Kathleen Smithers, "Tourism, Philanthropy and School Tours in Zimbabwe: Problematising "Win-Win" Discourses" (Routledge, 2024)

Summary

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New Books Network: Kathleen Smithers – "Tourism, Philanthropy and School Tours in Zimbabwe: Problematising 'Win-Win' Discourses"

Date: September 21, 2025
Host: Nick Posik
Guest: Kathleen (Kate) Smithers
Main Theme:
Kathleen Smithers discusses her book examining the intersections of tourism, philanthropy, and education in Zimbabwe—specifically, how school tours position local communities, tourists, and NGOs within complex networks, challenging the seemingly straightforward "win-win" narratives.

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Episode Overview

Kathleen Smithers’ book, Tourism, Philanthropy and School Tours in Zimbabwe: Problematizing "Win-Win" Discourses (Routledge, 2024), uses a rich ethnographic lens to analyze the multifaceted relationships created through philanthropic school tourism in Zimbabwe. Drawing on her positionality as someone born in Zimbabwe but educated and professionally based in Australia, Smithers unpacks the authenticity, power dynamics, and tensions inherent in these encounters between Western visitors and local communities. The interview delves into her theoretical frameworks, methodological choices, reflections on fieldwork, and the broader implications for research and practice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Framing School Tourism as a "Movie" (01:20–07:46)

• Central Metaphor: Smithers employs a vivid metaphor of philanthropic tourism as a movie set:
  • “Imagine for a moment the set of a movie filmed in an unnamed country in Africa...As you expect, red dirt and dry, sparse savannahs stretch as far as the eye can see...In the foreground, the man stands in a red dirt playground...he surveys the landscape with a camera at the ready. In his hands there are packages of pens and pencils which are gleefully given to smiling children.” (Kathleen Smithers, 02:25)
  • She likens teachers to film directors, tourism companies to producers, tourists to leading actors (often the "white savior" trope), and children to supporting actors.
• Critique of "Win-Win" Discourse: The metaphor illustrates the rehearsed yet unspoken roles that all players perform, shaping the experience and representation of "Africa" for Western audiences.
• Origins of the Metaphor: The metaphor arose from a conversation with her father, who remarked: “Everybody just knows what they have to do because it’s a movie they've seen a hundred times.” (Smithers, 06:03)
• Cultural Narratives: Smithers discusses how Western media, charitable campaigns, and education reinforce an image of Africa as needy but joyful—evoking her experiences in Australia, such as the "40 Hour Famine" (06:30).

2. Choosing Zimbabwe as Research Site (07:46–13:00)

• Personal Connection: Born in Zimbabwe, Smithers grew up in Australia with contrasting images of the country (urban Harare vs. Western "mythical Africa").
• Critical Incident: While on a university study tour, she witnessed tourists selecting a child to receive shoes, an act that galvanized her interest in researching the ethics and power in such encounters:
  • “What makes someone feel that they have the right to visually inspect and decide that that child is needy?” (Smithers, 10:00)
• Research Journey: Initially intending to study history curriculum, Smithers pivoted to focus on these philanthropic interactions after reflecting on her positionality and the unique access afforded by her background.

3. Selecting Sites & Scope of Philanthropic Tourism (13:00–19:18)

• Site Selection: Nearly all tourism providers in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North have some school partnership (13:22). Smithers carefully anonymized sites for ethical reasons.
• Ubiquity of Practice: School sponsorship is pervasive—supported by small local operators and large multinationals alike (16:28).
• Case Study Strength: Motopo school, the primary site, featured both small-scale and large multinational partnerships, making it a rich example for the study.

4. Methodological Approach & Fieldwork Insights (19:18–24:48)

• Ethnographic Immersion: Smithers integrated herself into daily school and NGO routines, fostering genuine relationships with teachers who became invested in her research.
• Participatory Methods: She used semi-structured interviews and innovative art-based activities with students, though logistical and curricular constraints required ongoing adaptation:
  • “It was very complicated to organize because schooling in Zimbabwe is a really serious endeavor...much less flexibility...that sort of art creativity element isn’t as recognized in the curriculum.” (Smithers, 21:24)
• Flexibility in Practice: Smithers underscores the need for adaptability and negotiation in qualitative research, particularly in cross-cultural contexts (23:28).

5. Navigating Ethics & Researcher Positionality (24:48–34:02)

• Challenging IRB Process: The human subjects approval process was tailored to medical rather than qualitative research, causing difficulties with articulating complex consent procedures (24:58).
• Advice for Doctoral Researchers: She references her published article "Fieldwork from A to Z" (28:07), urging student researchers to:
  • Anticipate the unexpected
  • Discuss scenarios with mentors
  • Recognize and embrace "shifting identities" in the field
  • Accept deviation from planned methods as normal
• Emotion & Identity: Researcher emotions and shifting insider/outsider identities profoundly shape fieldwork experiences.

6. Bracketing and Reflexivity in the Field (34:02–37:02)

• Field Notes as Emotional Outlet: Intended as academic documentation, Smithers’ field notes often became personal journals, reflecting difficult experiences as a white woman alone in Zimbabwe (34:11):
  • “There was this just constant level of harassment, which was very difficult to deal with...the field notes, what were meant to be sort of academic field notes, did turn into sort of rambles and rants about ... my feelings and emotions.” (Smithers, 34:45)
• Reflective Practice: Such reflexivity, while initially feeling like a failure, ultimately deepened her understanding and analysis.

7. Theoretical Framework: Foucault and Heterotopia (39:32–44:09)

• Foucault’s Influence: Smithers draws on Foucault’s concepts of power and governance, but particularly finds "heterotopia" (spaces that are 'other,' layered, and ambivalent) helpful to analyze schools that serve both as educational institutions and tourist spectacles (39:44).
  • Discovery of heterotopia came via tourism studies and a reference to the film "The Island."
  • She shifted away from Bourdieu’s "habitus-field-capital" model, seeking a more flexible theoretical approach that better fit her data.

8. Writing Style and Turning Thesis into Book (44:09–50:55)

• Narrative Strength: Smithers’ accessible, metaphor-rich writing style is lauded by the host; she attributes it in part to needing to explain her work to her family and a general tendency towards metaphor (44:09).
• From Dissertation to Book: The process was emotionally taxing, involving painful choices about which topics and chapters to "kill" (eliminate) for a wider audience. She notes the surplus of data and the difficulty in condensing the history and context for the book format (46:05).

9. Reflecting on the Book’s Reception & Future Work (51:48–54:15)

• Academic vs. Public Response: The book found a warmer reception in public media (e.g., The Conversation, South African radio) than academic circles, perhaps due to its interdisciplinary nature (51:50).
• Next Projects: Smithers is researching "parent and citizen committees" in Australian schools—organizations intended as representative bodies but increasingly focused on fundraising (52:46).

10. Problematization as an Orientation (54:15–58:08)

• Smithers describes her orientation as one of "problematizing" received wisdom, stemming from her early fascination with sociology and personal experiences confronting commercialization and inequality.
• “I have this innate love of what I would call like a sociological worldview...once you start seeing the world in that way, it’s really hard to unsee it.” (Smithers, 57:17)

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Notable Quotes

• On the “movie” metaphor of philanthropic tourism:
  “Everybody just knows what they have to do because it’s a movie they've seen a hundred times.” (Smithers, quoting her father, 06:03)
• On the ethical challenge of school-based tourism:
  “What makes someone feel that they have the right to visually inspect and decide that that child is needy?” (Smithers, 10:00)
• On the adaptability required for qualitative research:
  “I had to come to terms with the fact that part of that [art-based research] wouldn’t be as big or as detailed as I had hoped...that’s okay and you haven’t failed as a researcher.” (Smithers, 33:36)
• On positionality in the field:
  “The field notes, what were meant to be sort of academic field notes, did turn into sort of rambles and rants...that did actually, I would say, help to kind of give me that outlet.” (Smithers, 34:45)
• On the value of problematization:
  “I have this innate love of what I would call like a sociological worldview...once you start seeing the world in that way, it’s really hard to unsee it.” (Smithers, 57:17)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:20 – Introduction and central metaphor
• 02:25 – Reading the book’s opening, unpacking the movie metaphor
• 07:46 – Selecting Zimbabwe as a site
• 13:00 – Case studies and site selection process
• 19:18 – Research methodology, fieldwork in the school and NGO
• 21:24 – Art-based methods, challenges, and adaptations
• 24:58 – Navigating IRB and ethics procedures
• 28:07 – Practical advice for doctoral research and fieldwork
• 34:11 – Bracketing, field notes, personal experiences
• 39:44 – Theoretical turn to Foucault and heterotopia
• 44:09 – Writing style and translation to book format
• 46:05 – Emotional process of turning dissertation into a book
• 51:48 – Reception of the book inside and outside academia
• 52:46 – Current and ongoing research projects
• 54:15 – The roots of a “problematizing” orientation
• 58:17 – Where to find more on Smithers’ work

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Conclusion

This interview offers a rare, candid look into the realities and complexities behind research in philanthropic school tourism, highlighting both the tangible and emotional labor involved. Smithers challenges simplistic narratives and invites listeners to question "win-win" discourses, underlining the importance of reflexivity, flexibility, and a problematizing perspective in both academic and practical work surrounding philanthropy, tourism, and education.

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Where to Learn More:

• Kate (Kathleen) Smithers on Google Scholar
• Charles Sturt University Staff Profile

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Transcript

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Nick Posik]

Welcome to New Books and Philanthropy, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Nick Posik, and today I'm speaking with Kathleen Smithers about her fascinating book Tourism, Philanthropy and School Tours in Problematizing Win Win Discourse that was published earlier this year by Rutledge through the example of a school in Northern Zimbabwe. This book explores the phenomena of school tours and tourism, examines tensions between authenticity and artificiality, and the school site being both a place of community learning and a spectacle for tourist consumption. Kate welcome to New Books and Philanthropy. I'm so glad you can join me.

[Kathleen Smithers]

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Nick Posik]

Now, to orient our listeners to our book, I wanted to start with your central metaphor, which is quite good. You describe philanthropic tourism or developed tourism as you the portmanteau that you've coined as being like a movie or like a movie production. How is it like a movie?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Well, if it's okay, I'll just start with reading the opening paragraph of the book.

[Nick Posik]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Kathleen Smithers]

So it starts by saying, imagine for a moment the set of a movie filmed in an unnamed country in Africa. As the opening scene begins, the country melds into the homogenous continent Africa and seems alluringly exotic. As you expect, red dirt and dry, sparse savannahs stretch as far as the eye can see dotted across the landscape are animals, elephants, lions, giraffes and zebras. There are no tall buildings, no side of modern technology. Having established the scene, the camera pans across as the main character, a white American, has come to visit a rural school. In the main character, sorry, in the foreground, the man stands in a red dirt playground and his skin is slightly pink in the sun. Dressed in khaki, he surveys the landscape with a camera at the ready. In his hands there are packages of pens and pencils which are gleefully given to smiling children. After the gift exchange, the children spontaneously begin to dance, which the main character, enthusiastic, enthusiastically photographs with plans to upload the smiles and laughter to his social media timeline. As soon as the group returned to their pristine, expensive hotel, he will return with stories about how the child children were so happy despite having so little material possessions. And so this image sort of builds that idea of what the movie even is. And in the book I talk about how the teachers in the school, the film directors, and the film directors are usually responsible for the day to day running of the film, the overall guidance of the actors and maintaining the visual imagery for the set. And in the book I identify that there's another role in film development, which is the producer. And I talk in the book about how the tourism companies who visit these schools, they have tour guides and tourism personnel who are more responsible for the overall set design, creative vision, logistics about what this film looks like and how it is made. And then of course, I talk in the book about the actors of the film and I talk about the main character being the white savior, and that's the American in that overarching vision that we see in the beginning and that the actors, the other set of actors, the children, who I argue are an image of all the happy children, also play a supporting role who are there to guide the white savior through their journey in the mythical Africa. And so in the book I talk about how this metaphor helps to understand the variety of relationships that exist in the school and the conflicting demands that are placed on schools that have tourism in them. And it was really kind of just an idea that came out of lots and lots of thinking about how do I make such a complex network of relationships easy to understand and something that is accessible to someone who hasn't lived these sets of relationships and this type of tourism or philanthropy. And it actually came from my dad, this idea, not the whole idea, but I was talking to him about my research and he said, oh, he said it so flippantly. I don't think he fully realized at the time he was fundamentally shaping the way I would see the research. He said, oh, so, you know, everybody just knows what they have to do because it's a movie they've seen a hundred times. And so I sort of built it from there. And this idea that there is this mythical Africa that is in the minds of most people in the Western world. And in the book, I sort of talk in some of the introductory parts of the chapters about how this is an image that has not only shaped my life, but a lot of people. It's sort of Australian focused because I grew up in Australia, but a lot of my peers in Australia. So I talk about. I reference Mean Girls, that quote of if you're. If you're from Africa, why are you white? You know, that sort of imagery that sort of like just littered. And also things like the 40 hour famine, which was huge when I was growing up in Australia, which I'm not sure if it's in America, but it probably is, where at the time people would voluntarily starve themselves for 40 hours to raise money for the charity World Vision, which is obviously, I talk in the book about this. It's kind of morphed over time now. And people aren't voluntarily starving themselves anymore, but they're giving up coffee or takeaway for a week. So, yeah, I sort of use this metaphor as a way to really explain this complex network of relationships, because I think as well that philanthropy, sometimes it seems to come from all places and nowhere at once. And it seems to be such an inbuilt idea. And so it's just really about trying to frame that and look at understanding what this looks like and why is it so embedded in our understanding of the world.

[Nick Posik]

And why did you choose Zimbabwe as your site?

[Kathleen Smithers]

It was kind of inevitable for me to choose Zimbabwe, I would say. I was born there, so I was born there, but didn't spend much time there as a child. And so I had always grown up with this image of Zimbabwe. My parents had old video footage from our time there. There were photographs. I had this image of Harare, which is the main. The capital city. So I had this image of buildings, you know, just a busy cityscape. The house that we lived in had, you know, green grass walls, garden beds. And so I always growing up, had this image of Zimbabwe that was quite counter, I guess, to those images of Africa that I was raised with. And this kind of contrary image that I had sort of just bubbled in the back of my mind as I was growing Up. But then when I was in my undergraduate teaching degree, I had the opportunity to actually go to Zimbabwe on a study tour, which was intended to be more of a intercultural understanding tour rather than some sort of overseas placement. The subject coordinator of that was very careful, or the academic involved was very careful to position it as, you're not there to help, you're not there to teach anyone anything. You're actually just there to see a school system in a different country. And it was during that study tour that the classroom next door, I could hear, suddenly they started singing and dancing, and there was a lot of hubbub in the room next door, and my class just completely ignored it, and the teacher just kept on teaching. And I was kind of looking around thinking, wow, if this was an Australian classroom, the kids would all be, I don't know, like, leaning against the wall to figure out what was happening next door and what they could be involved in. And then five or 10 minutes later, when the dancing and singing finishes, a man and a woman appear at the door of our classroom, a white man and a white woman. And they walk in, the class greets them. There's like a formal sort of greeting process in Zimbabwean classrooms where you ask the visitor, good morning, you welcome them, and these two people, they just walk straight to a child, hand them some shoes and then leave. And so I. I waited until class had finished and I said, oh, like, who are they? Do they live here? What are they doing? Like, why. Why did they bring shoes for that child? And the teacher, they just said to me, oh, they're tourists. They came to visit the school, they looked around and they just wanted to pick a child who was needy, and they chose that child. And as an undergraduate at the time, I was a bit overwhelmed by multiple factors involved with that. I thought, oh, child protection, you know, in Australia at least, we have quite stringent checks that people have to do before they enter a school, you know, And I thought, how. How has this happened? What is happening here? And. And what makes someone feel that they have the right to visually inspect and decide that that child is needy? And it was an odd interlude in that study tour, and I sort of set it out of my mind. And there was another couple of tours that came during the time that we were there, the two weeks. And ourselves, we were tourists in the school, but we didn't really consider ourselves as tourists. And so then I had. At the time, I wasn't interested in doctoral research, but a few things in my undergraduate meant that suddenly it became of real Interest to me to go into further research. So I completed my honours year and then was looking at what do I study for a PhD. And part of it was I really wanted to go back to Zimbabwe. I really wanted to go back into schools in Zimbabwe and just be there. And so I started thinking about what topic could I do and how can I make this work in an education PhD. And I actually was the beginning interested in looking at history curriculum because I'm a history teacher. But then I kind of, during the process, and I talk about this a little bit in the book, I began to really question my own positionality and my whiteness. And I thought, I'm not really sure if it's appropriate for me to be commenting on curriculum in a foreign country, even if I was born there. And so I started to have almost like a crisis three months into my PhD where I didn't know what I would study. And then it was just a fortuitous moment where this incident of these tourists in the school came back to me one day. And I thought, that's really weird. And you know, I actually have the opportunity in my PhD here to look at this. And that's what a PhD is kind of for. You know, you get to really examine what a topic of interest to you that potentially is very niche. And so that's kind of how Zimbabwe came about. It was like kind of a lifetime of almost arriving at Zimbabwe.

[Nick Posik]

Yeah, it's all good. Qualitative research begins with a huh, that's weird, right? And what's great about your book is that it's quite specific. You dive deep into a few case studies of schools that interface with tour groups. And in particular, you spend a lot of time with the Motopo school. How did you find these sites?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Well, I talk in the book as well about how there's a study that was done and 95% of tourism providers in Matabelen north have had some interaction or sponsorship of a school. So really I probably could have spun in a circle and pointed and whatever direction the nearest school was, I could have probably found a school. And I have to be careful here because of the. I really tried to be careful about anonymizing. So I don't talk about the town that the tourism was in. And I don't really talk much about the details about how far it was from the main road or even what that main road was, because I'm really conscious that this is part of people's livelihoods and that there are serious consequences if someone was to be able to figure out where the school was. And so part of it was that the undergraduate study tour I went on, the academic involved in that, she was my PhD supervisor and she had some existing connections in, in the area. And so I was able to sort of use those. And yeah, it was also that it really is that case of there are so many different types of this tourism activity happening that even if I had just landed and walked into a school, I probably would have been able to find some examples. So. And that perhaps wasn't as. I wasn't as conscious of that until I actually landed to do my research. And everybody I spoke to had a story about a school that was involved in some sort of fundraising or some sort of tourism activity. I use the example of I was on an actual tourism activity outside of Bulawayo, which is one of the other main towns or cities. And the, the tour guide for that rhinoceros walking tour said, oh, why are you in Zimbabwe? Because a lot of people were surprised that a woman alone was traveling. And I explained my research a little bit to him and he said, oh yeah, yeah, my, my company sponsors the school, it's called Whatever, and it's right outside. And you know, sometimes we take people there, but mainly we just give them money. And it was, it was almost a repetitive conversation that ended up happening. Every person I spoke to had an example of a school and even say, I think 10 kilometers from where Motopo school was, there was another school that had also been founded by someone as a sort of like philanthropic project as well. So yeah, that was kind of how it came about. It was kind of like a convenience. It was well located to connections in a town and it just, it seemed to work. And I don't again, at the time when I chose Motopo as the main site of the research, I'm not sure that I fully realized how good of an example it was in that it had small scale partnerships, but also multinational partnerships, which not all of the schools in Zimbabwe do. Some have very small scale, some only have multinational. And so it actually turned out to be a really good example of how this tourism works and also the complexity of the arrangements because there were three different tourism companies who were mainly involved in the tourism and then there was a fourth who was actually providing donations. So it, it was, it's a very complicated funding structure in itself at the Topo school. But as I said, I think it provided a really good case study and example of how this tourism comes to be, but also the different scale of it because it's not just a, you know, a mum and pop sort of run tourism company that's involved. It is a multinational 40 countries sort of visited tourism company as well that's involved. Which I think when we think about this sort of tourism it seems so individual and so and this type of philanthropy, it seems so on the spot, unique, you know, sort of ad hoc. Oh, they're just taking us to the benefit of their school. But it really is quite big business and big philanthropy, which is something that I'm not sure I fully appreciated before I arrived. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one for gets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

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[Kathleen Smithers]

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And it's an excellent site, but also you used a whole variety of methodologies in order to understand it. I was really impressed. It's a kind of wonderful portfolio of qualitative phenomenological research tools. Everything from, you know, semi structured interviews to. And I was most fascinated by the art activities that you did to unveil insights from the students. How did you go about conducting all of your research?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Well, it was, as you said, it was a multitude of different types of qualitative research. And really I was just present in the school three days a week and I was also working. Well, I was more present in the NGO office two days a week as well. And so in some ways during that Time, it was almost like a job. I showed up at school with the teachers, caught the taxi with the teachers, had lunch with the teachers, basically did everything that a teacher would do in that school for three days a week. And then with the tourism, that ngo, I essentially did the same. I kind of showed up at starting time every day and sat in the office with them and then went home. And in some ways, the research kind of made itself happen by forming those relationships and by forming those connections. And it was interesting because the teachers, particularly at the school, were quite invested in my research work. Not working, that's the wrong term, but in me finding something. And I can't remember if it made it into the book or not, but there was one example where there was a funeral happening in the village nearby the school. And the teachers, they said, oh, you've got to go to the funeral. Like the. The other lead teacher is going to be a community representative, a school representative at the funeral. You have to go that you can see what a Zimbabwean funeral is like. And they were really invested. They would show me WhatsApp text message chains about the state of education in Zimbabwe. They would say, oh, write this down in your book, you know. And so I think in some ways that that part of the research became almost easy. They knew that I was just interested in every element of their work and what the school looked like and how it functioned. And so they almost in some ways became co researchers in that they were sort of guiding me. The children's art was a complicated element of the research, I would say, and it's not surprising if you look at research about art with children or you look at research about classrooms generally, because it kind of became almost a thorn in my side, that part of the research, it was very complicated to organize because schooling in Zimbabwe is a really serious endeavor. There are. Is such a crowded curriculum, and it's much more formal than Australian schooling. There's much less flexibility, and that sort of art creativity element isn't as recognized in the curriculum. And so teachers are often very busy trying to just get through the content, the heavy content of all of the subjects. And so originally, and this was part of the way the research was as well, a constant negotiation and renegotiation with the school. And so in the beginning, the principal had said to me, yep, you can do that at lunchtime. And because I was talking to the grade five children, I'd kind of. I introduced the research to them. I explained what consent was. They were able to tell me what consent was back and what Research was, and they had quite a good understanding of it. And I got them all to sign consent forms and their parents to sign consent forms. And I said to them, okay, one at a time, you'll have to come to me at lunchtime. But it was kind of complicated in that that meant that they were then not able to line up for their lunch for the day. And then of course, because something weird and interesting is happening in the playground, I had a whole gang of children sort of surrounding the table that I was trying to do an art based interview with. And so I ended up having to change the way that I was doing those art based interviews throughout the research. And that was kind of one of the things that I learned as well is that you really do need to be flexible. And I had intended to do a whole range of different base methodologies, not just the pictures, but also doing sort of like time that you spend during your day charts and all of these things. But it didn't work out for the way that the school day ran and I didn't want to interrupt the school. And so I kind of had to come to terms with the fact that part of that, that part of the research wouldn't be as big or as detailed as I had hoped. But the children's drawings are just lovely and the stories that those images tell as well I think are fantastic. I had actually wanted to put one on the COVID of the book, but unfortunately, because it's part of a book series, book series are set, so I couldn't put it on the COVID I.

[Nick Posik]

Just can imagine what the IRB review process was like for you. Could you just tell a little bit about that, especially for students who are going to undertake something similar?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Yes, it was difficult to say the least. But part of the problem was actually that our university system isn't really set up. Why not at that university anymore. But it wasn't set up for qualitative research. And if it was set up for qualitative research, it was really set up for just straight interviews. And so there was actually an electronic system which had questions and then you had to put in answers in each box. But each box had a word limit. And so like the word limits for consent or the word limits for even access to participants. And all of those sorts of questions that require a significant level of detail for a project like this were actually. I couldn't actually fill into the depth that I needed to because of the word limits. And when the, the ethics like so for our process, you submit the application, it goes to the panel and then they give you feedback, you respond to the feedback and then they kind of make the decision. And during the feedback process they asked all of these questions and there was kind of a little bit of a comment in it about, well, why didn't you address this in the application? Which did actually lead to my, my supervisor kind of had a quiet word with them and said, you know, your system is set up for medical research that doesn't encompass any of these complex consent elements. And so it was difficult. But once I had actually responded to their queries and I had a real, I would say base of research in ethics and also, well, human research ethics, not philosophy ethics, but in that sort of practical ethics. And also in art based interviews and also within the context, there was actually a, I guess a long standing history of art based interviews in Zimbabwe, not just from researchers, but from government as well. And so I was able to kind of justify it through that history. But I would say I did spend, and I said before that I had interrogated my positionality a lot. And so I had spent a lot of time breathing in the methodological literature, which I think helped strengthen that application. And if you are interested in doing something that is not just a straight qualitative interview, I really think that as a doctoral student particularly, it's so important to start with that methodological literature. And I do think that that can sometimes be forgotten or perhaps not. I know that the, the Ph.D. is structured differently in the U.S. like there's much more, the comprehensive exams and things like that, whereas we don't have that in Australia. Oh, yeah, yeah. So in Australia it's very much kind of you just launch in to your doctoral research.

[Nick Posik]

I can assure you you're not missing anything in terms of the comps. All right, so any other tips for doctoral students looking to undertake this kind of research?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Yeah, well, I have a. I actually published a paper last year in the Australian Educational Researcher. It's called Fieldwork from A to Z. And then it has a subtitle which I can't recall at this time. And it was actually written with another doctoral student. And what, what we kind of both realized. The, the paper was born out of a conference presentation that he did, which I watched. And it was about his shifting identity and the way that he undertook his doctoral research and the lessons that he kind of came to and the realizations that he came to because particularly schools are complex environments and classrooms are complex environments. And I think that sometimes PhD researchers who are teachers, they think, oh, yep, I'm a teacher. It's quite easy and simple. I'll just go into the classroom and it'll just be like being a teacher. But Matt, that's the PhD student I published with, he was in Australia and in the town that our university was in, in a school that was quite familiar to him. But he encountered the exact same problems and I guess dilemmas and identity crises that I did as well. And so in that paper, we sort of problematize this notion that research is more difficult if you're away from home or that if you're an outsider. We sort of problematize that insider, outsider notion because by all accounts, he was an insider in his school and I was an outsider in mine, but we had the same issues. And so I guess the biggest piece of advice that sort of comes from that article is that you do really need to be prepared for any situation to arise. So, for example, both of us had teachers leave the classroom when we were in the classroom. And so I, for example, the teacher just left for about 20 minutes. And I didn't know if I was supposed to teach the classroom, if I was teach the students, if I was supposed to sit there, if I was supposed to follow. And it sounds like such a simple problem to us, sitting here recording a podcast. But at the time, as a novice researcher, I was almost frozen in the spot and I felt paralyzed by that decision. And I didn't know whether I should follow the teacher or stay. And you know, either way, looking at it now, it doesn't really matter if I stayed or followed the teacher. But at the time, it was so stress and anxiety inducing to be sitting there just not knowing what to do. And so part of that is, I think it's important before you go on any type of interview field work to sort of have the conversation with your supervisor or other students who are further ahead and say, like, what do you think could happen? Like, what are the situations I might end up in where I have to make a, like an on the spot decision that I need to think about? What are the things that we should consider rather than. I think you mentioned the IRB process. In some ways you kind of, like, you think that you've planned for your research because you've submitted all of these documents. But there are so many in the spot decisions and ways of navigating other people in the research context that can never be covered by those applications. And I think it's really important to have those conversations with your supervisor. As I said, read the methodological literature. For example, I probably should have known that I would end up in a classroom alone. Because there is some research about child centered research that discusses that, where the researchers were just left and like, what do you do if a child gets up on a desk when you're alone in the classroom? And so, you know, in hindsight I probably could have been prepared. And. Yeah, and so in that paper we talk about that sort of element of thinking about what might change or what might go wrong or what might be different. But also we talk about the identities that people encompass when they are on their field work or in any sort of research. Because the reality is the IRB processes position you to be almost like a robot researcher and position you to just be a static person in the room conducting an interview. But at the end of the day, that's not, that's not the reality. You still are a fully formed person when you're doing that interview. And you're a person who has feelings, emotions, things happening in their life stresses and all of these things you bring with you to the interview. And we talk in the paper about the shifting identities that we undertook and also the way that these shifting identities shaped our emotions in, in the field, as you would call it. Because, for example, and we don't talk about this too much in the article, but there were times where I was angry with my participants. You know, we. Three days a week for a whole term, you form real relationships and you have real tensions or there were times where I was feeling homesick or lost. And you know, these things all play into the way that you do your research. And I think that it's important to go in knowing that so that you can just be prepared. And there is a. There's a paper that we cited called. It's called like Riding the Rapids of Classroom Research. And I think that it is important not just in classrooms like you are in some ways writing a rapid. That you don't know where it's going to go because you're participants are human and you're human. And so I think it's also about accepting that your research might not go to plan and that things might look different to how you had anticipated and that there might be unanticipated challenges and that that's okay and that's normal and you haven't failed as a researcher.

[Nick Posik]

That is wonderful advice and I hope our student listeners will take heed. I do want to ask one more question about this. Did you do any kind of bracketing while you're on site?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Yes, I wrote extensive field notes which had been intended Again in the IRB to add just another layer of data. But they did end up just being a journal about all of my frustrations, all of my emotions. Particularly because being alone as a white woman, often, even if I was at a cafe, eating a burger or shopping, there was this just constant level of harassment, which was very difficult to deal with as a young woman, where men would just walk up to me and they'd be like, hi, I'm blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would say, I'm just trying to eat my burger, like, can you leave me alone? And they would say, oh, where's your husband? And I ended up starting to like, almost lie and be like, oh, he's coming soon, or he's back at the, at my place. Because I had. It was just almost like I could barely go anywhere without being harassed. And in the book, I do mention, like even our regular taxi driver, I was walking to go somewhere with one of the other teachers and he called something sexual out the window to us, you know, and. Yeah, and so for me, that was probably one of the more difficult parts was that I felt just outside of even my research that I, I had this heightened sense sometimes of just being on edge. And so the, the field notes, what were meant to be sort of academic field notes, did turn into sort of rambles and rants about or just all of what I was experiencing and my feelings and emotions. And that did actually, I would say, help to kind of give me that outlet. But at the time I did feel like I was failing. I was kind of like, this isn't what these field notes are meant to be. It's not what I planned them to be, it's not what I wanted them to be. But you know, in some ways that also adds a bit of depth and understanding for myself when I'm looking back at my interviews and some of the field notes that are more descriptive about what the tourism was and my day, because it helps me to understand and remember what was going on for me at that time. Partly because I think as you progress through time, you forget that day to day minutiae of what is happening. And so those sort of field notes which ended up being combination of descriptive. This is what's happening in my day, this is what the school did today, this is what we did, this is what the tourists said. Um, to also being those sort of more emotional thinking through what I was experiencing.

[Nick Posik]

Yeah, gosh, thank you for sharing that.

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[Kathleen Smithers]

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[Nick Posik]

So shifting gears a bit. You draw a nichelfukot in your analysis make mainly through his perspectives on power and governance, but also his concept of heterotopia. How did you arrive at this framework?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Again, this was an exploration and I think this is one of the beautiful things about a PhD is that you have time to explore and read and learn and really figure out what is right for you and right for your data. And the way I actually came across the concept of heterotopia in particular, because it's one of the lesser known ones, was I was really deep in tourism studies literature. And this was another thing about my PhD. Just as a side note, it was very hard to position because it is that intersection of education, tourism, philanthropy, could even be like social geography, sociology. There are so many topics that intersect in this book and also in the topic itself that I was really reading quite broadly across, particularly tourism literature, because tourism literature kind of tourism faculties can sit in like a business area. They can fit in human geography, sociology. There's a range of different ways of approaching tourism studies and understanding tourism. And as part of that I actually read this article about there's a movie called the Island. It's a science fiction movie. And in that they introduce the concept of heterotopia as another place that is separate from places and is a spatial orientation. And that really intrigued me. And I thought this is actually a great way of understanding how a school can appear to be a school, but in some ways it actually functions as something else and that it's functioning as this ideal image of Africa while the students and teachers are still trying to undertake learning. And I wanted to have that concept once I read it, I couldn't get it out of my mind. And my doctoral supervisors had never heard of it despite, you know, having used Foucault greatly in their own work. Because it really, it's kind of been relegated to architecture and very few studies in education really talk about it. And once I had this concept of heterotopia, I couldn't get it out of my mind. And I really thought it was the way forward explaining my data. As for the other concepts, they just seem to fit I had before. In Australia we have this process called confirmation. About a year into your PhD you present your research, it's approved by a panel of academics who are not your supervisors and any sort of go out and do your data collection. So at my confirmation stage of my PhD, I had said I'm going to use B, I'm going to look at Habitus Capital Field. But then when I was actually collecting my data and I was in, in Zimbabwe, I, I just realized I don't see how I'm going to write with this theory and I don't see how it's going to work. And so then I did start sort of looking around and trying to figure out a way that would give me a bit more flexibility in the write up as well. Because I think that I was looking for something that was movable and flexible in the way that you can write because I didn't see how I would fit my resets into the boxes of Habitus Field and different types of capital. I mean, I'm sure I could, but it just didn't feel authentic to my data or it didn't feel natural to the way that I wanted to write about it. And so I was kind of scrambling after my data collection to try and figure out how I could explain this theoretically, which is probably the opposite of the way that most people say that you should do your research. A lot of people believe that the research questions, the interview question should be born from your theoretical framing. But for me it ended up being.

[Nick Posik]

The reverse, which I imagine has its own set of challenges, of course. And yeah, you know, I note that like, you seem to have a very clear idea of how you wanted your writing to work. And this is shown in your book. Right. You use these really vivid, we might call thick description type of writing. Is that something that just comes naturally to you or is it something that you've really honed over the years? Where does that sort of rich, sort of almost literary voice come from?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Well, my high school English teachers would not say it comes naturally. Oh yeah, I'm not sure. I think it was. It's one of those things where in some ways it must come naturally somewhere because I've never really thought about my writing style. And it's interesting because a lot of people say there's so much work in turning a PhD into a book, but for me there hadn't been as much transformative aspects because I accidentally almost wrote my thesis like a book in the beginning. And that's part of Why I ended up pitching the book proposal and going for a book was because one of the examiners said, this is basically written straight as a book. As it is, you could publish this. Obviously you get rid of some of the more dense parts. But I think it also comes back to I have a family who has been interested in my work. And so partly it was always about trying to explain my work to them. And I think that that in some ways lends itself to thinking through metaphors or thinking through ways of explaining it that aren't as academic or as dense or theoretical. And I think that my work is still quite dense and theoretical, but I think it helps in thinking through what is the simplest way that I can explore and examine this and look at it. And for me, I definitely do lean more towards metaphors and thinking through ideas as metaphors, even in other work that I've done. So I don't really have an answer. I think perhaps it is a natural.

[Nick Posik]

Well, nonetheless, it makes the book an incredibly compelling read. And now you talk about, you know, and this is a good segue into your transition from dissertation to book. What was that process like?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Emotional. It felt strange, I think, to return to the work of my dissertation, mainly because I had so much data. And that's probably something that is also something that doctoral students should consider, is even if you think that you're just doing, say, 20 interviews, you will have so much more data and stories to tell and avenues for exploration than you think are possible. And part of that was also bracketing off what is in the thesis and what is not in the thesis, what's for future publications. And so I had sort of put all of the imagery and the arguments that you see in the book into my thesis. And then so I sip into my thesis in 2021. And then I started writing papers from it basically as soon as I'd submitted. And so I kind of not moved on from these concepts, but I had begun thinking about the other parts of my data that I found exciting that didn't necessarily fit in with the book. And so when I submitted my proposal in July 2022 for the book, and I didn't actually start writing it until 2023, just because of the process of how long these things take. And then I submitted the actual book in January 2024, so that also hopefully gives people a sense of the long timelines here. And so part of it was returning to something I kind of finished in 2021 and returning to the emotions of being a student, to the emotions of the COVID 19 pandemic when I submitted my thesis, actually two weeks later, Australia was still doing lockdown. So we went into a lockdown. I got my thesis results in lockdown. I was awarded my PhD in lockdown. And so, you know, there were also some of those things tied to it. And I think sometimes we don't think about the emotional side of writing. And so part of it was just setting aside those emotions and those memories and those feelings. And then the other part was thinking, okay, now what is so boring that people do not need to know, you know, what is the things that are for a thesis and for the arguments of a thesis and for putting my forward, putting forward my case for my thesis, and what are the parts that are actually interesting? And people say, like, in writing, you don't want to kill your darlings or your babies or your children. And in some ways, getting rid of the theoretical chapters that were in my thesis did feel like killing my darlings. You know, I was. Because I think that writing about theory can be quite hard. Writing about, like, complex theoretical concepts in your own words as a doctoral student, that's probably some of the hardest work that you do in your thesis in terms of conveying these ideas in a way that isn't just straight up plagiarism that's transforming them into your own. Particularly when those theorists are kind of almost like you're a disciple or something like that to them. You kind of revere their work. And so for me, getting rid of the theoretical framing chapter was hard. And I knew that it couldn't be in the book, but it was hard to just let that go. And also reframing the chapter that's called How Does Tourism Come to Be in a School? That I think was actually two separate chapters in my thesis and much longer. And part of the difficulty of getting rid of that was I had had this conversation during my PhD with someone and I was talking about Zimbabwe, and I said, oh, yeah, you know, the hyperinflation that they experienced, like, blah, blah, blah. And they were like, no, no, I don't. I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean? And, and so for me, part of the difficulty was trying to, I guess, convey the history of Zimbabwe and the history of the schooling system in much less words than I had written in my thesis. And the problem with that is I thought all of the history was important. I'm a historian, you know, it was really hard. And so those were the elements mainly, was the things that I was removing.

[Nick Posik]

From the thesis and now after revisiting that work, right, you finish your dissertation, it goes up on ProQuest and then to turn into a book, you have to revisit all of your research and writing and thinking through. Did anything surprise you? Did you glean any new insights in that process?

[Kathleen Smithers]

I don't think anything surprised me. I think, and this might be quite arrogant to say, but I think I was surprised about the quality of my thesis. You know, as a student there's a sense of insecurity and particularly when it's going under examination or you know, you just feel insecure about your work and your writing, particularly, you know, as you are going through cycles of feedback. So it kind of can feel as if nothing is right. But when I read some parts of it, I couldn't believe how clear I was or how the clarity in the arguments I think I was surprised about. But in terms of the data, I don't know if there was anything necessarily new because I had been thinking about these concepts for so long that I. They almost felt like baked into the back of my brain somewhere.

[Nick Posik]

And how was the book received?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Well, I would say in academic circles it hasn't been picked up as much, but I had an article come out in the Conversation, which is the academic sort of newspaper and I've done a few radio interviews. One in South Africa. Well, I was in Australia, they were in South Africa, but on South African radio. So I think from outside of academia it's been really well received, but inside not so much. And I do think that is the danger again of being across fields and it is much more of a tourism book than an education book. But yeah, so I think it's been received well, just quietly in academia.

[Nick Posik]

Got it. Well, hopefully some folks will listen to this interview and no, this book has my ringing endorsements for whatever that matters. Right, so what are you working on now?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Well, so I, during my PhD and after my PhD, I've always been also interested in academic work. And so I look at precarity, so people who are on short term contracts in research or in just universities. So I have a lot of work on what we fall into critical university studies. So sort of looking at the processes and policies of universities, so that just bubbles away generally. And in the philanthropy space, I've started a project looking at parent and citizen committees which are, I think in the US they might be called Friends of Schools or they're sort of like a charitable organization associated with public schools and some private institutions, independent schools where parents, they're given like it's actually, it's in legislation, they're given a voice so they're allowed. They. The principal comes to meetings and it's like a voice sort of mechanism. But in Australia they've kind of morphed into fundraising. And so I'm looking at PNCs in my state, which is New South Wales, and I've conducted a survey and some interviews and also this massive mapping of the financial data about PMCs in New South Wales. So that's like the ongoing work. I haven't published anything from that yet. Still bubbling away. But yeah, I'm kind of like I straddled the two lines between looking at philanthropic things and also academic work.

[Nick Posik]

Fascinating. And I just note a recurring theme that you tend to problematize things. Right, yeah. That is. Where did that come from? Don't mind me asking.

[Kathleen Smithers]

Yeah, I actually think it was sort of sparked and I've always been curious about the way the world works. And so when I was in high school, I wanted to be a psychologist and I was so hell bent on being a psychologist. I knew exactly the process of becoming a psychologist in Australia. And in my first year of university I was enrolled in psychology and it actually turned out to be kind of disappointing to me and I. I didn't know, I was like, this isn't what I thought it would be. And I'd enrolled in a sociology subject as an aside, like it was part of, you know, like the guided electives or something you have to do. And the sociology subject really captivated me and I got, I think, almost 100% or something in one of the assignments because I was so fascinated by the things that it was showing me. But of course, being 18 year old who was not fully able to interrogate myself despite interrogating the world around her, I actually didn't take any learning from that and plotted through my psychology degree for another six months after my first year and ended up switching to teaching because there was something about teaching that made sense to me. I was like, yep, okay, that's interesting lesson plans. But also, I think in the psychology, I'd also chosen history as a guided elective. And the history subject also intrigued me. And so I was like, yep, I'm going to be a history teacher. Which I think a lot of young Australians do, because it's the easiest way to undertake an arts degree while feeling as if there's a future or like a future career. And so it was in my undergraduate, as I said, I went to Zimbabwe. That kind of triggered me thinking like, the world is very Kind of different to how I anticipated or there are real problems that particularly, like, I saw a lot of wealth inequality in that first trip. And that really stuck with me. And I didn't know what to do with this information. Alongside that, I'd done a sociology of education subject in my second year. And the sociology of education subject was also fascinating to me because they included a reading about the commercialization of schooling. I think it was in the uk and none of my classmates really cared about that reading. They're like, oh, God, another sociology reading. This is awful, because they're all training to be teachers. They're not necessarily interested in that. And this particular reading was about commercialization. And suddenly after reading that, all I could see in Australia was commercialization of schooling. We had this program called Dolomites, which was one of our big banks. From the age of five, you could sign up for a bank account with them. They would come to the school, and every week you could deposit money into your bank account. And I still had my Dolomites account. I was still a member of that bank. And I actually remember this was. I was 22 or something, and I was like, no, I'm not going to be a member of this bank anymore. And I changed banks because. Purely because I felt like I had been duped from the age of five into being one of their customers. And so I don't know if it comes. This problematization comes from anywhere. I think it's more just that I have this innate love of what I would call like a sociological worldview. And all of my studies have kind of fostered that and developed that. And I think that once you start seeing the world in that way, it's really hard to unsee it. But also I am careful. Like, I don't want to just be critical of everything. So I do try to create, like, almost not a balanced view, but not just go in with a really hard critical view, because I don't think that that helps either.

[Nick Posik]

Yeah, I will say it's a very understanding view. Well, Kate, we've taken up a lot of your morning. Where can our listeners go to learn more about your work?

[Kathleen Smithers]

Probably my Google Scholar page, so I go by Kate, but it's Kathleen Smithers on Google Scholar, because I just want to confuse everyone, apparently. And I also have my staff profile on my university, which is Charles Sturt University, that also has all of my work there and also lists some of the media engagements. So it's probably the best two places because they're the most up to date.

[Nick Posik]

Excellent thank you so much for joining me on new books and philanthropy.

[Kathleen Smithers]

Thank you for having me. I've really loved it. And, Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

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[Kathleen Smithers]

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