Fieldwork and its Ethical Challenges: Reflections from Research in Bosnia

Ethical issues and challenges inevitably arise during fieldwork and are a fundamental part of the research process. Too often, however, they are neglected. In following the standard trajectory of fieldwork, data analysis, write-up, and publication, scholars do not always spend enough time openly addressing ethical issues or sharing experiences from the field. The purpose of this article is to encourage and stimulate debate on research ethics, to demonstrate why research training (certainly in the UK) needs to give more priority to this issue, and to move away from what are often very abstract discussions by dealing with the subject in a concrete and practical way that draws upon personal insights. The article is based upon the author’s experiences of conducting fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) in 2008 and 2009 and focuses on four key issues that arose—objectivity, interviewer-interviewee relationships, representation, and reward. Underscoring the limitations of ethical codes, it advocates a situational approach to research ethics that is sensitive to context and involves interviewees in helping us to develop more ethical research procedures.