Researching Peers and Disaster Vulnerable Communities: An Insider Perspective

Abstract

Conducting research among peers and communities that a researcher also serves may be both daunting and rewarding. Researching peers may make the researcher feel uncomfortable raising certain questions that are sensitive or that could be construed to be testing their competencies. This paper is inclined more towards showing that it is advantageous to be an insider, whose position can facilitate collection of information that could not have been accessed, or revealed to an outsider. The paper reports on fieldwork conducted in a low-income country in Sub-Sahara Africa as part of a doctoral study with communities affected by disasters and those that work with such communities. The paper demonstrates the complexities of conducting such research and provides some insights that may be useful to insiders, outsiders or “in-betweeners” embarking on fieldwork in low-income countries and among vulnerable population struggling with manifold stresses and shocks.

Measuring community flood resilience and associated factors in rural Malawi

“…The floods also affected pregnant and lactating mothers who need high nutritional food diets, and deepened levels of child malnutrition, especially in Neno and Mangochi districts (Government of Malawi, 2017aMalawi, , 2017b, where over 45% of children are already stunted (Government of Malawi, 2019). The flood-induced devastation occurred against the backdrop of limited government capacity for preparedness (Dewa et al, 2021;Kita, 2017a), and limited coping capacity at community level (Dewa et al, 2021;Kita, 2017b;Mijoni & Izadkhah, 2009), pointing to the need for strengthened community disaster/flood resilience. The Nsanje district of Malawi in southern Africa, which is particularly prone to flooding, is home to two communities called Traditional Authorities (TA), Nyachikadza and Ndamera (Figure 1).…”