Paper short abstract:

This paper, based on field research in Somalia, examines how changing international interpretations of violence affect how researchers, the “researched upon” and local fixers and facilitators are identified with violence.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers research in conflict zones amidst changing international interpretations of individuals' associations with violence. This includes the criminalization of violence in the course of armed conflict, bringing closer scrutiny of the researcher as associated with the criminal exercise of violence and as a possible source of information about criminal activity. These changing interpretations pose ethical and methodological challenges for researchers and the "researched upon".

This paper will develop categories of relationships between researcher and "researched upon" [research subjects, fixers, and their communities] that traces impacts of changing international interpretations of violence in conflict zones. The author will use vignettes from his research conducted in Somali regions since 2006 to explain how selective criminalization of violence has affected rapport between researcher and local actors. Through this lens the researcher also becomes a subject of changes, navigating a treacherous legal terrain that criminalizes contact with individuals that governments consider "terrorists" or "war criminals" and risks of appearing on secret no-fly lists and other sanctions. The paper also examines how international counterinsurgency campaigns affect field researchers and the "researched upon," and the conceptual and legal vagueness of the concept of governments "at war in countries with which they are not at war."

This paper will be framed in terms of reflexivity in the social relationships between researcher and "subject" as an essential ingredient in learning from experts in violence and for personal security. Changes in this international context hinder the construction of interactive learning essential to the social science project.