Ill-prepare: International field research methods training

Political science values international fieldwork as a source of academic credibility, particularly for scholars studying violence and related topics. Yet the training for conducting this type of research remains piecemeal. In this paper, we present the results of a targeted survey of International Relations and Comparative Politics faculty and graduate students on their attitudes towards, and preparation for, international field research. We find a prevalent belief that fieldwork is highly advantageous for scholars of violence. At the same time, most graduate students have not had formal training in conducting fieldwork, instead relying largely on peers and junior women faculty for informal advising. These dynamics endanger scholars and the communities in which they work and perpetuate inequalities within the discipline. We argue that treating fieldwork preparation as methodology will improve safety and research quality, and have distributional benefits, promoting consistency in access to training and valuing the work that goes into providing it

The things they carry : victims’ documentation of forced disappearance in Colombia and Sri Lanka

Roxani Krystalli’s research was supported by fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation (DDRIG), the United States Institute of Peace (Peace Scholarship), the Social Science Research Council (IDRF and DPDF), the Henry J. Leir Institute (Human Security Fellowship), the World Peace Foundation and The Fletcher School PhD Fund.Survivors of systematic violations of human rights abuses carry with them the evidence of their victimization: photographs of the missing, news clippings, copies of police reports. In some contexts, collecting and preserving these documents is part of an effort to claim benefits, such as official victim status or reparations, from the state. In others, it serves as a record of and rebuke to the state’s inaction. In this article, through a comparative case study of victim mobilization in Colombia and Sri Lanka, we explore how these dynamics play out in contexts with high and low (respectively) levels of state action on transitional justice. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in both contexts, we examine grassroots documentation practices with an eye toward how they reflect the strategic adaptation of international transitional justice norms to specific contexts. We also examine how they organize relationships among individuals, the state, and notions of justice in times of transition from war and dictatorship. We argue that, beyond the strategic engagement with and/or rebuke of the state, these documents are also sites of ritual and memory for those who collect them.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

How the Tigers Got Their Stripes: A Case Study of the LTTE’s Rise to Power

Over the course of six months in 1986, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) eliminated their rival militant organizations, despite being significantly outgunned and outmanned by some of these groups. Relying primarily on contemporaneous accounts in Tamil and English, this article traces the process by which the LTTE became the primary avatar of Tamil nationalism, and explores the question of why consolidation unfolded so violently in this case. We argue that the answer lies in the LTTE’s successful portrayal of this violence as order-upholding rather than destructive, and attribute their ability to do this to the fact that much of the population perceived the LTTE as the most legitimate user of violence among the militants

Deploying justice: strategic accountability for wartime sexual violence

Why do governments and militaries publicly condemn and prosecute particular forms of abuse? This article explores the Sri Lankan government's decision to promote limited legal accountability for state-perpetrated rape committed in a country otherwise renowned for widespread impunity. We argue that rather than representing a turn against impunity, the symbolic stance against conflict-related sexual violence in a small number of high-profile cases served an explicitly politico-military agenda. The state deployed legal accountability in specific cases to garner political legitimacy among key domestic audiences. The Sri Lankan government drew on the symbolism of female victimhood to mobilize support at a time when support for military counterinsurgency was waning. We show that governments can uniquely instrumentalize sexual violence cases to establish moral authority and territorial legitimacy. Through an examination of the domestic legal response to state-perpetrated human rights abuses, we illustrate the many ways in which women's bodies—and the law—can be mobilized in war to serve military ends