avoid checkpoint delays. Yet, it was also essential to see that Ramallah is a
thriving city. Certainly, for locals, too, Ramallah is a “bubble” as it has
attracted numerous international NGOs, and its many cappuccino bars
cater to the Palestinian elite. Indeed, contrary to popular perceptions, life
here could also be relatively uneventful, dare I say, normal.
WORKINGWITH, AND NOTON, COMMUNITIES
While I managed to get some initial contacts in Palestine, I still had to earn
people’s trust! Action Researchers point out that, amongst marginalized
groups, especially in violently divided societies, there exists a long-standing
distrust toward conventional researchers who tend to engage in “‘drive-in’
or ‘fly-in’ research” (Andrews, Newman, Meadows, Cox, & Bunting, 2010,
p. 13; Lundy & McGovern, 2006). In other words, it is assumed that
researchers complete their field research, then disappear into the halls of
academia, publish their results, and build their careers on the backs of
those from whom they took the data (Van der Meulen, 2011). Indeed, a
soft-spoken and gentle Palestinian professor one day told me in not so
many words, after I sympathetically nodded once he had recounted how
soldiers entered and searched his home one night unannounced, whilst his
young children were screaming in terror, “I don’t want you to sympathize,
I want you to go back to America and do something about this!” It was the
first time that I become blatantly aware that working in a conflict zone
virtually demands engagement, whilst to remind disengaged constitutes a
form of betrayal of the people we question and the experiences and the
stories they choose to share.
Besides the need to shed the image of “fly-in” researchers who do no
morethan build up their professional credentials and CVs, researchers in
conflict regions can also be perceived as tainted by the history of the social
sciences. Indeed, scientific studies have historically frequently misrepre-
sented marginal communities and failed to account for their complex and
diverse social realities and preoccupations.^4
While a lack of trust and the danger of misrepresentation are ever
present in the study of marginal communities, such issues are magnified in
violently divided societies. Indeed:
social divisions and political conflict deeply impact issues of access, interviewee presen-
tation, the use of research for ends potentially detrimental to those being studied,
and the physical safety of the researcher and researched. (Lundy & McGovern, 2006,
p.53)Knowledge-Making and its Politics in Conflict Regions 27