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CIAO DATE: 12/99
The Ethics of Researching a Divided Society: a Response to Tamar Hermann, Universitv of Tel Aviv and Marie Smyth, University of Ulster
Seminar on Research in a Divided Society
October 22, 1997
Abstract of response at INCORE/CCRU Seminar on Research in a Divided Society, Malone House, Belfast, 22 October 1997.
Introduction
This short paper draws on the country-specific focus of Hermann and Smyth to reflect on wider ethical concerns when researching divided societies. Despite their very different ethno-political and social contexts, both papers give common insights into the methodology, values and personal histories of researchers attempting to unravel the complex and contradictory processes of conflict. Five themes are particularly relevant.
Key themes
The politics of conducting research
The first set of issues relate to the ‘consumers’ of the research and how they impact on the content and conduct of the process itself. Hermann explained the problems that Israeli researchers had negotiating access to Palestinian subjects and issues and maintaining trust during fieldwork encounters. An interesting theme in both feminist and anti-racist research is whether men can genuinely examines women’s issues because they can not empathize with their experiences and similarly, whether whites can undertake anti-racist research if they have not experienced discrimination and disadvantage. Robin Jenkins “warned blacks not to submit themselves to the scrutiny of white researcher’s who, in effect, act as spies for government (Bourne and Sivanandan, 1980, p.338). Does this mean that we can only research division and conflict if we are immersed in the daily experiences and consequences of violence?
In her work on Derry, Smyth demonstrates a commitment to locating fieldwork within the situational context she is trying to understand. This type of participant-based methodology at least recognises, despite its temporal and spatial limitations, the personal values and bias inherent in fieldwork and subsequent analysis. Making these explicit with open and honest reflective analysis gives a clearer perspective of the value base and experiences of the researcher and how they engage loaded and contentious issues.
Respect for the research ‘hosts’
Linked to this is the attitude of the targets of the research. After the 1981 race riots in Britain, communities were swamped with researcher’s keen to find stereo-typical responses to what had happened. The abuses of that time made it very difficult for later researchers to negotiate access to these areas and the suspicions generated became a major obstacle to understanding more about the plight of ethnic minorities in urban poverty.
In some communities, such as those living in enclave areas, survey fatigue, resentment and disappointed expectations can result from being in a methodological goldfish bowl. Identifying the beneficiaries of the research, particularly between the community and the career paths of researchers, is often difficult to disentangle by host groups. A number of ‘negotiation rules’ need to be adopted in order to minimize the harmful effects on the host community, the researcher and the research process itself. These might include:
more importantly, what it cannot do to achieve change. Speaking the governments mind There is an understandable strategy, but clear danger for the researcher, to negotiate projects relevant to the funder but which may miss some of the critical edges or frameworks that might be unfavourable, particularly in a divided society. One of the consequences of the political deficit in Northern Ireland is that decisions about research are often made on objective and, in the case of CCRU, clearly stated criteria. Both research commissioning and conduct has maintained a level of integrity in Northern Ireland and this has given space to the uncomfortable, the challenging and questions that raise fundamental notions about power relationships and imbalances.
Hermann’s striking account of how changes in government in Israel can completely re-map the research agenda, who is likely to attract funding and who is not and what constitutes research priorities, is a disturbing and dangerous context for the design and conduct of social research. How Northern Ireland government research strategies remain detached and insulated from these processes, particularly in the context of shrinking government budgets and uncertain European funding, should be an important focus for the forthcoming CCRU research strategy.
Radical methodology
The fourth point relates to the methodology itself. There been a tendency to describe division and the relative positions of the two communities, partly explained by government reliance on quantitative research methods (Connolly and Murtagh, forthcoming). Economic restructuring, spatial realignment and the emergence and rediscovery of ethnic conflicts have challenged the certainties of rational methods in general and quantification in particular. Making sense of unpredictable and multifaceted conflict highlights the relevance of more exploratative qualitative methods which are less fixed in the way they frame and analyse social reality. A better balance between these traditions can help to further explore causal relationships, empower fractured communities with data and arguments to better their conditions and challenge government on the effects of policy.
The politics of the researcher
Conducting research in a divided society throws attention on the values of researchers, the way they are conditioned by the political context they operate within and the way in which they condition their research to take account of and anticipate the impact of their research on wider society. This interplay of factors can skew how research is carried out, written up and disseminated. The requirement that research in Northern Ireland be objective and value free has often lead to artificially constructed designs whereby empirical asymmetry is an unwritten criteria for what constitutes ‘good’ research. These are important factors in a society where the execution of research in fieldwork, interpretation and conclusions can be a personally dangerous task. Both Hermann and Smyth offer us some important pointers in this area by emphasising the need for honest and open acknowledgement of the perspectives that inform our approaches, about sharing and challenging data from different projects and supporting and encouraging structured dialogue between researchers from conflicting standpoints.
Conclusions
Researching community fractures and violence is imbued with complexities and contradictions. In this context there is no such thing as objective, truthful or value free research. The responsibility on social researchers is to be explicit about their values, critically reflexive on their fieldwork and attempt, as far as possible, to minimise the inevitable errors that are part of the social research process.
References
Boume, J. and Sivanandan, A. (1980) Cheerleaders and ombudsmen: the sociology of race relations in Britain, Race and Class, Vol.21, No.4, pp. 331-352.
Connolly, P. and Murtagh, B. (forthcoming) Researching Racism and Ethnicity: Methodology After Post-Modernism, London, Sage.
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