Intricacies, Ethics and Anxieties of Fieldwork in Sites of Contestation

(Lecture delivered at ‘Doing Research; Doing Ethnography: Workshop for Young Sociologists’ organized by the Indian Sociological Society and XXXVII All India Sociological Conference at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, 9th December 2011).

The Hands Series; Installation by Pradeep Chandrasiri, Colombo

I spend a considerable amount of time with a camera, not so much to capture reality as it exists, but often to capture images out of context so that reality itself becomes at best blurred or something to be interpreted. As a practice, this is not too dissimilar to the partial truths we are in the business of constructing. Nevertheless, not too long ago a friend of mine pointed out that my images almost never included people as the main focus. If at all, they were in the backdrop, almost devoid of consequence. And she was right. In that sense, the placement of people in my photos reminded me of how Hitler had located people in the context of the massive buildings with gothic pillars and other pompous features that he had painted as a failed art student early in his life. The thought gave me more than a few shudders. Nevertheless, for a long time, I had consciously avoided photographing people because I could not be sure if I was violating their personal space or not, every time I clicked; it was also too tedious to ask if it was OK to photograph them all the time. My dilemma with regard to photography was also a dilemma I often faced in research, particularly in fieldwork where as a self-conscious outsider I was nevertheless always present. Naturally, my dilemma and anxieties would always be more pronounced when I am working in areas of contestation. By the word contestation, I do not necessarily mean only areas of entrenched political violence where open conflict may have arisen between different parties, but also areas where such open hostility may not be present, though underlying suspicions, cleavages and ruptures might. On the other hand, it also includes areas devastated by natural calamities where once stable social structures and patterns of living might have become unraveled and destabilized. In the latter case, the more obvious divisions that I have seen are between the people violently scarred by nature and those who have not been, but are nevertheless omnipresent as state agents, NGO workers, religious activists or relentless researchers looking for data, information and narratives. Much of what I have to say today is based on my experience and discomforts in working in Sri Lanka scarred by a multiplicity of contestations that in one case lead to a war that lasted for 30 years, which has now been sealed with a disquieting and undignified peace. On the other hand, ethics and anxieties of fieldwork do not simply end with research per se; they manifest again and again in the context of writing and publishing. So I will have a few things to say about writing as well. 


Though not a Catholic, let me nevertheless make a confession: The issues that I briefly outlined and would elaborate later, were ideologically, emotionally and intellectually important to me at the time I initially began field work in the early 1990s. At the time, they disturbed me immensely, and in many ways altered the directions of my own work. That is why, despite the extensive time I have spent talking with people affected by political violence, I have written comparatively very little, and despite my numerous conversations with people affected by the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on 26th December 2004, I have so far written nothing. These ideas are still important to me at a certain level of perception. However, they no longer haunt me in the debilitating fashion they used to all those years ago. This may be because with the passage of time some of the collective ideological positions many of us entertain might be chipped away, and aging itself takes its own toll while perhaps (un)fortunately, many of us do not become any wiser.

Research

Let me now focus a few moments on research. In ethical and methodological terms, field research in sites of contestations or sites of extreme sensitivity should not be any different from research in any other place. Nevertheless, working in such contexts places additional responsibilities upon researchers. The mere approval of a research proposal by an ethics committee does not resolve the kind of issues that are likely to crop up in the field; no graduate program or proposal will ever fully prepare a researcher for actual work in these conditions. In the complexities that a researcher would face in field conditions of this nature, all these are simple academic rituals of initiation, and nothing more. The world he or she enters needs to be shaped through a process of living and working. But that is not a world where we can afford to make too many mistakes. Particularly in sites of contestations, emergent narratives are not as clear as they might sometime appear. On different occasions the shapes of so called "truths" or the knowledge that the likes of us so relentlessly pursue change within moments. In some situations, people seemed to ask for help. Moments later, equally earnestly, they would request us to keep the information they had furnished to ourselves. I have faced this dilemma many times. As a consequence of the emerging confusion in my own mind, many such truths have merged within myself. By now I would also have forgotten many such ‘truths.’ The point I want to make here is that it is not always easy to determine what has to be told or exposed according to the wishes of the people who furnished such information. Sometimes, what is said is linked to an expectation of silence, which we may not decipher. Do we really get the kind of training in the classroom that would help us navigate through such gray areas? This confusion is amply illustrated by Daniel in his book Charred Lullabies who talks of a Sri Lankan woman who had seen the murdered body of her father being dragged away to the applause of cheering soldiers in the anti-Tamil violence of July 1983 (Daniel 1995: 1). In the interview she requests him: "You, man of the world, please take this story and tell the world, of what they did to my father, how they treated him" (Daniel 1995: 1).

The Day after the Siege; Etching by P. Shanaathanan, Jaffna

In the same interview she pleaded: "Please don't tell anyone else this story. My father is such a dignified man. He never comes to dinner without bathing and without wearing a clean white shirt. I don't want anyone to remember him the way I saw him, his clothes torn off his body" (Daniel 1995: 2). In this situation her request not to tell the story is not motivated by the fear of political reprisals. But due to her fear that the dignified image of her father would be "tarnished" if the world knew the painful and the undignified manner in which he died. This confusion regarding what to tell and what not to tell is not an easy dilemma to resolve. Daniel further observes: "This same ambivalence was to be expressed by other survivors and witnesses at other moments, in other ways and for other reasons. Over these twelve years this charge has been further compounded; the task has become one of not only deciding between what story to tell and what not to tell, but how to and how not to tell a story" (Daniel 1995: 2). I am not sure if Daniel ever resolved his own dilemma.

The very nature of contemporary research and writing, imprisoned within demands of universities, funding agencies and publishers’ deadlines often add enormous pressure on researchers. This becomes much more demanding when working in sites of contestation or in areas straddled with similar issues. Ideally, in such a place a much more nuanced, thoughtful and less hurried approach would be more workable. But such ideal conditions are hard to come by, given the institutional realities within which we have to work. I now appreciate the fact that the Japanese Anthropological Society a few months ago declined to initiate research in the tsunami-devastated Tohoku area in Eastern Japan even though the concerns I am outlining today did not factor in their deliberations. The pressure I am talking about is more visible among researchers who come to specific locations across greater distances who are both spatially and culturally more distanced from the sites in which they have chosen to work. They have more to lose, need what they want in relatively short periods and often are not proficient in local languages. As far as I am concerned, when working in sensitive areas, this is an equation that should be avoided. When discussing these issues, I am often reminded of the case of an American anthropologist who used to work in Eastern Sri Lanka in the 1990s. She was researching political violence in the region. A number of friends and colleagues working and living in this war-weary area complained of her professional conduct. It seems to me that if not ethics and training, common sense ought to have prevailed that the height of conflict is usually not the ideal time to undertake research in a contested site. This academic took a great deal of time to learn how to wear the local dress, learnt some Tamil and perceived of herself as the voice of the oppressed Tamils at international forums. But the complaints from the local people presented a different picture:

"She asks questions about the LTTE and the army that are very difficult to answer. Out here no one knows who is listening ---"

"She makes people pose in front of army camps and takes pictures. Taking pictures of camps is prohibited, and what she is doing to these people is very dangerous ---"

"We really do not think she really cares about us. But we have to be polite because a friend sent her to us. We tell her things she would like to hear ---"

It is entirely possible that due to this state of affairs, her work which must have been published by now by a reputable North American university press could be veritable partial truths and half baked thick description given the people’s own reactive responses. But I doubt if her texts ever contained the concerns of the people among whom she worked, which she may not have also sensed. It is in such a context that one could understand the following observation attributed to her: "these people were dignified even in their suffering." The people on their part who resented her activities never informed her of their concern since many of them considered it culturally inappropriate to do so. Instead, they provided her with what they knew to be false information. So, one kind of manipulation by the researcher leads to a reciprocal manipulation by the informants. The question is, do we have enough training and adequate common sense to avoid these kinds of situations? On my part, for a long time I refrained from allowing students to work in such conditions unless they came from these areas. I also advised many foreign graduate students not to undertake research in north eastern Sri Lanka in difficult times. But many found other ways to enter the sites of contestations that they had chosen to undertake research which their ethics committees and supervisors had approved. In such situations, I was a mere concerned bystander.

Writing

Let me now come to the issue of writing, particularly writing based on research in contested sites where one necessarily have to negotiate with and navigate between multiple emotions varying from extreme sadness to anger, frustration, senses of justice being absent, issues of compensation not being paid and so on. Writing emanating from such contexts would have to be located within a specific politics of representing violence, pain and memory. More specifically, we need to be concerned about attempting to communicate pain and memories of it, be it the result of war, a flood or tsunami that so closely and intimately touch the lives of many amongst us. Writing in 1990, Veena Das in the introduction to the book, ‘Mirrors of Violence’ offers the following thoughts that shed some light on the politics of writing about pain:

A crucial issue here is whether the form evolved in writing about survivor experience is simply used to titillate. Does it tear the facts of violence out of context? Does the author stand in relationship of a voyeur to the narratives of suffering? Most of the work on survivors done in this context would suggest that the distinction between the author and his/her subjects dissolves in the study of violence. To be the scribe of human experience of suffering creates a special responsibility towards those who suffer. While there cannot be a single answer to the nature of this responsibility, one cannot simply hide behind the axiological neutrality of Max Weber. We shall have to ask: did we take this responsibility seriously? (Das 1990: 33)

Indeed, the question is, have we, and do we take this responsibility seriously? Personally, I could not find a fool-proof way to address this issue except for finding something else to write about and many other things to think about. Fortunately, that is not difficult when living and working in the diminished intellectual and problematic political environment that Sri Lanka so readily offers. Obviously that does not mean that violence and contestations amongst us have melted away. On the other hand, self-reflections alone are inadequate in an attempt at not transforming the academic endeavors dealing with political violence and survival over natural calamities into a fully blown industry of spectacle marked by what may seem as a voyeuristic and pornographic fascination with violence and grief. Sometimes it is this very self-reflection that offers anthropologists and other such professionals opportunities to intellectualize pain and despair, and take refuge behind academic facades constructed out of impenetrable linguistic structures and theoretical picket fences. So Suarez-Orozco in his essay, ‘Speaking of the Unspeakable’ asserts that through "psychologically informed ethnographic work, we can give voice to the voiceless" (Suarez-Orozco 1990: 354). Whether the voiceless want their experiences voiced in all situations without exception, does not seem to form any part of this kind of logic. Similarly, Das in her book, ‘Critical Events’ observes that social anthropology can be a healing force if the experiences of human suffering documented by anthropologists are not used to consolidate the authority of the discipline (Das 1995: 196). However, more often than not, this consolidation of not only the discipline, but also of the authors is precisely what happens. It is also what is expected from academic practice by researchers, readers, publishers and so on. Das further adds that the manner in which anthropology can be made a healing force is if the experiences of human suffering encountered by anthropologists "lead to the formation of ‘one body’, providing voice, and touching victims, so that their pain may be experienced in other bodies as well" (Das 1995: 196).

Victory Dance; Painting by Chandragupta Tenuwara, Colombo

Das' formulation of anthropology as a healing force and her hope that it would help form "one body" in which "others" (such as anthropologists) would feel the pain of the victims seems to be the textual manifestation of the troubled conscience of a concerned anthropologist. Troubled, it would seem to me precisely due to the suspicion whether anthropology (among other disciplines) is in fact capable of constituting a benevolent process or being a healing force to victims of violence. I would suggest that anthropology can in fact be a healing force to the collective conscience of anthropologists and other watchers of violence who may be troubled by the manner in which some of them carry out their work. It might heal the doubts some of them might have about the utility of their work beyond the abstract terrain of scholarship. Counter productively, formulations such as Das' might also be used to justify research dealing with human suffering without paying much attention to the less visible but important ethical implications.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, all our attempts in research, the ethics we are guided by, the ethics we bypass in our pursuit of knowledge, our training, our common sense or lack thereof are directed in one direction: writing. Whether it is a PhD dissertation or a seminal text or something in between, it is writing that makes or breaks us: it could make us stars in academia or in the civil service or the NGO circuit. So if we fail in our endeavors to work cautiously in contested sites, and if we need someone or something to blame, it ought to be the compulsion for writing. If for a moment, we transport ourselves from IIT in contemporary India to the mythic times of ancient Greece, we might meet King Thamus, an ancient Egyptian King who lived in upper Egypt. In a story narrated by Socrates to Phaedrus in Plato’s book ‘Phaedrus’, King Thamus felt that technology did not always signal a positive development. When offered the gift of writing by God Theuth, King Thamus said: Those who acquire it [writing] will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to society" (Plato in Postman 1993: 4).

The Bandaged Man; Performance by Bandu Manamperi, Sydney

I think, this mythic king must have somehow read my mind all those years ago. True, writing is important. But it should not lead us do things to others that we will not do to ourselves. I am not trying to tell you not to do research that deal with sensitive issues and in contested sites. I am merely suggesting that you do so extremely cautiously because I am convinced whatever training we give you in universities, we will not be giving you the ultimate answers on how to work in such situations. That must necessarily come from your own convictions, reflections and thinking in the context of what you have learnt. As you know, I have not given you a format to follow because I do not have one; I doubt if anyone does. I have only shared with you some of my anxieties and some memories from the field and from what I have read. But I hope at some point my anxieties might be shared by you, and that my worries might trouble you too. In an attempt to conclude my comments, let me now come to my second confession for the day: Personally, I was never able to resolve within my own mind the ethical intricacies of conducting research in sites of contestation and pain, writing about such experiences or the problems of feeling pain in bodies exterior to those in pain with the added complexity of language’s resistance to communicating pain and despair. Perhaps my own personal detours from this specific research area have to do with this chaotic state of affairs. It is unfortunate that even though many in Sri Lanka have discussed these issues in private rather extensively, the local academic community has clearly failed to place these concerns in context in public. I am not sure if such an academic exercise has taken place in India. Maybe it has. So today, if I opt to study some aspect of violence as I sometimes do or explore some element of post-tsunami life and tiptoe into contested sites, I do not do it to make anthropology a healing force, to give voice to the voiceless or to bypass language’s resistance to pain. I do not do it even for simple developmental utility. I do so because of my own intellectual curiosity. But in doing so, I try my best to be guided by my own long-term anxieties and to do no harm while my curiosity is addressed. I wish you the best of luck.

Sasanka Perera , South Asian University, New Delhi

(This presentation heavily draws from my unpublished paper, ‘Against the Making of a Violence Industry: A Personal Reflection on Methodological and Ethical Problems in Studying Human Suffering’ (1995) and the review of the journal, Domains (Vol. 3, Special issue on Riot Discourses, 2007).