Emotional And Ethical Challenges For Field Research In Africa

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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, to help fathom the inevitable bias in the researchers' position in the field and to assess the quality of the research findings.

In addition, they can show that the facade 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.

Review: 'This volume will be an excellent resource both for the seasoned field researcher and for those preparing to conduct research in conflict-affected countries, whether in Africa or elsewhere, for the first time. The contributions are both self-reflective and sobering, and should provoke careful and critical preparation by researchers.

I look forward to recommending it to my own students.' - Professor Chandra Lekha Sriram, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK '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