Emotional and Ethical Challenges for Field Research in Africa The Story Behind the Findings

by Thomson, Susan; Ansoms, an; Murison, Jude

• ISBN13: 9781137263742
• ISBN10: 1137263741
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-12-07
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Academic literature rarely gives an account of the ethical and emotional challenges the researcher is confronted with before, during and after being in the field. Nonetheless, they deserve proper attention, not only to fathom the inevitable bias in researchers' position in the field and to assess the quality of the research findings, but also to show that the façade of 'scientific validity and neutrality' often hides a pragmatic approach that shapes the research process. Presenting their personal accounts, a variety of researchers who have done field research in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa explore the challenges faced when engaging in local-level research in difficult situations.

Author Biography

AN ANSOMS is Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She conducts research on poverty and inequality in the Great Lakes Region and pays particular attention to the challenges of rural development in land-scarce (post-)conflict environments.

SUSAN THOMSON is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University, USA. Her research and teaching interests are in state-society relations in contemporary Africa and qualitative research methods, with particular focus on research ethics and doing research in difficult environments.

JUDE MURISON is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Policy and Management, Belgium. Her research focuses on human rights, transitional justice, forced migration, health and agricultural production through the interplay of national policies and laws, and how they are implemented on the ground.

Table of Contents

'The authors take us behind the scenes of the fieldwork process to reveal the interpersonal encounters and relationships, the privileges and vulnerabilities, and the ethical stakes and emotional costs that are the very sources of knowledge in this kind of research. If the study of social and political conflict and change aspires to be any kind of science, it must reveal rather than cover the human tracks through which an understanding of such conflict/change is produced. The book also offers a much-needed antidote to the crude checklist approach to research ethics by providing on-the-ground experience, reflection, and advice on the unexpected and shifting dilemmas and choices that face those who are committed to socially engaged research. This should be required reading for both undergraduate and graduate students of not only Africa, but all area studies and social sciences that take fieldwork as a primary source of knowledge.' - Kimberly Chang, Associate Professor of Cultural Psychology, Hampshire College, USA