdisciplinary and vital Cotterrellian approach to legal form has led to useful insights. In his theorisation of the social and moral foundations of trust as a legal form, Cotterrell speaks of trust as a basis of social and moral relationships that raise questions of power and dependence (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 77). Outside of the trappings of law, a trust is a relationship in which the truster lets another person take care of something that they care about such that the trusted holds power over the one who trusts (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, pp. 77–78). The trusted is therefore socialised to treat the concerns of another as her own (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 77), in parallel with the creation of power imbalances that are necessary for these relationships to work (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78). Cotterrell invokes Luhmann in his analysis of how the idea of trusting relates to systems when he says that the giving and accepting of interpersonal trust involves a definite moral bond (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 77). The decision to take the risk of relying on the other involves a positive conferment of trust by the truster on the trusted (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 91). There is an element of vulnerability, of not just the truster, as Cotterrell would say (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78). This vulnerability can be tied in with the element of discretion that needs to be exercised by the person being trusted, an idea which Cotterrell borrows from Baier (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 93); in this case the socio-legal researcher.
2.1 An ESL approach
Law has traditionally been limited in its consciousness of methodology in relation to other disciplines, as Cotterrell has pointed out (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, p. 171). I add that this is no different for its methodological consciousness in relation to studies of the informal economy, as these have tended to reside in other disciplines. As a legal academic, I thought carefully about how to curate and innovate normative, analytical and empirical concepts that would help me to effectively study my chosen informal environmental economy. For instance, a systematic methodology will consider the normative, conceptual and empirical aspects of the subject matter (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017; Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris and Perry-Kessaris2012). In my case, I was concerned with investigating the normative concepts of formalisation and sustainable development. The regulatory objective of formalisation aims to improve the working conditions of informal environmental economic workers through compliance with relevant laws and policies (Alessandrini et al. Reference Alessandrini, Pilar Cortes-Nieto, Eslava and Yilmaz Vastardis2022). Sustainable development, which promotes the achievement of economic and social development with environmental protection, was the main aim and objective of laws governing waste management in South Africa – from the constitution to national environmental law and delegated local government laws (Lindner Reference Lindner2025).
I chose analytical concepts within the ESL tradition because the informal economy engages in sophisticated economic activity while operating from a place of social disadvantage on the legal borderlands. I felt that an analysis of these distinct but interlocking phenomena needed a methodology that approached each – the legal, the economic and the social – holistically. For me, ESL was useful because of its key idea that both economic and legal aspects of life are social phenomena and therefore embedded in social life (Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris2015, p. 58; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003, pp. 1, 6). The economic and legal aspects of life are mutually constitutive of the structure of the society in which they occur (Polanyi Reference Polanyi2001 [1944], p. 60). To this understanding of the interlinkages between the economic, the legal and the social, Bourdieu adds that ‘the social world is present in every “economic” action’ (Reference Bourdieu2005, p. 3). Such an understanding allows for a focus beyond that of the doctrinal approach which dislocates law from its social context (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, p. 180) and law and economic analyses that distil social relations through the prisms of economic efficiency and economic equilibrium (Ulen and Cooter Reference Cooter and Ulen2012).
This ‘transdisciplinary enterprise’ of ESL is suitable for the study of the informal environmental economy because it transcends reasoning focused on ‘the social forces operating on legislation’ toward intricate questions that address its key preoccupation: the embeddedness of legal and economic institutions and ideas in society (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, p. 172; Frerichs Reference Frerichs, Joerges and Falke2011, p. 70). Law and legal orders and legal institutions are seen as part of a societal structure which influences or inspires individuals to (not) conform to its economic priorities and rules (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, pp. 58–59; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003, p. 1; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2006, p. 66). As Cotterrell eloquently puts it, ‘law can be considered to express or structure the experiences that make up the essential texture of social life’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1998, p. 176).
Previous studies informed by ESL have focused on trade liberalisation and social policy (Ashiagbor Reference Ashiagbor2014), racial capitalism (Ashiagbor Reference Ashiagbor2021), financial markets (Black Reference Black2013), labour law (Dukes Reference Dukes2019), feminism (Kotiswaran Reference Kotiswaran2013), wind farm development (Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris2013) and the concept of embeddedness (Williams Reference Williams2023). This paper joins this literature by providing resources, based on Cotterrell’s socio-legal theorisation of the idea of trusting in the law, that law students and academics can use as they embark on an empirical study of the informal environmental economy.
3 Empirical methods to study the informal environmental economy
Empirical research, as construed in the social sciences, is quite broad and comprises two basic forms: quantitative research and qualitative research (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017). Quantitative research relies primarily on the use of numerical and statistical tools of analysis; it can also involve qualitative elements, which can facilitate a nuanced commentary on factors that affect human behaviour (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 3–5). While used by Bourdieu in much of his ethnographic work in Algeria and France in the form of rudimentary statistics, quantitative methods do not produce the data required for an ESL study of informal environmental economies, which, because they involve living practice, are better suited to qualitative observational methods (Jenkins Reference Jenkins1992, p. 59; Scheyvens Reference Scheyvens2014, p. 40; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003, p. 2). The use of tools affiliated to what anthropologists regard as ‘ethnography’ and sociologists call ‘case-study’ facilitates the data collection necessary to analyse the lived experience of informal environmental economic actors (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 2–3).
Thus, the analysis here is oriented toward challenges that occur in the process of qualitative studies that involve fieldwork using ethnographic-type methods. Congruent with Swedberg’s view, the idea is to produce ‘careful empirical studies on the role that law and regulations play in the economic sphere – drawing primarily … on an analysis that not only highlights social relations but also interests’ (Reference Swedberg2003, p. 2). The phenomena being investigated are regarded as dependent on, not independent of, society (Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003, p. 2). The study should produce a sense of individual actors’ contributions to the ‘internal culture of networks of community’ that rely on trusting relationships within the informal environmental economy, and clarity on the complexity of the relationship between law, economics and society (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 66; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003, p. 2).
The methods I use for this ESL study are similar to ethnography because they include observation, interviewing, field note-keeping and the collection of artefacts (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 19–20; Swedberg Reference Swedberg2003, pp. 1–2). However, they are different from ethnography in three respects (Lindner Reference Lindner2025, p. 255). Like ethnography, my method seeks to understand economic actors’ lived experience using observation, interviewing, field note-keeping and the collection of artefacts. However, ethnography is generally understood to involve living and participating in research participant community activities for a year or more (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 19–20). In contrast, a researcher using ESL will usually undertake a shorter period of study; in my case I spent five months in the field spread over two visits. Second, informal conversations I had with research participants took place with the expectation that an interview would take place, whereas in ethnography, more-than-informal interviews are not necessarily required (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 19; Lindner Reference Lindner2025, p. 255). Finally, while the research design of an ethnographic study can be flexible to entertain a variety of topics which are not fixed at the inception of the study, the focus in an ESL study is clear and not open-ended (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 20).
Before I gathered any data from human subjects as part of my empirical study, it was essential to undergo the process of ethical research approval and risk assessment (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 234). This was necessary for my protection and for the protection of the research respondents. Doing this also inspires trust in my work from the academic community to which I belong (SLSA 2021, p. 1). For a researcher new to the process, the ethical approval process comprises an application detailing the proposed research, the production of one or more interview schedules, an information sheet and a consent form (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017). The risk assessment comprises an evaluation of the risks of undertaking the research, and of the fieldwork location, prior to entering the field (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017). There may be further compliance requirements from individual institutions. For my project, my ethics application was approved by the Faculty of Social Science Research Advisory Group of the University of Kent, the institution at which I undertook my PhD. The content of the application was informed by research ethics guidelines produced by my doctoral study funder, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Statement of Principles of Ethical Research Practice produced by the Socio Legal Studies Association, which aims to promote research in socio-legal studies in the UK. My approved risk assessment complied with University of Kent guidelines. Researchers will need to ensure that the requisite forms comply with the requirements of their affiliated research body, any national or professional bodies governing the research and (external) funders (Bernard Reference Bernard2018, pp. 20–22; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 234–35; SLSA 2021, pp. 1, 8).
My data collection methods consisted of two components. The first was primary research via ethnographically inspired methods including behavioural observation, interviewing of research participants and the keeping of a field note diary (Bernard and Gravlee Reference Bernard and Gravlee2014, p. 277; Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 131; Scheyvens Reference Scheyvens2014, p. 60). The second was secondary research via the collection and analysis of relevant primary sources such as laws, policies, regulations, reports and brochures from government international organisations, private and NGO sector organisations, academic articles, newspaper stories and blogs for the purpose of document analysis (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 132; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 22). These twinned data collection methods are apt for studies with a heavy empirical component where data are not available in the literature (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 3; Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 132).
The empirical component required me to devise a strategy for how to meet research subjects and their gatekeepers – intermediaries who assist with the process of entering a community to conduct research – and can shape the development of the research (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 195; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 52–55). As part of this strategy, I undertook two fieldwork trips: an initial scoping visit of five weeks and a longer fieldwork trip of approximately three months. In the first trip, I attended a key industry conference which was instrumental in the success of the empirical component of my research because potential research subjects from government, formal private sector and academia were in attendance. Conference networking sessions provided a space to initiate contact with key stakeholders I identified through conference panel and plenary sessions and desktop research. While I did not meet any waste pickers at this conference, the contacts I made facilitated contact with waste pickers, a helpful complement to the contact I made with environmental activists via cold email. This made the process of setting up and conducting interviews in the subsequent four weeks of my first fieldwork visit and the beginning of my second visit very productive.
At this stage it became very clear that the formation of trusting relationships with key figures within the informal environmental economy and their allies was crucial to be granted interviews and opportunities for behavioural or participant observation. I needed to develop moral bonds, ‘involving reliance, in social relationships, on other people’s goodwill, solicitude and competence; or a confidence that general expectations in familiar social circumstances will not be frustrated’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 75). Though gatekeepers helped with introductions to research respondents, my access to individuals being interviewed had to be ‘negotiated and renegotiated’ with every encounter (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 44). I saw this practice as situating myself within the ‘network of community’ that Cotterrell says ‘may be held together by a variety of bonds … for example, shared values, allegiances or customary practices…’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 51). I recruited research respondents through the process of non-probabilistic snowball sampling, whereby contact with new research respondents is made via existing research participants and gatekeepers (Scheyvens Reference Scheyvens2014, p. 45). I maintained these relationships by keeping in contact with the gatekeepers I met during the conference I attended at the beginning of my fieldwork and accepting invitations to social events at which I could develop informal rapport.
3.1 Meeting and interviewing research respondents
Data for both the scoping trip and the main fieldwork period were collected using in-depth, semi-structured and informal interviews with a range of private sector, national and local government actors. I also observed numerous instances of the working lives of private sector actors. I chose to interview a range of actors to get a 360-degree understanding of how various actors who worked in the same environmental economic ecosystem as informal environmental economic actors understood their individual roles and the roles of others. The scoping trip facilitated a ‘test-run’ of the semi-structured interview schedules (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 122). Based on the responses received from research respondents, I refined my initial interview schedule, mapped the waste management field in South Africa and chose my main sites of fieldwork data collection. Overall, I chose to research in South Africa for three reasons. The vast literature on South African waste picking provided very good information prior to fieldwork, the normative conceptual focus of my study, sustainable development, was enshrined in South African waste management law and policy, and many waste management practitioners were conversant in sustainability (Lindner Reference Lindner2025, p. 254).
Throughout the interview process, I adapted the research questions to the responses that research respondents gave, and adjusted my communication style depending on their level of English and their interest in and knowledge of the subject matter. I found that remaining flexible to adapt the form of the interview was crucial for getting information. In some instances, I took notes in lieu of using a voice recorder when requested, such as when offered an on-the-spot interview or where the interviewee did not wish to be audio recorded. Understandably, these instances proved challenging and did not produce the same richness of data as would a transcribed audio recording (Farnell and Graham Reference Farnell, Graham, Bernard and Gravlee2014, pp. 406–408).
3.2 Fieldnote diary and artefacts
The fieldwork diary I kept helped me to reflect daily on how my own interactions with research respondents and engagements with the field fit into the aims of the research project (Farnell and Graham Reference Farnell, Graham, Bernard and Gravlee2014, pp. 406–407). I used the process of writing every day to better assess the quality of information gathered and devise and revise strategies for information gathering. The material artefacts that I collected, such as photographs, brochures, newspapers and waste-related products, provided me with a tactile and visual reminder of the places visited and the research respondents interviewed in the post-fieldwork phase of the research (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 144; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 138).
As I progressed my analysis of the primary data, the fieldwork diary and artefacts were, as constant companions, sources of reflection and reminders of the fieldwork experience. They thus contributed subtly to key findings detailed in my studies on the informal waste economy and waste management policy-making in South Africa. In one study, I found that sustainable development is difficult to achieve for waste pickers because the persistent inequality that exists in South Africa is extant not only within societal dynamics but between and among waste management firms who buy waste pickers’ recyclable materials (Lindner Reference Lindner2025). In another, I detail the reasons for the poor design and implementation of a waste management programme that did not lead to waste pickers’ improved socio-economic conditions, but instead to the programme’s cancellation (Lindner, under review).
4 Methodological challenges
Multiple factors affected waste pickers’ ability to trust me as a researcher. Cotterrell’s ideas on trusting relationships have helped to put the methodological challenges I encountered doing research with human research respondents into perspective. Waste pickers were constantly in motion while navigating precarity and societal rejection (Simatele et al. Reference Simatele, Dlamini and Kubanza2017, p. 128). Waste pickers who had difficult relationships with the police and other authorities were likely less inclined to develop a trusting relationship with anyone who appeared to have a position of authority that may cause trouble for them legally (Fieldwork Notes 2017; Lindner Reference Lindner2025). My lack of even rudimentary fluency in any Bantu-based South African language stymied my awareness of specific perspectives held by those without fluency in English, my native tongue, proving a limitation on my ability to develop deep relationships (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 140).
To create some trust, I undertook to preserve the confidentiality and anonymity of my research respondents, a widely held ethical practice that often results in the use of pseudonyms to identify research respondents in academic outputs (Socio-Legal Studies Association 2021, pp. 6, 9). In the process of analysing fieldwork data, I pseudonymised the names of companies and interviewees. I sometimes changed the gender I ascribed to my research respondents when describing them in publications to further delink them from their original identity. I used pseudonyms instead of interview identifiers to make my research respondents more relatable to readers of my publications. I see this humane portrayal of research respondents as acting with respect and discretion ‘in a manner that protects the interests of the person who trusts’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78).
In one instance, I was able to anonymise the research respondents but not the company involved. Anonymisation was not possible because the formation of the company was gazetted by government and the company was named party to a court case relevant to my analysis (Lindner, under review). However, below, I home in on three challenges that go to the core of this ethnographic-type of research that are likely to arise in many contexts: my positionality, my observation of research respondents and the production of a documentary film, a non-traditional output. My aim is to show that the degree and character of trust between researcher and research respondent shapes their relationship, the process of data collection and research output production.
4.1 Positionality
Positionality refers to how one’s identity, experience and privileges influence the whole research process, and is often reflected upon by anthropologists and sociologists, but less so by lawyers, though the literature on this is growing (Massoud Reference Massoud2022, S74; see the Reference Chua and Massoud2024 collection edited by Chua and Massoud). My positionality was a major challenge during fieldwork as it affected research respondents’ willingness to be completely open with me. In my interactions with research respondents, I did not hesitate to disclose my background nor did I consider the political implications of doing so. I simply thought that if I want my research respondents to be open with me, I must be transparent with them about who I am. This arose from wanting to build the ‘systems of mutual reliance’ that embody trust according to Cotterrell (Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 94; Reference Cotterrell2013), and that I would agree are crucial for effective social relations, particularly where a power imbalance is further complicated by limited knowledge of the law. My experience was that being transparent led some research respondents to ask me questions about my home country, its native peoples and our customs, which felt like a meaningful exchange. This proved the development of some of the ‘personal obligation of care and concern’ between the truster and the trusted (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 85). My openness was particularly useful with waste picker research respondents who expressed surprise that my African-heritage family from a South American country with West Indian culture did not speak an African language. My openness helped research respondents to better remember me and signalled some recognition that I could be trusted to treat the concerns of my research respondents about who I was as a person as my own (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 77). Personally, I was relieved that sharing extra-professional parts of myself authentically fostered positive relations, and I would do the same again in the future.
A good understanding of subtle cultural nuances, I learned, is a quality that is important to cultivate during fieldwork (Scheyvens Reference Scheyvens2014, p. 129). My experience as a foreigner with a Third World upbringing and Western tertiary education helped me to recognise many of the legacies of colonialism present in South Africa regarding wealth distribution, race and, surprisingly, language (Rowe Reference Rowe, Coghlan and Brydon-Miller2014). Guyana, South America, where I grew up, was a Dutch colony before it became an English one (Chang Reference Chang2019). Dutch ceased to be the colonial language in the second decade of the 1800s in Guyana. However, the country has many Dutch place names, similar to South Africa where Afrikaans, a Dutch-based language infused with African and Asian influences, has provided a similar legacy. I learned in South Africa that more Dutch words are retained in Guyanese Creole English than I had ever considered (Allsopp Reference Allsopp2003, p. xliii). This ability to connect over language was important in a country that has twelve official languages, of which I only speak one fluently (Parliament of the Republic of South Africa 2023). The discovery of a shared Dutch colonial history built my confidence that I could relate to South African research respondents in a way that would create some mutual trust.
Regarding race and racism, I was often asked if I was Black or Coloured. Generally speaking, my German last name, also a common thing for African-heritage people in Guyana, firmly placed me in the ‘Coloured camp’ as I discovered that many Coloureds who look like me also had German or Dutch names. Many with this heritage spoke Afrikaans as a first language, so my rudimentary understanding of Dutch went a long way. It was remarked that I spoke Afrikaans in the manner of a child. My efforts to learn some Zulu and Sepedi (Northern Sotho) from my housekeeper in Pretoria were appreciated, and I felt they helped me to overcome the hurdle of being Black without an ‘African’ language spoken at home when connecting with waste pickers (Scheyvens Reference Scheyvens2014, p. 127). I confirmed this one day when a waste picker in a buy-back centre shared in English, ‘I hear that you are speaking Zulu sista’.
This combination of language mutability and cultural ambiguity permitted me entry through many doors that I think would not have been possible had I been less foreign yet familiar at the same time (Scheyvens Reference Scheyvens2014, p. 128). It contributed to the process of developing the kind of interpersonal trust, to use Cotterrell’s idea (Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78; Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 55), that was necessary for my research respondents to share the things they cared about with me: their views on their work. Being Black also prevented me from entering or being accepted in some spaces where potential research respondents did not want to be vulnerable with me through a reliance on what Cotterrell describes as goodwill (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78). There were times when being a foreigner compensated for my Blackness, particularly in professional spaces, and others when being a foreigner was a liability. Upon arrival at a landfill one day, I asked a waste picker whom I recognised from a previous visit where I could find my host and was brusquely told, ‘I don’t like speaking in English’. This is one example where my positionality as a researcher with limited language skills made it difficult to develop the trust required to have productive interactions with (potential) research respondents (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 94).
Once I understood that gaining access can take time, I became more targeted in my approach to researcher–respondent interactions (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 46–51). This was particularly important because I sensed that I was only able to gain a glimpse of the true character of economic relationships that I saw on display, compared to if I was a researcher more embedded in South African culture. I developed a resigned uneasiness with what research respondents shared with me initially. As an example, during one landfill visit, a university lecturer requested one of his master’s students to accompany me. The student, who was local to the area, acted as a ‘sponsor’ through his intimation to me of the nuances of the dynamics of the economic relationships between waste pickers and the middlemen who buy what waste pickers collect and sell it on to manufacturers (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 49–50). He explained that waste pickers who worked independently and were less educated were more likely to be underpaid for their recyclable materials than those organised into co-operatives, a practice that created more bargaining power for waste pickers selling to middlemen (Fieldwork Notes 2016). If waste pickers did not make enough money they could resort to other informal economic activities to meet their basic economic needs. This phenomenon was not something that waste pickers readily shared. Armed with this perspective, I was then able to ‘prod’ future research respondents on these points, which then elucidated a more ‘round’ response. The trust that the student had in me to be open about his knowledge then helped me to trust that through the process of interviewing, I could gain more useful information from research respondents if I asked the ‘right’ questions (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 55; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 50–51).
Overall, I found that the distance between my subject matter and me prevented some research respondents from being as candid or as open as they might have been with a ‘local researcher’ or a foreign researcher who was more embedded into the culture, for instance through multiple visits or long residence (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 38–39; Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013). These researchers’ ability to develop stronger relationships is an output of Cotterrell’s idea of social relations of community that foster stable, trusting relationships (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 55). For me, how trust operated as a crucial element of the research process was clear at the end of my research stay when research respondents were more open as my presence became more ‘known’ or ‘accepted’ within the waste management community (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, pp. 38–40; Musante Reference Musante (De Walt), Bernard and Gravlee2014, p. 258). My clear research focus on sustainable development compensated somewhat for lower than optimal levels of trust. By having interview schedules with very specific questions related to the themes I wished to analyse post-fieldwork, I was guaranteed to gain some knowledge from willing research respondents.
4.2 Observation
Participant observation, understood to involve taking part in the direct day-to-day activities of a group of people to understand their culture, is a foundational method in ethnography and ethnography-oriented empirical studies (Musante Reference Musante (De Walt), Bernard and Gravlee2014, p. 251; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019). When it works well, participant observation is an important part of the process of developing the trust required to have productive researcher–respondent relationships (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78). This form of observation is also an outcome of the researcher having developed relationships in which there is a high enough level of trust for research respondents to feel comfortable enough with the constant presence of a possible newcomer (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 78; Musante Reference Musante (De Walt), Bernard and Gravlee2014, p. 258). As a result, opportunities for participant observation can be difficult to negotiate, where as a foreigner-outsider, positionality is an immutable quality that can complicate this process (Massoud Reference Massoud2022; Medzani Reference Medzani2021, p. 388; Rowe Reference Rowe, Coghlan and Brydon-Miller2014, p. 627). At the same time, participant observation can help the researcher distance themselves from otherwise ‘constraining identities’, such as their gender, race or immigration status, that prevent them from being readily accepted by the researcher–respondent community (Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 67).
My efforts at direct participation in the activity of waste picking within waste picker co-operatives were not successful. Naturally, this was disappointing given that I made a lot of effort to build relationships with waste pickers. Before arriving in South Africa, I set up an interview with an environmental activist who invited me to a waste picker organisation meeting where I was introduced to several prominent waste picker leaders. This meeting subsequently led to several visits to a landfill at which I thought I gained enough waste picker trust to ask to participate in their day-to-day activities. However, despite the circumstance of our acquaintance and three visits to this landfill, I was told that waste picking was not possible for me because only South Africans could participate as the law prohibits foreigners without a work permit from doing so (Fieldwork Notes 2017; South African Immigration Act 2002 (Act 13 of 2002), s. 42).
The denial of my request led to an interesting ethnographic finding. On a subsequent landfill visit, I was told by one South African waste picker that there were non-South African waste pickers on site who were members of the co-operatives that devised ways to conceal their labour from the authorities. They did this by counting the weight and price of materials handled by non-South Africans as part of the co-operative’s overall activity and then distributing the financial proceeds to them informally. At this point I realised that my request was denied not because I was a foreigner without the right permit, but because the waste pickers did not feel that they knew me well enough to participate in their day-to-day activities, they did not trust me to do this type of work for whatever reason, or as a well-educated researcher introduced to them by a prominent environmental activist, I was not within the right social category to waste pick. My stated willingness to waste pick did not signal to waste pickers that I could have, through waste picking, what could be ‘an experience of collective belonging’ in solidarity with them (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 63). I did not, or could not, develop the social relationships required for my research respondents to embrace my participation in their work (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 75). I simply did not have the social capital required to waste pick informally (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu and Richardson1986, p. 248).
In ESL terms, the hiding of foreign waste pickers’ work in the waste picker co-operative accounting fits with Cotterrell’s view that ‘economic interests are stronger than the forces supporting legal regulation, and circumventions of law can frequently be disguised in economic practices’ (Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 58). The waste pickers were aware that the market could bear their economic practice because, as Cotterrell says, ‘those working continuously in a market are often able to distort the meaning of legal rules in practice, and typically they have much greater expert knowledge of that market than do legislators and law enforcers’ (Reference Cotterrell2013, pp. 58–59). The concealment would, in Cotterrell’s interpretation of Weber’s position, ‘rely on state law for support but, as far as possible, the market takes law’s interventions strictly on its own terms for its own purposes’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 59). The waste pickers used the discretion within legal accounting practices to facilitate a circumvention of the law, in line with Cotterrell’s view that ‘the cards are strongly stacked against effective state regulation of economic life’ (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 59).
Not being permitted to waste pick did not deter me from trying to understand the physical experience of waste picking. I had to abandon the view that participant observation, a lauded hallmark of the ethnographic method, was the only effective way to immerse oneself in the lives of my research respondents. Fortunately, waste pickers trusted me enough to observe their working activities. Through observing waste picker behaviour, I learned that the successful completion of an ethnographic study is not dependent on whether one is able to partake in participant observation. This method, called behavioural observation, traditionally involves observing behaviour where researchers cannot rely on informants’ own accounts of behaviour. Behavioural observation became my way to connect with research respondents in a way that respects their wishes while still gaining some material understanding of the character and value of their economic activity (Hames and Paolisso Reference Hames, Paolisso, Bernard and Gravlee2014, p. 293). In doing so, their concerns became my own (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 77). This challenge, which I saw as a lack of research respondent trust in my suitability to waste pick, was instructive, and I hope that its resolution can expand thinking around what is possible for ‘ecologically and economically’ oriented researchers (Hames and Paolisso Reference Hames, Paolisso, Bernard and Gravlee2014, p. 293).
4.3 Documentary film
The evidence shows that ‘we are born pattern spotters … and we learn best when there are pictures to look at’ (Raworth Reference Raworth2017, p. 13). When ideas are visualised, we can connect more readily with them because we live in a visual world (Rose Reference Rose2022, p. 377). Empirical studies such as those within the tradition of ESL lend themselves to visual and other creative representations, particularly when the aim is to reach non-academic audiences (Rose Reference Rose2022, p. 377; Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris2014, p. 184). There is usually already a visual record from the researcher having taken photographs and videos of the fieldwork sites of interest, to create a post-fieldwork record and reminder of the sensory experience (Darian-Smith and McCarty Reference Darian-Smith and McCarty2017, p. 143; Hammersley and Atkinson Reference Hammersley and Atkinson2019, p. 134; Vannini Reference Vannini and Vannini2024, p. 2).
The decision to produce an audio-visual representation of my research came during the fieldwork period (Fieldwork Notes 2017). Many of my research respondents requested that I report back to them on my findings, which I see as a continuation of the relationship of trust that Cotterrell says is needed for the maintenance of networks of community (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, pp. 50–51). However, many of them are very busy people who either did not have the time, the inclination or the capability to read a long document in English. My initial idea was to commit to creating a five-minute clip in which I would speak into the camera with detail about my research questions, process and findings. However, after I completed my doctorate I was encouraged by a senior colleague to expand my thinking and consider making a documentary. The production of a documentary film is not a cheap enterprise and so it required two funding applications to realise this project.Footnote 1
I aimed to make a documentary film that was faithful to my research. I wrote a concept note to share with the film maker the three main ideas from my research findings that I wished to convey in the film. The award-winning activist film maker I worked with had previously created documentaries about social justice issues including access to medicines during the pandemic and the informal economy. This gave me, as the truster, the confidence that I could rely on her competence (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 75). To give power to their voices, waste pickers were encouraged to speak in their native tongue in the film, allowing them to communicate with a conceptual clarity that simply was not possible in English. Here, trust became a central element of the small social network of community that was created among the film maker and her crew, the cast, my university and myself. We each had to trust that we could rely on each other to do our part to complete the film project (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell1993, p. 75).
The film, which was shot on location in Johannesburg and Pretoria in June 2022, was subtitled in English throughout to allow for greater accessibility. Two versions of the film were made. The twenty-five-minute version has been used mainly for teaching and in my interactions with policy-makers (Murcott and Hlongwa Reference Murcott and Hlongwa2022). The forty-eight-minute version has been used at screenings to connect with research respondents, academics, students, policy-makers, practitioners and the public (Murcott and Hlongwa Reference Murcott and Hlongwa2023). Screenings have taken place at several universities and the film has made its way on to ‘reading lists’ at law schools in multiple countries. The film has also been screened three times in Johannesburg for research respondent, community and waste management professional audiences and YouTube links to the film have been shared with research respondents for their own viewing and dissemination. The film has made my research legible and readily communicable to the three disciplines that comprise ESL – economics, sociology and law – and amplified engagement with academic, policy and public audiences (Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris2014, pp. 190–91).
The experience of communicating and disseminating my research has shown how the visualised form can be transformative in its manifestation of social phenomena (Perry-Kessaris Reference Perry-Kessaris2014, p. 184). My initial aim, like that of the five-minute clip, was to reconnect with my research respondents and act in a way that demonstrated my continued respect for research respondent trust in the way that is needed for interpersonal relationships to function well (Cotterrell Reference Cotterrell2013, p. 55). However, this soon mushroomed. I discovered a field of academic-policy praxis called ‘research communication’, which has been instrumental to my efforts at public, policy and pedagogical engagement. Research communication may be defined as the process of interpreting and translating complex research findings into a language, format and context that non-experts can understand (Carter and Paulus Reference Carter and Paulus2010, p. 8). Geared toward creating impact on industry, society and public policy, research communication is now an important part of the research production process in the UK. The Research Excellence Framework, which is the UK’s system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, now permits up to 25 per cent of all submissions to come from impact case studies (REF 2029 Website). In this respect, concurrent to the production of the documentary was the drafting of a research-informed policy brief that has been instrumental in academic engagement with local authorities and other organisations working at the coalface of informal environmental economic actor inclusion into formalised systems (Lindner Reference Lindner2023).
5 Conclusion
Trust is, of course, important to develop interpersonal relationships generally, but more so in empirical fieldwork, where it takes time to develop productive relationships with one’s research respondents. Throughout this article, I consider the role of ‘trusting’ in the process of doing research when challenges arise by relying on Cotterrell’s social theorisation of the concept. This is further amplified if the researcher is a foreigner-outsider to the community being researched. The concept of trust becomes more pertinent when the research respondents come from a community that operates at the borderlands of regimes at which law and the formal economy are at the centre.
I found that an ESL approach, which sees the law, the social and the economic as inherently interconnected, provides an apt framework for the study of the informal environmental economy. Its flexibility to include a variety of research methods can help economically and environmentally minded researchers to consider how to overcome the challenges that one may face in the process of doing research. This extends to the thorny issue of building the trust required for research respondents to share their accounts with me.
Many challenges, including the three examined in this article, involve some consideration of trust, which needed to be grappled with and responded to head on. These challenges relate to positionality, observation and the production of a documentary film. Awareness of the first challenge, one’s positionality, can help the researcher to understand how their characteristics shape their experience in the field: acceptance, the ability to gain information and the advantages and limitations of the lens they bring to their analysis. In this, the researcher must trust the process. The challenge of how to respond when the tried and tested research method of participant observation is not feasible when the research respondents do not trust the researcher required creativity to overcome. Trust was a global issue – not just for Cotterrell, who was concerned with trust as a legal device in 1993 – but for waste pickers who had little trust in the formal systems they navigated as I sought to build interpersonal relationships of trust with them.
The production of a documentary film required several chains of trust: between researcher and film maker; between research respondents and researcher; between research respondents and film maker. Most importantly, the research respondents had to trust that the researcher and the film maker would take their concerns as their own, to rely on Cotterrell, portray them with respect and preserve their dignity. The centrality of empirical methods to studies of the informal environmental economy means that lawyers need to adopt the practice of other social science scholars when embarking on such studies by being attentive not only to the law but also to the resolution of the challenges that arise in gathering empirical data and in the production of research outputs. None of these things can happen without the formation of relationships. And at the centre of this all is trust.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my research respondents and my film-making collaborators, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology for granting me the time and space to write this article, and for feedback on earlier drafts from Marie-Claire Foblets, Larissa Vetters, Xenia Cherkaev, Angélica Cocomá, the Special Issue Editors, Eric Loefladd and Raúl Madden and two anonymous reviewers.
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