Paper short abstract:

My paper is inquiring the risks of conducting ethnographic research in complex disasters, where a disaster situation is heightened by the presence of phenomena’s as violence, famine, epidemics or social anomie. I am comparing the fieldworks of four ethnographers with different disciplinary background in order to rethink the limitations and possibilities of ethnographic research under such conditions.

Paper long abstract:

The frequency of complex disasters, where a calamity is embedded in a situation of violence, epidemics or social anomie is increasing on a global level. Athe earthquake disaster and the Cholera epidemic in Haiti in 2010 ethnographers with different disciplinary backgrounds were confronted with the challenges of such complex situations. My paper is inquiring the risks they faced in their research and the coping strategies they developed. For this purpose I am comparing the field work of two doctoral researchers, including myself and two experienced ethnographers in Port-au-Prince in 2010 and 2011 in order to rethink the limitations and the possibilities of an ethnographic approach in disaster studies.

In complex disasters not only the security of the ethnographer and his psychological stability is at stake, but also the security of the researched, who find themselves affected by multidimensional vulnerabilities. The researcher has also only limited access to the social and physical space, where his research object is placed. Furthermore ethical questions about the presence of the researcher in a situation of scarcity and the legitimacy of his methods vis-à-vis personal and collective trauma and grieve appear and must be integrated in the methodology of the ethnographer. Finally a complex disaster management with fast changing actors and structures requires reflections about scale and constant adaption to the field.

The strategies researchers developed during the Haitian crisis while facing those risks give hints to understand to what extent ethnography remains possible in complex disasters and about the results it produces.