Methodology

This part will clearly outline the research strategy, methods, approach and the process used to conduct the research. The researchers will also explain how the data and information were collected and processed.

Field Site

The research was conducted in the inner city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands with total 5 fieldwork visits from November 2017 to March 2018. Amsterdam is the largest city in the country with population of more than 847,000 within the city proper and about 1.3 million in Amsterdam urban area as of 2017 (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2018).

The observations were made in multi-sites as the stakeholders worked in different places for different purposes. For instance, since they did not have the fixed offices for themselves, meetings were held in a community centre, cafés, or in other public places.

Study Subject

Our study subjects are two resident associations namely Amsterdam in Progress (AiP) and Wij Amsterdam. Both associations consist of residents living in the canal district of Amsterdam. Among the association members, we followed some of the members who are actively engaged in decision making process and a political debate. During our fieldwork, we discovered that both stakeholders work together and have comparable but highly complementary aspects that will enrich our understanding of how the residents of canal district in Amsterdam inner city face the challenge. For one, Amsterdam in Progress acts more as a pressure group and Wij Amsterdam, on contrary, works as a citizen think tank. Further detailed descriptions of the stakeholders will be explained in the “Actors” section.

Methods

For qualitative research, we principally employed participant observation method to collect data from our two stakeholders. Since we followed them on specific occasions, such as events and meetings, our observations had interval periods in between. Together, casual conversations and semi-structured interviews via Skype, email, and in person were used in data collection. Secondary data was collected from literature, news media, and online published documents. Throughout the findings, we interweave our conceptual framework into the analysis of our ethnographic work.

Research Approach

We have chosen to study our research situation from the overarching framework of sociocultural anthropology as we adhere to the discipline’s essential epistemological propositions of viewing social and cultural phenomena holistically: situated in a particular, socially delineated environment but within a richly described context and in connection to “broader systems of meaning and action” (Leite and Gaburn, 2009, p.36), taking into account how different aspects of human existence (economics, leisure, politics, mobility, territoriality, class, urbanity, etc.) influence and inform one another.

The research followed an inductive approach whereby we began by reading literature related to the topic in order to have a solid background on the anthropology. Our research began with field observation which we used as a starting point to act as a general background to the tourism-related issues in Amsterdam. The detailed research process including data collection process, researchers’ positioning, and selection of stakeholders will be further elaborated in the group process section.