EASA (2020) roundtable: A Fair Return: Paying in return for your fieldwork material. Can money and fieldwork go together?
Short abstract: This roundtable discusses the significance of ‘fair return’ in fieldwork. Most particularly, it reflects on questions surrounding cash payment and its consequences for fieldwork. It aims to break open the taboo around the subject, which nonetheless is central to many of our fieldwork experiences.
Long abstract: Field relationships have been extensively discussed in the methodological literature which primarily devotes attention to the role trust, rapport and ethics play in establishing relationships. However,
rarely do the discussions embrace the role of payment in fieldwork relations. Ethical codes often refer to giving participants a ‘fair return’ for their participation. But what does this ‘fair return’ entail? For anthropologists going to the field in the early years of the past century sharing a can of tuna with your key informants might have sufficed. However, contemporarily there are known cases where researchers are (legally) obliged to pay when they interview/survey indigenous peoples. In other instances, research participants are accustomed to receiving money, and they make it perfectly clear no money-no interview. Nonetheless, the discussion of paying cash remains a taboo. There are a growing number of proponents for giving cash payment, while the opponents can still be clearly heard. In this roundtable, we invite contributors to reflect upon the idea of ‘fair return’ and questions such as, what are the methodological consequences of offering informants’ cash (or goods) – or
refraining from doing so? Should payment be given if not asked for? And if given, is the anthropologist ‘spoiling it’ for the next one who comes? What does the repeatedly heard question, ‘what’s in it for me?’ signify in this
context? By discussing these and related questions, this roundtable intends to break open the taboo around a subject which is nonetheless central to many of our fieldwork experiences.
Convenors: Tijo Salverda (University of Vienna) and Lorraine Nencel (VU University Amsterdam)
Chair: Erella Grassiani (University of Amsterdam
Link: https://easaonline.org/confere