Witchcraft and supernatural harm: navigating spiritual ethics in political science research

Abstract

This article addresses a significant ethical oversight I am responsible for in my doctoral research program: the failure to account for and comprehensively prevent the threat of spiritual harm for my research assistants in Ghana and Cameroon. In this work, I discuss spiritual care as a major lacunae of research methodology considerations and ethics procedures in relation to my own work in the field of political science. Through an analysis of my methods and ethics preparations and subsequent fieldwork, I hope to demonstrate how epistemological and structural biases I enacted are also embedded in academic processes and how these helped facilitate this oversight. I argue that a modernist approach to research and ethics can lead researchers, such as myself, to overlook important considerations regarding spiritual care.