Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Goma, DR Congo, I want to raise two points for discussion: 1) a methodological exploration on how to realize “deep hanging out” in times of emergency and 2) some theoretical thoughts about potentialities and limits of textual representation.

Paper long abstract:

Fieldwork, especially in contexts of violent conflict, is surrounded by a particular aura. When I returned from Goma/ Eastern Congo in 2008 friends, strangers and colleagues alike looked at me with a weird mixture of curiosity and disgust, craving for adventurous accounts on the one hand or asking with affirmative voice "but it was not really dangerous, right?"

In contrast to political scientists or other "experts" in the field of violent conflict, anthropologists as "embedded researchers" (Peters/ Richards) are often reduced to mere purveyors of anecdotes. While pondering about my data, reflecting about own experiences and trying to solve the problem of how to order disorder in the process of writing up, I realized that I got entrapped in the murky waters of representation myself - not wanting to share certain experiences, therefore playing events down, and nearly desperately trying to avoid a kind of "pornographization of violence" as Daniel (1996) has labeled it. It is a very thin line between an adequate description of a general 'situation under siege' and a self-reflexive evaluation of one's own position.

Therefore, I want to raise two points for discussion: 1) a methodological exploration on how to realize "deep hanging out" in times of emergency and 2) some theoretical thoughts about potentialities and limits of textual representation.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I discuss some dilemmas between obtaining data and keeping out of harm's way I experienced during my field research in eastern Congo. I also describe some of the effects this research had on my state of mind, including anxiety, loneliness, sleep-deprivation, apathy, mistrust and panic.

Paper long abstract:

Conducting fieldwork in a context marked by violent conflict presents a special set of challenges on a daily basis for the researcher. One of the main daily challenges of carrying fieldwork in these conditions is to find an acceptable compromise between obtaining high-quality information and limiting the inherent risks involved with trying to obtain this data. In this paper I discuss some of the challenges I was confronted with trying to fulfill my "vocational mission" as a researcher aspiring to carry out social science on issues related to militia governance, the production of public authority and on the territorialization of ethnicity in eastern Congo. My experience was marked by a fundamental and constant tension between the requirements of rigorous research and avoiding taking undue risks. Whereas my "vocational mission" compelled me to seek an ever deeper level of comprehension through cultural immersion, my apprehension to become too accustomed with a social context marked by threats, violence, high levels of mutual distrust, and abject poverty, pulled me in the opposite direction. This dilemma was further aggravated by my partly self-imposed limited experience with the field and by extension my limited sense of the "rules of the game". In spite of my efforts to keep myself out of harm's way, my immersion profoundly affected my state of mind

Paper short abstract:

Inspired by Gluckman's argument that Africans are rebels, never revolutionaries, this paper explores the role of the anthropologist-expert during periods of violent conflict and the political and intellectual challenges of marshaling ethnographic knowledge for future-oriented analysis.

Paper long abstract:

"Tell me, based on all your studies, do you think that revolution is possible?" The question, posed by one of my interlocutors in rural Central African Republic (CAR), contained a note of urgency as the person voicing it noted with despair the cycle of rebellion the country has fallen into over the past fifteen years, a cycle that all the peacebuilding initiatives mustered by the international community seem only to have bolstered. I thought of Max Gluckman's pessimistic answer: Africans are rebels, never revolutionaries. In other words, conflict preserves the social order rather than upending it. By our interlocutors, and also by journalists, diplomats, and policy-makers, anthropologists are called on to make prognoses about the outcomes of political upheaval. This task raises dilemmas at once personal, political (should one 'take a side'?), and intellectual. As critical as anthropologists have long been of functionalist analysis, our training includes little to help us engage in future-oriented analysis. Drawing on my experiences being interviewed during the rise of the Seleka rebel coalition and its assault on the CAR capital in December 2012, this paper will explore the ambivalence surrounding the anthropologist-expert's role in describing conflict patterns and their likely outcomes. I argue that the full implications of Gluckman's argument remain to be grappled with and that only then will rebellious ethnography have a chance of becoming revolutionary.

Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses two interrelated ethical questions in reporting research results from a post-conflict society: fair presentation and emotions. The questions are reflected through auto-photographic data of six former Liberian girl soldiers with whom I have been working with since September 2012.

Paper long abstract:

In the book IV of Plato's Republic there is a story of Leontius, the son of Aglaion, who comes across some dead people lying at the executioner's feet. At the same time Leontius feels both a desire to stare at the corpses but is also disgusted and abhorred by the sight. He covers his eyes and struggles for a time but finally gives up for the desire to see and forces his eyes wide open. Leontius rushes towards the corpses shouting: "Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight."

In the paper, the ancient story of Leontius is placed in a modern environment, a post-conflict Liberia, and the role of Leontius is played by a "modern researcher" - myself. Firstly, the question of fair presentation is discussed. How much individual suffering does a researcher need to show in order to describe informants' realities? Yet, how to avoid a "pornography of violence"? Secondly, the often neglected question of researcher's emotions is contemplated. How can the negligence or inclusion of emotions affect the research results? Are emotions permissible in academic research?

These questions are investigated primarily through auto-photographic research data of six former Liberian girl soldiers with whom I have been working with since September 2012. The paper does not offer any ready-made answers on the challenging questions presented above but rather tries to remind both the writer and the readers that we, as human-beings, cannot escape "struggles of Leontius" even in academic research.

Paper short abstract:

This paper, based on field research in Somalia, examines how changing international interpretations of violence affect how researchers, the “researched upon” and local fixers and facilitators are identified with violence.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers research in conflict zones amidst changing international interpretations of individuals' associations with violence. This includes the criminalization of violence in the course of armed conflict, bringing closer scrutiny of the researcher as associated with the criminal exercise of violence and as a possible source of information about criminal activity. These changing interpretations pose ethical and methodological challenges for researchers and the "researched upon".

This paper will develop categories of relationships between researcher and "researched upon" [research subjects, fixers, and their communities] that traces impacts of changing international interpretations of violence in conflict zones. The author will use vignettes from his research conducted in Somali regions since 2006 to explain how selective criminalization of violence has affected rapport between researcher and local actors. Through this lens the researcher also becomes a subject of changes, navigating a treacherous legal terrain that criminalizes contact with individuals that governments consider "terrorists" or "war criminals" and risks of appearing on secret no-fly lists and other sanctions. The paper also examines how international counterinsurgency campaigns affect field researchers and the "researched upon," and the conceptual and legal vagueness of the concept of governments "at war in countries with which they are not at war."

This paper will be framed in terms of reflexivity in the social relationships between researcher and "subject" as an essential ingredient in learning from experts in violence and for personal security. Changes in this international context hinder the construction of interactive learning essential to the social science project.

Paper short abstract:

This contribution focuses on research with mid- to high-ranking rebel officers in western Côte d’Ivoire based on fieldwork since 2008. It reflects on the power relationship between the researcher and researched, risk assessments and the place of the commanders’ views in the 'synthesis'.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution focuses on methodological and ethical challenges in research with mid- to high-ranking rebel officers. It reflects on the power relationship between the researcher and researched, risk assessments and the representation of the commanders' voices in the ethnographic 'synthesis'.

Based on more than 14 months of field research in western Côte d'Ivoire since 2008, this project on social trust and civil security set itself the task to 'talk to all sides'. The rebels' headquarters countersigned the research authorisation from the State and assured me that they had 'nothing to hide'. Nevertheless, the rebel's spokesperson avoided me throughout my stay. I had to learn that what was information to me was intelligence for them and that scientific curiosity was close to prying and spying.

Getting access to the high-ranks with formal research methods proved difficult. Often they declined interviews indirectly and instead suggested to take me out for a drink - shifting research into the informal, sometimes private realm. Listening to some, I began sympathizing with their positions and roles, too. Eventually, I found myself dining with possible 'perpetrators', just to have offered all sides the opportunity to give me their version of reality. Sometimes, I probably mistook my role as an investigative researcher for an investigator, wanting to establish triangulated 'facts'.

Having managed to gather various perspectives, I was left with bringing them together in a concise text; as one of the high-ranks put it: "You listen to everybody, but you don't hear everyone."

Paper short abstract:

We analyse the discrepancy between the Rwandan governments’ constructed image of a performing state – in line with international donors’ standards - and the ‘disguised masks of dissent’ of local rural actors that challenge this dominant discourse.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the way in which social life in Rwanda is covered under many 'veils of disguise'. The Rwandan government very actively constructs an image of a performing state enhancing fast economic development through intense social engineering. Their vision is largely inspired by a neoliberal view upon what a modern post-conflict society should look like. It has made Rwanda one of the African 'donor darlings', widely applauded by the international community for its economic progress and exemplary status in terms of technocratic 'good governance'. At first sight, many people at the local level seem to be 'working with the system' and perform within the boundaries of what is publically desirable. Behind the screen, however, people have developed inventive strategies to 'work around the system'. They challenge the dominant discourse through 'disguised masks of dissent' (terminology adopted from Scott, 1995). The first part of the chapter analyses this discrepancy between public and hidden transcripts in terms of rural development. In the second part, we reflect upon the methodological challenges for foreign researchers to uncover such hidden transcripts. In a third part, we illustrate how research participants' increased 'willingness to share' their hidden transcripts with us as foreign researchers gives an indication of the increased levels of frustration that people are facing at the local level. We reflect upon which corridors of agency exist that have the potential to channel this hidden dissent into more organised forms of (hopefully non-violent) resistance.

Paper short abstract:

The Casamance conflict in southern Senegal is 30 years old. The paper reflects on methodological and ethical issues raised by working relationships between researchers and members of the separatist Mouvement des forces démocratiques de la Casamance. It suggests approaches to mitigating the problems discussed.

Paper long abstract:

The Casamance conflict in the south of Senegal, rooted in a separatist rebellion, is now 30 years old. The relatively low or localised level of conflict over much of this period and the relatively benign research environment (with some notable exceptions) created by the Senegalese state have enabled researchers fairly easy access to and sometimes development of long-term working relationships with members of the rebel Mouvement des forces démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC). The rebels are in turn keen to engage with academic research as a means of 'getting their message out' and raising the international profile of their struggle. The paper reflects on methodological and ethical issues raised by these research dynamics. First, the highly fragmented nature of the MFDC and each faction's desire for recognition and resources make it hard for researchers to identify legitimate interlocutors. Second, researchers and their outputs risk in turn becoming inadvertently co-opted into the separatist project in various, sometimes subtle ways. Third, other voices in Casamance, a large and diverse ethnic and political space, may be neglected amid the focus on the conflict, the discourses and actions of the MFDC and Senegalese government, and reactions to these alone. The paper concludes with some thoughts on how to address such problems, showing how closer attention and a more inductive approach to the concerns of 'ordinary people' is not just a valuable counterpoint to the views of conflict actors, but essential to help researchers situate violent conflict in its broader developmental and social context.

Paper short abstract:

Doing research in a war zone is not easy, especially in Africa. I realized eight months of fieldwork in West Africa during the years 2007 and 2008. I want to discuss and share my experience during this meeting.

Paper long abstract:

My research tried to explain the difficulties faced by international organizations in West Africa in developing effective peacekeeping operations. Specifically I examined the intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Ivory Coast, drawing also on the experience of interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. My research attempted to go beyond conventional narratives focused on the weaknesses of ECOWAS, the African Union (AU) or the United Nations (UN), or on the realpolitik dimensions such as Nigerian regional hegemony or external intervention by former colonial powers, and to understand the dynamics of peacekeeping in the region in terms of the notion of multilevel governance.

My research involved eight months of fieldwork in West Africa, working both in the ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja in Nigeria, on the ground in Ivory Coast, as well as from Senegal. I carried out a substantial number of interviews many actors and institutions of conflict resolution, as well as engaged with them on a more informal basis.

I realized this research after the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee has accepted my request of ethics approval of my project. I want during this meeting to share my experience and faced difficulties during this fieldwork.

Sriram, Chandra Lekha, C ; King, J, C ; Mertus, J, A ; Martin-Ortega, O ; Herman, J (dir.), Surviving Field Research : Working in Violent and Difficult Situations, London ; New York : Routledge, 2009, 262p.

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses the Juba Peace Talks between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army to highlight methodological and analytical challenges encountered during researching the complex developing and changing dynamics between 2006 and 2008.

Paper long abstract:

Investigations of peace processes tend to look for "spoilers"—readily identifiable actors pursuing a counterproductive interest. Yet, the Juba Talks between the Government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army showed that instead of single spoilers, such processes are complicated by a vast and ever-changing range of individual and group actors and interests. Peace talks are a multi-layered part of a conflict trajectory in which individual experiences might play a bigger part in conflict resolution than the technical matters being discussed at the table.

Adequately capturing that rich human tapestry requires thorough and time-consuming investigation of a nonlinear coalescence of ever-changing events, experiences and context through detailed multi-disciplinary observation. This would ideally need to include a researcher's engagement with all actors at all times, in order to emerge as an omniscient narrator able to produce a sequential analysis of unsystematic human experiences while appreciating that success and failure need new measurements if the whole process and all the dynamics it sets into motion is taken into account.

Yet such a holistic scholarly approach that provides reliable and unskewed information on years of multifaceted and ever-changing motivations in a developing conflict and then draws constructive conclusions that help make the peace talks a success is outside the remit of individual researchers. Scholarship has yet to learn how to qualitatively investigate complex processes with incomplete and manipulated information and draw nuanced, yet operationally informative conclusions. Yet what to do with this realisation that throws open more questions than it answers?

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore the ethics of conducting long-term anthropological research in conflict zones. After narrating M23’s invasion of my fieldsite in November 2012 and the aftermath of their occupation, I examine the consequences of my presence in DRC on my local networks and my university.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I explore the ethics of conducting long-term anthropological research in conflict zones though a description of my own research in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In November 2012, halfway through my dissertation research on conflations of love and sexual violence in 'the rape capital of the world,' M23 invaded and occupied Goma and its surrounding vicinities. By narrating the events surrounding my evacuation from and subsequent reinstallation in my fieldsite in a small village in North Kivu, I identify the communities of people affected by my decisions to leave and to return: my staff, my friends, beneficiaries of the hospital at which I worked, employees at an NGO with which I associated, members of various armed groups, and my California-based thesis committee. As I recount and contrast each community's narrative about the possibilities and the risks of my continued research in the area, I demonstrate the diverging ways in which conflict is lived, managed, and understood by differently situated actors. Then, I critically examine the anthropological desire to 'be there,' which becomes a sacred concept in conflict zones, simultaneously revered and banned. I conclude with a rigorous consideration of the contradictions between the ethics of the discipline and those of its subjects who remain suspended in conflict zones long after the anthropologists that study them leave.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to develop a more holistic representation of conflict fieldwork ethics by illustrating the ethics of intent, action, and outcome as three distinct stages of fieldwork design necessary to consider when doing social science fieldwork within conflict zones.

Paper long abstract:

Long the domain of anthropologists and journalists, field research within conflict zones has become an important criterion for young scholars in a broad array of social science fields that formerly did not prioritize fieldwork, including for mixed-methods approaches in political science and international relations. However, after scholars select where to research, the existing literature on how to research often provides little guidance on the fundamental tenants and basic practicalities of how to anticipate and address ethical issues as they arise. Researching in conflict zones complicates matters further, as

life-or-death situations for subjects and researcher can be more than mere rhetoric. Effective and ethical fieldwork design should consider not only methodology, but also the fact that a researcher's presence and actions have consequences that can reverberate during and after fields visits in both positive and negative ways for the researcher and the researched. In this paper, I draw upon fieldwork (primarily in Asia) focus upon the ethics of intent (before you go), the ethics of action (while you're there) and the ethics of outcome (after you've gone) as three distinct stages of fieldwork design that are necessary for researchers to consider and understand when undertaking social science fieldwork within conflict zones.

Paper short abstract:

Giving an insight into the local manifestations of pre-election tensions and violence in KwaZulu-Natal, the paper concentrates on the methodological and ethical difficulties faced when aiming to ‘give a voice to all’ - one of the many dilemmas when conducting fieldwork in ‘dangerous fields’.

Paper long abstract:

In the run-up to the 53rd national conference of the African National Congress (ANC) in Mangaung in December 2012, the province of KwaZulu-Natal experienced a new recent spate of threat, intimidations and politically motivated murders. Reflecting on ethnographic field research conducted on the topic of 'political culture' in the province prior to the elections, the paper concentrates on a group of township residents who formed part of a regional shack dweller's movement - protesting against the development of a housing project, the scale of local corruption and the lack of basic service delivery. In the face of upcoming party and government elections, in which local elites sought to secure their stake, the protesting group soon faced severe threats and intimidations. Unravelling the tensions between the different local actors involved, promised invaluable insights into dominant features of local political culture. However, the dilemmas were also evident: In what manner would the emphasis on 'giving voice to all actors' compromise the safety of informants, assistants and the researcher? Concerning one's own presentation - what insights into the conflict dynamics should be shared (or deliberately left out) so as to establish rapport and ensure trust? How does one legitimise relations to perpetrators of violence, on the grounds that they continue to be important 'gatekeepers' within one's field of research? The author ties reflections on her interactions in the field (including own principles followed) to the tensions and limitations faced when aspiring to a thick description of the case study, while preserving vital anonymity in the stages of writing.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at how conflict in Abyei, Sudan, transformed social relations in the area, and the impact of these transformations on fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

Shortly before southern Sudan held a referendum on secession from the north in January 2011, Abyei--a small contested territory now nestled between Sudan and South Sudan--was attacked by militias supported by the Sudanese government. These attacks continued until May 2011, when Abyei was occupied by the northern military, leading to 110,000 people being displaced. These fateful months were also months during which I was carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in Abyei.

In one particular tense encounter, I was stopped by agents of the Sudanese government, who accused me of being a spy. No, I insisted, I am an anthropologist. "What is an anthropologist?" "I collect information," I told the security agent, "about peoples' ways of life." "You see!" he replied, "you are a spy!" After being held for two hours and increasingly threatened, the security agent let me go, with the words, "Don't worry, I am a spy too!"

As Abyei came under attack, all relationships were doubled: anyone could be a potential spy for the northern government, and this paranoia undermined everyday processes, and habituated relationships of trust. One became skeptical of everything.

This paper will simultaneously describe the transformations in trust-relations in Abyei brought about by the conflict, and analyse the challenges to doing ethnographic fieldwork created by a situation in which nobody can tell the truth.