Researching Violence in Africa: Ethical and methodological challenges
本书探讨在非洲冲突环境中进行暴力研究的伦理与方法论挑战，强调研究者需根据当地现实灵活调整方法，摒弃中立与公正的幻想。
Reading the introductory chapter to Researching Violence in Africa one immediately starts to reflect critically on one's own work and its ethical implications. Successfully stimulating such reflections is an obvious quality of a book whose aim is not to set up rules and act as a tools manual, but to prepare researchers in difficult settings to be able to think on their feet (p. 12). In a strong introductory chapter the editors raise central ethical and methodological questions and place them in relation to existing literature on methods and ethics in conflict zones. They problematize ethical principles concerning ‘informed consent’ and ‘do no harm’, arguing that in conflict settings these principles must be converted into living tools. Consent can be renegotiated, and settling for the ‘least worst option’ (p. 10) may be the only choice. The volume raises important questions concerning self-censorship, and illusions of neutrality and impartiality during and after fieldwork. A central contribution of the book is the explication of how ethical considerations are innovatively applied to methodological responses. It argues that ethical questions and dilemmas require the researcher to act in context and to make situated choices; the contributors demand methodological responses that set aside illusions of neutrality and impartiality (see chapters by Giorgia Doná, Sharon Hutchinson, and Danai Mupotsa). Ethical considerations in conflict situations are often linked to power and politics, and in order to ensure the safety of informants and researchers, to balance questions concerning the protection and use of knowledge, and to engage with moral concerns about injustices, researchers are often forced to take a stand. As the editors nicely phrase it, ‘researchers must navigate ethical terrain by adapting their methodological plan of action to the local realities of the situation they are working in’ (p. 13). Conflict settings are socio-politically charged contexts, and when researchers engage with informants who are forced to navigate these circumstances the informants reveal themselves as partial and political actors with their own agendas and expectations (see chapters by Doná, Ukoha Ukiwo, and Martijn Wienia).