Paper short abstract:

We will present the ethical and methodological dilemmas related to research on homeless people in Zagreb, focusing on the characteristics of field access and changes in research focus/position caused by immersion in the field (outsider/insider, etic/emic, participant observation/volunteer work).

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we will present the ethical and methodological dilemmas we have encountered while investigating certain aspects of the lives of homeless people in Zagreb. The research has been ongoing for more than a year and is related to the distribution of free meals for vulnerable groups of people organized by volunteer initiatives twice a week in the city center. According to some estimates, there are two thousand absolute homeless people in Croatia, half of whom live in Zagreb. In addition to the absolute homeless, the study also included people who are not homeless in the strict sense, but whose existence is threatened on a daily basis (unemployment, irregular employment, very low pensions, no property of their own, etc.). Special attention will be paid to the characteristics of field access and changes in research focus and our research position caused by immersion in the field and getting to know the research subjects (outsider/insider, etic/emic perspective, observation, participant observation/volunteering, etc.). The development of the relationship with the research subjects allowed us to gain a deeper insight into certain features of their lives, but from an ethical perspective led us to constantly question our research position, the appropriateness of classical and improvised methods, and the presentation of the results in a way that would give a clear voice to society and the relevant institutions while not threatening the dignity of the research subjects.

Paper short abstract:

This study shows that there is a need to reconceptualise notions of power and vulnerability not as fixed qualities inherent to the researcher or the research participant, but rather as dynamic and relational. It also shows that ethical conduct needs to be managed and negotiated in an ongoing manner.

Paper long abstract:

As homeless people are generally positioned to some degree as vulnerable, a need to transform research from a ‘top-down’ researcher-led encounter to a ‘bottom-up’ participant-led encounter (Aldridge 2014) has been acknowledged. Nevertheless, researcher positionalities and research locations can have an impact on power dynamics where binary constructions of researched/powerless and researcher/powerful need to be reconceptualised. Drawing on research experiences in a joint comparative research project (CSRP) on homelessness, this study rethinks and redesigns ethnographic research practices along more inclusive, collaborative lines that sometimes require case-by-case qualitative methodological approaches based on reflective and responsible judgements. To ensure non-hierarchical research relationships, our research participants are treated as knowledgeable experts and a two-way research relationship through an element of self-disclosure is also encouraged. Further, rather than just relying on procedural ethics, this research also shows the need for ethics in practice or relational ethics to help researchers deal with the unpredictable, often subtle yet ethically important moments that arise in the field while recognising mutual respect and connectedness between researcher and researched (Ellis 2007). This work shows that there is a need to reconceptualise notions of power and vulnerability not as fixed qualities inherent to the researcher or the research participant, but rather as dynamic and relational. While ethical conduct needs to be managed and negotiated in an ongoing manner, research processes also need to be flexible, with ‘knowledge’ negotiated through honest interactions between researchers and research participants and with the acceptance of potential vulnerability, anxiety or disharmony from either side.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will present insights from my ethnographic study of Ukraine about research methods in uncertain, unsafe and complicated situations. As well as I will give examples how it helps to disclose the individual and collective narratives that were entrusted in the context of war.

Paper long abstract:

Russia's aggression against Ukraine raised an academic opportunity and necessity to analyse how people live and how they experience situations of war, how they create individual and collective narratives. However, researching people who live in war conditions requires special attention to their emotional and physical state. It means that you must make some ethical considerations collecting material and writing about their experiences: to ensure that all information will be used for academic purposes; maintain the ethnographic imperative to preserve full anonymity; know what to ask at a particular time. It is especially important in such insecure, unsafe, and uncertain situations.

As a PhD student, I analyse war in Ukraine from micro level perspective. To collect information, I am using online semi-structured interviews and method of participant observation with people who live now in Lithuania, with people who left Ukraine in the beginning of war and with those people who are now in Ukraine. It raised some questions which are also important in the writing process: how digital ethnographic fieldwork helps to solve people's accessibility issues? Are these online conversations being more comfortable for people who are interviewed? How distance in research helps to control personal emotions and create a reflexive research process? How can we compare online and live material collection practices?

In this paper I will make some insights from my case study about methods in uncertain lives and I will give methodological examples how it helps to disclose individual and collective narratives that were created.

Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the process of involving 36 Syrian refugee youths as co-researchers in a project investigating the ways young Syrians work towards better futures. It reflects on how such involvement shifts the stakes of the ongoing ethnographic pursuit of coevalness (Fabian 1983) in research.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses a methodological experiment of involving members of the target group as co-researchers in ethnographically inspired research.

In 2021, the project Viable Futures: Near and long term prospects among Syrian youth in Jordan set out to investigate how young Syrian refugees work towards worthwhile futures while facing legal voids and profound material lack. It hypothesized that engaging young Syrians as co-researchers would yield novel analytical insights in a context where most programs for future-making are designed by NGO’s and policy makers without much input from the target group itself. Simultaneously, involving young Syrians as co-researchers would allow them an income and skills that could aid them in their pursuit of better futures in an exceedingly uncertain situation.

Practically, we trained 36 young Syrians who conducted qualitative interviews with other young Syrians on behalf of the project. Along the way, they took part in developing questions, refining the approach to interviewing and discussing the collected interviews. These discussions unfolded at several workshops, which took place in large meeting rooms at local NGO offices. Such workshops were spaces for reflection that allowed for mutual knowledge production on future-making among young Syrians. They also called for meta-reflections on the workshop situation itself as the Syrian co-researchers were there as a way to forge better futures for themselves.

Against this background, the paper reflects on the analytical, methodological and ethical affordances and challenges of such co-researching. What kinds of coevalness (Fabian 1983) might this create and for what/whose benefit?

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss how a deeply personal experience of loss and grief, connected to substance abuse and mental illness, could connect to larger contexts and speak to social issues when using autoethnography and creative writing as tools.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013 and 2015 the author lost two of her childhood friends - Marcus and Noel. They both died for reasons connected to social vulnerability, substance abuse and mental illness. In order to transform this personal experience into an ethnographic research project the author felt a need to explore new strategies for research, both in regards of collecting the material and in the task of depicting the lives of Marcus and Noel and this experience of loss and grief in text. In this, the author turned to autoethnography, as well as various forms of creative academic writing such as poetic inquiry (poetry as method). Non-conventional research seemed to demand non-conventional forms of writing in order to match content and form.

This paper will focus on the knowledge gained from this endeavour. It will discuss how a deeply personal experience of loss and grief could connect to larger contexts and speak to social issues when using autoethnography and creative writing as tools. It will show how we might come a little closer to the goal of social justice and grievability for those who are seldom viewed as grievable by transforming their experiences into texts that people can relate to.

Paper short abstract:

Visual ethnography shows the “work at home”, which is usually hidden away in the privacy. How is to deal ethically with the fact, that the protagonists took social risks by letting us reach into their private home and by naming mechanisms of academic social injustice not even being anonymized?

Paper long abstract:

Academic life, as Max Weber has phrased it, is a “wild hazard”. Until the unlimited professorship-contract, one is in a biographically vulnerable situation and needs to compete with others for positions and funding and in that way, for social continuity within Academia. Making discriminating mechanism and gender-hierarchies visible is hardly possible. One is always risking social exclusion from the academic field to do so.

On the base of this insight, we use the ethnographic film and draw close to the years of Covid 19 – a time where the uncertainty and biographical vulnerability of academic lives became catalyzed, particularly those of academic parents. We zoom in on the everyday life of five protagonists and their ways of negotiating care work and professional advancement with uncertainties. Visual ethnography with its cultural-anthropological approach serves as an empirical-analytical tool in its own right, as it will literally let us see the challenges of “work at home”, which are usually hidden away in the privacy. How did and do we ethically deal with the fact, that the protagonists took social risks by letting us reach into their private home and by naming severe mechanisms of academic social injustice not even being anonymized?

Indeed, parents’ uncertainties differ from those of other social groups. Still, we need to focus on the socio-political and existential dynamics in our very own field. As we contend, the ethnographic film, as a still peripheral form of analysis, functions as a strong discursive marker of imaginatively broadening our academic practice.

Paper short abstract:

Ethnographic research with drinkers in a First Nations community is permeated with ambivalence, especially if conducted by a non-Indigenous researcher. Including drunken states as a locus of research adds another element of uncertainty. The complex stories that emerge make the challenge worthwhile.

Paper long abstract:

Thomas King, Indigenous author, wrote: “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” His writing eloquently shows how everything we say and do reflects the stories we believe. Given the theme of this conference, I would like to share stories with you: particularly stories that I was unable to include in my doctoral dissertation despite its phenomenological approach. The ethnographic fieldwork on which the dissertation was based took place in Chisasibi, an Eeyou (First Nations) community in Northern Quebec, Canada. I conducted participant-observation and discussion-based interviews with people stigmatized as “drunks”. On the surface, my fieldwork looked like that of any other ethnographer. But a decision to include stories shared during drunken states necessitated a different set of ethical, methodological, and theoretical considerations. Adopting an ethic of harm reduction, a flexible methodology, and respect for fundamental Eeyou values of humility and non-interference were crucial elements in the success of this research. Throughout my time in the community and during the writing process, stories emerged that wove together multiple narratives: life experiences of Eeyou drinkers, my experience as a settler from an alcoholic family, colonial narratives that dominate academia and everything else in Canada, and narratives of Indigenous resilience and resistance. These complex stories highlight the ambivalence that permeates settler-Indigenous interactions. But they also expose the deep level of responsibility non-Indigenous researchers have toward the people who share their stories with them.