Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the temporalities and constraints of an ethics of generosity based on learning generated from the Young Lives study within the context of a 15-year mixed-method observational cohort study of childhood poverty involving marginalised children and families in four countries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the temporalities and constraints of an ethics of generosity based on learning from Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty that has traced the changing life trajectories and circumstances of 12,000 children over a fifteen-year period in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States), Peru and Vietnam. It uses both survey and qualitative approaches to engage children and adults in the research. The study is multi-disciplinary, embodying differing understandings of the way knowledge is produced. A more positivist approach emphasises the study's observational (non-interventionist) design, such that the research should neither change the lives nor influence the phenomena under investigation. A more interpretivist approach accepts that the research endeavour is a co-production of knowledge and meaning involving researchers and their interlocutors in a complex relationship. I draw on accounts from researchers, children and families involved in the study, and on classic anthropological theories of gift exchange, to illustrate the varied understandings, tensions and expectations regarding 'generosity', how these changed as research relationships evolved over time, and the questions raised about the possibilities and limitations of an ethics of generosity.