Researching Domestic Violence in Bangladesh: Critical Reflections

ABSTRACT

In-depth interviews are now an established method of qualitative research across disciplines – Geography, Sociology, Social Work and even in Medical Sciences. However, there is a dearth of discussion about the issues entailed in using semi-structured interviews in Bangladesh, especially while conducting research on sensitive issues such as violence against women including domestic violence (DV). Drawing upon our experiences of conducting 42 in-depth interviews amongst the victims of DV, who sought help from two social welfare organisations – Women Support Program (WSP) and Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), both located in Sylhet, Bangladesh, we used critical reflections on issues pertaining to data collection, sensitivity, while discussing our identities and positionalities as researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• In-depth semi-structured interviews
• sensitive topics
• identity
• positionality

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the authorities of the two organisations namely ‘Women Support Program (WSP)’ and ‘Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST)’ for giving us permission to interview the victims of domestic violence, seeking help from those organisations. We also would like to express our deep sense of gratitude to the research participants. We are equally thankful to the two anonymous reviewers and Dr Derek Clifford, Editor, Ethics and Social Welfare for giving us the opportunity to review and resubmit the manuscript. Lastly, a big thank you to Miss Maitreyee Mahasweta Moudgalya for copy-editing the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rituparna Bhattacharyya is an Independent Researcher and Editor-In-Chief, Journal Space and Culture, India. In March 2018, she accomplished the Associate Fellow status of Higher Education Academy, UK, York Science Park, Innovation Way, Heslington, York YO10 5BR. She is also a volunteer, Training and Development, Alliance for Community Capacity Building in North East India (the UK registered charity no. 1106666). She obtained her PhD from the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Before joining PhD at Newcastle University, she worked as a Lecturer in Geography at Cotton College, Guwahati, Assam, India.

Tulshi Kumar Das is Professor of Social Work, has been teaching for the last 24 years at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. He received his MPhil and PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He served as the Head of the Department of Social Work, and also the Dean of School of Social Sciences at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology. His research interests include child labour, slum culture, domestic violence, disaster, poverty and microcredit, indigenous social work, etc.

Md. Fakhrul Alam is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. He received his Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree from the Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University, Australia. He takes interests in different research fields like domestic violence, social policy, poverty, sex work, street and working children, etc.

Amina Pervin is Professor of Social Work at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. She has been teaching at this university for the last 18 years. She received her IMSSW degree from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her fields of research interests cover family and couple conflicts, child care and child welfare policy, violence against women, etc.

Notes

1 Conducting Semi-Structured Interviews, Oxfam Research Guidelines, Retrieved from http://www.oxfam.org.uk/policyandpractice.

2 The Sylhet region of Bangladesh bears a distinct Sylheti identity not only in terms of the Bengali dialect, which is called Sylheti, but also with respect to its sub-culture, which stands out with its religiosity, family values, rituals and practices when compared to other parts of Bangladesh (Das et al. 2015; also, Bhattacharjee 2013). Historically, Sylhet, known as Srihatta, was a part of Bengal Presidency, which was carved out and attached to colonial Assam in 1874, and which remained a part of Assam until 1947, when Hindustan was politically divided into India and Pakistan. Sylhet was then detached from Assam and incorporated in the formation of erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) (Bhattacharyya 2005; Bhattacharjee 2013). In a way, the Sylheti sub-culture bears a type of legacy of Assamese sub-culture. However, with the passage of time, this legacy has become fluid and have given rise to a ‘Sylheti’ identity and culture within contemporary Bangladesh, albeit at times found to be reshaped by multiple intersections and influence of power, culture and history of Bangladesh.

3 Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), prepared by the University of Oxford incorporates three dimensions comprising 10 indicators. They are – Education (Years of Schooling, School Attendance), Health (Child Mortality, Nutrition) and Standard of Living (electricity, sanitation, water, floor, cooking fuel and assets) (Alkire and Sumner 2013; Bhattacharyya 2017). If an individual is deprived of one-third of these weighted indicators, then the particular individual could be referred to as ‘multi-dimensionally’ (or MPI) poor. The 2017 MPI for Bangladesh is 0.196 (urban 0.10, rural, 0.23); the percentage of MPI poor stands at 41.3 per cent. The percentage of population vulnerable to poverty is 22.5 per cent, 15.7 per cent live in severe poverty, and 11.6 per cent are destitute. The inequality among the MPI poor stands at 0.156. The MPI for Sylhet is 0.320 (here, 16.8 per cent are vulnerable to poverty; 32.1 per cent live in severe poverty and 23 per cent are destitute) (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (2017). ‘Bangladesh Country Briefing’, Multidimensional Poverty Index Data Bank. OPHI, University of Oxford. Retrieved 21 December 2017 from, http://www.dataforall.org/dashboard/ophi/index.php/mpi/country_briefings).

4 Our team comprised of four (two females and two males).

5 Kwame Anthony Appiah: Mistaken Identities Episodes, The Reith Lectures, BBC iPlayer Radio. Retrieved from, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080twcz/episodes/player.

6 Please refer to note 5.

7 2017 Global R&D Funding Forecast, Retrieved from http://digital.rdmag.com/researchanddevelopment/2017_global_r_d_funding_forecast?pg=4#pg4.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received a research grant of US$1000 in 2011 from the ‘University Research Center’, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh for conducting the study.