Power, Ethics, and Human Rights

Book excerpt: Refugees experience some of the most visible manifestations of human rights abuses in the world today--and raise difficult issues for researchers and policy makers alike. This book investigates a broad range of complexities that arise as ethnographers work with refugee populations from different geographic areas in research, policy formation, and legal and social assistance. But the issues raised here have application to ethical concerns in ethnographic research and practice beyond refugees. The contributors draw on their intensive fieldwork to explore issues surrounding power and disempowerment between researcher and subject; dilemmas over the protection of research informants; and the rights and actions of refugees in representing themselves and their cultures in advocacy and policy arenas. The wealth of important insights in this book sharpen our understanding of the problems faced in any cross-cultural research and intervention. These explorations revitalize, in vivid detail drawn from case studies, recent theoretical debates on anthropology and ethnographic research, while suggesting new, empowering approaches to applied work and ethnographic study.