Doing research among exiled Rwandan army deserters

A reflexive narrative

Bibliographic Data

ID20155762
AuthorsFlorence Ncube (0000-0001-6934-1952, University of Johannesburg, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume51
Issue1
Pages97-116
Publication date2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02533952.2025.2593069
OpenAlexW4416931891
LanguageEN
References cited46

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