Community Members as Fieldwork Guides in Disaster Settings: Ethics of Care Through a Relational Methodology of Empathy and Trust

Abstract

This reflexive account of fieldwork with disaster-affected communities in Kerala, India, recounts the researcher’s engagement with positionality and ethics. A participatory method was adopted—enlisting local field guides who mediated the researcher’s interactions with participants. Apart from offering pragmatic solutions for accessing participants, the method enhanced the researcher’s contextual/cultural insight, and facilitated a relationship of trust. The researcher-guide dynamic is explored as a co-constructing and relational method that minimizes harm and maximizes benefit for participants. Ethics of care is elucidated as a practicable ethical framework for thinking and doing disaster research, illustrated with reference to the present method.

Recognition and ethical research practices: The role of community specialists

“…Browne and Peek 2014;Wu et al 2022), and disaster research methods guidance (e.g. Hakkim 2022;Louis-Charles et al 2020;Rohlman et al 2022) are essential resources to guide ethical interactions in long-term disaster research, there is a fundamental consideration Table 1. Lessons learned from project phases and collaborative reflections.…”

“…Studies focusing on disaster research standards and practices shed light on diverse approaches to navigating long-term disaster research and making ethical decisions in those settings (e.g. Browne and Peek 2014; Hakkim 2022; Louis-Charles et al 2020; Rohlman et al 2022), but as we will highlight in the following section, these often lack actionable detail or fail to adequately consider recognition.…”

“…Specifically, they argue that local researchers who serve as team members can leverage their community and cultural knowledge to improve research participation and enhance the likelihood of having representative data (Louis-Charles et al 2020). Others also point to the benefits of including researchers who have been affected by the disaster and emphasize the ability of these researchers to contribute to diverse knowledge pathways grounded in the experiences, feelings, and emotions of disaster-impacted communities (Barber and Haney 2016;Hakkim 2022;Marlowe et al 2015). Rohlman et al (2022) also propose a community-based approach to disaster research, characterized by the coordination between researchers and community members to implement research processes that are sensitive to community needs.…”

“…While they suggest practices that can facilitate recognition, such as the inclusion of community voices and knowledge into research practices, they do not provide concrete guidance for engaging communities. Similarly, Hakkim (2022) presents a community-guide-assisted framework, which entails the voluntary participation of community members across the research project to support ethical practices. They highlight how community guides enable meaningful engagements with research participants through their ability to provide insider perspectives and cultural immersion, help contextualize research and findings, and serve as a check-and-balance in maintaining ethical practices.…”

“…To reduce the negative impacts and increase the benefits of research participation on communities, universities require Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviews and disaster scholars advocate for methods and standards to support ethical research practices, including ethical toolkits and research design guidance (e.g. Browne and Peek 2014; Hakkim 2022; Louis-Charles et al 2020; Rohlman et al 2022; Wu et al 2021). Despite these safeguards, current long-term disaster research practices can unintentionally harm communities because of gaps in institutional requirements, ethical toolkits and frameworks, and research design guidance, which can ultimately fail to protect communities and, at times, magnify inequities through data collection and dissemination.…”