Relationships, complicity and representation: Conducting research in Nepal during the Maoist insurgency

Conducting fieldwork in conflict situations raises specific and ethical questions. While Taussig(1984, 1987, 1992) and Scheper-Hughes (1995) have for anthropologists to speak out against terror, they not addressed in detail how researchers working in zones should negotiate the pragmatics of representation dangerous field situations. As Kovats-Bernat(2002) notes, although there is a growing literature that to develop theoretical approaches to the study of violence, little attention has been given to the practical surrounding fieldwork in conflict.1 What is needed, he argues, is 'the adoption of tactics for ethnographic research and survival in dangerous sites - strategies that challenge the conventional of the discipline, reconfigure the relationships anthropologist and informant, and compel innovation negotiating the exchange of data under hazardous' (2002: 208). Danny Hoffman (2003) similarly this issue with his call for a reconsideration 'frontline anthropology' techniques. We contribute to discussion by examining these questions within the changing context of Nepal, where a bitter internal has developed over the last eight years.