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- Convenors:
-
Nerina Weiss
(Fafo Research Foundation)
Erella Grassiani (University of Amsterdam)
Linda Green (University of Arizona)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
Short Abstract:
Researchers have increasingly addressed the topic of violence in its myriad forms. What is still missing, however, is a profound discussion on how we, as researchers, can get better prepared, and can prepare our students, for doing research on and in violent settings.
Long Abstract:
During fieldwork, anthropologists have often become entangled in violent situations, ranging from the spectacular to the seemingly mundane. Seldom, however, have these experiences found their way into academic disseminations.
We know that the intense and repeated exposure to violence, social suffering and conflict in the field and through the data processing may negatively affect researchers, both personally and their ability to analyse and reflect on the material gathered. The need for supervision and reflection has been acknowledged within NGOs as well as for aid workers stationed in conflict settings. Most researchers working in academia, however, are still left alone to cope with the personal, ethical and emotional dilemmas that can emerge in the field and when processing data.
This roundtable encourages open conversations about violence and its aftermath not only on the lives of our interlocutors but on the lives of our students and ourselves. We invite researchers to reflect on their positionality, methodological dilemmas and the emotional costs of doing research on and in violent settings. What are the institutional perspectives on researching conflict and violence, and how are we to take care of ourselves and our students?
Accepted papers:
Paper short abstract:
In this contribution, I reflect on a personal experience conducting fieldwork amid shooting, where, after Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, the risk of stray bullets generated paralysing anxieties that halted my research.
Paper long abstract:
In this contribution, I reflect on my experience conducting research in a neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro where shootings happened frequently, and how the sound of gunfire affected me differently after Covid-19 lockdown measures were put in place, mid-way through fieldwork in March 2020. Armed clashes that I was previously able to place within the web of relations of the neighbourhood had, after lockdown, shifted to and intensified in a different area, where I was residing, but about which I knew little. I then describe my own state of paralysing anxiety and fear after a stray bullet pierced the water tank of the house where I lived, a few meters above my bedroom window. I reflect on these emotions as personal reactions to the impossibility of determining the severity of the risk was under. I propose that, when preparing to conduct fieldwork in violent settings, we must think beyond the bureaucratic framework of risk assessments to consider how different dangers might intersect with personal sensitivities and affect us in ways that may be hard to predict.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from fieldwork experiences in Jamaica, the talk will explore how extended exposure to violence can lead to its normalization, while raising theoretical questions about the anthropological study of murder.
Paper long abstract:
When I returned from two years of fieldwork in Jamaica, conducted during years when the country suffered from one of the highest murder rates in the world, my sister told me in one of our conversations that I have “normalized murder”. Indeed, during my fieldwork, I associated quote often and closely with men who killed: gang members, police officers who participated in death squads, as well as 'ordinary' people who had committed murder at some point in their lives and who paid the price for it. In the talk, I will discuss turning points in the research that made me feel that murder is indeed quite a 'normal' thing that humans sometimes do, and even learn to “stop worrying and start loving” murderers. I will raise questions about the ethical and political meaning and dilemmas that arise from such a stand. At the same time, I will try to think about why anthropology, which has dealt extensively with issues of sin and taboo, does not offer us ethnographic descriptions and theoretical engagement with the homicide phenomenon. What can anthropology still contribute to the cross-cultural understanding of 'murder,' and is it even possible to talk about such a category in universal terms.
Paper short abstract:
I would like to discuss the findings I present in a chapter written for the book "Emotions, Ethics and Mass Atrocities" (to be published in 2025), titled "An anthropological perspective: dealing with emotions when conducting ethnography in conflict-affected areas"
Paper long abstract:
In this chapter I divide sections into 'before', 'during' and 'after' fieldwork, where I present 'lessons learned' in each section. One of the main arguments is that the discussion still needs to start within anthropology, I am hence very happy to see read this roundtable description (and believe to be a perfect fit!). Hereby the abstract of the chapter:
"Within anthropology, emotions have mostly been discussed in relation to reflexivity (e.g., Glynis, 2013; Davies & Spencer, 2010). It is, in other words, hence acknowledged that the ethnographer is the research tool, which raises the question how personal emotions impact the validity and reliability of ethnographic data. While this is a crucial question, there continues to be a lack of reflection on the personal impact of ‘bearing witness’ to traumatising events while conducting ethnography. In line with a slowly growing body of work on dealing with emotions within ethnography (e.g., Robben & Hinton, 2023), this chapter offers a lens on the personal impact of conducting fieldwork in conflict-affected settings. Through detailing the emotional impact I experienced during fieldwork in various places, this chapter demonstrates the importance of (secondary-)trauma awareness. As such, this chapter draws attention to the need for researchers to be aware of the emotional toll research takes, as well as the crucial need for institutional support within this process."
Paper long abstract:
My previous research focused on the legal and bureaucratic classifications by which West Bank (WB) labour was regulated at the time and the employment of 'the enemy' was legitimized. It was an ethnography of the fluid, constantly negotiated legal status of WB Palestinians mass labouring at the time, inside the Green Line, focusing on the dual danger they are both collectively attributed with as well as experience and face. This danger, I argued, mobilized what I conceptualized as an economy of danger, through which the state of Israel minimizes WB physical and political presence across the land to the most profitable minimum. My DPhil project continues this research and was planned to broaden its scope by adding to its focus Jewish employers of WB labourers, interested in the negotiations and mediations of danger and profit that take shape in the context of these labour relations, tracing the political and territorial border formation and maintenance they are both shaped by and promote. In this talk I will present how Oct 2023 and the catastrophic violence it brought abruptly reshaped Israel’s policy towards WB labourers, still evolving today, touching upon its territorial and political possible implications and my relationships with my interlocutors
Paper short abstract:
This autoethnography of a violent assault in 1980s Belfast and its aftermath focuses on the variable responses of justice systems (official and unofficial), and subsequent reticence in scholarly and professional contexts.
Paper long abstract:
The assault took place while the author was living in a housing estate on the outskirts of Belfast. In the aftermath, the author was confronted with a choice between official and unofficial (paramilitary) justice systems. He chose the former. The paper describes the consequences of this choice, the concepts of trauma then deployed in the assessment of compensation: an emphasis on physical injury and ‘blood money’ not emotional support.
The author was writing-up his PhD in anthropology at the time of the assault. It did not occur to him to inform his PhD committee, perhaps because the incident did not occur while he was doing fieldwork, but when he was literally at home. This conference would be first time he has discussed this incident at an academic conference of anthropologists. The paper considers reasons for this reticence, comparing his experience to that of other local scholars who experienced violence close-up.
After the ceasefires in 1994, and more so after the peace agreement in 1998, a grassroots movement of storytelling has flourished in Northern Ireland. But in the 1980s when this incident occurred the local norm was to make light of injury. Amongst local scholars, this stoicism seems to have persisted.
Paper short abstract:
Vulnerabilities can be devastating but they also connect people across differences and inequalities, allowing new forms of exchange, solidarity and care to emerge and thrive in fieldwork and academic institutions.
Paper long abstract:
While vulnerabilities can deeply affect researchers’ physical and emotional well-being, they are also powerful and revealing encounters with what makes us human in an entangled and unequal world. Building on reflexive and feminist anthropology, we introduce the concept of “reciprocal vulnerability,” recognizing that vulnerabilities are relational, shifting, and situational experiences and positionalities that can connect people across differences and inequalities, allowing new forms of exchange and reciprocity to emerge and thrive in fieldwork and anthropology more generally. Creating bonds of care and solidarity with others, including interlocutors and colleagues, reciprocal vulnerabilities can support anthropologists from all walks of life in their recovery from harmful and devastating experiences in the field and in academia. We therefore see vulnerabilities as a possible and common ground for an institutional ethics of care and solidarity for and with our students, colleagues and research participants, in which the exposure to harm or violence is neither invidualised and silenced nor heroicised.
Paper short abstract:
By combining our experiences and ideas as an anthropologist and a multiculturalist to teach a pre-fieldwork seminar, we were able to address students‘ feelings and needs. We argue for learning from each other to overcome disciplinary blind spots which are dangerous with respect to "violent work".
Paper long abstract:
This contribution examines the entanglements of three violent settings in which we have worked. Recently, we co-taught a seminar, which took an in-depth, emotion- and trauma-informed look at ethnographic fieldwork in violent settings. With our students, we were grappling with questions, such as: What emotional barriers exist when conducting research and to what extent can we break through these limits? What are the boundaries that keep us and our research partners safe? What theoretical, psychological, and embodied resources can we mobilize during our research trips? Using experimental methods, including role play and one-on-one conversation carousels, we confronted our respective fears and vulnerabilities. Our classroom was in the historically violent IG-Farben-Haus, a building on the campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt, which commemorates Germany‘s Nazi past. Our seminar adressed awkward questions that are rarely addressed in qualitative methods trainings and drew on own divergent training. Nilly was building on her work in a multicultural classroom in Israel, navigating the tension of working with Arab and Jewish Israeli students in war time where the idea of multiculturalism has become difficult to maintain. Catherine is an anthropologist who has worked in multiple violence-affected contexts in Mexico and Southern California. By combining our divergent experiences and disciplinary perspectives, we were able to make individual feelings and needs seen. We argue for setting aside disagreements (such as over the definition of "culture") in favor of learning from each other and addressing our disciplinary blind spots - which are particularly dangerous with respect to "violent work".
Paper short abstract:
Online misogyny seeks to silence women and reinforce patriarchal norms. Witnessing this affects me, shaping my reflexive process and methodological choices. I call for institutional practices to transform the emotional toll of encountering violence, with media anthropology offering new perspectives.
Paper long abstract:
In my research on online misogyny, I encounter various forms of violence, commonly trivialized due to its digital manifestation. Experiences range from feelings of disrespect to online sexual assaults and efforts to strategically silence women’s voices, reinforcing patriarchal norms. This undermines women’s sense of security and agency and can escalate into impacting offline life.
This pervasive hostility has shaped my research experience from the very beginning, leading to three key dilemmas: a practical one—how to manage emotional stress to continue the research and at what cost; a scientific one—how to analyze these violent experiences; and a personal one—how to navigate an environment that lacks sensitivity to these challenges (Stodulka, personal conversation, 2023).
As a woman, the research encounters deeply affect me - I can relate to participants' violent experiences and understand that their stories impact my own sense of safety and well-being. Consequently, my positioning - as both researcher and woman - shapes my methodological choices about what to engage with or avoid, making it a central part of my reflexive process. This dynamic represents a social fact that, for transparency, requires more attention.
I propose that institutions facilitate reflective activities for researchers facing violence, meeting an ethical obligation akin to climate activists' protest trainings (Nann, under review). Regular practices like supervisions can help express, manage, and transform emotions, shaping researchers’ lived realities of experiencing violence (White 2005). Insights from media anthropology can enrich this conversation by introducing new perspectives on violence in digital fieldwork.
Paper short abstract:
When conducting research with displaced people, relational kinship intimacies often arise. In this context, the positional shift of the researcher as an observant to an active participant for the mitigation of exposure to violence is both an ethical and emotional one, leaving longstanding traces.
Paper long abstract:
While preparation, access to having someone outside the field to honestly reflect with during fieldwork and learning self-care routines are key, the effects of conducting research in contexts of sudden or protracted violence can still be longstanding. Beyond the sudden cut of social ties and possible solidarities developed in the field, returning to the academic setting for the writing-up stage can also be experienced as an added form of violence, through the mis-recognition of the effects of PTSD and vicarious trauma, as well as, the embodied knowledge produced through these experiences, which may also relate to the researcher's active involvement in justice-making. The lack of institutional recognition of the emotional effects of traumatic processes in knowledge production, can leave one feeling alone and ashamed at a stage when analysing data can also be experienced as retraumatising. What is implied here, is a quasi-colonial relationality dictating that the academic has to forego emotional connections with their participants and themselves, for the sake of academic production. Reflecting on conducting fieldwork with people no longer on the move living in self-organised housing squats under imminent eviction in Athens, I centre methodological dilemmas, lingering regrets connected to inaction, emotional costs and also gains which can materialise in powerful insights, especially if writing can be experienced as healing. This can be greatly facilitated by a supportive institutional environment, which presupposes a repositioning from a metrics-driven, time and writing centred approach to academic knowledge, towards one focused on diversification and wellbeing.