Ethnographic research through a liberationist lens: Ethical reflections on fieldwork

Abstract

The article deals with four research-related ethical questions that stem from the author’s experiences in fieldwork. The author employs the liberationist tradition as a sounding board in her reflection. This tradition gives rise to the ethical questions that she deals with, among other influences, and also works as a lens through which she navigates the ethical dilemmas. She argues that such ethical reflection is timely because of the increasing interest in ethnographic methods in theology and theological ethics. The liberationist lens – which is consciously biased in its choice of socially marginalised people and groups as interlocutors and is geared towards just social transformation – offers a useful approach to interrogating fieldwork ethics, also for scholars operating outside of the field of (liberation) theology. Besides the key contribution of the article, that is, reflecting on the relevant ethical questions related to the research, the author suggests that a wider and more systematic usage of ethnographic tools could benefit the liberationist tradition, which indeed emphasises the importance of lived experience, at this point in time, when many of those writing in the liberationist tradition are full-time academics.