Too dangerous for fieldwork? The challenge of institutional risk-management in primary research on conflict, violence and ‘Terrorism’^*

* An early version of this article was presented in a panel on ‘Moving Moralities: Anthropological Fieldwork and Risk in a Violent World’ at the joint CASCA/IUAES Conference, 6 May 2017, University of Ottawa, Canada.

ABSTRACT

Research on conflict and ‘terrorism’ is confronted by an expanding range of daunting ethical, methodological, and institutional challenges. One of these is the increasing involvement of university ethics and fieldwork safety committees in ‘managing’ researcher safety and security as an issue which requires institutional oversight, control, and approval. This paper contributes to contemporary reflection on and conversations about social sciences fieldwork in what is deemed to be an increasingly dangerous world. It focuses specifically on the increasing application of institutional ethics and safety review processes to ‘dangerous’ fieldwork on socio-political violence. While these new restrictions are clothed in the language or idiom of ethics and worker safety and security, a political analysis suggests that these committees represent powerful institutions of censorship and control, a serious challenge to academic freedom, and even movement towards the recolonisation of social science research. This paper describes and addresses this threat, and offers a constructive proposal for potentially responding by the development of risk assessment and management protocols which may contribute both to researcher survival in perilous field sites and help researchers to negotiate the necessary approval by university ethics and safety committees.

KEYWORDS:

• Fieldwork
• danger
• conflict
• violence
• ethics
• safety

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jeffrey Alan Sluka is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Massey University, New Zealand. He has a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley (1986), where his dissertation was an ethnographic study of popular support for the Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army in Divis Flats, a Catholic-nationalist ghetto on the Fall Road in Belfast. He has extensive research experience with regard to the war and peace process in Northern Ireland; is an expert on the anthropology of social conflict; has published widely on political resistance, state terror, and managing danger in ethnographic fieldwork; and is interested in armed ethnonational movements. He is engaged in critical terrorism studies, and has published articles critical of contemporary counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency policies, tactics, and strategies, particularly as they have been applied in the so-called ‘global war on terror’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. He is the author of Hearts and Minds, Water and Fish: Popular Support for the IRA and INLA in a Northern Irish Ghetto (1989, JAI Press), and edited Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (2000, University of Pennsylvania Press) and (with Antonius Robben) Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, first edition 2007 and second edition 2012).

Notes

* An early version of this article was presented in a panel on ‘Moving Moralities: Anthropological Fieldwork and Risk in a Violent World’ at the joint CASCA/IUAES Conference, 6 May 2017, University of Ottawa, Canada.

1 Under occupational or workplace health and safety legislation, employers are required to take all ‘reasonably practical steps’ to ensure the health and safety of employees. Regarding universities, this includes both staff and students who engage in research. Under such laws it is imperative to take appropriate steps to assess and plan for possible risks, and a number of factors go into determining what is ‘reasonably practicable,’ including assessing the degree of harm that could be caused, how much is known about the hazard and risk, and options for eliminating or minimising it. Where a serious risk arises from sending employees to an off-site location and this cannot be eliminated or minimised, an employer will potentially be in breach of its obligations and subject to criminal charges and punitive, including financial, damages.

2 A parallel issue not addressed in this article is difficulties, challenges, risks, and related ethical and other pressures increasingly surfacing with regard to everyday research on critical topics even when undertaken in ‘non-conflict-zones.’ For example, governments and civil society institutions such as universities are targeting research on terrorism, conflict, and political violence not only by making it next to impossible to actively enter conflict-zones, but also to study such subjects through routine social scientific methods such as online research and primary source document analysis.

3 About 40 countries issue official travel warnings which university IRBs may rely on in assessing the level of risk for researchers who propose working in foreign countries. For example, in 2017 the UK Foreign Office warned against travel to either the whole or parts of 59 countries, and the US State Department issued ‘cautions’ for travel to 42 countries and banned citizens from travel to three – Central African Republic, Eritrea, and Libya. Most travel warnings or infrequent bans are for countries in the Middle East and Africa, but also include some in Latin America and Asia. While such travel warnings do not prevent individuals from travelling to ‘risky’ locations and countries, they have the effect of raising concern for university ethics and research safety committees and of making insurance difficult and expensive to acquire.

4 On the critique of university ethics committees also see American Anthropological Association, 2004; Boser, 2007; Boster, 2006; Christians, 2005; Hammersley, 2009, 2010; Hammersley & Traianou, 2012; Hedgecoe, 2016; Hodge, 2013; Hoecht, 2011; Iphofen, 2009; Klitzman, 2015; Lederman, 2006; Lincoln & Tierney, 2004; Marshall, 2003; McAreavey & Muir, 2011; Monaghan, O’Dwyer, & Gabe, 2012; Murray, Pushor, & Renihan, 2011; Owen, 2006; Pritchard, 2002; Reid & Breif, 2009; Schneider, 2015; Schrag, 2010; Schwandt, 2007; Sikes & Piper, 2010; Stark, 2012; Tinker & Coomber, 2004; Tolich & Fitzgerald, 2006; Tolich & Smith, 2015; van den Hoonaard, 2001, 2002, 2006; and van den Hoonaard & Hamilton, 2016.

5 See http://www.sfu.ca/~palys/NewBrunswickDeclaration-Feb2013.pdf.

6 The United States Africa Command is one of nine unified combat commands of the US Armed Forces, responsible for US military operations and military relations with 53 African nations. The new ‘security’ emphasis in US imperialism, usually justified as ‘anti-terrorism’ assistance, is glaringly displayed in the fact that in 2017 American Special Forces troops were deployed to over 70% (138) of the world’s countries (Turse, 2017).

7 A complementary idea is the development of standardised ‘boilerplate’ responses to questions regarding researcher safety on ethics review/approval application forms (see Lederman, 2007).

8 On managing danger in fieldwork see: Belousov et al., 2007; Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principles, 1993; Cramer, Hammond, & Pottier, 2011; Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2008; Dolnik, 2013; Feenan, 2002; Garthwaite, 2011; Golde, 1986; Goldstein, 2014; Howell, 1990; Huggins & Glebbeek, 2009; Ice, Dufour, & Stevens, 2015; Iphofen, 2015; Kovats-Bernat, 2002; Lee, 1993, 1995; Lee & Stanko, 2003; Lee-Treweek & Linkogle, 2000; Maček, 2014; Mazurana, Jacobsen, & Gale, 2013; O'Neil, 2008; Parker & O’Reilly, 2013; Paterson, Gregory, & Thorne, 1999; Peritore, 1990; Porter, Robinson, Smyth, Schnabel, & Osaghae, 2005; Possick, 2009; Renzetti & Lee, 1993; Rodgers, 2007; Sriram, King, Mertus, Martin-Ortega, & Herman, 2009; Sluka, 1989, 1990, 1995, 2012, 2015; Stark, 2012; Smyth & Robinson, 2001; Warden, 2013; and Williams, Dunlap, Johnson, & Hamid, 1992.

9 For a good list of the various types of risks encountered in fieldwork – including exposure, animals, human hazards, injury accidents, diseases, mental health and illness, and parasitic infections – see Howell, 1990.