Observing, Measuring, Proxying: Human Challenges in Studying Political Violence

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Observing, measuring, and proxying are terms researchers often utilize, yet what they entail are often taken for granted and could be conflated. Thorough and critical engagement with these terms ought to be crucial when studying contentious political action, where observational, measurement, and proxy challenges are manifold due to the amorphous nature of the topic and are intractably linked to ethical challenges of data collection. As such, this roundtable brings together scholars working across different forms of contentious politics and political contexts to discuss how they navigate, encounter, and incorporate these terms in their work and their implications for research.

This roundtable also contributes to discussions on research ethics by highlighting the human challenges that come with advancing or trading off observation/measurement/proxying. Methodological innovations always come with new ethical concerns or challenges, which makes it important for us to continually reflect on the role a human researcher/data collector plays in their research in relation to research participants and phenomena/sites of interest. Through interrogating the three terms and drawing out the entanglements between methodological innovation and ethical commitments, this roundtable explores how we can better conceptualize, design, and propagate political violence research.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Chair

• Agnes Yu London School of Economics

Presenters

• Kanisha Bond Binghamton University

• M.P. Broache University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Christopher J. Fariss University of Michigan

• Amelia Hoover Green Code for America

• Jennifer Pan Stanford University