Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka & Susan Thomson 
Field Research in Africa [PDF ebook] 
The Ethics of Researcher Vulnerabilities

Researchers working in Africa are engaged in ethical, methodological, logistical, emotional and professional compromises. Juggling the demands of being a researcher and being human, scholars must balance the recording of data withthe emotional demands of listening, of analyzing and reporting personal, and often contradictory, narratives. This book recognizes these challenges and lays bare the underlying and important process by which the researcher grapples with emotions, and how ‘feelings’ inform and shape data collection, interpretation, write-up and dissemination. Based on widely researched on-the-ground work, the contributors reveal the ambiguities and inconsistences that emerge at all stages of fieldwork and how to tackle them. They examine the ethical quagmires that arise when doing research on sensitive topics in a researcher’s own living environment, and suggest how to manage the complex interaction between the researcher’s own identity and social relationships in the field, and navigate the role of researcher when activism risks access to the field.

Table of Content

Foreword: It is about Us –
Elísio Macamo

Map of Africa showing Fields of Research


Introduction: Fields of Vision, Emotion as Reflexivity –
Susan Thomson, An Ansoms, and Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka

1. Skin Connections: Negotiating Institutional Ethics alongside Insider Identities –
Gino Vlavonou

2. Conducting Sensitive Research ‘At Home’: A Matter of Responsibility –
Emery Mushagalusa Mudinga

3. A Gendered Research Journey: Ethical Dilemmas of an Algerian Immigrant Recovering the Memory of ‘Home’ –
Ghaliya N. Djelloul

4. Establishing Kinship in Diaspora: Conducting Research among Fellow Congolese Immigrants of Cape Town –
Rosette Sifa Vuninga

5. ‘If they find out, we’re dead’: Intermediaries, Self-censorship, and Anxiety in Research as an Outsider-insider –
Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka

6. Looking Behind the Screen: Ethical Quagmires when Accessing Hidden Discourses –
An Ansoms

7. Scholar-Activist? On Relational Accountability and an Ethic of Dissemination –
Susan Thomson

Conclusion: Theorizing Self as Ethical Research Practice –
Susan Thomson, An Ansoms and Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka


Bibliography

About the author

SUSAN THOMSON is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University.