Intersectionalities and access in fieldwork in postconflict Liberia: Motherland, motherhood, and minefields

Yacob-Haliso, Olajumoke

doi:10.1093/afraf/ady046

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Even local aid workers and “heritage” researchers—that is, researchers studying their home countries or communities—as well as others who may claim forms of insider perspective (e.g., researchers who are/have been displaced) (Abu-Lughod, 1988; Akello, 2012; Altorki & El-Solh, 1988; Bouka, 2015; Earle, 2014, p. 429; Ghosn et al, 2021, sec. B; Kalinga, 2019; Nyenyezi et al, 2020; Yacob-Haliso, 2019)—are still seen as distinct from those receiving assistance, given their access to resources, technology, social connections, and relative political power.…”

Section: Research As Politics: “Methodological Cognates” In Complex C...mentioning

confidence: 99%

(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research

Parkinson

2021

Comparative Political Studies

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In settings where war, forced migration, and humanitarian crisis have attracted international attention, research participants’ prior experiences with journalists, advocacy groups, state security, and humanitarian organizations influence scholarly work. Building on long-term fieldwork in Iraq and Lebanon, this article argues that individuals’ and communities’ previous and ongoing interactions with these actors affect the content, quality, and validity of data gathered as well as shaping possibilities for ethical academic research. Drawing on observational and interview-based research with humanitarian service providers, journalists, and displaced persons, this article argues that the cross-sector use of “methodological cognates” such as surveys and structured interviews shapes data validity and reliability via four mechanisms: regurgitation, redirection, reluctant participation, and resistance. I contend that these features of the research process should centrally inform academics’ research designs, project siting, case selection, and data analysis.

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Section: Research As Politics: “Methodological Cognates” In Complex C...mentioning

confidence: 99%

(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research

Parkinson

2021

Comparative Political Studies

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“…While this application of reflexivity is relatively common in these disciplines and epistemologies, however, the growing sub-field of peace and conflict studies -as a research area dominated by political science and international relations -all too often avoids these critical exercises. Even though critical scholars within peace and security increasingly reflect upon researchers' identities and positionalities (Cronen-Furman and Lake, 2018;Fujii, 2018;Yacob-Haliso, 2018), the mainstream literature on researching conflict and violence largely avoids these exercises and tends to treat the subject of the researcher as just the neutral instrument for collecting data. In particular, the (neo-) positivist traditions that dominate contemporary peace and conflict research are often centred around 'notions of positionality that can preclude a researcher's steady (re)consideration of her [or his] place within the research environment' (Malejacq andMukhopadhyay, 2016: 1012).…”

Section: Positionalities and Reflexivity During Research In (Post-)conflict Settingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognizing research participants’ fluid positionalities in (post-)conflict zones

Schulz

2020

Qualitative Research

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This article re-conceptualizes the highly ambivalent relationships between researchers and research participants in conflict zones, with a focus on recognizing respondents’ multiple and fluid positionalities. Standardized and dominant approaches to qualitative research are largely based on essentialist and infantilized portrayals of research participants and neo-colonial assumptions regarding the research relationship: informants are presumed to be inevitably vulnerable and in need of external protection, while the researcher is positioned as the omnipresent expert in control of the research process. In reality, however, research participants rarely exclusively occupy the ‘oppressed victimhood’ axis of identity and frequently take on active roles in the research and data collection process in a myriad of ways. I elucidate how especially in (post-)conflict zones, research participants frequently re-shape power dynamics by exercising agency over the researcher and the research process. While previous studies have considered how informants’ agency can shape processes of knowledge production, in this article I expand this focus by examining how key-informants can, and frequently do, facilitate the researchers’ safety and security. I specifically draw on personal experiences of empirical research in Northern Uganda. I demonstrate how in a particular moment of post-conflict insecurity – while being trapped in-between the exchange of gunfire between the Ugandan police and an armed group – one of my key-informants ensured my physical protection and safety, thereby exercising power over me and the research relationship. The key-informants in this context thus occupied multiple positionalities – ranging from informant to protector, evidencing that research relationships are never static but rather contextual, shift and fluctuate. Such ambivalent and fluid power dynamics are more reflective of the lived realities of qualitative research and can influence the research process by positioning researchers and research participants on more equal terms.

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“…12 Researcher Characteristics and Participants' Perceptions Gender, racial, political, ethnic, religious, and other identities can be assets or barriers to access, depending on the setting, research topic, or interlocutors. Different aspects of a researcher's intersectional identities become salient at different times and their effects often vary across research participants, even in the same field site (Bouka 2015;Clark and Cavatorta 2018;Naz 2012;Peritore 1990;Schwedler 2006;Yacob-Haliso 2018). As Parkinson (2016) and Yacob-Haliso (2018) demonstrate, age and life stage (i.e.…”

Section: Positionality and Replicabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexivity and Temporality in Researching Violent Settings: Problems with the Replicability and Transparency Regime

Thaler

2019

Geopolitics

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Researchers studying conflict, violence, and human rights in dangerous settings across the globe face a complex set of ethical, personal, and professional dilemmas. Especially in more positivist fields and professions, there is pressure to conduct and present research as 'objective'. Yet the reality of field research in violent and conflict-affected settings is much messier than ideals in methodology textbooks or the polished presentation of field data in much published work. I argue that rather than the imposition of blanket positivist standards of replicability and research transparency, research in violent settings needs to draw lessons from interpretivist ideas and methodologies about the researcher's role in the process of data gathering, analysis, and presentation. I focus on three key issues: reflexivity, temporality, and the geography of research between 'field' and 'home,' drawing on personal experiences conducting research on conflict, violence, and postconflict society in Liberia, Nicaragua, South Africa, and Uganda. I show how these three issues practically, theoretically, and ethically conflict with replicability and transparency demands. Through a practice of reflexive openness, however, positivist-leaning researchers can more honestly and ethically reconcile realities of research with professional expectations in the field and after returning. Beyond the omnipresent ethical imperative to protect human subjects, researchers in violent and conflict-affected settings must engage in various ethical, mental, and professional balancing acts while living in the field, interacting with research participants, recording and analyzing data, and reporting findings. Researchers in more positivist fields must determine how to reconcile their experiences in the field and emotional orientations toward research participants with the 'objectivity' that their disciplines or employers may expect in data gathering and analysis. Balancing these priorities can be a struggle even in more reflexive fields like ethnographic sociology and critical geography (e.g. Nilan 2002; Woon 2013). An

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Intersectionalities and access in fieldwork in postconflict Liberia: Motherland, motherhood, and minefields

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research

(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research

Recognizing research participants’ fluid positionalities in (post-)conflict zones

Reflexivity and Temporality in Researching Violent Settings: Problems with the Replicability and Transparency Regime

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