A Different Kind of Ethics

2015

Research with persons who have experienced trauma requires careful consideration. In preparing the ethics protocol for an ethnographic study of an anti-rape protest, we thought carefully about how the first author would manage ethical decisions in accordance with the University ethics code. However, this process did not prepare us for the dynamic and reciprocal positioning the first author encountered in the field. Nor was she prepared for her sense of the ethical duty of response when entrusted with the narratives of women who had suffered ‘irredeemable harm’. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and examples from the research, we show how ethical decision-making in ethnographic research is always relational and dialogical; extending beyond our direct interactions with participants to the ways in which we approach our ‘data’. We argue that ethics cannot be reduced to a cognitive-rational process and propose ways to acknowledge and draw on the ‘affective’ and ‘transcendent...

Commissioned paper for the Ethics Unit of the European Commission to advise ethics review panels on ethical issues in qualitative research, ethnography and anthropology.

Report commissioned by the Ethics Unit B6, DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission. The main audience for this Report are the members of ethics review panels who might not be so familiar with ethnographic research or qualitative research methods. Ethical review should be informed by the underlying theoretical and methodological assumptions of the discipline which frames the research proposal. This requires the provision of a full justification of the research approach from the research proposer, together with a properly constituted and competent review panel and a robust, fair and transparent review process.

Sociological Review, 1980

2021

Can breaking the law as researchers ever be ethical? Or should we, as researchers, by default curb our dedication to ethical research to the terms set out by local, national and international law? In this chapter, we investigate how, in certain instances, the difference between ethics and law puts the practising of ethical research to the test. We consider our own and others’ experiences with illegal ethnographies to raise a series of questions. Rather than casting judgements or proposing a ‘framing’ for illegal ethnographies, we investigate situations in the stages preceding, during and after fieldwork where our speculative embrace of situated ethics runs up against the law, or where an ethical evaluation of the complex relations between researcher, research participants and research institutions that make up a particular ethnographic situation calls for us to break the law to remain ethical. We interrogate the possibility of a more situated approach capable of providing support to researcher and research participants that facilitates ethnographic entanglements responsibly, promoting greater and contingent interactions with ethical concerns.

Ethical dilemmas and self-reflexivity in ethnographic fieldwork, 2022

Whilst ethnography has been increasingly adopted by translation researchers in examining various sociological aspects of translation (e.g. Marinetti and Rose 2013; Olohan and Davitti 2015; Anonymous 2020), the ethical dilemmas that an ethnographer encounters are often overlooked in translation studies literature. Drawing on the fieldnote data, this presentation sets out to engage in a self-reflexive analysis of the following issues: What ethical dilemmas did I grapple with during the fieldwork? How did the doubts and anxieties change my behaviour in the field and my perceptions of research participants? How can an ethnographer cope with these challenges? I first briefly introduce the study of online collaborative translations in China for which I undertook fieldwork in order to collect first-hand data. Then I move on to discuss an ethnographic methodology underpinned by hermeneutics and its core method of participant observation. My fieldwork can be broadly divided into three stages, i.e. descriptive observation and non-participation; focused observation and moderate participation; and selective observation and active participation (Anonymous 2019). The ethical challenges that I encountered at each stage were influenced by different factors as my familiarity with the research participants and the depth of the involvement in the field evolved. In the initial stage, I struggled between undertaking covert or overt research (Lugosi 2008: 133), asking myself if I should be a “candid ethnographer” (Fine 1993: 282). In the second stage when I started to interact with the community members, I became a ‘self-censored ethnographer’, mostly yielding to others, including the moments when I felt uncomfortable with the gender-biased remarks made by one of the participants. In the third stage, which was also the stage when I felt ‘native’ in the community, I questioned myself if I was a “fair ethnographer” (ibid.: 285) and whether I kept a balance between the multiple roles that I played simultaneously. The self-reflections and analyses in hindsight reveal that the ethical dilemmas that one may encounter in the field can be heterogeneous, highly contextual and personal, subjecting to particular interactive instances. As an ethnographer, one may continue to struggle with unpredictable ethical challenges with which may be best dealt with constant, critical and conscious self-reflexivity.

Research involving fieldwork can present the researcher with ethical dilemmas not anticipated in institutional ethics approval processes, and which offer profound personal and methodological challenges. The authors' experiences of conducting qualitative fieldwork in four distinctly different contexts are used to illustrate some of these unexpected consequences and ethical dilemmas. Issues encountered included: compromised relationships with informants which develop in unforeseen ways; engagement with traumatized informants which lead to unexpected roles for the researcher such as confidante, dealing with new information that is critical to informants' futures but could undermine the research project, and the implications of ethical decisions for research design and analysis. In our shared reflection on the four case studies in this paper, we examine anticipatory rather than reactive ways of dealing with such ethical dilemmas. Preparation and critical reflection are found to be key tools in relating to field informants, dealing with the personal challenges of undertaking field work, and developing useful research outcomes after returning home. We conclude by suggesting some issues for field researchers to consider in addition to the concerns addressed in a standard university ethics approval process. Keywords: Fieldwork, Qualitative Research, Research Ethics, University Ethics Guidelines, Fieldwork Design

2006

Methodology/Approach Critical ethnography carries an implicit obligation to understand and expose hegemonic regimes of truth within a social setting. In this paper, the issues that arise are elaborated by presenting a critical ethnography of the research process itself. Findings Exposing hidden social processes puts both researcher and research participants at risk contributing to complex ethical dilemmas. Two methods were established to mitigate the impacts of this. Firstly, discourses were created using ethnographic data from different participants as a means of protecting identities while preserving the authenticity and plausibility. Secondly, consideration of the sense-making process brought about a framework for selecting which data to present. This offers a ‘contingent ethics’ approach that enables a balance to be struck between protecting the participants’ well-being and a researcher’s obligations to report findings honestly. Practical implications Participants can be protect...

Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 2016

Introduction Writing ethnography is a creative experience. It produces outputs and, more importantly, it leaves traces. However, such creativity is of a particular kind, for it is mutually poietic. Objects are subjects, and the practice of fieldwork makes and re-makes subjects in unexpected and indecipherable ways. From this perspective, therefore, understanding the other, knowing the world and being ethically engaged with both appear ephemeral and, as a consequence, fundamentally unsubstantial. It is as if ethnography initiated a set of possibilities while at the same time incorporating these as impossibilities. In this sense I take ethnography to be utopian because its aims are inherently unattainable: looking at the world through the eyes of the other, pretending to do so without hijacking the other’s perspective and establishing an ethical relationship of mutuality and fairness is always impossible in the concrete, everyday practice of ethnographers. In this article, I intend to...

Medicine Anthropology Theory

Ethical issues are an essential part of research and need to be considered throughout the process and in its aftermath, especially when including vulnerable groups. This Field Notes revisits some ethical tensions that emerged during fieldwork with a ‘vulnerable population’—a group of waste-pickers and their families—and links these to specific avenues for further thinking within ethical frameworks. I reflect on mistakes, omissions, and blunders committed over 5 years working with this social group affected by many different forms of injustices, part of my 25 years of wider research into social inequalities and health disparities within marginalised communities. I remark upon three emerging ethical tensions relating to: the exclusion of certain narratives; the layers of vulnerabilities and danger of harm; and the risk of stereotyping vulnerable groups. I conclude that, more than just considering ethical issues within the context of our own work as researchers on moral solipsism, deci...