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Qualitative Sociology

Erschienen in:

01.09.2006 | Special Issue: Political Ethnography I

The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones

verfasst von: Elisabeth Jean Wood

Erschienen in: Qualitative Sociology | Ausgabe 3/2006

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Abstract

Drawing on 26 months of field research in El Salvador during the civil war, I analyze some ethical challenges that confront field researchers working in conflict zones. After briefly summarizing the purpose and general methodology of my research, I discuss in detail the research procedures I followed to implement the “do no harm” ethic of empirical research. I first analyze the particular conditions of the Salvadoran civil war during the period of research. I then discuss the procedures meant to ensure that my interviews with people took place with their fully informed consent—what I understood that to mean and how I implemented it. I then turn to the procedures whereby the anonymity of those interviewed and the confidentiality of the data gathered were ensured to the extent possible. Throughout I discuss particular ethical dilemmas that I confronted, including issues of self-presentation and mistaken identity, the emotional challenges of field work in highly polarized settings (which if not well understood may lead to lapse in judgment), and my evolving questions concerning the researcher role and its limitations. I also discuss the dilemmas that arise in the dissemination of research findings and the repatriation of data.

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The five case-study areas met the following research criteria. Each area had to be reasonably accessible to me in my small truck and should be politically manageable (in the Salvadoran context this meant that only one or two of the five insurgent factions should be active there). Across the case-study areas, I sought variation in the social relations that prevailed before the war (wage labor, share-cropping, peasant agriculture, etc) and in the patterns of political mobilization (that is, areas where some civilians actively supported the insurgents and some the government). However, this research design emerged through a more convoluted process than this indicates, as explained in chapter 3 of Wood (2003).

Once that process was completed, as far as I was aware there were no restrictions placed on my movement or research.

The accuracy of the claims by these cooperative leaders to occupy extensive areas of land in 1992 was confirmed by my own travel and observation in the case-study areas and by examination of the land claims data held by the insurgent group, the government, and the United Nations during the postwar land transfer process.

See for example Green (1995), Nordstrom (1997), and Das (1990).

For further discussion of the challenges of ethnography in wartime, see Wood (2003: chapters 2 and 3). See also Nordstrom (1997), Peritore (1990), and Smythe and Gillian (2001), and the essays in the collection by Nordstrom and Robben (1995).

See Kalyvas (2006) and Weinstein (in press) for discussion of patterns of violence in civil wars.

Severine Autesserree, personal communication.

See National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979), known as the Belmont Report.

Such procedures are required for researchers based in the US through a mandatory review of research proposals involving human subjects by institutional review boards, which must either approve project procedures or rule the project exempt. Although ethnographic research that poses minimal risk to human subjects can be reviewed under expedited procedures, that is clearly not the case for research in conflict zones. See National Research Council (2003) for discussion of the conditions for expedited review.

I initially feared that this affiliation would discourage government officials and landlords from speaking with me: the government and rightist elites throughout the war repeatedly denounced the university as supporting the “terrorists.” While some landlords shared their opinions of the university with me, none declined to participate in the project on these grounds.

I did, however, provide lunch for those drawing maps in the workshops.

In the Salvadoran setting, it might not have been appropriate to ask the local priest or nun to support the project by taking on this role: in other areas, pastoral agents were clearly allied with one party or another.

I gave copies to the non-governmental organization that had carried out the reconstruction and to members of my MA committee. The official copy of my MA thesis held by the University of California at Berkeley was held by the library under an agreement that it would not be made available for five years after its filing.

My caution was recently confirmed when a review of my second book appeared in an issue dedicated to understanding insurgency of a publication (Special Warfare, December 2004) of the US Army's John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, which may well be read by Salvadoran military officers.

See the essays collected in Jaarsma (2002) for extended discussion of the difficulties in implementing this norm.

I initially regretted this decision (although I never doubted it was the right thing to do) as the photographs when developed showed merely slightly colored lines on a background of light gray, as might be expected of a photograph of a hand-drawn map. Fortunately, once the photographs were digitized restoration proved possible (thanks to Carolyn Resnicke of the Santa Fe Institute).

Bell, P. (2001). The ethics of conducting psychiatric research in war-torn contexts. In M. Smyth & G. Robinson (Eds.), Researching Violently Divided Societies. Ethical and Methodological Issues. London: UN University Press and Pluto Press.

Das, V. (1990). Our work to cry: Your work to listen. In V. Das (Ed.), Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia (pp. 345–398). Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press.

Green, L. (1995). Living in a state of fear. In C. Nordstrom & A. C. G. M. Robben (Eds.), Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (pp. 105–127). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Green, L. (1999). Fear as a Way of Life. New York: Columbia University Press.

Jaarsma, S. R. (Ed.). (2002). Handle with Care. Ownership and Control of Ethnographic Materials. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Kalyvas, S. (2006). The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kelman, H. C. (1972). The rights of the subject in social research: An analysis in terms of relative power and legitimacy. American Psychologist, 27(11), 989–1016.CrossRef

National Research Council. (2003). Protecting Participants and Facilitating Social and Behavioral Sciences Research. Panel on Institutional Review Boards, Surveys, and Social Science Research. C. F. Citro, D. R. Ilgen, & C. B. Marrett (Eds.), Committee on National Statistions and Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Nordstrom, C. (1997). A Different Kind of War Story. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Nordstrom, C., & Robben, A. C. G. M. (Eds.). (1995). Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Peritore, N. P. (1990). Reflections on dangerous fieldwork. The American Sociologist, 21(1), 359–372.CrossRef

Sluka, J. A. (1995). Reflections on managing danger in fieldwork: Dangerous anthropology in Belfast. In C. Nordstrom & A. C. G. M. Robben (Eds.), Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (pp. 276–294). Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Smyth, M. (2001). Introduction. In M. Smyth & G. Robinson (Eds.), Researching Violently Divided Societies. Ethical and Methodological Issues. UN University Press and Pluto Press.

Smyth, M., & Gillian, R. (Eds.). (2001). Researching Violently Divided Societies. Ethical and Methodological Issues. London: UN University Press and Pluto Press.

The National Commission for the Protection Of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research [The Belmont Report]. (1979). Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.

Weinstein, J. (2006). Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge University Press.

Wood, E. (2000). Forging democracy from below: Insurgent transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. Cambridge University Press.

Wood, E. (2003). Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge University Press.

Titel: The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones
verfasst von: Elisabeth Jean Wood
Publikationsdatum: 01.09.2006
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Qualitative Sociology / Ausgabe 3/2006
Print ISSN: 0162-0436
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7837
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-006-9027-8

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