Ethical considerations

Doing research with human beings on a daily basis necessarily raises certain ethical is- sues. In this section, I focus more on the ethical consideration at the local level, as I spent more time doing research in the village (therefore, there were more respondents at the local level involved in my research than at the national or provincial levels). Moreover, I assume that my respondents at the local level, especially K’ho villagers, were more vul- nerable and therefore, I attempted to minimise any potential risks for them when taking part in my research.

Obtaining informed consent from villagers is the most important aspect of ethical research. The process of getting (or ensuring) informed consent from villagers in socialist countries like Vietnam and China, however, might be more complicated and sometimes fail to meet the researcher’s expectations and his/her ethical protocols. As previous re- search has pointed out, this is because the approval for research to be conducted in se- lected areas is often granted by authorities at higher levels, and the actual participants such as villagers are merely informed rather than consulted (Cox 2010, Tebboth 2014). In my case, I was aware that having an approval letter from Provincial People's Commit- tee, and verbal approval of the village head was to facilitate my stay in the village in political terms. In ethical terms, however, this does not mean that my respondents have given informed consent. Therefore, I sought to obtain their individual verbal consent be- fore and during my research.

The purpose of seeking verbal consent for interviewing and tape-recoding is also to adapt to the contexts of the community being studied. In rural and upland Vietnam, it is not usual for both foreign and Vietnamese social researchers to obtain written consent from the respondents. While I visited a house in the village, my respondents often thought

that I was a journalist or government official sent to the village to look for ‘sensational stories’ on land and forest governance. They would feel intimidated and self-censor the information provided if they had to sign the consent forms, despite knowing that their identities would be kept confidential. To avoid this, I often explained to them about my research first and then asked for their permission to record their answers. Their verbal consent was sometimes recorded as my respondents were asking what I would do with the data collected during our interview. I always made sure that I responded to their ques- tions as honestly as I could and gave them time to decide if they would like to continue talking to me even though we were halfway through the interview. For those who did not feel comfortable, I stopped the conversation and moved to the next household. This is especially relevant in my research, as I was aware that my research might touch on sen- sitive issues, such as forestland disputes among villagers or negative impacts of state pol- icies on local livelihoods. Therefore, all of my respondents were assured that they were free to withdraw from the interview or refuse to answer questions that they found uncom- fortable or sensitive.

Apart from the sensitivity of data collection, I could foresee that ethical tension would arise during my fieldwork. For instance, I conducted participant observations, which sometimes involved collecting data outside of the interview situation. This poten- tially raised issues about how aware they were about being researched at those times. However, as soon as I went to the village, I had established my identity as a postgraduate student collecting data for my PhD and local people were officially informed of my re- search. Moreover, I sometimes discussed issues I found unclear and took notes in front of them or in public spaces where they could see me.

When I visited a household, I prepared a small packet of candy or cigarettes to give to my respondent as a token of appreciation. Through these small gifts, I wanted to show my gratitude to those who spared their time and energy in helping me with my research. The packets of candy were usually distributed to my respondents’ children and the cigarettes were consumed by the male respondents and their company when we were talking, both of which were seen as local exchange between friends and socially accepted in the village. Also, since these gifts were quite insignificant financially, the act of giving gifts was not, in my view, considered as paying my respondents for information or bribing them to get what I needed.

For the photovoice participants, since we had a lot of meetings and follow-up interviews, I gave the participants a small amount of cash as their allowance for three months and bought light refreshments for them when we had our group meetings. Other

than that, I did not pay any of my photovoice participants with cash or expensive items to avoid evoking jealousy between other villagers and the photovoice participants. More- over, in a typical agriculture-based community like this village, most of my photovoice participants had to spend time working in their own field and coffee plantation as well as collecting NTFPs for instant cash. The allowance I gave them was just enough to com- pensate their time spent on the meetings or photo interviews with me, so it was not con- sidered by my participants and myself as a form of paid employment.

With my respondents at the national level, I followed the same ethical procedures; however, I did not give them any gifts as I arranged to meet up with them during office hours and both of us considered these meetings part of their job as government offic- ers/officials.