Researching Violence in Africa

Christopher Cramer, Ph.D. (1994) in Economics, Cambridge, is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He works in sub-Saharan Africa on the political economy of violence/post-conflict reconstruction, and on rural labour markets. He is the author of Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (London: C.Hurst, 2006). Laura C Hammond, Ph.D. (2000) in Anthropology, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She works in the Horn of Africa on conflict, forced migration, and food security, and is the author of This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia (Cornell, 2004).Johan J P Pottier, D.Phil (1980) in Anthropology, University of Sussex, is Professor of African Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He specialises in food security, media representations of conflict, and humanitarian intervention. He is the author of Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the late 20th Century (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

• CONTENTSAcknowledgements ............................................................................ viiNavigating the Terrain of Methods and Ethics in Conflict Research ..... 1Johan Pottier, Laura Hammond and Christopher CramerResearching Conflict in Africa: A Researcher’s Account of Ife-Modakeke, South-Western Nigeria ...... 23Olajide O. AkanjiResearching Children and Violence in Evolving Socio-Political Contexts ...... 39Giorgia DonáFour Layers of Silence: Counterinsurgency in Northeastern Ethiopia ... 61Laura HammondUncertain Ethics: Researching Civil War in Sudan ..................... 79Sharon E. Hutchinson‘From Nation to Family’: Researching Gender and Sexuality ..... 95Danai MupotsaCooperative Ethics as a New Model for Cultural Research on Peace and Security ... 111Derek B. Miller and Ron ScollonHidden Agendas in Conflict Research: Informants’ Interests and Research Objectivity in the Niger Delta ... 137Ukoha UkiwoSilence and authoritative speech in post-violence northern Ghana .. 155Martijn WieniaList of Contributors ........................................................................... 175Index .................................................................................................... 1

'Besides the Introduction, the contributions by Doná, Hammond, and Wienia stand out, especially their approaches to silence. Silence can mean complicity or resistance, a calm before the storm, a cultural expression of self-censorship, or self-censorship on the part of the researcher. These critical reflections illustrate how method encompasses our access to the field and our actions in it, but also how we reflect on our experiences, and how we analytically order and shape them into ethnographic representations. This is one of the strengths of the volume –and it could have been spelled out more explicitly.The questions and reflections raised here are relevant beyond an African context. However, restricting the focus to Africa makes this publication a timely contribution to debates on African social change and how we engage in it'.Jacob Rasmussen, Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims and Roskilde University, in 'African Affairs' July 2012