![]()
1
Introduction: Surviving field research
Julie A. Mertus
Why this book?
In recent decades there has been increasing media attention to mass atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other gross human rights violations. At the same time, there has been a vast increase in the number of academics and researchers seeking to analyze the causes of, and offer practical responses to, these atrocities. Yet there remains insufficient discussion of the practical and ethical challenges surrounding research into serious abuses where researchers operate under difficult circumstances and deal with vulnerable populations. Respect for and protection of interlocutors and researchers and the challenges of assessing the veracity of information gathered in research in conflict areas are issues that arise with greater frequency in academic field research, yet rarely arise as a central topic of scholarly study.
That the ethical issues surrounding human rights fieldwork receive scant attention in existing literature on qualitative research is deeply troubling. Without a set of materials acknowledging and examining these issues, university professors face great difficulty in adequately preparing their students embarking on qualitative studies that bring them into conflict areas and in conflict with vulnerable populations. In the absence of academic analysis and debate on these important issues, field researchers act without the benefit of the knowledge and experiences of their colleagues and, thus, continually find themselves reinventing the wheel. The stress of determining effective research strategies in the field on a case-by-case basis, under pressure, in isolation and without considered connection to praxis, weighs heavily on researchers and their subjects, underlying possibilities for short- and long-term fruitful collaboration.
With this book we seek to help researchers identify and address challenges in conducting qualitative research in difficult circumstances; circumstances such as in autocratic or uncooperative regimes and with governmental or non-governmental officials and, perhaps most importantly, with reluctant respondents such as victims of genocide, or (on the other side of the coin) war criminals. How do we gain authentic information and generate credible knowledge from research in difficult places and from difficult audiences? Can we do this? Are there practical and ethical solutions to the challenges and barriers often put before us? In this way we strive to inform ongoing debate about responsible scholarship, and seek to inform not just students and scholars, but also policymakers engaged in research in difficult situations.
Where did this collaboration arise?
This volume is a direct response of university professors to the need for more timely and complete teaching materials for courses in qualitative research. A continual topic of concern, discussed each year after year in academic circles, the question of qualitative research in difficult circumstances made its way onto the agenda of the 2007 annual meeting of the International Studies Association. The enthusiastic response to the panel and discussion at that meeting led directly to the present collaboration between two research hubs on both sides of the Atlantic: the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict (London)1 under its Director Professor Chandra Lekha Sriram and researchers Olga Martin and Johanna Herman, and the American University Human Rights Council,2 under its Director Professor Julie Mertus and Professor John C. King (Washington, DC). The resulting collaboration has proven to be far richer and much more significant than the sum of its parts.
Who should read this book?
This book has been crafted to address the needs of three audiences:
For university instructors and students: The volume will be ideal for use in M.A. and Ph.D. research methodology classes (required in most programs), and for qualitative research courses or field research courses in anthropology, international relations and political science. In addition, the text will address a void in the literature available for students of human rights, a burgeoning field on many university campuses. Students of applied ethics will also be attracted to this text.
For researchers: This text will be an ideal guide for all researchers concerned with conducting ethical field research in conflict areas. While it will be of particular use to those newly engaged in fieldwork, the discussions across a range of practical, ethical, and social dilemmas that are often encountered in the field will be of interest to even the most seasoned researcher.
For practitioners: The wide range of practitioners who will turn to this volume include both governmental and non-governmental employees engaged directly in fieldwork in conflict areas and indirectly through the training of others.
How is the book designed?
The volume proceeds in five substantive sections, each addressing a different challenge of conducting field research in conflict scenarios: 1) ethics; 2) access; 3) veracity; 4) security; and 5) identity. All five of these challenges can have a substantial impact on the behaviour of the researcher and on their ability to carry out their research as planned. The authors address these challenges with reference to their own field experiences, whenever possible, providing context for the application of concepts that at first appear in the abstract.
Part 1: Ethics
The book opens with discussions of unanticipated ethical concerns often raised by field research in difficult and often hostile settings. Can we be ethical researchers? Specifically, how do we manage relationships where we ask personal questions about experiences and feelings from individuals who may continue to be targets of the state and, thus, be at considerable personal risk in interacting with us? How do we present our research and information from our interviewees after the fact? Can we meet these issues and be ethical?
The success of field researchers is determined in large part by their ability to develop trust with local counterparts. The unions researchers form in the field are critical pathways through which perceptions are formed, and thus, can significantly enhance or hinder the process of building credible knowledge in all sorts of ways. Contact with researchers, however, often poses significant risks to respondents, and these risks are magnified in conflict settings. This section explores how tradeoffs are made between the imperative of researchers to extract data from subjects and the interests of persons at risk.
Judy Hemming, for example in Chapter 3, reminds us that the political dimension of academic field research is often played out in the academic setting before research review boards. Intervention by these institutional structures, Hemming warns, may undermine academic responsibility and threaten academic freedom. Using her own experience researching Thai women sex workers as an illustration, she explains how the power invested by the university in its research ethics committee can be flexed through questioning the worthiness of the research project. Hemming explains how, in her case, the research review board was effectively trying to stifle research into sex workers and industries because it was itself a captive of stereotypes that the research pointed to as part of the problem.
In Chapter 4, Elizabeth Levy Paluck focuses on direct challenge of conducting survey research in conflict settings, suggesting that this well-accepted method may raise more complex ethical questions than originally meets the eye. In Chapter 5, Chandra Lekha Sriram examines the maintenance of standards of protection during write-up and publication, identifying, among other issues, the concerns raised by the increased culture of sharing draft documents with colleagues via e-mail or on the Internet. While certainly not exhaustive in their scope, taken together the Hemming, Paluck and Sriram chapters serve to shed light on some of the most pressing ethical concerns facing contemporary researchers today.
Part 2: Access
The second section of this book explores a matter of great importance to all researchers planning work among vulnerable populations in conflict settings: the question of gaining access to research subjects. Julie Norman, writing in Chapter 6, introduces the concept of trust, suggesting it as a crucial element for gaining access to potential research participants. Informed by her own fieldwork in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, she examines the close connection between a state’s willingness to trust a researcher and the researcher accesses to the field, and to particular researchers within that field. In so doing, Norman also identifies a link between the willingness of collectives and individuals to place their trust in the researcher and the researcher’s ability to reach certain research subjects. Norman concludes her chapter with specific recommendations for overcoming some of these challenges of building trust.
The discussion of trust is expanded and refracted through a more anthropological lens by Courtney Radsch (Chapter 7). Building on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt and Lebanon, Radsch looks at the role of culture and politics in shaping the feasibility and practicality of fieldwork. In some cultures, she suggests human contacts are vitally important: research begins and ends with a cup of tea. Radsch explains how in her case studies wasta, loosely translated as ‘connections’, and isnad, the ‘tracing of a chain of witnesses as a criterion of veracity’, are especially important for a researcher making initial contacts for a project and for building the kind of trust and credibility required to pursue an interview or participant observation.
The many ways in which researcher access may still be restricted is taken up in greater detail by Susan Thomson in Chapter 8. Referring to her own experiences in post-genocide Rwanda, Thomson considers three points of entry to the field where access can be complicated: 1) the host government and government-approved local partners; 2) the social spaces and sites where both access to potential informants and participant observation is possible and appropriate; and 3) individuals who may be unwilling or unable to speak due to their position of marginality or vulnerability. Among its contributions to the larger discussion, Thomson’s chapter serves to alert researchers to the sensitivities of interacting with and interviewing individuals who are emotionally traumatized by their experiences of political violence.
Part 3: Veracity
Once researchers solve accessibility issues, they encounter the question of veracity or, most often, lack of veracity. Researchers confront all sorts of barriers to authentic information, including: multiple subjective perspectives and intentionally misleading statements. In her contribution to this volume, Lee Ann Fuji (Chapter 10) suggests ways to recognize and address the mistruths that ...
