Person of the Month in June 2004:
		“The NCCR N-S needs career counselling” What Silvia Hostettler (PhD student of the NCCR North-South, Switzerland) likes most about her research, why drunk Mexicans can be a problem, and what she thinks the NCCR could improve, she discloses in the following interview.

Silvia, you are doing a PhD with IP5 (Social practices and empowerment in urban societies) and with IP2 (Natural Resources and Ecology, co-supervision) in Mexico. You have just returned from a longer fieldwork. Where exactly were you and what were you doing there?
Well, I did one major thing, which was conducting a survey in Western Mexico, my study area, where I focus on five communities, called ejidos. I applied two questionnaires which concentrate on land use changes, remittances and trans-national migration. One of the questionnaires has been developed together with two other NCCR North-South students (Christine Bichsel, IP7, and Balz Strasser, IP6). During the six weeks that I was there I conducted 75 interviews with migrant and non-migrant households, private landowners, and key persons from the communities and from the municipal land use planning authorities. It was extremely interesting!

Can you briefly tell us something about your research?
My PhD research, with the title Land Use changes and trans-national migration in Western Mexico, focuses on the driving forces of land use changes in western Mexico. I am particularly interested in finding out to what extent remittances are driving land use changes (i.e. money that migrants send back from the USA to their families in Mexico).

How often have you been to Mexico for your PhD? Are you fluent in Spanish?
I have been there four times so far - and yes, I am fluent in Spanish, for when I was 17 I did an exchange year in Bogotá, Colombia….. this facilitates fieldwork a lot.

What is it like for you, doing field work in Mexico, working in a culturally different environment?
Mmhh… I think, in general the people in Mexico are very friendly. There was just one woman – out of a maybe a hundred people that I interviewed – who did not even want to open her door when I came.
Sometimes, the people are quite shy, especially the rural population. They sometimes thought my questionnaire to be a test, where they might not know the answers. And then it was up to me to assure them that the questions were really not a matter of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. The initial shyness was generally soon overcome, and I often thought myself very lucky to meet so many welcoming people. However, if you go to Mexico as a western woman, and if you, in addition, have blond hair, then you are standing out, of course. In the interviews, the men usually wanted to flirt a little bit, and the women were just very curious about that ‘blond woman’ arriving with a questionnaire.

Have you ever got into a difficult situation?
No, not difficult in the sense of dangerous, but annoying…. Because, at the weekends, when the men don’t have to work, they get drunk. They start drinking very early in the morning, and, as the weekend is also the time when they have time for an interview…. well (laughs)…. by the time you get there, at 11 or 12 in the morning, they are already drunk, very drunk! And this is difficult. And they don’t give you the answers you are asking for….
Another difficulty for me was to remain emotionally uninvolved with the attitude of men towards women. In the questionnaire, for example, there was this question asking about the equality of men and women. And, of course, both men and women acknowledge a big inequality…. coming to the question of whether this inequality is a problem or not, the reaction is very different: the men have no problem with it, they are ordering the women around, they are the boss, or they even beat their wives. And what’s worse: they are even showing off with this. The women’s view on this is very different, of course, but they don’t seem to know how they could redress at least some of the inequalities.
Or else, what was also difficult for me, was to see the cruelty of some people towards animals, such as cats and dogs… they let them starve …. or if you see children (6 year-olds) willingly and forcefully breaking the legs of a mother-cat with kittens… with adults shrugging their shoulders at it, as if this was the most normal thing in the world to do… sometimes it was so difficult to keep my anger under control.

What’s the nicest experience you’ve ever made during one of your interviews, during your field work in Mexico?
Hmm, let me think…. maybe…. when I started with my interviews during my first field work stay, I got to know an old woman – Doña Maria. She’s 82 years old, has 16 children, and 69 grand-children. I kept going back to her, asking her questions, because she has had an amazing life. I did a family tree on her family, of how many migrated, to where, and when, and why, etc. The more I talked to her, the more interested it became. She’s become a real friend now – and I visit her whenever I am back in Mexico.

What do you miss most from home when you’re abroad? – And what do you miss most from Mexico when back in Switzerland?
Well, when I am gone, I miss my friends…and my partner, of course. - And back here?… I miss the people as well… and, hmm, one really amazing thing is the beach two hours away from my study area, in a small village “Barra de Navidad”. I often went there at the weekends during the time I was there… it’s a really nice place!

Could you imagine living in your study are for some longer time?
I think if I had a very interesting research project, yes, I could imagine to live there for maybe a year or so. It’s not that I would feel myself completely alien there or so, but after a while I would miss cultural things, movies, theatres, bookstores, etc which just doesn’t exist in a small Mexican town like Autlán.

How did you get interested in your research topic? Your motivation?
I find land use change a fascinating field of research for several reasons: firstly, because land use change is the most pervasive form of global environmental change – with its driving forces still poorly understood - and then because land use is the interface where humans and nature interact, and also, because focusing on land use often requires using GIS and remote sensing methods.

Do you work with GIS and remote sensing methods in your research?
Yes, this is one of the things which I find makes my PhD very interesting: it draws both on socio-cultural (questionnaire part) and on physical aspects, and this also makes it a big challenge for me…. the remote sensing and GIS part come to play in my land use study, where I compare the changes that occurred between the years 1980 and 2000.

What was the most important book/paper/person, etc. for your research?
On a day to day basis, the most important people for my research are two other NCCR North-South PhD students from Switzerland, Christine Bichsel from IP7 and Balz Strasser from IP6. We started collaborating after the first ITC in September 2002 exchanging and commenting research proposals and have developed a small comparative research project on trans-national migration in Kyrgyzstan, India and Mexico since. We will soon analyse our data together, as we have now completed our data collection.
As to important articles: two of the articles I really enjoyed during the past three years were written by anthropologists (see literature recommendations at the end of this interview: Murray Li 2002, Rhoades 2000). I like them because they are concise, differentiated, slightly ironic and they are raising important questions.

You’re about to evaluate the data of your research. What are your (expected) results?
Yes, am just about to enter into an in-depth data analysis, so my results are still very much provisional. However, from the impressions I gained during my fieldwork it seems that the main driving forces of land use changes seem to be environmental (quantity of water available for irrigation) and economical (land use changes are almost always motivated by the perspective of obtaining a higher income) ones.
First results about the influence of remittances are quite contradictory. In some cases remittances seem to have a very strong impact on land use change (for instance when remittances are used for fencing off large areas of communal forested land, which is then used as pasture or cleared for agriculture). In other cases, remittances are hardly sufficient to cover the basic needs of a family, such as food and clothes…. What I found quite impressive is that approximately 40-50% of the households in my study areas in Mexico depend on remittances for their livelihood.

The main goal of the NCCR N-S is the mitigation of syndromes of global change. What are the impacts of your PhD for mitigation?
Mmmh..... one of my provisional findings is that corruption is a key constraint to implementing land use policies, more so than the lack of data on current land use. So how can my research contribute to the mitigation of corruption? - I don’t know.
I have to admit that I am a bit sceptical about the mitigation impact PhD research results can have, and whether it is realistic to expect them to have a mitigation impact at all. However, I do believe in the mitigation potential of PAMS that are based on PhD research results.

How would you use your PhD as a PAMS-effective mitigation instrument?
As I said, I am very critical here. I think you can have PhDs as a basis for PAMS. But not in my case. I can maybe ‘mitigate the lack of data’, but not mitigate directly …. (hesitates)…. ask me again in two years, but right now, at this stage of my PhD, I don’t see any mitigation potential of my PhD.

What do you think of the NCCR N-S programme? Where do you see its particular potentials?
I find that the NCCR North-South offers some unique opportunities for advancing disciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. But for me, personally, the greatest potential of the NCCR N-S is the fact that it brings together over 300 researchers from all over the world. In theory, this makes two major things possible: the formation of long-term scientific networks between scientists and research institutions worldwide, and a comparative research at a global scale.

Is there something that should be improved within the NCCR N-S?
Of course, there are always things that could be improved. To cite just one example: it could be useful to create platforms accessible to all NCCR N-S researchers where the conceptual framework(s), syndrome research approaches, research contexts, global overviews, transversal topics etc. of the NCCR N-S could be debated and thereby further developed.
And I think that it is sometimes simply not clear who has the lead on what issue and who should or could be contacted within the NCCR N-S if you need specific information or wish to make contributions on specific issues. However, considering the size of the NCCR N-S programme and the number and diversity of people involved, I think the NCCR North-South is doing very well.
On a completely different, and more personal level, I think there is a need of an additionally hired person who could advise NCCR N-S PhD researchers on career planning and career opportunities, something like a career counselling; this person should maybe be a member of the NCCR N-S Management Centre.

What would be the best way for co-operation between the North and the South to reach the NCCR goals, in your opinion?
In my opinion there are no blue prints for successful North-South co-operation and even less so for the mitigation of the syndromes of global change, which is decidedly a very ambitious goal... I don’t think that there IS a “best way” for North-South co-operation. ….I think the best the NCCR N-S can do is to continue to evaluate and analyse progress towards its goals and apply and disseminate the lessons learnt.

If you don’t work for your research or answer questions about the NCCR North-South: what do you like doing most if you have time for yourself? How do you relax from work?
With sports… with hiking, sailing, windsurfing and horse-riding. - Yes, I like sailing a lot, on the Lake of Geneva, or on the high sea…. My longest trip on the sea took five months: it took me from Senegal to Cap Verde.

Thank you, Silvia, for your time and this interview! On that the wind blows always on your back….

Interview by Barbara Schichler, Management Centre, NCCR North-South, 26 May 2004.

Useful links and literature tips from Silvia Hostettler:
Silvia Hostettler. 2003. Land use change and urban-rural interactions in the Ayuquila watershed. Poster for the ITC 2003.

Murray Li Tania. 2002. Engaging simplifications: Community-based Resource Management, Market Processes and State Agendas in Upland Southeast Asia. World Development. Vol 30 (2): 265-283. (Login necessary)

Rhoades Robert. E. 2001. Participatory Watershed Research and Management: Where the shadow falls. Gatekeeper series 81. IUED. (Login necessary)

Land Use and Land Cover Change Programme (LUCC) - "With regard to my specific field of research I am linked to the international Land Use and Land Cover Change Programme (LUCC), which has endorsed my PhD research proposal last year." (Silvia Hostettler)