One of the key overarching themes of my research is the investigation of ethics in everyday life, informed by insights from ordinary ethics, the anthropology of morality, and feminist care ethics. Looking for ethics in everyday life leads me to think critically about my own life and work, too. In this blog I consider my position as a visitor in Ghana and the ethics of scholarship away from home as part of international fellowship programme. I begin with a question: “Should I be here?”
Researchers from the global north (for want of better terminology) working in the majority world, historically have not been disposed to ask ourselves this question. There are of and , detailing the broad spectrum of harms caused by global northern scholars pursuing academic goals by embedding themselves uninvited in the majority world. I cannot do justice to those critiques here but the interests and concerns of the people we write about have typically been given secondary consideration at best. “Should I be here?” is thus a risky question—the answer could be “No,”. If framed in terms of the outcomes or impact of research, this question draws attention to who benefits (qui bono). Benefit is critical, but I want to focus particularly on the ethical implications of international travel and field research in the context of the coronavirus pandemic in Africa. I have attempted to ‘travel with care’, as explained below, but the attempt is fraught with contradictions.
The prevailing colonial, imperialist global economic order African governments’ responses to the pandemic. 82% of available Covid-19 vaccines have been distributed among global northern states, with in the majority world, with of Africa’s population fully vaccinated compared to . I am part of these statistics: as of June 2022, have been fully vaccinated, while the figure for . As a resident and citizen of Britain, I received two doses of vaccine and a booster shot before the end of 2021. To enter Ghana in May 2022, I was only required to prove my vaccination status. In other words; my ability to be present in Ghana is dependent on the way in which care—specifically, health care in the form of vaccines—has been stockpiled by the British government, allowing me to be fully vaccinated, and to prove it at the border. As a fully-vaccinated, white, British passport-holder in 2022, I stand ‘atop the [global] social pyramid’, not least in terms of my transnational mobility.
This is a pertinent but unexceptional measurement of what was already true before the pandemic. Leah Eryenyu (2022) warns against the nostalgia of the the pandemic. As powerful as the above vaccination statistics are, they stand in continuity with the pre-pandemic era—not in contrast to it. The deeply unequal economic and geopolitical power relations that shape the world have collided with Covid-19 to produce a new iteration of . , the pandemic has highlighted ways that both the people who do caring labour and the relationships in which life-sustaining care happens, are devalued (in the home) and commodified (in the workplace). The necessity of working to survive in , combined with our governments’ responses to the pandemic, have meant that the processes and relationships by which life is sustained are the same as those that threaten life (). The resulting harms .
It would be false to equate the choice for academics to undertake a fellowship under these conditions, with the lack of choice forcing millions to risk their health and lives in (other) under-paid and under-valued jobs; but the same calculation underpins both. To take care of ourselves and our loved ones we must work, and in order to work many academics have to travel and/or (temporarily) relocate. This situation is more acute for those academics who were already marginalised, , and with caring responsibilities. If harms resulting from lack of care, or care extracted under duress, are ubiquitous in everyday life—as the evidence presented above attests—then ethical conduct in such circumstances might aim not at avoiding (causing) harm but managing it.
Recognising the potential for my actions to cause unintended harms, I have attempted to travel carefully, including continuing to wear a mask in indoor settings. (Occasionally this has prompted Ghanaians to ask why I do so now that it is no longer mandatory. , tourists often perform freedom and carefreeness by discarding social norms they might adhere to at home—going maskless could now be listed alongside drinking to excess, or taking intrusive photographs. In some settings, wearing a mask distinguishes me from holidaymakers—which I like!) As also required by 明星八卦’s policy on research during the pandemic, I am additionally using physical distancing and hand hygiene measures to minimise the risk of unwittingly transmitting (or contracting) coronavirus during field research. Important as I know these measures are, they clash with the general abandonment of mask-wearing in Ghana, and a persistent (false) narrative that from coronavirus. Travelling with care can only mitigate some of the inherently shared risks of the pandemic. The answer to my question “Should I be here?” is a “Yes,” but an ambivalent one.
Eleanor T. Higgs
Junior Fellow, MIASA, University of Ghana and Lecturer, Social and Political Sciences, 明星八卦 University