Paper short abstract:

The Casamance conflict in southern Senegal is 30 years old. The paper reflects on methodological and ethical issues raised by working relationships between researchers and members of the separatist Mouvement des forces démocratiques de la Casamance. It suggests approaches to mitigating the problems discussed.

Paper long abstract:

The Casamance conflict in the south of Senegal, rooted in a separatist rebellion, is now 30 years old. The relatively low or localised level of conflict over much of this period and the relatively benign research environment (with some notable exceptions) created by the Senegalese state have enabled researchers fairly easy access to and sometimes development of long-term working relationships with members of the rebel Mouvement des forces démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC). The rebels are in turn keen to engage with academic research as a means of 'getting their message out' and raising the international profile of their struggle. The paper reflects on methodological and ethical issues raised by these research dynamics. First, the highly fragmented nature of the MFDC and each faction's desire for recognition and resources make it hard for researchers to identify legitimate interlocutors. Second, researchers and their outputs risk in turn becoming inadvertently co-opted into the separatist project in various, sometimes subtle ways. Third, other voices in Casamance, a large and diverse ethnic and political space, may be neglected amid the focus on the conflict, the discourses and actions of the MFDC and Senegalese government, and reactions to these alone. The paper concludes with some thoughts on how to address such problems, showing how closer attention and a more inductive approach to the concerns of 'ordinary people' is not just a valuable counterpoint to the views of conflict actors, but essential to help researchers situate violent conflict in its broader developmental and social context.