Doing research among exiled Rwandan army deserters

A reflexive narrative

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20155762
AutoresFlorence Ncube (0000-0001-6934-1952, University of Johannesburg, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume51
Fascículo1
Páginas97-116
Data de publicação2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02533952.2025.2593069
OpenAlexW4416931891
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas46

This paper reflects on my experiences of doing research among ex-soldiers who deserted from the post-conflict Rwandan military, who believe that they are being “hunted” by their government, allegedly, for political reasons. It attends to practices of doing fieldwork among people whose normal lives are suspended by the perpetual need to navigate the daily threat of discovery by the long arm of the Rwandan state and the very real threat of violence and death in exile. I show how fear, as a profound ontological condition, can shape the process of research. I foreground the materiality of fear and propose that the interlocutors’ consciousness and sensitivity to the hazards that the field is infused with can influence the nature of ethnography. Through fear, politically sensitive research can produce moving ethnography, that is, a kind of ethnography in which the participants and researcher are in an enhanced state of sensory and nomadic comportment during fieldwork. Analysis of data draws mainly on insights from Vigh’s ideas on social navigation, Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics and Deleuzian ideas of the control society

Ethnography · Narrative · Narrative inquiry · Qualitative research · Reflexivity · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics