Fieldwork, Objectivity, and the Academic Enterprise: Constraints and Opportunities for the Study of Non-State Actors.

The proposed research draws on a decade of research and writing on non-state armed actors in Lebanon, Bosnia, Colombia, and sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the study of non-state armed actors engaged in violent internal conflict is particularly vulnerable to social scientific ?biases?. These biases are of two sorts: conceptual and empirical. On the empirical side of the ledger, participant-observer research ? a must to unravel the complex realities of internal war?is susceptible to charges of partiality and adhockery. The paper demonstrates that such charges can be avoided by drawing a distinction between the notions of objectivity and impartiality and adopting the latter as the measuring rod for qualitative fieldwork. Conceptual biases, the paper claims, are less obvious but more consequential. These biases derive from political science?s reification of the state as the ?natural? form of political organization. Using illustrations drawn from previous research on the topic, I explain how such conceptual lenses affect the manner in which we perceive and study non-state armed actors and propose potential avenues out of this quandary. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]