Paying for stories of impairment – parasitic or ethical? Reflections undertaking anthropological research in post-conflict Sierra Leone

Abstract

This article describes how during ethnographic research in Sierra Leone, I was working with people who were used to telling stories of violence about how they got their impairments, which I perceived as ethically problematic and exploitative. I explain how those stories are becoming linked to a post-conflict culture of dependency, patronage and payment. In this context, I explain some of the ethical limitations and struggles I encountered and why, in order to align my research to the community's wants and needs, it was important to engage in more reciprocal and collaborative communal research. I used a social model of disability framework to try and access discourses that the community were using to advocate their issues, and explain some of the limits people encountered by trying to get involved in those discourses.

Keywords

• ethics
• disability
• post-conflict
• remuneration