A direct engagement with social and political responsibility concerning ethics of witnessing requires us to develop expertise for using the tools we need and to be creative and innovative in our approaches to ‘collecting data.’ This would allow the scholar/researcher to decipher the firsthand experiences and testimonies about discrimination, violence or atrocities carried out against individuals, groups and communities and treat their unit of analysis no longer as the ‘vulnerable individual’. The intended effect of directing scholars to hear, think about, collect and examine life stories, testimonies, case documents, reports, expert witness accounts, interviews, and other forms of direct records is to allow us to bear witness to societal traumas and injuries that have not found direct address in dominant socio-legal approaches to mass movement of communities.

Secondly, since these practices often prove to be a difficult exercise in divided societies or societies effected by ongoing civil strife and tenuous partition, it is of utmost importance to constitute communities of learning and trust. This pedagogical approach could be set in motion by asking direct questions about narratives of injustice that cannot [yet] be addressed within the current social order. Such questions are meant to elicit thoughts that at least some sectors of the society at large are eager to talk about and thus creating counter publics, as well as bringing to light issues not easily acknowledged or expressed. In this way, the research community moves beyond a sense of ‘what could we do, nothing more than research and document’ and towards a belief system in which the utterance of ‘there must be and are other ways’ is embraced. By using the cases at hand as a springboard to think about social and historical justice in political and ethical terms is a must for scholars who work within the context of gross and systemic human suffering. Whenever such communities are created, our research practices become a site of engagement and transformation in which we perform our roles as witnesses and advocates for social justice defined in the most inclusive and often challenging of terms.

Thirdly, we must provide direct, hands on means for our students to bear witness to historical traumas and present wrongdoings in the very context of their research projects and establish a collaborative environment of daring support. There is a direct relationship between witnessing as a form of responsibility and assuming agency and power to affect change. Documenting and being present is the first step towards acknowledging the shortcomings or malfunctions of a social, political or legal system. Introducing and managing such forms of engagement in research have ethical, pedagogical, and emotional implications for our students who are asked to bear witness to individual and societal injustices that is yet to find address. Thinking about our responsibility as scholars and researchers to act beyond expert witnesses also requires progressive pedagogies based on discussions on and practices of witnessing potentially leading to transformative political and legal practices.

Action Research as Strategy

The methodology pertaining to ethics of witnessing as responsibility is in tandem with the main tenets of what has come to be known as ‘action research,’ a transformative approach which understanding of complex social situations has been sought in order to improve the quality of life of the effected populations. The importance of this kind of engagement with research is not merely to instill an ethics of witnessing in order to raise awareness about difference and suffering in society. Rather, the aim is to move away from simply acknowledging injustice and towards the consideration of possibilities of substantive changes that could emerge from the very act of witnessing as scholars and researchers. Witnessing is an act that connects us, and obligates us, to each other. It is not a passive presence but an active engagement with the society at large that engulfs the researcher/advocate. At times when silence is the only option and where immediate recovery or remedies are not possible, witnessing buys time and sustains the hope that soon another horizon for justice would emerge.

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