On Sensitivity and Secrecy: How Foreign Researchers and their Local Contacts in Myanmar Deal with Risk under Authoritarian Rule

Matelski, Maaike

doi:10.1353/jbs.2014.0008

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…cholera outbreaks) was not without risk for the research participants. We addressed this by applying strict confidentiality rules (Chakravarty 2012; Matelski 2014). The confidentiality of individuals, institutions and localities was guaranteed, and local officials’ authorisation to conduct fieldwork in a particular location was always obtained.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The humanitarian theatre: drought response during Ethiopia's low-intensity conflict of 2016

2019

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This article aims to rekindle the debate on the politics of aid in the increasingly common – yet still under-studied – authoritarian and low-intensity conflict settings, detailing the case of Ethiopia in 2016, when a 50-year drought coincided with a wave of protests and a state of emergency. During four months of qualitative fieldwork in 2017, state, civil society, Ethiopian and international actors were approached – from humanitarian headquarters to communities in the Amhara, Oromiya and Somali regions. Research participants relayed stark discrepancies between the humanitarian theatre's ‘frontstage’, where disaster responders showcase an exemplary response, and its ‘backstage’, where they remove their frontstage masks and reflect on the information, the decision-making monopoly of the state and the intrusion of conflict dynamics into the humanitarian response. In humanitarian research and in policy, a collective conversation is necessary on where to draw the line between respect for governments’ sovereignty and the intrusion of humanitarian principles.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The humanitarian theatre: drought response during Ethiopia's low-intensity conflict of 2016

2019

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“…One older woman, for example, told me that she believed her neighbors were (or still are) government informants. A foreign researcher, perhaps accompanied by a stranger, entering the home of a local resident can cause suspicion on the part of other residents, and might even cause trouble for the survey participants (e.g., Matelski, ). In fact, it is not only neighbors who can cause discomfort for the interviewees, but also the police or other parts of the state apparatus who might become watchful.…”

Section: The Street‐intercept Survey Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conducting a Street‐Intercept Survey in an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Myanmar*

Buschmann

2019

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective In this research note, I share my experiences conducting a street‐intercept survey in Yangon, Myanmar. The prestudy aimed to measure postmaterialism among Burmese using Roland Inglehart's four‐item measure. The article discusses the key features and advantages of the street‐intercept survey method in difficult sociopolitical environments, the design and implementation of the study, as well as the results of the survey. Moreover, the ethics one ought to consider in authoritarian regimes are emphasized. Methods Original data were collected via a street‐intercept survey in Yangon, Myanmar. Results The prestudy confirmed the feasibility and the advantages of the street‐intercept survey method in Myanmar. At the same time, in Myanmar, difficulties in the translation of Inglehart's items raise questions regarding the applicability of this particular measure. Conclusion This note will be useful for researchers intending to collect survey data in Myanmar and other authoritarian regimes.

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“…In Myanmar, if the drug bags made one thing clear, it was that perhaps we had started in the wrong place; if we wanted to understand people's relationships with medicines, we had to understand their relationship with providers of antibiotics. Moreover, social scientists in Myanmar [25,26] have noted that the country's long history of authoritarian rule has left many people highly suspicious and fearful of unknown outsiders probing into their lives. This is a political context that international health research cannot easily escape: it made it very difficult to establish trust and almost certainly affected the way that people responded to the drug bags.…”

Section: Assessing Data Quality Against Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘Drug Bag’ method: lessons from anthropological studies of antibiotic use in Africa and South-East Asia

Dixon

MacPherson

Manyau

et al. 2019

Global Health Action

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Understanding the prevalence and types of antibiotics used in a given human and/or animal population is important for informing stewardship strategies. Methods used to capture such data often rely on verbal elicitation of reported use that tend to assume shared medical terminology. Studies have shown the category ‘antibiotic’ does not translate well linguistically or conceptually, which limits the accuracy of these reports. This article presents a ‘Drug Bag’ method to study antibiotic use (ABU) in households and on farms, which involves using physical samples of all the antibiotics available within a given study site. We present the conceptual underpinnings of the method, and our experiences of using this method to produce data about antibiotic recognition, use and accessibility in the context of anthropological research in Africa and South-East Asia. We illustrate the kinds of qualitative and quantitative data the method can produce, comparing and contrasting our experiences in different settings. The Drug Bag method can produce accurate antibiotic use data as well as provide a talking point for participants to discuss antibiotic experiences. We propose it can help improve our understanding of antibiotic use in peoples’ everyday lives across different contexts, and our reflections add to a growing conversation around methods to study ABU beyond prescriber settings, where data gaps are currently substantial.

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On Sensitivity and Secrecy: How Foreign Researchers and their Local Contacts in Myanmar Deal with Risk under Authoritarian Rule

Cited by 18 publications

References 7 publications

The humanitarian theatre: drought response during Ethiopia's low-intensity conflict of 2016

The humanitarian theatre: drought response during Ethiopia's low-intensity conflict of 2016

Conducting a Street‐Intercept Survey in an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Myanmar*

The ‘Drug Bag’ method: lessons from anthropological studies of antibiotic use in Africa and South-East Asia

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