An introduction to JHR’s new Methods Focus series

Since the 1990s, questions of methodology and how they relate to the work of academic publishing have taken center stage in debates over research integrity and scholarly impact on policy. How can we best ensure that the peer review process fairly advances rigorous scholarship? In what ways can academic journals provide a service beyond assisting their authors in job searches and in gaining promotion and tenure? And how can editorial staff use journals not only to highlight current scholarly trends but also to push conversations about the future of various academic fields and critical intersections with policy?

These questions are even more pertinent for interdisciplinary journals, such as the Journal of Human Rights. Our journal has a broad readership, in terms of both geographic representation and disciplinary background. How can we best engage our diverse readers in a common conversation? How do we make methodologies intelligible across disciplines, so readers can scrutinize as well as learn from the practices of disciplines other than their own?

Our decision to develop a quantitative Harvard Dataverse portal two years ago was a first effort at addressing these questions.¹ The move was guided by two primary goals. The first was to allow scholars working on quantitative research on human rights to better engage with the data and findings published in the pages of JHR. Second, we wanted to provide a space for collaboration where scholars of varying disciplines could develop new approaches to quantitative human rights data analysis. As Benjamin Carbonetti (former managing editor of JHR and now our journal’s data consultant) explained in a research overview introducing the Dataverse site to our readers, “Both of these goals fit with part of our mission statement to ‘broaden the study of human rights by fostering the critical re-examination of existing approaches to human rights, as well as developing new perspectives on the theory and practice of human rights’” (2016: 157).

Beginning in this issue, we take this effort one step further with the introduction of our new Methods Focus series. The series will be an ongoing initiative, jointly curated by Carbonetti and myself. As scholars trained in distinct fields (political science and anthropology, respectively) and working from different methodological orientations (i.e., quantitative and qualitative, respectively), we reflect a good measure of the diversity of approaches in the field of human rights. Together, our aim is to engage thought leaders in human rights in more critical reflection on the methods currently employed across the field, along with the tradeoffs, limits, and potential of new tools and approaches.

Methods Focus authors will explore both practical and ethical issues related to methodology. We envision these pieces serving several purposes. First, we see the Methods Focus series as a vehicle for creating space for focused conversations about methods, ethics, and the challenges and opportunities associated with conducting research on human rights. These conversations are vital for the development of future scholarship within the overarching field of human rights, but they do not always find their natural place in the pages of research-based journals. Therefore, we hope these relatively short Methods Focus pieces will resonate with scholars in a variety of fields while at the same time serving as potential teaching tools (particularly useful to graduate students preparing to enter the increasingly interdisciplinary field of human rights).

As Laitin and Reich (2017) argued, if scholars are truly interested in improving research integrity, their efforts must expand beyond conversations about validity and reproducibility. Improved data-sharing practices, innovative approaches to handling misconduct allegations, and more opportunities for training in research ethics all play a role. Discussions about research ethics can be especially important for graduate students who are just learning the disciplinary norms of their fields, but they also help keep more established scholars current with new methodological techniques and debates. And, although research ethics training is common in the health sciences and in some social sciences, as Phillips (2017) noted, it is still relatively rare in many fields. Although certainly not extensive enough to provide a complete training in research ethics, the pieces published in the Methods Focus series will provide a good introduction to a wide array of ethical debates relating to the diverse data-gathering tools used within human rights research.

Second, the articles published as part of the series will showcase the wide range of methodologies published within the volumes of JHR. As a journal, we seek to publish from a wide variety of disciplines, including both those fields traditionally associated with the study of human rights (such as political science and legal studies) and those that are more underrepresented (such as literature, psychology, and economics). In the current issue alone, we have articles written by scholars from the fields of sociology, education, humanitarian studies, social work, public health, and political science. When we introduced the Dataverse site, Carbonetti (2016: 160) noted that “a potential happy side effect that JHR’s new submission requirement on replication data could have is to demystify quantitative methods to the majority of human rights scholars who do not employ these approaches.” The new Method’s Focus series takes this one step further. Through the inclusion of various articles about methodological considerations in a variety of fields, it is our hope that readers will have the opportunity to better appreciate one another’s methods—to see what they have to offer and to understand the limitations associated with them.

One of the greatest challenges for interdisciplinary research is the collision of taken-for-granted assumptions about “what is knowable and how” (Morawska 2003: 611). Debates over ways of knowing are not confined to interdisciplinary work; they also exist within individual disciplines. Although often framed in the neutral language of methodology, they are fraught, fueled by deeper conflicts related to gender (Hekman 1997; Fonow and Cook 2005; Shames and Wise 2017), race (Huber 2009; Malagon, Huber, and Velez 2009), and overarching power within the academy.

Within interdisciplinary spaces, epistemological disagreements can pose difficulties for reading and working collaboratively across disciplines, and can even occasionally present obstacles for interdisciplinary journals that may struggle to find appropriate reviewers who are comfortable commenting on both the content and the methods of a manuscript (Campbell 2005). As an editorial team engaged in the work of producing an interdisciplinary journal, however, we feel these debates present even greater opportunities. As Campbell (2005) noted, “challenges to deeply held, sometimes unquestioned beliefs can be opportunities for growth.” Morawska (2003: 611) agreed, and advocated for more “mutual education,” in which those who are involved in interdisciplinary initiatives openly discuss not only disciplinary methodological approaches but also the “epistemic gains derived therefrom.” These conversations allow research to move from the realm of multidisciplinarity, where various disciplines share a common space but remain “independent and separate components of learning” (Park and Son 2010: 83), into a truly interdisciplinary space in which researchers integrate knowledge of a variety of disciplines into their previously held disciplinary approaches.

Our inaugural essay, written by Carrie Booth Walling (this issue), does exactly this. Walling examines the practical and ethical issues that arise when one form of data (in this case, the testimony of atrocity victims) is employed by transitional justice scholars and practitioners in a variety of settings. As she notes, in theory, the inclusion of victim testimonies is often viewed as a way in which individuals who experienced violence may “speak for themselves” within larger, often impersonal human rights institutions such as trials, truth commissions, and human rights reports. At the same time, however, the manner in which these testimonies are framed by scholars and practitioners alike can lead to both empowering and disempowering outcomes for victims themselves.

Walling calls on scholars to consider the potentially conflicting priorities of various actors who engage with evidence such as victim testimonies. For practitioners working within human rights trials, for example, “the purpose of trials is the punishment of the perpetrator and the reestablishment of societal norms; the goal is not necessarily to document history or give voice to victims” (2018: 387). The “truth” of the incident must be shaped to fit within a particular timeframe and must be conveyed within the language of the law (Strejilevich 2006). The priorities of victims rights activists, on the other hand, may conflict with these restraints.² For advocates, the empowerment of victims may surpass all other potential outcomes, including the punishment of perpetrators. Human rights scholars, in turn, potentially present a third set of priorities, seeking a nuanced and deeply contextualized picture of the positionality of survivors and the violence itself (Walling 2018: 387).

Reflecting on Angelina Snodgrass Godoy’s research on human rights narratives in postconflict El Salvador (also this issue), Walling (2018) calls on researchers to acknowledge their own positionality and to recognize that scholars are also stakeholders. She continues, “ethically engaging with testimony requires recognition of the variety of stakeholders in transitional justice processes and the diversity of their goals. Human rights scholars must respect the agency of witnesses and value both the evidentiary and experiential truth components of the stories they tell” (2018: 388--389). It is this sort of conversation—one that traverses disciplinary boundaries and has the potential to inform the research efforts of a wide range of human rights scholars—that we hope to encourage through the Methods Focus series.

More broadly, this series is part of a general trend toward the development of a shared cannon of human rights literature. Eight years ago, Coomans, Grünfeld, and Kamminga (2009: 180) noted the lack of writing specifically focusing on human rights research methodology, despite a clear need and desire among academics for more scholarly conversation on the topic. There has been much growth in the field of human rights research since that time, and the desire for more reflection on human rights methodology has grown apace. This is in part a function of the dramatic increase in human rights centers, research institutes, course offerings, and certificate programs that have emerged globally since the early 2000s. Within this context, we hope the articles contained in the Methods Focus series will spark new interdisciplinary conversations, bringing to light common concerns and aiding in the process of methodological innovation.

Notes on contributor

Catherine Buerger is the managing editor of the Journal of Human Rights. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Connecticut and is currently a researcher with the Dangerous Speech Project, where she studies global activism related to hateful and harmful speech. She is also an editor with the Teaching Human Rights Database project (https://humanrights.uconn.edu/teaching-human-rights-database/).

Notes

Notes

1 See https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/jhr.

2 In his study of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Richard Wilson (2001: 36) described the challenges that present themselves when various constituencies come together within an institutional setting such as a truth commission, particularly when each group brings with it a different understanding of “truth.” More recently, Wilson (2017) examined the differing epistemological constraints that exist between various forms of evidence (specifically law and social science) in international courts.