FIELDWORK IN HIGH-INTENSITY CONFLICT ZONES:

PRAXIS, ETHICS, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Leslie E. Sponsel

Introduction Actually, the only high conflict zones I have ever witnessed are faculty meetings, in recent months cyberspace, and the AAA convention this year! But those are different contexts from the one we are preoccupied with for this panel. I have never conducted fieldwork in an active high conflict zone. In the Venezuelan Amazon I did fieldwork with a northern subgroup of Yanomami called Sanema, but that was certainly not a conflict zone by any stretch of the imagination, although the Yanomami have long been a zone of conflict among anthropologists. There were some quarrels in the village, mainly marital, one club fight, and three false alarms of a raid, but otherwise, like John Peters, Ken Good, and others, I was most impressed by how harmonious village life was on a daily basis. Personally, I never felt in any danger or risk myself. Indeed, in walking through the forest, the Sanema were very careful to alert me to any poisonous snakes and other hazards. Previously while doing primate research in Ethiopia I road in a jeep with a Kerayu nomad pointing his rifle toward my head, but was assured that it was not loaded. Fortunately, he didn't pull the trigger to determine whether the rifle was loaded. More recently in southern Thailand, one of my informants had only one leg, the other was blown off by a land mine set by extremist Muslim separatists. I guess all three of these situations had some potential for conflict and violence, and maybe I was just naive and lucky, but it would have probably been better to be more prepared, sensitive, and alert to possibilities of conflict and violence.

Why is this topic important? Now about one third of the world's countries are involved in some kind of warfare, and about two-thirds regularly resort to abuses of human rights (Sluka 1995:276-277). Clearly the chance of an anthropologist getting accidentally caught in a conflict has been increasing in recent decades. It must now be considered by fieldworkers and also by professors in training and advising graduate students about fieldwork, and this together with my long-standing concern for human rights is the main reason I agreed to the invitation to participate in this panel.

Furthermore, conflict and violence is very likely to increase in coming years and for decades. Why? There are numerous reasons, but certainly in many cases they include increasing population and and economic pressures on land and resources with consequent competition often becoming violent. Thomas Homer-Dixon and colleagues have systematically studied the rise in resource competition and correlated violence in a large cross-national sample, the results published among other places in an article in Scientific American in February 1993. Norman Myers, R.D. Kaplan, and others have written about this gloomy future as well. That is why this topic is so important, and increasingly so in the near future.

Many would argue that conflict and violence are not synonymous. Conflict as disagreements are ubiquitous, inevitable, and often unavoidable. However, conflicts can be resolved through nonviolence. Violence is not ubiquitous, inevitable, or unavoidable. Nevertheless, both conflicts and violence are on the increase, and very likely to increase further in the near future (see Fry and Bjorkqvist 1997).

What are the possible general scenarios? An anthropologist may try to locate an area for fieldwork that is relatively nonviolent and peaceful where the chances of a conflict erupting are very remote at best. (Few anthropologists would voluntarily walk in front of a firing squad, except for a Ph.D. candidate defending a dissertation before a faculty committee). However, even in an apparently nonviolent and peaceful situation, a fieldworker might get caught in an unanticpated conflict that suddenly erupts. For example Frank Pieke (1995) was in Beijing, China, in 1989 when the People's Movement exploded in Tian'anmen Square and he decided to study and document the event and its context through what he called dialogical and improvisational fieldwork. (See his chapter in the superb anthology co-edited by Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius Robben, Fieldwork Under Fire. Also in that book is Jeffrey Sluka's very relevant chapter called "Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork" with very practical advice).

Others may be especially interested in conflict and violence as a research topic, and thus intentionally enter a high conflict zone, or adjacent zones to interview refugees and/or other witnesses. So avoidance is one scenario, but that may not always be possible, and thus accidental involvement is the second general scenario, if a researcher decides or is forced to stay rather than flee the scene. Intentional pursuit of research in a high intensity conflict zone is a third scenario, and there are many cases of this in the Nordstrom and Robben book and other sources.

How can one take precautions and be prepared? This is not just appropriate for those who intentionally pursue research in conflict zones, but for anyone, because anyone could get caught in a violent conflict that surprisingly erupts. Also this is not just for those fieldworkers who happen to be in a high-conflict zone, but also relevant to low-conflict zones, bullets and bombs do not follow such distinctions. I don't think it is necessary for anthropology departments to offer courses in self-defense, marshall arts, weaponry, survival techniques, etc., although, conceivably such training could help in some circumstances.

I really don't think it is necessary for researchers to carry weapons into the field such as cans of chemical mace, electric stun guns, and the like, although at least one anthropologist working with the Yanomami did so. I think if you establish genuine rapport with the host community they will look out for your welfare as best they can. Sluka (195:277) advises foresight, planning, and skillful maneuver including impression management.

What you can do is your homework--- read as much of the relevant literature as you can find to be alert to the possible situations and responses, like the previously mentioned anthology Fieldwork Under Fire. Such reading would include the political history of the country and region where you are doing fieldwork, human rights documents such as the annual reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In other words, don't walk in blind! Familiarize yourself with the history of conflicts, violence, and human rights abuses in the country and region where you are going as much as possible. It is no longer enough to just read the relevant ethnographies. (Also especially useful for any fieldworker is Nancy Howell's Surviving Fieldwork, and a curious book apparently little known to anthropologists, Fielding's The World's Most Dangerous Places by Robert Young Pelton, et al.).

Furthermore, beyond the usual core courses in graduate training---- history and theory of anthropology, regional ethnology, ethnographic field methods, and so on---- I think equally important are three additional courses--- first, conflict, violence and war; second, professional ethics and politics of anthropology; and third, advocacy anthropology and human rights.

In my opinion we also need a change in coverage of conflict and violence in introductory courses to help inform and prepare students. For example, textbooks commonly discuss the Nuer, but most only in the ethnographic present of Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork in the 1930s. However, the civil war in the Sudan has profoundly effected the Nuer since 1983. At least one million people have been injured in that war and half a million killed, many of them Nuer. Six million people have been displaced, many of them Nuer. There are Nuer refugees settled in the Ethiopia, Kenya, Australia, Canada, and the USA. A survey I did of eight major textbooks in cultural anthropology revealed that only one goes beyond the ethnographic present of the 1930s to bring students up to date on the Nuer, the one by Sheldon Smith and Philip Young (1998)(Sponsel 2000). The others leave the Nuer fossilized in the ethnographic present of the 1930s. Yet since the mid-1990s several anthropologists have documented the recent reality of the Nuer--- Francis Deng (1995), Jon Holtzman (2000), and Sharon Hutchinson (1996). For textbook authors to only describe Nuer reality only in the 1930s and ignore the last 70 years is to leave contemporary students in a fantasy world! These authors need to wake up and get real! Our students, and especially the Nuer, really deserve much better! This is also a matter of professional ethics, responsibility to students.

Barbara Johnston is to be congratulated for a major accomplishment in launching as series editor a set of volumes for Greenwood Press called Endangered Peoples of the World. This should also help change anachronistic ethnographic cases in cultural anthropology textbooks!

Many anthropologists believe that anthropology has a social responsibility to contribute to the documentation and explanation of conflict and violence wherever it occurs in the world, especially when it involves indigenous and ethnic groups, and even more so when such violence targets people simply because they are different. (The latter is the pivotal point suggesting action in cases by the AAA Committee for Human Rights).

Can one be neutral? The various statements of the AAA on professional ethics since the 1970s are certainly unmistakably clear on one point--- the welfare of the host community and informants must take first priority above all else. This, in my opinion, is also the primary reason why anyone would do fieldwork in any conflict zone, whether high-intensity or otherwise. To put it in another way, anthropologists should study conflict and violence because of the genuine humanitarian concern which has characterized our profession since at least Franz Boas.

Furthermore, anthropologists have a unique set of theoretical and methodological tools, and also the cross-cultural perspective, which can help document and understand conflicts and violence. Above all, they can help give voice to the various interest groups involved, something which might be called multi-actor ethnography. If it is feasible, honorable, and moral to give voice to all parties and be neutral then that is great. But probably in most cases--- for practical, political, moral, and/or personal safety reasons--- there may simply be no choice but to work with one faction in a conflict. In some cases a fieldworker may even choose to be partisan for some reason.

One thing we do know, most journalists usually have short-term experience in a conflict and usually focus on the leadership, spokespersons, and the like. Anthropologists are more likely to have long-term experience and operate at the community level, and this may well provide a very different perspective than that of the leadership, perhaps even threatening them. In short, the emic perspective from the local community is what anthropologists can document best and what is often missing in other portrayals of conflicts and violence.

Who benefits from such research? There is far more grant funding available for research on violence and war, than on nonviolence and peace. Indeed, it may even be that they feed each other in some ways, just as military suppliers and wars feed each other! Is the Hobbesian view of human nature really pure and objective science, or is it connected with the modern military industrial complex including arms sales?

In any case, we must ask how local people can inform the broader society's understanding of conflicts and violence? We must also ask, how can we as anthropologists help inform local people's understanding of conflict and violence as well as that of the leadership, policy makers, and the military. If anthropologists studying conflict and violence do not contribute to local people's understanding, and in some ways even help empower them, then are such anthropologists any more than intellectual mercenaries? Is that ethical?

In Sluka's (1995) chapter in the previously mentioned book edited by Nordstrom and Robben, he more elegantly refers to this as liberation anthropology which reveals the politics of truth, that is, presents an insiders perspective which humanizes the people involved in conflict and violence.

Personally, I think the 21st century will prove that the luxury of doing anthropology solely for the intellectual entertainment of colleagues and students is a luxury that the world, and our discipline, can no longer afford morally, politically, or even financially. One very important conceptual framework for such research is human rights. This can help anthropologists transcend the usual pitfalls of mere scientism, careerism, and egotism.

Why haven't anthropologists been more relevant and prominent in documenting and explaining violence and other phenomena in conflict zones? How often do you see anthropologists on the PBS Newshour or in the U.S. Institute for Peace? (See Avruch 1998). Given the general theme for this AAA convention, the public face of anthropology, and given the real possibility of diminishing funding resources and increasing competition for them, greater relevance and prominence is a serious concern for the future of anthropology and its research. Far more important than these considerations, given the likelihood that conflict and violence will increase in coming years and decades, isn't it a professional, moral, and social imperative that anthropologists intensify their research in conflict zones? To do so effectively student training should attend more closely to the reality of increasing conflict and violence in the world (see Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation 2000, also Sponsel 2000).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Avruch, Kevin, 1998, Culture and Conflict Resolution, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace.

Cranna, Michael, 1994, The True Costs of Conflict, London, England: Earthscan Publications, Ltd.

Deng, Francis Mading, 1995, War Visions: Conflicts of Identity in Sudan, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute.

Fry, Douglas P., and Kaj Bjorkqvist, eds., 1997, Cultural Variation in Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, 2000 (Spring), "Teaching About Violence," The HFG Review 4(1):1-61.

Holtzman, Jon D., 2000, Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives: Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Homer-Dixon, T.F., J.H. Boutwell, and G.W. Rathjens, 1993, "Environmental Change and Violent Conflict," Scientific American 263(2):38-45.

Howell, Nancy, 1990, Surviving Fieldwork, Washington, D.C.: AAA.

Hutchinson, Sharon, 1996, Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with War, Money and the State, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Kaplan, R.D., 1994, "The Coming Anarchy," Atlantic Monthly 273(2):44-76.

Lee, Raymond M., 1995, Dangerous Fieldwork, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Myers, Norman, 1996, Ultimate Security: The Political Basis of Political Stability, Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Nordstrom, Carolyn, and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, eds., 1995, Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Pelton, Robert Young, Coskun Aral, and Wink Dulles, 1998, Fieldings The World's Most Dangerous Places, Redondo Beach, CA: Fielding Worldwide, Inc.

Pieke, Frank N., 1995, "Witnessing the 1989 Chinese People's Movement," in Nordstrom and Robben, pp. 62-79.

Sluka, Jeffrey A., 1995, "Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: Dangerous Anthropology in Belfast," in Nordstrom and Robben, pp. 276-294.

Sluka, Jeffrey A., ed., 2000, Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Smith, Sheldon, and Phillip D. Young, 1998, Cultural Anthropology: Understanding a World in Transition, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Sponsel, Leslie E., 2000 (December), "Comments on Keith F. Otterbein's article," American Anthropologist 101:794-805.