Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between the anthropologist, his informants and the wider context of violent conflict in the Spanish part of the Basque region. The paper will draw on field experiences of the anthropologist being in between antagonistic worlds of suffering within a state context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between the anthropologist, his informants and the wider context of violent conflict in Spanish part of the Basque region. The paper will draw on field experiences of the anthropologist being in between antagonistic worlds of suffering within a state context.

I will argue that fieldwork in state contexts, where antagonism, tension, suffering and conflict are prevalent, pose particular or at least highlight certain challenges in connection with the anthropological method of participant observation. Informants trying to persuade the ethnographer "to chose side" in the conflict, might be described as one such challenge. Narrators of stories of suffering often claim absolute truth value and an acceptance of these "truths" by the anthropologist. Moreover narrators and narratives of suffering and violent acts are often intricately connected with dominant antagonistic discourses. In this way narratives of violence suffering accentuate issues of positioning and ethics while in the field and while writing ethnography. In this paper I will focus on these challenges as an anthropologist doing research in the intersection between antagonistic worlds.