Challenges of Conducting Disaster Research - Wiley Online Library

Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2015

Challenges of Conducting Disaster Research: The Case of the Sichuan Earthquake Ming Hu Few studies involve disaster fieldwork, not to mention fieldwork in China where disaster management has long been politicized. Drawing upon the authors’ own experience with an action research project on community reconstruction after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, this article discusses a number of challenges associated with conducting disaster fieldwork from the perspective of insider researchers. While the action research approach facilitated access to the field and benefited data collection, it created barriers such as research biases, role conflicts, and ethical dilemmas. This article particularly explores ethical concerns of conducting action research in the absence of independent review institutions. KEY WORDS: research methods, and evaluation, disaster recovery

Introduction Social science’s engagement in disaster research dates back to the 1950s when disasters were no longer regarded merely as technological failures but also associated with cultural and societal causes and results (Oliver-Smith, 1986; Stallings, 2002; Tierney, 2007). Scholars from sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, health, and public administration have examined various aspects of natural and technological disasters (Bromet & Dew, 1995; Kreps, 1984; Norris et al., 2002; Oliver-Smith, 1996; Quarantelli & Russell, 1977). Many disaster studies in social science involve fieldwork. With an origin of interpretative research, fieldwork allows the researcher to “take the role of the actor and see his world from his standpoint” (Blumer, 1966, p. 542), and thus understand the meaning of events in particular situations. Social scientists employ fieldwork to “supplement official records, uncover additional contextual elements that traditional quantitative methods may ignore or are unable to capture, and explore the unexplored territory or culture” (Liang & Lu, 2006, p. 157). Students of disaster are faced with very complicated situations in their fields, including natural risks, public health risks, riots, psychological problems, complex community relations, and even government surveillance especially in developing

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societies where disaster management tends to be politicized. In addition, they share similar barriers as in other fields: difficult preparation for entry, limited linguistic skills, sociocultural strangeness, ethical challenges, and departure with complex emotion. However, few previous researchers have discussed their challenges, solutions, and confusions during fieldwork. This article presents the author’s experiences and reflections on conducting fieldwork in an earthquake-stricken community after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. The primary purpose is to share the experience of disaster fieldwork in China. Researchers in other academic fields have accumulated a great deal of fieldwork knowledge and also confusions in this post-communist Asian country (Heimer & Thøgersen, 2006; Thurston & Pasternak, 1983), but few discussed disaster research for a variety of reasons, which will be discussed later. In addition, this study is expected to contribute to the discussion of action research methods and ethics in disaster settings. Disaster Fieldwork and Chinese Practice “There is no area of social research in which the scientist must operate with less freedom than in the field of disaster study” (Killian, 2002, p. 52). Researchers are often faced with a variety of significant challenges prior to, during, and after fieldwork, which has led to the scarcity of real-time disaster fieldwork. Demanding ethical requirements in action research make this process even more challenging. Fieldwork Challenges and Research Ethics in Disaster Research From an anthropological perspective, Oliver-Smith (1996, p. 305) defines a disaster as “a process/event involving a combination of a potentially destructive agent(s) from the natural and/or technological environment and a population in a socially and technologically produced condition of environmental vulnerability.” It is understandable that disaster fieldwork involves important challenges. The first challenge involves the access to the field of disasters, an area often significantly politicized especially in developing countries (Doughty, 1986; Olson, 2000; Robinson, Hernandez, Mata, & Bernard, 1986). Oliver-Smith (1996, p. 309) argues, “Disasters create contexts in which power relations and arrangements can be more clearly perceived and confronted, which transforms political consciousness, shapes individual actions, and strengthens or dissolves institutional power arrangements.” Seeing disaster management as an opportunity to consolidate state legitimacy, governments, especially those in developing countries, tend to “monopoly” relief efforts and avoid any potential criticisms from independent investigations. Under such circumstances, obtaining entry permission for a research purpose often proves to be difficult, if not impossible (Nadarajah, 2011; Stallings, 2002; Tierney, 2007). Second, disaster fieldwork features data collecting in the environment of uncertainty, vulnerability, and complexity. Disaster research is always post hoc

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Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 6:2

and reactive because of the unpredictability of hazard occurrence (Killian, 2002). After the major strike, secondary hazards irregularly reoccur and create high uncertainty such as emergency evacuation, displacement, public health risks, unavailable transportation, food undersupply, and so forth, in the life of all people living in the affected region (Horsley, 2012). So it is extremely difficult to follow a given research schedule in disaster settings (Billo & Hiemstra, 2013; Pieke, 2000). Researchers are also faced with the vulnerability of research participants (Cutter, 1996; Twigg & Bhatt, 1998). Women, children, the elderly, the poor, minority groups, the injured, people losing properties or relatives in the calamity, and even aid providers are all likely to become vulnerable both psychologically and physically in a disaster. Vulnerability appears also at the community level: the loss of public places, informal gathering places, or physical features symbolic of community identity may be mourned collectively (Bode, 1989). In addition, complexity occurs as disaster management involves multiple processes of technology, economy, social culture, and politics (Oliver-Smith, 1996). Emergency aid and post-disaster reconstruction bring about numerous negotiations among multiple parties and critical decisions regarding resource redistribution, community restructuring, lifestyle adjustment, and power relation alteration, which may lead to critical consequences, including short- or long-term social tensions, restratification of social classes, sociocultural evolution, and even social (in) stability (Lin, 2012; Tierney, 2007). Such complexity challenges researchers in terms of developing propositions, making context-wise research design, and adapting data collection skills. Finally, though leaving the field is relatively easy, researchers are often criticized for giving little back to communities. Previous studies also suggested long-term investigation in the same area with respect to the high complexity and transiency of disaster management (Oliver-Smith, 1996). Action researchers are faced with great ethical challenges due to these characteristics of disaster research. Action research is defined as “The study of a social situation carried out by those involved in that situation in order to improve both their practice and the quality of their understanding” (Munn-Giddings & Winter, 2001). The dual purpose makes action research demanding (Levin, 2012), which is reflected in numerous discussions on research ethics. Hilsen (2006) claims that human interdependency, co-generation of knowledge and fairer power relations comprise the foundation of action research ethics. Gellerman, Frankel, and Ladenson (1990) articulate four ethical principles: serving the good of the whole, treating others as we would like them to treat us, always treating people as ends rather than as means, and acting so the powerless won’t be more disadvantaged. Gelling and Munn-Giddings (2011) further proposes seven requirements as the basis for evaluating ethics in action research, including value, scientific validity, fair participant selection, favorable risk-benefit ration, independent review, informed consent, and respect for enrolled participants. When it comes to disaster settings, Collogan, Tuma, Dolan-Sewell, Borja, and Fleischman (2004) review four ethical concerns in previous studies, including participants’ decisional capacity, victims’ vulnerability, risks and benefits of


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participating, and informed consent. O’Mathúna (2010) raises five ethics principles in disaster research and discusses their limitations: (a) Appreciating vulnerability. Though survivors’ vulnerability deserves special attention, most studies found that most people continue to be able to make informed decisions even when extremely upset. (b) Balancing benefit and burden. Though survivors are assumed to have enough to deal with, however, only a few participants are found to be negatively impacted by research. (c) Avoiding coercion. People should be clearly informed that the care or resources they receive will not be influenced by their participation. (d) No rush to research– “Getting to the research site quickly should not occur at the expense of careful research design or thorough ethical oversight” (p. 72). (e) Protection. Protecting research participants has the first priority. However, few studies discuss how to practice these principles while conducting action research. Conducting Fieldwork in China If disaster fieldwork is challenging in itself, it becomes much more challenging in the developing context like China where fieldwork generally is restricted by both disaster politicization and underdevelopment of social inquiry systems. Modern social sciences in China were rebuilt in the 1980s after thirty years of absence in China’s communist era (Heimer & Thøgersen, 2006). The long-term expatriation from the communist education system led to the underdevelopment of social research. In general, social science in China has been highly affected by academic politicization. It has been used to serve the need of the state and support the Marxist state ideology (Lin, 2011). As a result, academic institutes and researchers have been integrated into or affiliated with the government system and lost academic independence (Hayhoe, 1995). Universities often exchange leadership with government agencies. This has brought a social status of “guojia ganbu (state cadre)” to researchers working for academic and education institutions and may foster their collaboration with government agencies in fieldwork while independent researchers found themselves hardly acknowledged by academia and government. In this sense, researchers are just “walking in the footsteps of the communist party” (Hansen, 2006, p. 82). As a consequence, interviewees regard researchers as politically privileged and expect them to speak for their benefits (Svensson, 2006). However, while facilitating access to research participants, such favorable power relationship also might produce biases due to participants’ selective responses during data collection. Research politicization also creates a utilitarian disposition in social inquiries. Social inquiry is used as an instrument for public policy and administration (Cornet, 2010). The government expects immediate policy applications from academic efforts rather than general knowledge generation and takes usefulness and applicability as the primary criteria when appraising research plans. In addition, social science has been marginalized in the research and education system while natural sciences are placed with high priority and are much more funded. Other consequences of politicization involve the establishment of

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forbidden areas and the lack of an independent research review system. Fieldwork concerning any politically sensitive topics such as democracy, human rights, ethnical conflicts, and criticisms against the party-state system is forbidden or restricted, which serves as common sense among Chinese researchers. Both researchers and informants, and even research sponsors will get into trouble as a result of out-of-bounds inquiries (for example, Thuno, 2006; Yeh, 2006). In addition, researchers lack an institutionalized review system (for instance, Internal Review Board, or IRB) to guide and supervise their research behaviors, though they are subjected to ex post accountability institutions (K.T. Li Foundation, 2009). While enjoying the efficiency and flexibility due to this absence, they risk unjustified restriction of conducting fieldwork or publishing study results by the government. Presenting a disaster researcher’ experiences and reflections on disaster fieldwork after the Sichuan Earthquake, this article discusses the challenges of conducting long-term fieldwork in disaster settings. It also serves to enrich the scholarship on action research methods and ethics in China where social science has not yet developed an advanced institutional review system due to politicization of social inquiry. Research Team and Research Design On May 12th, 2008, an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 struck attacked West China (primarily Sichuan), causing 69,227 deaths and 17,923 lost people.1 Over 40,000 rural and urban neighborhoods were seriously destroyed. One month later, four nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that had joined a NGO network for the emergency relief decided to initiate a joint community recovery program, “New Hometown Plan (NHP), ” and continue close collaboration, thanks to the trust they had built in previous partnership. Among the four founding NGOs of NHP, the first is affiliated with a top university in East China (and staffed by faculty members and graduate students from the university) and is dedicated to NGO capacity building and policy. The second NGO is a volunteer training center also based outside of Sichuan. The third and fourth are both based in Sichuan, one focusing on environmental education and the other basic education support. Modern NGOs had been seen as agents of bourgeoisie and totally banned during China’s communist era and have revived after the start of the “Opening up and Reform” since the 1980s (Jia, 2003). In recent years, NGOs have grown exponentially despite the government’s numerous restrictions in registration and fundraising and have been seen as a primary driving force for China’s civil society (e.g., Saich, 2000; Yang, 2005). Following the model of development organizations such as World Bank, UNDP, and international NGOs, Chinese NGOs have been engaged in community development as their focus area (Feng & Kang, 2001). However, due to China’s disaster politics, NGOs were not allowed to participate in disaster management until early 2008, shortly before the Sichuan Earthquake. The inadequate preparation of knowledge and skills in disaster


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management would challenge NGOs that were going to engage in emergency relief and post-disaster community recovery, in addition to their longstanding difficulties concerning registration, fundraising, and talent (Deng, 2010). Given the significance of NGO studies in temporary China, the four partners developed two purposes for their community recovery program: (a) to explore how NGOs can help earthquake survivors recover from the disaster and reach sustainable reconstruction and redevelopment through the participatory development approach; and (b) to explore how NGOs can develop and maintain stable interorganizational partnership. One to two representatives from each partner met several times and developed the dual purposes of this program: community recovery aid and research. In addition, responsibilities were shared among partners according to their capacity. The first NGO would be in charge of strategic planning and research activities (the author worked for this NGO during this study), the second program management, and the third and fourth resource collection and volunteer recruitment. But it was the supervisory committee composed of leaders of each partner that made all important decisions. NHP’s strategy was to base the program in an earthquake-hit community and work with survivors for at least three years to assist them in community recovery. A research proposal that followed the action research processes, “preplan-plan-act-reflect” (Acosta & Goltz, 2014), was created primarily with the first NGO’s facilitation. Accepted by the supervisory committee, the first NGO sent an informal report to the university to make the latter informed of what might be going, given that there was no formal IRB rules within the university system for social science. Reaching the Field The Baishuihe neighborhood is located in Longmen, a small town 80 kilometers away from Chengdu, Sichuan Province’s capital, and is populated by 2,000 registered residents. In the 1950s the central government founded a stateowned mining firm in the town and recruited workers all around the country. In its peak days, the firm was staffed by 3,000 workers, whose families constituted the majority of the Baishuihe population. When the firm went bankrupt in 2002, all workers were laid off and fell in poverty. The elderly and children became the majority of residents when young and middle-aged people had to work outside the town. About one fourth of residents sold their houses and moved to cities. Though the firm was transformed into an administrative unit and incorporated into the township system after its bankruptcy,2 the disagreements on layoff compensations and distribution of the firm’s remnant assets led to conflict and distrust between residents and the township government. A deserted community, Baishuihe had no theatre, no gym, no museum, and no philanthropic organization to provide public services. The earthquake ruined Baishuihe, killing 14 persons and destroying 95% of the houses. The drinking water system was severely damaged, and the power supply destroyed. Losing all of their possessions during the earthquake, residents

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lived in crowded tents and received limited food, clothes, and other everyday provisions from governmental allotments. Without house insurance or employment opportunities, they were faced with a dim future of community reconstruction. Two months after the earthquake, NHP arrived in Baishuihe. In order to find an appropriate community to base NHP, the work team had developed a list of potential sites according to the knowledge acquired through their emergency relief efforts and visited each of them. Baishuihe was chosen for several reasons. First, Baishuihe was a heavily stricken community during the earthquake and thus in most need of assistance. Second, the township government welcomed NGOs with the expectation that NGOs could help them assuage victims’ grievance and assist in community reconstruction. Third, a NGO partner had collaborated with the local primary school before the earthquake and developed good relationship with government officials, teachers, and students. Our formal entry to Baishuihe was a typical Chinese-style process. A NGO leader made a phone call to a deputy mayor of the town and the latter confirmed the government’s assent to our program. The head of the residents’ committee which is usually seen as the lowest branch of the government system then showed up and welcomed the program team. She designated a small yard in a deserted middle school for us to build a work station. Also with the head’s coordination, dozens of soldiers came to help us pave the yard and set up tents– these soldiers were deployed in this community after the earthquake to assist in public security and emergency aid for three months. A community-based work station was then established, staffed by about ten NGO professionals and volunteers. NHP then conducted a participatory needs assessment to identify survivors’ needs and available resources. It found that while the short-term needs involved child care, elderly health, public hygiene, and social life, the long-term needs would be elderly care, housing, and employment. Considering our limited fundraising capacity as grassroots NGOs, we decided to focus on delivering services and fostering community organizations rather than funding housing and public facilities. An important progress of our aid activities was the establishment of a community center one year after the earthquake. Run by a joint team of residents and NGO staff, it consisted of the square, training classroom, public shower room, tea house, community library, and Internet cafe and soon became residents’ social life center where they did exercises, reading, entertainment, making friends, and for forth. NHP also encouraged and funded residents to meet their needs in arts, culture, and other community services by volunteering and establishing selfhelp groups. Finally, NHP helped the community to launch a resident assembly where all residents were encouraged to discuss public projects they needed. Meanwhile, a special council composed of resident representatives, NHP staffers, and community cadres was established to conduct the assembly’s decisions. Responding to the increasing activities, NHP gradually developed its program management structure. It restructured the supervisory committee to


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make it more responsive for supervising the work team. Two years later, NHP was registered as an independent NGO with a board of directors composed of both leaders of partner NGOs and external experts. Finally, the new NGO became a fully local organization when the work team was staffed all by local employees. Collective Data Collection The action research approach guided our research in two aspects. First, all research activities were in close connection with, if not fully integrated into, NHP’s aid projects. Second, researchers were also team members in aid projects and worked closely with other research participants. These characteristics shaped data collection into a process of collective knowledge production in which researchers and other participants contributed to data building based on their understanding of mutuality. However, differences still existed among research participants. Data Collection With NGO Partners The four NGOs in NHP were both nonprofit practitioners and researchers, though research activities were primarily led by the first NGO. Data collection from NGOs had three sources: project activities, interviews and observations, and archival data. First, all project documents, including project proposals, activity and event records, and project progress and assessment reports, were kept for research purpose. In addition, the project staff prepared a community journal that tracked all important community events every day and shared them with researchers (some people have dual roles of research and project management); all meeting minutes of the project team were also shared. Second, researchers participated in most project activities and took observation notes. Also, project staff members were interviewed twice a year to deliver opinions about project management, interorganizatonal collaboration, and future project plans. Third, participating organizations shared archival data in their own organizations if necessary. Generally, collecting data from our NGO partners were easy and even enjoyable because of the census on research priority within the program. Practitioners actively collaborated with researchers in data collection and participated in data analysis. Though data analysis and report writing were mainly performed by researchers, researchers asked practitioners’ review before publication. The release of important research report was decided by the supervisory committee. But data collection became relatively difficult when it involved nonprofits outside NHP. Impacted by the stereotype of seeing scholars as impractical and aloof, nonprofit professionals often questioned interview requests: “What use is academic research in the disaster settings?” In order to win their trust, we introduced ourselves as nonprofit professionals with academic background who were working on a research project with the purpose to improve nonprofit engagement in disaster management. This strategy worked very well.

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However, challenges still exist. First, some NGO professional suffered more post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) than survivors because of their personal experience (such as carrying bodies, being wounded, and being robbed by desperate survivors) in frontline areas during emergency relief. Researchers must respect their willingness of participating in research. Second, nonprofit professionals tend to criticize governments for inefficiency and corruption on one hand and actively seeking (and also boasting of) government support on the other. Researchers must be aware of such paradox that was caused by grassroots NGOs’ marginalization in the current sociopolitical system. Third, researchers must also be cautious to deal with criticisms and disagreements among partners that were expressed in interviews and observations in order not to foster internal conflicts. Neutrality and careful de-identification therefore were necessary in research activities. Data Collection With Residents Several measures were taken to get informed consent from earthquake survivors in Baishuihe. After arriving in the community, NHP invited cadres and other residents at a community meeting and introduced NHP’s purposes and major activities so that they knew research was an important part of our program. When some major research activities like the annual program evaluation were carried out, NHP convened a community meeting to inform of the content and procedures and ask for suggestions. In addition, the researchers would ask for their oral consent before interviewing survivors, though no informed consent letter was used. Actually, the letter was avoided in order not to bring unease among participants because in Chinese culture, a written consent letter often symbolizes power or serious legal concerns that are used by social elite over the powerless. On the other hand, our community recovery efforts apparently helped us win survivors’ high trust. Most people gladly participated in interviews and actively shared their knowledge and opinions on community affairs. When our inquiry was occasionally doubted, other residents might come and say to the interviewee, “They are volunteers. They come here to help us!” Trust and the psychological closeness built through everyday interactions also helped a lot when conducting in-depth interviews and participant observations. For example, we usually chose not to make an interview appointment beforehand: An appointment in a quasi-traditional community like Baishuihe would make the interviewee uneasy or make over-preparation (for instance, preparing food and drink to treat the researcher). We visited him/her as if we dropped around. A typical conversation began with recent life events and had a natural shift to the research topic such as his/her life experience before and during the disaster and personal plans for the future. Though a few families lost their relatives during the earthquake, most people were not apparently affected and were still optimistic about their future. Some even enjoyed telling their experience during the earthquake.


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Observations were performed in collective events and everyday life. The activities organized by NHP such as festival celebrations, group dance and singing, and road pavement became an ideal space to observe interactions among residents. In addition, residents developed a great deal of interactions in everyday life: They talked over meal, went shopping together, and played group games thanks to unemployment and geographic closeness that were caused by the earthquake. Everyday life provided the natural settings to observe their understanding of disasters, government policies, and the decision making system at the community level. While our long-term presence in the community brought convenience for research activities by means of building trust, a feeling of gratitude that grew among residents might bias our data. The gratitude had two sources. First, we were regarded as “true friends” because we entered the community during the post-disaster hard times and share the same harsh environment with them. Second, they benefited from NHP’s services which the neighboring communities did not have. Feeling grateful for the aid from us, residents would think of accepting our interviews and surveys as a way to give back to our service. Consequently, they would rather not criticize our projects. When asked if they had any comment or suggestion for NHP’s work, they often said, “You did such great a job! Everything is awesome.” But a few resident volunteers who worked closely with the NHP staff still liked to share their criticisms and suggestions with us, which were appreciated by researchers. Data Collection With Neighborhood Cadres and Government Officials Collecting data from neighborhood cadres and government officials were difficult for many reasons. The first challenge was about the disaster management system. The government established a highly centralized system to manage community reconstruction issues in response to their political and administrative complexity (State Council of China, 2008). Officials were asked to take full responsibility for any important issues related to resident resettlement and social stability. They had to be very cautious to avoid mistakes in fear of internal punishment, for instance, demotion or career dead-end. Considering the importance of political correctness in determining career development in China’s government system, officials usually would rather avoid any personal comments about disaster-related issues; or they just cited government-released reports or documents but kept personal opinions silent. For example, we tried to make an interview appointment with a deputy mayor who was relatively open-minded and had often visited our work station. However, he replied that he was recently assigned to manage another program irrelevant to disaster management and felt inappropriate to accept our interview, though our questions would concern his personal opinions as a previous project partner. The second challenge was their tight yet unfixed schedules. The administrative office of the township government seldom had an exact master schedule. Officials were often required to keep their cellphones accessible around the clock

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so as to be available for new tasks in any time. In addition, few officials at the grassroots level had the habit of accurately managing time. Consequently, it was difficult for us to make successful appointments with officials. Interview appointments were very often cancelled or delayed without notification. The centralized system was extended to neighborhood cadres who actually were not government staffers but were regarded as quasi-officials because of their financial and administrative dependence upon the government. However, an important difference between them and government officials lay in that cadres were also local residents and earthquake victims while most officials came from outside the neighborhood. Cadres shared interests with other residents and were empathetic of our projects. So, it was relatively easy to reach cadres. Considering these difficulties, NHP developed several solutions for data collection. Frist of all, we collaborated with a government agency at a higher level and built government–government communications. The board president of one founding NGO headed a municipal governmental agency in Chengdu. This relationship proved to be very useful for NHP to develop communication with township officials because they felt they collaborated with us via government insiders and reduced the risk of political incorrectness. Second, the major researchers’ association with a top university provided great support. In China, top universities had a high political status and were closely associated with the central and provincial governments. After the depoliticization reform in the 1990s, they were still regarded as privileged institutions (Tian & Meng, 2011). Also, professors and researchers were seen as respectable and trustworthy people in general. As a result, when we introduced ourselves as researchers from a top university, interviewees were usually glad to have a conversation with us. In addition, thanks to the stereotype of social research as policy research, officials and cadres tended not to rigidly separate research from our aid projects and accepted it, especially when we described it as an essential part of our community recovery efforts. Third, demonstrating political correctness was an important strategy to win trust since we were “outsiders” anyway. We tracked government policies and tried to use the language cited from relevant documents when we communicated with the government. The purpose was to tell them we were not trouble makers but help givers that knew and followed government policies. Fourth, personal relations constituted another critical way. Our entry to Baishuihe benefited from a NGO leaders’ friendship with a deputy mayor. Another leader was an alumnus of a second deputy mayor. In addition, NHP’s supervisory committee regularly visited the neighborhood and invited officials and cadres to have dinner together, an important part of social life in China. The project staff often gave administrative assistance to community cadres and built friendship with them. On the other hand, ethical codes were fully appreciated and followed. We entered the community with the government’s consent and informed them of NHP’s purposes and content and. A formal interview began only after receiving the interviewee’s oral consent. Several measures were taken to protect the


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interviewee such as making appointments, taking notes rather than audio recording, and rigorously deidentifying interview notes. These efforts significantly increased the government’s trust and support for us. Township officials frequently visited our work station in the beginning of the NHP program in order both to show their interest in us and to investigate if we had any “hidden” purposes. However, such visits disappeared six month later when they regarded us as helpers. In addition, a researcher was invited to intern in the party sectary’s office for two months. Such trust and support helped researchers got easier access to local policies and facilitated research and aid activities that engaged government officials and neighborhood cadres. Research Through Tensions Field research in disaster settings is often associated with security concerns. During our stay in Baishuihe, we experienced numerous minor earthquakes. Also, dilapidated buildings, fallen trees, and collapsed hills were seen everywhere in the neighborhood. Summer floods were also significant threats. However, the biggest challenge in the fieldwork came not from natural risks but from heated conflicts between the government and earthquake survivors. A community of layoff workers, Baishuihe had been split by the conflicts between residents and the government before the earthquake. Residents held grievance against the government due to the bankruptcy of the state-owned firm and the following mismanagement of remnant assets and asked for livelihood improvement. Resident displacement and housing reconstruction after the earthquake made the conflict more complicated and heated. The government demanded that residents must give up their previous homestead land in order to get new government-subsidized houses. Residents regarded this condition as unfair and refused to accept. However, the government exercised political pressure upon them to demand cooperation. The situation put NHP into a dilemma: the government asked us to be on their side, or at least be neutral, while residents expected us to speak for their benefits. After rounds of discussion, the supervisory committee made a decision that NHP should be neutral and avoid involvement in the conflicts in order to avoid ostracization from Baishuihe by the government, as happened to NGOs in many earthquake-affected communities. The neutral stand restricted our community intervention and also placed researchers in an embarrassing situation. Researchers kept observation on what was happening to residents, usually with empathy, but must be alert to the risk of being involved. While government officials were satisfied with our choice, residents felt disappointed (though empathetic) and became less engaged in our projects. Actually, due to the government-residents conflict, NHP had to stop its planned strategy of improving participatory community governance in Baishuihe, which partially led to its final withdrawal from the community before fully reaching its original goals. Another major challenge came from within NHP. Like all grassroots nonprofit start-ups in China, NHP faced three difficulties, legal legitimacy, funding, and

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talented staff, which would threaten the survival of the entire program. To run this initiative legally, we affiliated NHP with one local partner. Two years later, NHP was registered with the municipal government through personal relations with an official. This move kept NHP as a lawful organization. Funding also troubled the work team. Few foundations would like to fund grassroots NGOs, not to mention the government. Grantmakers that financed social science projects were so scarce that even researchers from a top university regarded grant seeking as a great challenge. In addition, due to limited funding and strategy changes within individual organizations, all four founding NGOs withdrew three years after NHP’s establishment and transferred the projects to the newly built NGO. Given that earthquake survivors just moved into their new houses and still had a long road ahead for sustainable redevelopment, the goals of this action research project were merely partially reached. Leaving the Field In many anthropological and sociological studies, leaving the field was often described as a sad and paradoxical process because most researchers will never visit the community again (Zinn, 1979). However, for researchers in a community-based program, leaving the field was a gradual and natural process. When it was located in Baishuihe two months after the earthquake, NHP set up a long-term objective of establishing a local NGO to take its place. Local residents were encouraged to volunteer with the project team. Local staff members were also recruited and trained. When NHP was able to obtain reliable funding in the third year (2010), the supervisory committee registered it with the local government as an independent NGO. Well informed that these moves were prepared for our final withdrawal, residents fully understood and accepted our departure when it actually happened in early 2012, three years after the disaster. Also, the local NGO succeeded NHP’s most aid projects but stopped research due to lack of skills. On the other hand, researchers never completely left Baishuihe: We kept an eye on what was happening in the community by staying in touch with the new NGO and sometimes paying visits to the community because community recovery was still a focus area on our research agenda. Giving Back to the Community Traditional ethnographers from outside are often criticized as taking advantage of their informants but giving back little (Blauner & Wellman, 1973; Staples, 1976). In this collaborative study among NGOs, however, researchers not only assisted local residents with direct services but also gave back to the greater community of earthquake survivors, NGO people, policy makers, and researchers through capacity building, policy advocacy, and cross-sectoral collaboration. In its three-year work in the town, NHP set up two community-based work stations (one in Baishuihe and the other in a nearby village) and served more than 2,000 residents. The projects included an integrated community center,


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public facilities, child education, computer skill training, and community art clubs. The total amount of grants was nearly one million renminbi (about $160,000). Residents were grateful for these services that were offered when the community was fully destroyed in the earthquake. In addition, NHP staffers played another important role as psychological supporters/partners during their hard times. Based on our lessons and findings in Baishuihe, we organized four training workshops to help 60 junior professionals from local grassroots NGOs improve project management skills. Our project site in Baishuihe welcomed many NGO leaders through visiting and exchange activities. Satisfied with our performance in Baishuihe, a private foundation entrusted us to deliver small grants to support eight NGOs working in other earthquake-affected communities. The community-based study also attracted attention from the research community. Many scholars visited us and exchanged research skills and plans. Several of them directly benefited from the data collected by the research team or from our personal networks in the community. Researchers’ publications in conferences, journals, and books contributed to knowledge production in the fields of disaster research, nonprofit management, and community recovery. Finally, our work improved cross-sectoral collaboration for disaster management. Based on the findings and social networks we developed from the NHP program, we organized three conferences which brought together disaster survivors, government officials, scholars, and NGO leaders and supported interorganizational dialogue and collaboration. Though significant collaboration was seldom reached, dialogue and networking proved to be valuable in reducing social divides and improving censuses, given the absence of regular cross-sectoral communication channels in China’s disaster settings. Research Reflections The three-year action research in disaster settings gave rise to reflections on disaster research and community recovery practice. The first reflection involves the “field.” The world of “others” constitutes the field for traditional ethnographers (Gupta & Ferguson, 1977). In disaster research, the field often refers to the community of local people and organizations, including survivors, voluntary associations, and governments. NGOs, communities, and academic institutions outside of Baishuihe could also be included. But what makes action research unique lies in that researchers participate in the creation of the “field” through their interventional activities in the community. In this study, researchers were deeply involved in aid project management and might deserve criticism for altering the supposedly “natural” settings. However, Burawoy (1998, p. 14) argues that “Interventions create perturbations that are not noise to be expurgated but music to be appreciated, transmitting the hidden secretes of the participant’s world. Institutions reveal more about themselves when under pressure or in crisis, when they face the unexpected as well as the routine.” In our case, only through our engagement in NGO operation and in community reconstruction did

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we obtain a full understanding of power relations and collective actions in the context of community reconstruction. However, the high involvement of the researcher produces challenges of balancing research activities and aid projects. First, the roles as a researcher and as a practitioner were often in conflict. Considering the relatively incapable team and his expertise in nonprofit management, the author had to participate in program administration a great deal, which led to the competition of roles and time management. Second, the dual role of research and project management may lead to bias: The researcher might prefer some projects over others and bring his/her bias in research activities that involved aid project design and assessment. Third, research activities might involve NHP’s internal conflicts and the government-residents conflicts. Following the ethical principles of “value” and “scientific validity” as suggested by Gelling and Munn-Giddings (2011), we decided that all research activities must carried out without undermining the aid projects that would directly benefit earthquake survivors and must demonstrate rigorously scientific methods. The second reflection involves research on the disadvantaged in the field of disasters. While most studies agree that the victims who directly suffer from the disaster, especially women, children, and the elderly, are the disadvantaged, government officials are usually excluded. However, in my field research officials working for the township government were actually among the fragile group, not because of their physical or property loss but their psychological vulnerability. Most officials lived outside the town and hardly suffered financial loss or physical harm. But the disaster still incurred a strong shock upon them, which was reinforced by the heavy workload and great political pressure.3 For example, when we visited a deputy mayor in his office and planned to have an interview, he was being bluntly blamed by a woman villager who felt unfairly treated by the government in terms of the compensation for her expropriated land. Feeling innocent in this case, the deputy mayor nevertheless could not defend against an ordinary villager because of his position as a government official. He suddenly broke into tears in front of us. We had to comfort him and cancelled the interview. This story did not serve as a cliche of broad victimization of everyone in disaster settings but as a social lens of the centralized political system which increased vulnerability in certain groups. On the other hand, interviews with disaster survivors proved to be an efficient way to help them recovered from psychological harms, in contrary to the common warning that the investigator should avoid topics that may recall the participant’s sadness (Quarantelli & Russell, 1977; Fischer, 1998). We often found some survivors, especially the elderly, would like to share their stories during the earthquake in the interviews. Telling stories became one way to get relaxed from psychological tensions (Killian, 2002): They tried to persuade themselves that they were lucky to survive such a catastrophe and should be grateful. However, such interviews require good understanding of local culture and empathy of the survivor.


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Finally, the lack of independent review remained a major concern. Though some forms of ante-post ethics review does exist in China, they work only when the researcher breaks ethic rules in a significantly detrimental way and brings damage to research participants or the academic community (K.T. Li Foundation, 2009). As a result, the researchers in most time have discretion about how they observe research ethics. Such discretion nevertheless means both convenience and challenges. In this study, action researchers followed self-formulated fieldwork rules such as avoiding “buying” information, avoiding unethical approaches in data collection, keeping informants’ personal information confidential, sharing findings with participants, and so forth. However, without the regulation of an independent review system, we found self-discipline tended to become lax. Some informants were not fully informed about research purpose; research procedures might be broken owing to schedule conflict; some data were not fully deidentified before analysis. Moreover, when informants cast doubt on whether we could fully protect them from being identified, we lacked an independent review system to justify our ethical practice. Conclusions My fieldwork in an earthquake-stricken community in West China after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake contributes to disaster studies in the following respects. First, it presents the challenges of conducting fieldwork in disaster settings, especially in the phase of temporary resettlement. Unlike emergency relief researchers who are faced with direct natural risks and high uncertainty, fieldworkers in the field of temporary resettlement collect data from a community of survivors who have suffered property loss and psychological strikes and have been involved in a series of new challenges that will determine their lives of future decades. Such an environment demands researchers of knowledge and skills different from those in emergency relief, as shown in this action research study. Second, the article enriches the literature on action research ethics. Action researchers are faced with great ethical challenges, one of which is to balance maximizing the benefits of participants and ensuring scientific validity. This study demonstrates the possibility. However, how to reach the balance remains controversial between action researchers and independent reviewers and even between action researchers (Gelling and Munn-Giddings, 2011; Munn-Giddings & Winter, 2001). Future disaster researchers may benefit from these discussions in at least two aspects: positionality and fieldwork design. As discussed in many studies, personal traits such as race, class, gender, age, language ability, education, life experiences, and many others constitute one’s positionality in the field (Cornet, 2010). Though every field is unique in this sense, recognition of common traits will help researchers build method-wise positions, which is also conducive to fieldwork design. Owing to natural unpredictability and social complexity in disaster fields, fieldwork design is a multiply negotiated process between theoretical development and fieldwork practice. This process involves access to

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the field, methodological adaption, and partnership building, and sometimes continues until the end of fieldwork. Ming Hu is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Society & Community Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1300 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706. Phone: (317) 603-6077. E-mail: [email protected]

Notes I am grateful to Angela Bies, Chao Guo, and Maria Lepowsky for their contribution to this paper. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their excellent suggestions. 1. The numbers were released by the State Council News Office in September 2008. Though lost people should be postulated as deaths three years after the event according to the law, the death toll has never been updated since. This suggests political sensitiveness of disasters in China. 2. In the past the firm managed everything from household registration to job allocation to social insurance benefits, which was prevalent in all state-owned “work units (gongzuo danwei)” in the planned economy. 3. During my fieldwork, local newspapers covered several cases of government officials in the earthquake-hit areas who committed suicide because of the combination of PSTD and great political pressure.

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