Introduction: identity, jeopardy and moral dilemmas in conducting research in ‘risky’ environments

In 1968, Clifford Geertz, one of the world's most influential symbolic anthropologists, wrote:

Most social science research involves direct, intimate and more or less disturbing encounters with the immediate details of contemporary life, encounters which can hardly help but affect the sensibilities of the men who practice it … An assessment of the moral implications of scientific study of man which is going to consist of more than elegant sneers or mindless celebrations must begin with an inspection of social scientific research as a variety of moral experiences. (1968, p. 141)

Geertz's writing, 49 years ago, lacks the gender sensitivity that we now view as customary in the social sciences. But this should not detract us from the main point he is trying to make which is that social science thinking and practice is fundamentally moral (and therefore subjective) because it deals with human beings in all their complexity. He writes in the same article that ‘ … the moral quality of the experience of working social scientists, the ethical life they lead while pursuing their inquiries, is virtually never discussed except in the most general terms’ (1968, p. 140). This remains the case today within the world of social science where there appears to be a serious shortfall with regard to deliberations about issues of morality, contested ethics, emotions and risk taking. This collection results from the identification of this ongoing deficit in social science literature, and locates the moral and ethical dimensions of doing social science in ‘risky’ environments, particularly in the developing world.

In his article, Geertz reflects on his research work in what he calls the ‘new states’ or what today would most likely be referred to as developing countries or part of the ‘global south’. All the contributors in this collection have conducted fieldwork in this more ‘risky’ part of the world, still developing economically and politically. Some of the contributors to this special issue are indigenous to these spaces, while others are not. Their research locality is significant, although it is important to remember that many of the dilemmas that are dealt with here are also relevant to those who do field research, even in contexts that are viewed as ‘safe’ or uncontested. Researchers working in prisons, gangs, low economic housing estates, hospitals and a range of other settings do have to deal with uncomfortable matters such as emotional discord, a lack of conviction around tick box ethics requirements, choices to exit the field prematurely and mechanisms for minimising danger and harm. It is also important to recognise that all social contexts change very quickly; an environment that has been ‘stable’ and safe can rapidly turn into a locality of conflict and insecurity, in the global north and in the global south.

This collection does, however, focus specifically on the experiences of a group of social scientists and their quest to address questions of agency and moral discomfort during their fieldwork in precarious environs. Most of the contributors to this collection are young and indigenous to risky spaces from different parts of the globe such as South Africa, Brazil, India, Egypt and Yemen. ‘Non-indigenous’ researchers from Germany, the United States and Australia were also invited to contribute, as they had conducted research in precarious locations, and were keen to reflect on what this meant in for them in thinking more deeply about tricky questions of methodology and ethics. Their research approaches range from ethnographic to participatory action research with a vast array of research methods being employed. The scope of their research varies from advocacy, to consultancy, to descriptive and explanatory research. What holds this collection together is the reflexivity of a group of researchers – the great majority women – who raise critical questions about their positionality and about strategic and ethical choices they have had to make in conducting their research. They make reference to research in these environments as complex, messy and profound. At times, doing research in such contexts is experienced as objectionable, frustrating and even confusing.

In re-examining the contexts in which young scholars’ conduct their research, this collection examines the many possible ways in which fieldwork designs could be readjusted to allow for worthwhile and relevant research outcomes. The kinds of alignments spoken about by the contributors include dealing with positionality, personal moral dilemmas, ethical concerns and risk minimisation. The multiple tactics that they employed in doing research in risky environments demonstrates that there is no single solution to any of the tricky issues they confronted.

Despite the fact that the issue of subjectivity and bias within the social science have been debated for decades (Krieger, 1985), there remains a pressing need for ongoing reflection and debate about research methodology and research ethics, especially in non-traditional settings where the personal is political and where the political is deeply personal. Here, the need for sense making of the subjective reality and the complexity of positionality is laid out unapologetically for sense making. What emerges clearly from the set of articles in this collection is that both ethics and positionality are fluid, and that in most cases flexibility is what makes research possible in risky circumstances. Being able to adapt to circumstances, shift research direction and engage relationally in non-conventional ways with research participants seem to take primacy over any need for certainty or age-old concerns about researcher objectivity.

As the editors, we hope that this collection will contribute to the building of grounded theory-based research and to the creation of a network of researchers who are keen to reassess traditional approaches to doing social sciences research in circumstances that are uncomfortable, even dangerous. The collection, we believe, is unique in that it demonstrates the possibility of south-north knowledge building in an area of social science (i.e. methodology) literature that remains dominated by northern views and perspectives.

Researching risky environments or unstable spaces

The articles that make up this collection reveal a number of dilemmas about conducting research in places that are considered precarious. Precariousness is different from dangerous. Precarious places are those that are characterised by uncertainty, unpredictability and even instability. All the research sites that are written about in this collection are precarious. Some are more risky than others. These include Pakistan, Kenya, Yemen and Egypt where real physical risk and danger confronts citizens and researchers on a daily basis. Here, poor decision-making on the part of the researcher can have very serious consequences and bring significant harm. As a contributing author, Viqar (2018) reminds us, in risky environments, researchers can become ethnographers of brutality and hostility.

In environments that are precarious, but not endemically violent, such as China, Uganda, India and Brazil, ongoing fear might be less prevalent as an emotion and as a driver of methodological choices. However, even in these places, what is palpable is a constant lack of certainty about ways of relating, the consequences of research interventions and emotional discomfort. Perhaps then distinguishing between dangerous and precarious places is not particularly useful. Drawing on the work of Sluka (1990), another contributor to this collection, Wilson (2018), reminds us that, all ‘anthropological’ research always has the potential of being inherently dangerous. However, it is undeniable that this inherent danger increases dramatically in places characterised by conflict or by deep social and political divides.

As noted above, most of the contributors to this collection are originally from the countries that they are researching, broadly classified as ‘developing’, non-democratic, or even authoritarian. They thus bring to the field tacit knowledge about tricky circumstance and to some extent legitimacy as researchers which ‘outsiders’ would not have. Yet, as they show, this full or partial ‘insider’ identity does not assure immediate acceptance. Nor does it mitigate the harms that researchers face in risky places. Indeed, in some instances the insider identity adds to the discomfort and the risk of doing research as the authors fear being exposed as not native enough or as partisan. Periods spent doing post-graduate degrees in the developed world have created barriers between researchers and their participants and even suspicion about the aim and use of research findings. All of this means that researchers, both native and foreign, have had to reflect on pertinent issues about identity, truth, emotional risk and harm. The authors all talk to the messiness of research in risky environments. They talk to the real methodological, moral, ethical and emotional dilemmas they face that are far less likely to be as salient if the research location was in established democracies.

It is important to recognise that most of the authors that have contributed to this collection are young or emerging researchers, having recently completed their doctorates. Evident in their writing is an openness about the difficulty of being insider and outsider simultaneously, about making very hard choices about whether to remain in the field or to exit and about also their emotional vulnerability. There is a freshness in their recognition that research is sometimes serendipitous in both process and outcome. Through their raw honesty, they raise questions, and provide possible answers, to others who might enter risky environments with little guidance from supervisors or research peers, having to make decisions in-situ, knowing that ethics boards do not provide the answers they require. In so doing, these authors present a challenge to all social scientists to recognise that there are no definitive ‘scripts’ or ‘tick boxes’ for doing qualitative research when your personal positionality and your research locality embody and generate vulnerability.

Scott and Fonseca – both based in Australian universities – go as far as to say that for researchers dong fieldwork in risky situations, existing ethics review procedures and regulations are essentially ‘unfit for purpose’ (2010, p. 288) and require complete revision. Van Den Hoonaard (2003) and Sin (2008) would concur with this perspective. They argue that social scientists tend to oblige ethics boards mechanically only to find that in doing research in risky situations, there is substantive back-stage doubt about operationalising ethical frameworks. What counts most for many researchers who opt to do research in dangerous and precarious contexts is authentic knowledge production and the protection of the researched community (Marks, 2012).

Finding identity and commonality in divided societies

Every author in this collection raises questions about researcher identity. As they enter and journey the field, they are confronted with real struggles to determine to what extent they could find commonality with their research participants. This was perhaps most sharply experienced by those who could be described as ‘diasporic researchers’ (Henry, 2007). These researchers, originally from the global south and now based in the global north, were confronted with the ongoing challenge of their authenticity within their ‘home’ communities, ‘making hybridity and hyphenated identity a compelling option’ (Henry, 2007, p. 70). They were simultaneously positioned at the centre and at the periphery, and had to make sense of what this meant and how to respond to this meaning, only once in the field. The dilemmas of authenticity and dystopian identity were generally not anticipated by the researchers, or their supervisors, prior to engaging in their fieldwork.

Tyagi (2018) as a young Hindu woman believed that through employing a feminist empathic approach she would be able to embed herself in a Hindu right wing girls’ camp. She enters this space with uncertainty, but also with a belief that her youth, and her common cultural background will create the bonds she feels will make her research endeavour somewhat simpler. Yet to the contrary, she quickly realises her ideological discomfort with being in this social context, as well as the reality that her ‘urban privilege’ fundamentally separates her from the girls in the camp. Her empathy proves to be as problematic as it is enabling as she begins to feel huge discomfort both with what she witnesses and her inability to actively intervene to change the circumstances of her research subjects.

The preference for a feminist approach to conduct research in ‘risky environments’ is shared by Leggett (2018) in her article on doing environmental research in China. For Leggett, the feminist interview is empathic, promotes knowledge sharing and may even employ the (therapeutic) skill of immediacy. This stands in stark contrast to more positivistic approaches which Leggett believes can be potentially harmful in risky environments; when ‘hard’ evidence is placed above individual emotion and experience, potential harms are generally not considered. Leggett thus makes the case for being transparent as a researcher and for employing Pieke’s (2000) idea of ‘fieldwork serendipity’. Fieldwork serendipity requires the researcher not only to reflect on his/her own positionality, but to use this reflection and an understanding of social context in the most flexible and creative manner to be able to be optimally responsive to local circumstances.

Yet while Leggett speaks of the need for flexibility, she is equally adamant about the need for her research to be ‘ethically led’. This translated into being transparent about her own positionality and agenda, as well as her ability as an Australian foreigner to escape the highly polluted (environmentally and politically) research location. Her identity as a foreign researcher also informed her moral choice not to take on an activist positionality, despite the feminist push for researchers to be change agents that Nast, together with other feminist researchers, point out in an issue of The Professional Geographer in (1994).

For Viqar (2018), finding how and when to draw on her multiple identities as a woman and a Pakistani with a particular ‘ethnic’ background was complex and each at different points in time, alternate identifications were mobilised. She openly shares her very personal feelings of internal disruption as someone who both identified with Karachi as home (the place where she grew up), and her more recent disconnect from the city as a result of living in Canada for more than a decade. Her move to Canada, she openly reflects, afforded her many privileges, including that of living a safe and predictable life. Yet her Mohajir ethnic background continued to provide her with the ‘right to the streets’ and to be claimed as part of a significant community within the urban Karachi space that she was researching. Her ethnicity, while not central to her personal identity in Canada, became salient in her fieldwork, not simply as a protective mechanism but also as a means to make connections and for inclusion. As she puts it, she ‘performed’ identity strategically, drawing on her own real experiences growing up in the place that she opted to make sense of as a ‘relative outsider’. Performing ethnicity provided an important mechanism for ‘urban belonging’. So too did being a woman. Viqar makes the point that being a woman had a protective impact as she was viewed as relatively non-threatening. At the same time, cultural norms meant that as a woman she had to be accompanied by a male ‘escort’ when the area she was wandering in was seen to be in heightened danger. Ethnicity and gender remained contingent even in the Karachi context where both are salient.

This safety in womanhood experienced by Viqar contrasts strongly with Ashley Wilson's (2018) experience; she felt that being a woman made her an easy target in the informal settlements of Kibera in Kenya. In her research journey, she needed to have a male friend or colleague constantly on ‘speed dial’ in case of any emergency situations. Her identity as ‘outsider’ doubled the risk as her research participants were very suspicious of outsiders, particularly foreign nationals. Wilson points out that the residents of Kibera are very sceptical of what she refers to as ‘slum tourism’ which has not benefitted the community (financially or otherwise) in any way. Foreigners and their organisations are thus viewed largely as pariahs, exploiting poverty as a point of observational interest.

In dealing with her outsider status, Wilson had to make sure that at all times she was accompanied by a co-researcher who knew the residents of Kibera well, including the protocols for engagement and their broader moral economies. Wilson's vulnerable identity as an outsider (even though she lived in Kibera during her data gathering period) was only minimised through this collaboration and the sensitisation it brought about. ‘Outsiders’ were always under threat of recrimination in Kibera because of real histories of exploitation by tourists, multi-national and international organisations and even central government.

De Clerck and Lutalo-Kiingi's (2018) research is situated in Uganda, a country said to be a leader in deaf advocacy in Africa. This status emerged after sustained collaborations, at state and non-state levels, with Nordic countries such as Denmark. De Clerck is both a part of the community she is studying and apart from it. She is a deaf scholar but her ‘home’ country is Belgium. She recognises the importance of collaborating with a Ugandan scholar in conducting research into the morpho-syntax of Ugandan sign language. Her collaborator and co-author, Sam Lutalo-Kiingi, is the chair of the Ugandan Deaf Development Association; was one of the first people to be trained in Ugandan sign language and received his doctorate in the United Kingdom. At the time of researching and writing the article, he was based in his home country, Uganda, as a lecturer. Both researchers are fluent in multiple sign languages, including Ugandan sign language. In conducting the research, and being sensitive to local political dilemmas, Lutalo-Kiingi took the lead in doing the actual doing of the interviews, with De Clerck remaining literally ‘behind the camera’. This collaboration allowed for a complex web of inside/outside perspectives and reflections about sign language and about north-south knowledge exchanges. Legitimacy for the project did not result directly from the insider (deaf and Ugandan) positionality of the researchers, but more importantly from the participatory action research approach that was employed. The research agenda was driven by the interests of the deaf community through representative non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

In reflecting on archival fieldwork, Nassar (2018) describes how the environment of dust in the city becomes an integral part of the research and gets internalised in the researcher's identity and questions of subjectivity. By opting for a relatively safe methodology, Nassar ventures into a risky environment, through a mechanism of manoeuvring danger and reducing harm. However, a non-traditional factor arises and reshapes the way she had designed to research her own city, where she grew up and studied. Nassar turns to describe how dust, as a ‘materiality’ and a ‘metaphor’ became an essential factor manipulating her subjectivity and access in the field.

Unlike Nassar whose fieldwork methodology did not deter her from continuing with her research and her journey through her city, for Abdelhalim (2018) being a Muslim woman in her native country had both advantages and disadvantages. One the one hand, she was viewed as unthreatening because of her gender. On the other, being a woman led to her exclusion from certain ‘male’ conversations and she was viewed as an easy target when violence did occur. Despite her understanding as a ‘native’ of the need for her to dress and behave in very prescribed ways in order to be accepted, she felt deeply uncomfortable with this and lived it out as an imposition. Familiarity with cultural and religious norms, in her case, did not prevent her feeling of apartness from the context that she would otherwise be expected to have internalised as a ‘native’ person to the city of Cairo.

According to contributing author, Aya Nassar, Abdelhalim's concerns and dilemmas are shared by many Arab women who research their own fields, confronting a range of methodological ‘spectres’ and innumerable questions about motive, fear, memory, outcome and self-identity (see for example: Altorki & El-Solh, 1988; Bolak, 1996).

de Souza Santos (2018) also anticipated that doing research in her native country, Brazil, would be straightforward. Yet the first urban site she hoped to research was confrontational; she felt threatened by the disorder and hostility in Luz (also known as Crackland). The ongoing crime and violence was experienced as threatening and her self-identity as Brazilian did little to reduce her own feelings of fear and disconnect. As a single woman she was confronted with the difficulty of finding a place to stay in the city of Luz, especially since she was regarded as either a mistress or sex worker because she was a young woman requiring short-term rental. As a result, she was forced to commute from a more middle class (and no doubt comfortable) apartment outside of Luz to conduct her fieldwork, compromising her ethnographic aspirations. Her gendered and class position rendered her ‘insider’ status fairly meaningless.

Augustin (2018) critically engages with Herrman's (2001) insider–outsider typology; her close association with the people of Southern Yemen through family connections definitely led to an identity of ‘insider’. Yet this status itself generated a need for self-reflection on positionality in a context where rumour and fear created both uncertainty and insecurity, just as these circumstances had led to rumours in the first place. Rumour making is rife in situations where persecution, prosecution, detention and killings are the order of the day, such as they were in the Southern Yemen region when Augustin was doing her research there. Augustin found herself unexpectedly aligning herself with the ideology and politics of her research participants despite the fact that she was not entirely native to Southern Yemen. She thus defines herself as an ‘involved outsider’, an identity she neither was able nor wanted to discard. Her solidarity with the Southern Yemeni population, she argues, brought with it both incredible insights and accusations of partiality. Augustin employed Tillmann-Healy’s (2015) concept of the ‘ethic of friendship’, which she viewed not only as fundamental to building trust and lasting relationships, but also as necessary for her very safety.

Augustin makes no apology for her submergence in the lives of her respondents. Rather, she argues, in highly divided societies it is often extremely difficult for researchers to be non-aligned. This does not deflect from the researcher's capacity to be reflexive, nor does it undermine the validity of the research. On the contrary, her article demonstrates that this partiality, or her positionality as ‘involved outsider and temporal insider’, was critical to her being able to interpret the social world she was trying to make sense of. Of course it also played a critical role in gaining access, building trust and even in keeping safe. At times, however, these same emotional connections led to a real questioning of the significance of research in the midst of death and personal tragedy. The emotional exhaustion of conducting research when people that you have developed strong emotional connections with are threatened, tortured and even murdered is very real. This raises serious questions about the role of supervisors and colleagues in providing support and critical circles of advice.

The right to emotions

Criminologist, Liebling (1999) makes the point that accounts of emotions in social science writing are relatively recent. This is the case even in the discipline of criminology where researchers are dealing with trauma, pain and dislocation by groupings such as prisoners and even by police and prison wardens. However, Liebling argues that writing of emotions is critical, because it ‘can be a significant guide to or even source of valuable data’ (1999, p. 147). She asserts that trying to understand the human environment ‘without subjective feeling is almost impossible’ (1999, p. 149), particularly in risky environments such as in prisons.

Despite conscious recognition by social scientists that there is no separation between our researcher and our human lives, ‘most behave, read and write as though they are separate’ (Liebling, 1999, p. 148). In much the same vein as Liebling, Whiteman (2010) writes that deep emotions, even heartbreak can actually help researchers to connect with their data and the people they study.

The need to acknowledge, process, analyse and write about emotions as social scientists is advanced by Nassar (2018). Nassar talks about the complexity of living through some of her respondents’ experiences that she was aiming to describe and interpret. In her article on fieldwork and subjectivity in Cairo, she argues that space needs to be made for researchers to reflect on their emotions (in an autobiographical manner) when conducting and writing up fieldwork. It is important, she points out, for researchers to ‘reclaim a subjective voice’, particularly when located in complex research landscapes. Writing in this way, she believes, allows researchers to disentangle a range of practices in the field through acknowledging the role of the subjective and interrogating this rather than ignoring it. In risky environments, such as the city of Cairo or others in the Middle East, feelings of anxiety play a significant role in how fieldwork is conducted, spoken about and even analysed. Dust, which Nassar brings attention to in her work, is much like emotions. It is pervasive and our attempts to wipe it away are useless. Much like emotions, it keeps resurfacing and sticking to everyday existence.

Tyagi (2018) writes very powerfully about how despite, or because of, her attempts to subdue part of her ‘self’, she ended up feeling a range of overwhelming emotions. She felt particularly frustrated at not being able to act in defence of the young women in the camp for fear of not being adequately subdued as was expected of her. She also felt deeply saddened by the humiliation and denigration experienced by these young women. And she felt incredible guilty about opting to leave the site of her fieldwork because of her emotional standpoint of anger and resentment toward the older Samiti women who ran the camp. While she did not complete her study at the camp, her emotions played a critical role in facilitating deep reflection about its dynamics, allowing her to deepen her critical analysis both about the Hindu right wing camps and about the use of feminist methodologies. While Leggett (2018) did not leave the field, that is, China, she also speaks of guilt at being able to escape the heavy pollution of Chinese cities to return to the developed world (Australia and Germany) that is her base. In both Leggett’s (2018) and Tyagi’s (2018) case, guilt as an emotion led to a reflexive stance on positionality and on the context of fieldwork study.

Wilson (2018) also speaks of her emotional involvement in the lives of the residents of Kibera, many of whom had experienced severe trauma and dislocation. In dealing with this as a researcher, Wilson soon learned that being a ‘listener’ took priority over finding answers to targeted research questions. While she does not speak explicitly about the impact of narratives of trauma on her own emotional wellbeing, she does write about the need for interviews in circumstances of distress to be ‘therapeutic’. Yet social science researchers (with the possible exception of psychologists) are generally not trained in therapeutic interviewing despite the fact that ethics committees aim to ensure that in conducting their research, researchers do not trigger feelings of distress and discomfort, and mitigate against further harm when this does occur. Wilson correctly points out that while her own exposure to trauma and insecurity is not uncommon in anthropological research, very little practical support is given by the academy to (especially young) researchers who embed themselves in dangerous and traumatised spaces.

Augustin's (2018) deep emotional ties to the Southern Yemen community were partly the result of family connections in the area, and also the solidarity that was produced through living (jointly) in a highly risky social and political landscape. She writes honestly of her research community who quickly also became her ‘comrades’, a relationship reinforced by the ongoing surveillance, kidnapping and murders carried out by those on the ‘other side’. Feelings of fear reinforced connections amongst participants living under ongoing threat in a time of armed conflict. The real-life experience of ongoing violence and the ever present drones above translated feelings of fear into emotions of hatred and anger toward the other. Through her own personal deep engagement with the field, Augustin was able to make sense of the very uncomfortable feelings and everyday experiences of her respondents (including her own family).

Choosing to exit the field

Three of the authors in this collection, Tyagi, de Souza Santos and Abdelhalim, write about their decision to leave the field prematurely. These determinations were not made lightly, and there are lessons to be learned from these young researchers chose to write about making this tough decision. Their reasons for exiting so are different, but all equally significant and their accounts are unusual. As Michailova, Piekkari, Ritvala, Mihailova, and Salma (2014) write, there is almost a complete silence in social science about exiting fieldwork. Exiting determinations and disruptive relationships with fieldwork participants have huge potential to contribute to theory building and to very deep reflexive analysis, yet are seldom acknowledged or published.

For Tyagi (2018), being acquiescent in an environment that was perceived as emotionally harmful to young girls was deeply uncomfortable. Her suppression of what she perceives of as her true personality left her feeling heavily compromised. But her guilt at leaving the site is equally significant. This centres on not being able to fulfil her research journey, but also at abandoning the young girls (with very little agency) whose circumstances she felt deeply saddened by. Ultimately, as she views it, her power lay in her ability to write and talk about the Hindu right wing camps, rather than in trying to change them from within as a researcher.

Abdelhalim (2018) opted to end her research project in Cairo because of the risk that the research posed to herself and her respondents. Trying to make sense of citizenship in a country where authoritarian rule and militarisation are a feature of everyday life makes talking about ‘rights’ (or their absence) much more complex than it would be in established democracies. Abdelhalim's initial intended research focused on the lived reality of citizenship amongst the minority Coptic community in Egypt. While she initially believed that her own Egyptian citizenship would pave the way for a relatively easy engagement on this subject, this proved not to be the case. Indeed, she refers to her research endeavour as ‘an utter failure’.

Despite being born and growing up in Egypt, the fact that Abdelhalim had lived abroad since her post-graduate studies rendered her, in the eyes of the respondent community, as an outsider, and even a potential spy. Her safety and the safety of her respondents was thus seriously at risk given the political climate of Cairo at the time that she entered the site in 2013. Not unlike Tyagi, Abdelhalim's decision to exit the field in many ways resulted from her discomfort with her own privilege. Her Egyptian identity did nothing to diminish her feeling of separateness from the impoverished communities in a derelict part of Cairo that she had elected to focus on. But even more significantly, perhaps, her over-identification with fellow Egyptians led to her being ‘blinded by the familiar’. The reality, as she describes it, was one of being overwhelmed by feelings of restlessness and frustration to the point that exit was the only conceivable option.

de Souza Santos (2018) also opted to leave her initial site of study, Luz. While she had hoped to understand the failure of a well-known urban regeneration project in this part of Sao Paulo, the ongoing political and social tensions in this part of the city made ethnographic research almost impossible. Potential research participants were too fearful to talk of their views and involvement with the project. As a researcher she felt shunned and therefore isolated. Real threats to her safety within this part of the city ultimately led to her decision to exit the field and to find a new urban space in Brazil that was less precarious and threatening.

A combination of push factors led to the choice to exit fieldwork in the midst of the research process. Michailova et al. correctly point out that

Exiting fieldwork is associated with changes in identities and emotions as enacted and experienced by both the researcher and research participants and their (self) learning and reflexivity. Understood in this way, exiting raises important research questions about the foundations of fieldwork and theorising. (2014, p. 139)

Writing and publishing about decisions to exit fieldwork ‘prematurely’, as these three contributors did, takes intellectual courage; the norm is to focus on quality relationships in the field and researcher adjustment to situations. Each of these contributions demonstrates the need for ongoing flexibility, reflection and reflexivity, particularly in doing qualitative research. Publishing about ‘getting out’ is as critical as ‘getting in’ in the social sciences (Irvine & Gaffikin, 2006), and adds to theorising of issues such as subjectivity, interpretation, meaning, context and relationships (Michailova et al., 2014).

Negotiating harm and minimising risk

The management of risk is now an integral part of living in contemporary society (Beck, 1992; Fox, 1998; Giddens, 1991). As humans and as ‘scientists’ we have learned to manage, minimise and alter risk. In some instances it is even beneficial to maximise risk for effect or to ‘test’ extreme circumstances. Whatever the case, the ‘virtue’ of risk and precariousness is that it does demand that we become more aware, reflexive and accountable (Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2008). There is now an extensive body of literature on the minimisation of risk to research participants as an ethical goal. Yet it is only more recently that social scientists have begun to acknowledge, confront and problem solve around risks that are confronted by researchers that need to be managed (Liamputtong, 2007).

In considering risk to researchers, we need to account for both physical and mental risk (Dickson-Smith, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2006). University ethics committees and student supervisors are, for the most part, largely incompetent in anticipating and dealing with exposure to risk by researchers. These committees are often fairly uncreative and inflexible, and lack supervisory guidelines for researchers in risky environments (Sieber, 1993). In this collection, some of the contributors talk quite openly about their concern with their own insecurity and vulnerability and the choices that they made to reduce this often in complete academic isolation.

Danger, often accompanied by violence, is generally experienced as the most severe form of risk by researchers. In places where danger is a part of everyday life, such as Karachi, researchers are confronted with making decisions that reduce potential harms associated with violence, both to themselves and to their research participants. Viqar (2018) narrates how she frequently encountered the threat of violence in her research fieldwork. This violence was part and parcel of the everyday lives of her participants, and her challenge was to protect, as far as possible, the marginalised groupings that she was researching. Physical danger was impossible to escape in her fieldwork as, in her view, violence both destroys and reorders urban spaces. Violence in Karachi, then, is a tool for spatial governance, both on the part of state and non-state groupings, and is thus an inescapable part of the researcher's landscape.

Viqar had to make the difficult choice to curtail her anticipated immersion in the daily lives of her respondents as a result of both the reality and the fear of violence. She had to take guidance from her respondents in calculating how to reduce exposure to risk. She speaks of her shift to sharing with her respondents a very real and deep sense of suspicion of the state and its security apparatus. We learn through her article the importance of taking seriously local sensibilities and coping mechanisms as a protective measure. Of course, this is no guarantee of safety, but local knowledge certainly adds certainty and deferring to such knowledge at key moments also legitimates the researcher role and identity.

For Wilson (2018) who conducted her research in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, mitigating risk at a time of heightened political tension was what guided her research on informal marriage. To do so she developed, along with a locally based researcher, a mixed methods approach that would not draw negative attention to her or her respondents. Like Viqar (2018), Wilson was guided by local knowledge of the area and appropriate and sensible ways of entering into the lives of research participants. She defers to what she refers to as ‘localised ethic’ in navigating risk in Kibera.

Wilson writes about the sensitivity of ‘research’, as a word and an act, and how she learned very quickly from her native research collaborator about the inherent dangers of what would be considered as banal in other less risky research contexts. Non-disclosure of the research activity as ‘research’ was imperative. Research surveys were positioned as census information, leading to concealment of the reality of her activities in Kibera. In a context characterised by precariousness and informality, the use of the term ‘research’ would have simultaneously raised suspicion and generated fear about intention. Taking her lead from local ethics, she deviated from the conventions of informed consent as stipulated by university ethical codes. This was required for the ‘greater good’ of conducting the research that otherwise could not have been done. Wilson writes sensitively about the residents of Kibera as ‘risk averse’ and the importance of both understanding and respecting this. Her decision to privilege localised ethics and knowledge meant working creatively with the somewhat staid tick box rules of more conventional academic ethics boards.

As Wood (2006) and Marks (2012) illustrate, doing fieldwork in dangerous and precarious places brings to bear the real fluidity of ethics that are considered as immutable, such as informed consent and disclosure. In an article entitled ‘Ducking and Diving: Ethical and moral dilemmas in doing criminological research’, Marks reflects on her work as an ethnographer in dangerous and compromising contexts. She talks of the complexity of applying university crafted ethics in complex and dangerous situations where morality is not definitive, but is contextual, relational and deeply personal.

The slippery nature of ethics that Marks (2012) writes of is evident in the article by Abdelhalim (2018). Abdelhalim speaks to the false validity of informed consent amongst a population group that has no real understanding of research and whose basic needs for (and rights to) medical and other assistance dominate any other form of interaction, particularly with people that are viewed as outsiders. In addition, the simple act of talking about political issues was in itself dangerous for respondents, and this was an important consideration for Abdelhalim whose ethical pivot was ensuring the safety of her respondents and herself.

Also concerned about her personal safety, de Souza Santos (2018) talks about ‘risky closeness’, and how familiarity itself can be dangerous as participants claim researchers as advocates for their agendas. This is difficult to escape in urban spaces characterised by familiarity, where there is ongoing scrutiny of all aspects of personal life. Yet, for de Souza Santos, such familiarity was a preferred option to the possibility of personal risk in Luz where security agencies acted in ways that were violent and unpredictable. She acknowledges that while ethnographers in risky and dangerous spaces do make the decision to hold their ground in the research site, this was a decision she was not willing to take. Perhaps the depth of her knowledge of Brazil's security agencies as a Brazilian national led to a more heightened awareness of the real possibility of being a victim of the brutality of those who govern security. The precariousness of local urban politics generated fear and suspicion amongst de Souza Santos’ respondents, and as a result just ‘talking’ became a problem in and of itself. The research focus was a source of anxiety for the planners and built environment specialists that de Souza Santos hoped to engage with, and this too contributed to her decision to exit Luz in search of a less contested and risky space. In Ouro Preto where de Souza Santos felt far safer and less isolated, she learned the importance of silence as a tool to engage, particularly in public meetings, so as not to feed into localised (and often very personal) disputes between residents of this town.

Leggett (2018) also grapples with the extent to which researchers should act as advocates in risky research settings. She argues (controversially within a feminist framework) that taking on an advocacy role around environmental issues in China where regime policy change and practice is unpredictable, was not an option. Advocacy, in her view, would compromise her respondents as state bodies might not receive external advocacy (or what could be considered provocation) well, and could target local activists or respondents as a result. Leggett is aware that an overt advocacy role may be far less risky for researchers based in established democracies. This cautious position on the role of the researcher in precarious spaces and situations is shared by Geertz who argues that in ‘new states’, the problems that are identified are ‘rather deep’ (1968, p. 142); by trying to intervene in these, the researcher can in fact worsen existing agonising situations.

Augustin (2018) differs dramatically from Leggett in her approach to activism and advocacy. Augustin writes of her slow burn involvement in the Southern independence struggle. This was something she had not anticipated prior to entering the field. But her ties to particular families and friends positioned her very firmly within a political ideology and grouping. She writes openly about her mistrust of the Northern Yemenis which was deeply ingrained through her social network and participants and through witnessing the harassment and persecution of Southern Yeminis by the Northern militia. These political alignments in fact served to protect her as she quickly learned the verbal and body language that assisted her to recognise when rumours were likely to transform into threats. Her survival in the very precarious and dangerous context of Southern Yemen was the result of her embeddedness in the everyday life of the Southern Yemen community, including their political associational life. Through these close ties she became part of what she refers to as a ‘network of mutual control and protection’, especially when violence was taking place. Like her research respondents, she learned how to live in and through a chronic state of fear and terror. In particular, she learned how to navigate rumours which spread quickly and widely in situations where fear is tangible and mistrust is understandable. Societies in such states are highly polarised and while not all rumours are ‘true’, they hold within them real warnings about potential threats.

Nassar (2018) was far more cautious in her risk mitigation during her fieldwork in Cairo at a time when the city was experiencing outbursts of violence and outrage. She made a very clear decision to ‘be careful’ in studying her volatile home country. According to her, she abided by all the risk mitigation regulations stipulated by the British university she was based at when doing her doctoral research. In her own words, she followed a ‘Western’ set of ethics risk management. Instead of embedding herself in the daily politics and social movements of Cairo, she opted to step into the archives as a place of refuge, but also as a space where dust and the emotions that this reflects and evokes are inescapable. Nassar writes that avoidance of harm makes research ethical, yet at the same time the more clinical research becomes the more detached it is from reality. There is, then, a real trade-off that comes with harm minimisation in risky fieldwork settings both in terms of the ‘relevance’ of what is studied, and the emotions that emerge (like guilt) through being what Nassar calls ‘non-risky’.

But it is not just being in the field that is complicated, publishing research is too. De Clerck and Lutalo-Kiingi's (2018) article focuses on the potential harm of publishing the stories of marginalised or at-risk populations. Publishing information about the Ugandan deaf community brings with it a number of risks given the country context where democratic values and practices are still in design, and where fiscal management makes budgeting for the deaf community complicated. Information from respondents about sensitive issues such as the use of international rather than Ugandan sign language could lead to victimisation of deaf research participants as well as researchers. For De Clerck and Lutalo-Kiingi, mitigating this risk and minimising harm requires a ‘ritual dance’ which involves a constant balancing of the researcher's ethical responsibility; the wellbeing of research participants; and the interests of other (powerful) stakeholders. In addition, there was an ethics dance that had to be choreographed as confidentiality is extremely difficult to ensure when facial expression is critical to understanding sign language. The researchers thus had to find ways of reducing the risks to their participants by carefully selecting content that would be publicised and balancing identified and anonymous information.

De Clerck and Lutalo-Kiingi's key concern was to reduce the possibility of their participants being stigmatised, marginalised and isolated – a difficult balancing act when participants wish their stories to be told and known. While many deaf participants wanted their stories to be told, the researchers were aware of the possible risks to participants of making controversial statements about Ugandan policy and implementation in regard to sign language. The risks (emanating from the political field) of making information public were carefully explained to participants by the two authors. Risks to the scholars were also real, as research resources could easily be reduced or removed by the authorities if the research results were viewed as controversial. For Lutalo-Kiingi, as the only deaf linguistic specialist with a doctorate, the precariousness of his work security was a very real consideration that had to be factored into the design of the project and the way in which the research results were published. The risks to the researchers’ wellbeing are very real; the authors remind us that Makerere University, Uganda's oldest public university was shut down in November 2016 due to a fiscal crisis.

In reading the articles that make up this collection, it is evident that systems for reducing harm and risk trump the usual ethics paradigms of powerful organisations, be they universities, government agencies, or even NGOs. The complexities of doing research in risky and precarious spaces remain largely unwritten in methodology textbooks and even in social science journals. Even less is written about the decision to exit a site of study, particularly if this is because of personal emotions such as fear and anxiety. Yet, as we have noted, the realm of emotions as a means for sense making is under-documented, perhaps because there is an ongoing dominant concern – even in the social sciences – with issues of objectivity and neutrality (Inayatullah 2011; Sylvester 2011).

Conclusion

The articles in this collection have focused on a range of dilemmas – methodological and ethical – in doing social science research in risky environments. All of the fieldwork reflected on here is based in the global south. These articles, however, raise issues that impact on social science researchers in a very wide range of fieldwork environments, not limited to either risky environments or to the global south. Issues of emotions, partisan engagement, the slippery nature of ethics of the academe and an urgency to exit the field prematurely affect social science researchers in the global north too. For example, working in schools with children with disabilities is likely to generate a range of emotions for the researcher which could lead to difficult choices about how long to remain in the field and how to express in writing what was witnessed. Conducting research on evangelistic church leaders whose charisma can result in congregants engaging in self-harm activities will also no doubt leave the researcher with questions about the research ethics and objectives.

Doing fieldwork in prisons or in gang formations in the global north is equally likely to raise fears around safety and bring to the researcher's attention complex dilemmas about how to minimise harm and for whom, as it is in the characteristically more risky global south. Minimising harm for the researcher, and even for participants, might not be in the interest of the broader public good. For example, opting not to ‘whistleblow’ on cops (Marks, 2005) who maltreat vulnerable population groupings such as drug users or sex workers might result in this conduct continuing unabated. Researcher silence might even lead to research participants believing that their behaviour is acceptable, when in reality it stands in stark contrast to operating within a human rights framework. Decisions such as whether or not to whistleblow or what information gets published or whether to exit a research site is determined by a range of issues and circumstances. These include the relationships (both positive and negative) that researchers have with their participants; political context; personal emotions of the researcher (particularly guilt and anxiety); and the watchful (or not) eye of ethics committees. Yet these dilemmas are seldom written about in their own right despite their salience both in terms of researcher experience and in terms of knowledge generation.

The quandaries that social scientists confront, we suspect, takes place more frequently than is imagined, and are prevalent in both the global south and the global north. Yet it is perhaps in the global south that these issues are highlighted more deeply, and thus reflecting on them becomes more urgent. We are fortunate that these research experiences are increasingly being written about in the international language of English by those doing research in developing countries, and increasingly by researchers who are indigenous to those countries and whose second language is English (see for example Goduka, 1990).

It is important to bear in mind that the ethical and moral dilemmas spoken of in this collection resonate with those doing research outside of the social sciences. Researchers in biology, public health, public management and even information technology are also impacted by complex moral choices and by their position in research locations (real and virtual) that are unsettling. Professionals such as journalists, psychologist and lawyers who are equally confronted with the ‘morality of the moment’ (Bauman, 1998) and are continually making decisions that are far from clear cut and that are often uncomfortable. Deliberating about this, and ensuring these matters are published, is incredibly important in informing those entering research fields that are non-traditional.

The contributors to this collection demonstrate that they have had to adapt to conditions by employing mentalities and technologies that make the doing of research possible, particularly in the global south. Old debates about social research as biased and non-partisan come to the fore as researchers quickly realise that their own subjectivity matters, and that it shapes research processes and outcomes in very real ways. For many, aligning with research subjects is a means of survival and is critical to gaining access. Identifying with the daily realities of the researched is essential to gaining and maintaining legitimacy while not compromising the validity of their research findings. A variety of technologies or tools are crafted in the field. These range from dressing in ways that are acceptable; to finding the more hidden and material value in things such as dust; to having local experts on speed dial; to listening rather than interrogating; and to exiting the field when personal discomfort becomes too compromising. These technologies are not taught in methods courses but are learned in the field, often in very isolating circumstances (see Henry, 2007).

Young researchers engaged in post-graduate research usually find themselves located far from their supervisors who are based in the safe locality of universities in the global north, sometimes with very little knowledge of the daily dilemmas of researching in localities that are precarious. What emerges from the contributors of this collection is that young researchers doing research in risky environments require supervisors who are able to anticipate possible tricky circumstances and to provide real support and guidance, even from afar. Doing so might require prior arrangements with supervisors in like-disciplines who are based in the localities where research is being done.

Senior social scientists could also benefit from implementing some key technologies employed by the feminist movements such as speaking bitterness and making the personal political. Circles for sharing difficult circumstances and for support would assist in debriefing and in sharing moral predicaments faced by researchers when they are in the field, when they exit and when they write up. Supervisors and ethics committees need to acquaint themselves with non-Western ethical philosophies of decision-making (local ethics), and facilitate applying these in Western research settings and in so doing liquefy the existing binaries of research practice in the global north and the global south.

Being indigenous does not in and of itself act as a protective mechanism, nor does it necessarily mean that researchers carry with them the local knowledge required for them to navigate the social worlds in which they are embedded. As a result, supervisors need to be as prepared as young researchers themselves to craft exit strategies from the field when knowledge generation seems unlikely or when circumstances become too risky (physically, emotionally and ethically).

We are reminded by the contributors to this collection that the dominant research ethics that govern social science research remains more appropriate to the context in which they were developed – medicine in the global north (Fuse, Land, & Lambiase, 2010). The Westernised values that underpin ethics committees and regulations globally need to be revised so that they fit with the social realities of the global south. In short, ethics, like the real world itself, must embody fluidity in order to provide researchers with the confidence to be adaptable and situationally appropriate while at the same time remaining cognitive of the rationales behind established ethical charters. In the absence of this, important research could be halted, limiting our knowledge of situations that are already poorly understood.

Researchers in fields that are not easily subject to Western ethical frameworks will continue to feel that their work remains on the margins and that their own research stories are privatised. It is our hope that this collection brings to the fore the real need for new rules of engagement in social science research informed by alternative currents of thought that subjugate archaic ways of interacting as researchers. Researches in and of the global south, such as the contributors to this collection, remind us that research practice needs be conceived of as nuanced and culturally sensitive, breaking with universalised claims about research ethics and methodologies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Prof. Monique Marks currently heads up the newly established Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology (UFC@DUT). Initially trained as a social worker, she has a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Natal, and writes predominantly in the field of criminology. She has published widely in the areas of youth social movements, ethnographic research methods, police labour relations, police organisational change and security governance. She has published five books: Young Warriors: Youth Identity, Politics and Violence in South Africa; Transforming the Robocops: Changing Police in South Africa; and Police Occupational Culture: New Debates and Directions (edited with Anne-Marie Singh and Megan O'Neill); The Spaces In Between; and Police Reform from the Bottom Up (edited with David Sklansky). She has also published over 50 peer reviewed articles and numerous reports. She sits on a number of journal editorial boards as well as the Board of Trustees of the Safer South Africa Foundation. Her research is mostly ethnographic and takes place in spaces that are considered compromising or unsafe.

Dr Julten Abdelhalim is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. She obtained her PhD in political science from Heidelberg University (Germany). Before that she studied at the universities of Cairo (Egypt), Freiburg (Germany), KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Jawaharlal Nehru (India). Her PhD thesis has been transformed into a book, titled Indian Muslims and Citizenship: Spaces for jihād in everyday life (London: Routhledge, 2015). Her research interests include citizenship studies, revivalist Islamic movements and gender issues, democratic transformation, and youth in India and the Arab World.