Contenu du sommaire : Enquêter en milieu « difficile »

The general introduction engages in a discussion on the methodological and epistemological stakes raised by the adoption of an ethnographic approach in doing fieldwork under striving conditions. It first intends to define a category more than often linked with zones of violence or contexts of insecurity. This category also includes objects considered as socially illegitimate, stigmatized or proselytes. Then, the paper proposes a survey of the French and Anglo-Saxon state of art and approaches, as well as the strategies elaborated to bypass them. Finally, it puts forward the contributions of the ethnographic methods, showing that it modifies the way political scientists using it construct their objects.

Based on our research experience in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this article tries to shed some lights on the difficulties of dealing with violence, from the field research to its restitution. Whereas some difficulties in addressing violence resort to the specificity of the Palestinian context, many traps pertains to the larger social sciences practices : under-interpretation of violence, or its contrary, leading to over-victimization of individuals ; the most attractive trend, especially in political science, remains in focusing only on causalities and perpetrators of violence. We try to show how heuristic could be a bottom-up approach, aimed at ordinary places and people where violence is daily dealt with – more than produced. From a practical point of view, we demonstrate how ethnographic immersion is then not only inevitable but meaningful. We finally raise certain seldom addressed ethical questions, stressed by the ethnographic approach of a highly contentious field.

There is little academic research which uses an ethnobiographical method to examine public policies with regard to the homeless. This type of method allows the researcher to understand the various ways in which a homeless person can access and come into contact with the Welfare State. In order to do this, it was necessary to create a close link with a homeless person. The fact of having a close relationship with a privileged informant allowed me to observe the difficulties involved in accessing welfare benefits and assistance, and revealed the complex system which allies precarious aid and humanitarian measures. Finally, the reciprocal dependence which arises between the researcher and the subject of the research leads to important ethical questions, linked to the way in which the engagement of the researcher can compensate for the weakness of the other available assistance for the homeless.

Telling the story of field research, with its hazards, setbacks, strokes of luck, tactics, has become a specific genre in ethnographic production. A few temptations come with it : taking the idea of « hard places » as a fact, although in most studies it reflects the social background and privileges of the researcher ; taking the authenticity of the research, with its contacts and hardships, as a test of quality for a study ; taking direct observation as the decisive solution for all research problems. Ethnography has obvious advantages, as shown by many reports ; but we should know exactly what is new and convincing in each study to be entitled to affirm its epistemological necessity.