Part I - Control and Confusion

Summary

There is an idea inherent in a lot of advice on and critique of fieldwork-based research in areas of violent conflict and international intervention that the (Northern/outside) researcher is generally in control of the research process. Contributions to this first part of the book raise serious questions about this idea. Four authors reflect on misunderstandings in the research process and the confusions that have arisen during their specific researches. They discuss the effects such confusions have had on them as researchers, including a range of emotions such as frustration, anger, bewilderment and self-doubt, which are seldom discussed in academic outputs. They also address what effects misunderstandings and confusions had on others, especially research assistants and research participants or informants, but also the wider communities in which they have carried out their research (most seriously, for example, putting them in danger). From a recognition that the researcher is not always in control of the research, the authors develop strategies of how to mitigate the risks for themselves and others emanating from questions of control and confusion. Examples in this part are taken from fieldwork interactions with international intervention elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina; interpretivist research on the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Germany, Mali and Niger; oral history research with Soviet– Afghan War veterans in Tajikistan; and reflections relating to research relationships between a Northern conflict researcher and his Malian research partners in areas of high insecurity in the African Sahel zone.