Voices 6 - On the margins

Summary

Researching on the margins heightens the possibilities of new insights, but it can also bring special dangers of both physical and emotional dangers, as these two voices tell.

Maxine Molyneux: fear in Afghanistan

Well, there were some dangerous bits, yes. There were some dangerous places. I think when you’re young, you don't think of risk so much, do you, you head off into it, and it's quite exciting. But looking back, I was a risk-taker, and I didn't mind that, it didn't affect me at first. I think the time I was most aware of my own mortality was in Afghanistan, when Fred [Halliday] and I went in 1980. It was just after the Russians invaded, and it was a very unpleasant, frightening trip, because we were targets – I mean, we looked Russian apparently. We both had leather jackets on, and that's what Russians wore, and we stood out. And we were taken around in armoured personnel vehicles. It was terrible.

We were told that So and So had been blown up yesterday, and a German TV crew in Herat had been killed in exactly the same spot. I was trying to do work on women's organisations, and they were doing such fantastic things, it was heartbreaking, trying to train young women, and give them an education and so on. So I went to all these projects, but under armed guard, with a platoon of soldiers behind me. But we got stuck in a market – I’ll never forget – and the driver was absolutely terrified. You could see that. He said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get out of here’. It was that, I think both of us came out of there, we went to Delhi after that, just feeling pretty rocked by that experience, to the core! But yes, you don't think about it. That was the trip I really did think about it. (p 30)

Avtar Brah: the struggle in academia

Avtar Brah grew up on the edge of the colonial British Empire. Her family fled to Britain to escape racist persecution in Uganda. She not only became a successful academic, but also fought on the front line for the welfare and rights of other Asians in Britain. She chose at the very end of her interview to voice how, nevertheless, she still feels marginalised in British academic life.