Reflections on conducting ethnographic research in post-conflict schools

• In Event: Educational policy as a research object: the ethnographic possibilities, challenges and limits of studying power

Proposal

While much of the literature on education in conflict-affected areas has come from practitioners in the field, there is still insufficient ethnographic analysis of educational policy implementation in post-conflict schools (Sobe 2009, Kirk 2011), which is likely why there is very limited honest academic discussion about the difficulties (ethical, personal, and practical) of conducting ethnographic research in places affected by violence.
This paper is based off 18 months of ethnographic research in three government primary schools in post-conflict northern Uganda. I used Wright and Reinhold’s (2011) concept of studying through to trace the implementation of an internationally-funded government sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education program implemented in government primary schools. This program explicitly endeavored to promote the wellbeing of young people and the population at large by giving students knowledge about HIV, early pregnancy, personal hygiene, and risky behavior.
Yet while studying the implementation of this policy, I realized the inadequacies of internationally-funded state SRH programs in a context of structural violence that affected the ability of schools to function, teachers to teach, and students to study. This “make live” policy could not sustain itself in a context where the government had “let die” for twenty years.
In the absence of “make live” SRH policies, structural violence created spaces where other forms of violence (e.g. physical and symbolic) took place in schools. In this paper, I will explore the difficulties of navigating school gatekeepers, promoting wellbeing of research participants, and maintaining self-care when conducting ethnographic research in places affected by current as well as historical violence.

Author

• Nancy M Rydberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison