Fieldwork in the Global South ─ Ethical Challenges and Dilemmas

Choosing to do fieldwork overseas, particularly in the Global South, is a challenge in itself. The researcher faces logistical complications, safety issues, language barriers and much more. But permeating the overseas experience is a range of ethical issues. While there are books and guidelines on ethical practice, these do not present fixed answers or set procedures. Instead, each situation is unique and the individual researcher must negotiate their own path through a variety of ethical challenges and dilemmas.

In this book, research students share their experiences of facing such ethical challenges and dilemmas during fieldwork in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Ethical issues face the researcher at every turn and cannot be compartmentalised into one part of the research process; this book puts ethical challenges and dilemmas at the very centre of the discussion and uses them as the lens with which to view different stages of fieldwork. The book covers four thematic areas: ethical issues relating to using different research methods; ethical dimensions of researcher positionality; ethical challenges relating to practical issues in the field; and ethical dilemmas of engaging with research subjects. The contributors’ fieldwork experiences come from their doctoral research on a broad sweep of development-related topics from natural resources, gender and governance to land tenure, energy and health, as well as a spread of country-specific experience across the Global South.

This book provides fresh insights on ethical issues faced when conducting fieldwork overseas by hearing from the experience of current or recent postgraduates rather than established academics with many years of experience. Their personal experiences and real examples offer honest and self-critical reflections on negotiating ethical challenges and dilemmas, which will appeal to postgraduates, undergraduate students and all other researchers conducting their research in the Global South.

Jenny Lunn manages a project promoting public engagement in geography at the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers in London.