Power, Ethics, and Human Rights Studies of Refugee Research and Action

by Krulfeld, Ruth M.; MacDonald, Jeffery L.

• ISBN13: 9780847688975
• ISBN10: 0847688976
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-29
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Refugees experience some of the most visible manifestations of human rights abuses in the world today -- and raise difficult issues for researchers and policy makers alike. This book investigates a broad range of complexities that arise as ethnographers work with refugee populations from different geographic areas in research, policy formation, and legal and social assistance. But the issues raised here have application to ethical concerns in ethnographic research beyond refugees. The contributors draw on their intensive fieldwork to explore issues surrounding power and disempowerment between researcher and subject; dilemmas over the protection of research informants; and the rights and actions of refugees in representing themselves and their cultures in advocacy and policy arenas. The wealth of important insights in this book sharpen our understanding of the problems faced in any cross-cultural research or intervention. These explorations revitalize, in vivid detail drawn from case studies, recent theoretical debates on anthropology and ethnographic research and practice, while raising new issues.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(20)
Ruth M. Krulfeld
Jeffery L. MacDonald
PART I: HUMAN RIGHTS AND RESEARCH	21	(76)
1 Exploring New Methods for Collaboration in Ethnographic Research: An Attempt at Overcoming Exploitation and Violation of Informant Rights	21	(36)
Ruth M. Krulfeld
2 Whose Lives, Whose Work? Struggling along the Subject-Colleague Continuum	57	(16)
MaryCarol Hopkins
3 The Testimonio Method in Refugee Research: Practicing Advocacy and Feminism in an Ethnographic Encounter with Q'eqchi' and K'iche' Women	73	(24)
Faith R. Warner
PART II: WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO PRESENT AND REPRESENT	97	(50)
4 "We Are the Experts": Iu-Mien (Yao) Refugees Assert Their Rights as Scholars of Their Own Culture	97	(26)
Jeffery L. MacDonald
5 Is There "Refuge" in the Refugee Category?	123	(24)
Greta Uehling
PART III: HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRAXIS	147	(46)
6 "I Must Have My Rights!" The Presence of State Power in the Resettlement of Ethiopian and Eritrean Refugees	147	(26)
Lucia Ann McSpadden
7 Working with Southeast Asian Refugees on Health-Care Issues: Human and Cultural Rights Concerns	173	(20)
Amy Zaharlick
Index	193	(10)
About the Editors and Contributors	203