Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on the lessons learnt from conducting multi-sited ethnography for a component of a large research programme. The component aimed to assess the extent to which standard religious teachings inform the values and beliefs by which local people live and how these religious values and beliefs do or do not shape their ideas about certain aspects of development. The research was carried out in Pakistan, India, Nigeria and Tanzania as part of a larger programme. The research was conducted by fieldworkers many of whom had received no previous training in ethnographic techniques. This research was conducted through a set of complex relationships. At local level the fieldworkers were often rooted in the communities they studied and the process of becoming ethnographic interviewers was uneasy involving a change in the nature of their relationships with many research participants. The informal dialogues that represent much of the data collected were only made possible because of the friendships and respect the fieldworkers were awarded by the communities in which they also lived. These friendships were made vulnerable by the passing on of this data to a funder whose relationship to these communities was often described by participants as problematic. This paper documents my unease as coordinator asked to 'capacity-build' and write about the lives of people I have never met. This paper reflects openly on the ethics of this research experience whilst also maintaining that the close insight the anthropological lens brings to large scale inter-disciplinary research programmes is important.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the relation between knowledge and danger in a small community of Chiloé, southern Chile

Paper long abstract:

Doing ethnography on a small and remote island presents the immediate predicament of being the very visible Other in a small world of all alike people. In a community where people do all they can to ensure lack of differentiation, being the Other implied having 'knowledge' of things that belong to the outside world. 'Knowledge' is dangerous because it promotes differentiation between people, different access to sources of power, and to witchcraft. This paper will explore the contradictions that have to be faced doing fieldwork, when trying to access other people's knowledge and at the same time being invested with knowledge expectations. This contribution will also show the impossibility of relying on the interview as a relating device.

Paper short abstract:

Data from interviews and everyday interactions among Tamil refugees in Norway demonstrate how relations of intimacy, empathy and imagination give access to meanings that confront specific moralities and calls for general ethical perspectives in creation of knowledge – about Tamil social experiences.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses how the interview and engagement in the other as a mutual subject can create relations that challenge researchers' particular moral codes and cause us to expand these to more general ethical perspectives. Conducting fieldwork among Tamil refugees in a small fishing village in northern Norway with a concern for illness and well-being, interviews and conversations were contextualised by sharing daily activities to capture Tamils' tacit perceptions and experiences of social life. The paper presents a case-study with a Tamil woman who experienced stigmatisation in relation to the local Tamil and Norwegian population. Data from interviews and everyday interactions demonstrate how relations of intimacy, empathy and imagination give access to meanings and values that confront specific moralities and calls for ethical creation of knowledge - about Tamil social experiences.

Paper short abstract:

‘Knowledge for the pursuit of human good’ introduces ethics in the process of knowledge production and entails a series of moral choices from the part of the scientist, at every level of knowledge –creation. ‘Responsibility for the “other”’ might be the measure and the guiding principle for the researcher’s choices.

Paper long abstract:

If we intend to deal with the ethical dilemmas arising during research with informants, it might be useful to step backwards and rethink the epistemological question ‘knowledge for what purpose?’ ‘Knowledge for the pursuit of human good’, which appears as the obvious and immediate answer, introduces an ethical demand in the process of knowledge production, already from the beginning. Within social sciences, the researcher confronts the ‘other’ both as object of inquiry and as recipient of the produced knowledge. According to Bauman, facing the challenge of the ‘other’ means facing the responsibility of the choice of what is good for the ‘other’ (this is, for Bauman, ‘the “primal” condition of morality’). Thus, in the case of social inquiry, ‘human good’ needs to be determined by the scientist as an exercise of her own responsibility and then ‘the pursuit of human good’ needs to be implemented at a practical level, in both the research and the knowledge production processes. This paper is an account of the puzzlement I encountered regarding this kind of responsibility, during the research for my dissertation. Choices I had to make about how to interact with Afghan refugees and how to put in text the information gathered are discussed. I used Gilligan’s ‘ethics of care’ as ethical model for relating to my informants and then relied to Trouillot’s notion of ‘moral optimism’ and Knauft’s notion of ‘critical humanism’ as general guiding principles for the representational project.