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Meeting the ‘organs’: the tacit dilemma of field research in authoritarian states
Author(s) -
Gentile Michael
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/area.12030
Subject(s) - regret , authoritarianism , dilemma , politics , communism , political science , field (mathematics) , relation (database) , sociology , political economy , environmental ethics , law , epistemology , democracy , philosophy , mathematics , database , machine learning , computer science , pure mathematics
To the regret of many scholars, science and politics often overlap, and nowhere as clearly as inside countries ruled by authoritarian governments, where research tends to attract the surveillance of repressive authorities and, more specifically, of the secret services (known as the ‘organ’ within post‐communist space). While such surveillance places significant ethical and methodological challenges on field research, it is rarely discussed in the literature. This paper discusses what may happen when the organ takes interest in fieldwork. Based on the author's experiences in a range of post‐communist countries, the aim is to present and discuss the related risks, and to show how these may materialise in relation to the organ's (c)overt activities.