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- Convenors:
-
Sam Staddon
(University of Edinburgh)
Clara Calia (University of Edinburgh)
Lisa Boden (University of Edinburgh)
Liz Grant (University of Edinburgh)
Action Amos (University of Edinburgh)
Corinne Reid (Victoria University)
Abdul-Gafar Oshodi (Lagos State University)
Joseph Burke (University of Edinburgh)
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- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Global methodologies
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores opportunities to ‘unsettle development’ offered by interrogating and re-imagining research ethics procedures and practices. We feature contributions of progressive engagement or experiments with research ethics, which ultimately help to promote progressive global social change.
Long Abstract:
Researchers and research projects are part of, not separate from, global inequalities and relations of power, thus we must reflect on our own practices and re-imagine our procedures, in order, ultimately, to be a part of progressive global social change. In this panel we are interested in exploring opportunities to ‘unsettle development’ offered by interrogating and re-imagining research ethics procedures and practices. Formal University ethics procedures must respond to demands to tackle global injustice and inequalities, but systems and structures for supporting this are currently uneven and often inadequate. Development studies scholars are typically well prepared for and practiced in conducting ethical research, however they are increasingly joined in their endeavours by those from other disciplines and sectors, who may have less training in and/or experience of negotiating the complex situational ethics which inevitably arise in development-oriented research. Beyond the University, demands to decolonise academia apply equally to ethical procedures and practices, with indigenous peoples offering their own criteria for ethical approval of research for example. In this panel we welcome contributions from those who explore opportunities to ‘unsettle’ current research ethics, and who offer examples of progressive engagement or experiments with them.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 July, 2021, -Paper long abstract:
Good research requires strict adherence with ethics including obtaining consent, protecting data and keeping high level of confidentiality. This paper is based on my research experiences in Africa where I have been conducting research activities for over 15 years. Although ethical clearance procedures are an important aspect of doing research, many remain disconnected with the reality in the field. As a researcher, I have nearly always found myself torn between following strict ethical rules and responding to local people’s desires and demands. There are many times when I have to listen to voices of potential research subjects who feel strongly that they have been excluded from participating in my research. There are times when men and women demand that their names be included in the list of respondents and so on.
This presentation will be based on my practical experiences of the ethics of doing research in local villages in Africa using ethical procedures developed in the UK universities. The presentation covers selected case studies from Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, based on selected stories taken from personal research diaries covering many years. During the presentation, I will highlight the challenges that I have faced and how I have negotiated my way through to find a win-win situation although this is not always the case. As I present this, I will share key lessons learned – what worked, what did not work- and hope that my insights might be useful to other researchers.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation explores the application of a novel, situated ethics framework in international development research.
Paper long abstract:
Euro-American based researchers engaging with participants in the so-called global South often encounter ethically dilemmas which confound and contest the guidance laid out in researchers’ institutional or disciplinary codes of ethics. At the very least, the inability to take appropriate ethical action during ethically challenging moments results in frustration – for researchers and participants – which jeopardizes the research. This presentation draws from a paper-in-progress that discusses a participant-centred, virtue ethics approach, the Ọmọlúàbí moral-ethical framework, which incorporates participants’ moral virtues within an ethical research framework to better manage ethical dilemmas, particularly those that arise within participants’ settings. It demonstrates how the framework was methodically applied during doctoral research in rural Yorùbá school-communities in North central Nigeria through the principles of continuity; adherence to local and national processes; adaptation to participants’ ways of being and doing; and provision of tangible benefit. Moreover, the presentation explores the tensions that emerge between diverse ethical traditions and provides practical suggestions for researchers who wish to conduct moral and ethical fieldwork in similar contexts.
Paper short abstract:
Researchers who study violent contexts should embrace political reflexivity in their work. This involves a critical examination of politics, positionality and privilege in relation to context, participants, and the political implications of research. Standpoint theory; decolonial methods; fieldwork
Paper long abstract:
Researchers in management and organization studies are increasingly interested in studying phenomena associated with violent contexts. Yet violent contexts are by no means ‘normal’ research settings. More often than not, violent contexts have a history of colonial/imperial violence, and as such, involve deep-rooted inequalities. Researchers seeking to study violent contexts through apolitical, ahistorical lenses risk perpetuating a façade of neutrality by masking the power structures and abuses inherent to violence, which in turn can cause harm in the form of objectification, violence normalization, and silencing voices. To remediate these harms, researchers wanting to study violent contexts should embrace and practice political reflexivity in their work. Political reflexivity compels researchers to continually and critically re-examine their politics, positionality and privilege vis-à-vis the geopolitics of the research context, epistemic privilege of marginalized participants, and broader ethical and political ramifications of their work. As a decolonial research method, political reflexivity can help researchers better situate their research along a continuum of decoloniality that includes complicity with colonial/postcolonial power structures, a hybridity approach that seeks to circumvent the centre in favour of marginalized knowledge, or purposeful work seeking to achieve repatriation/liberation.
Keywords: Decolonial research methods; Feminist standpoint theory; Political reflexivity; Research ethics; Violent contexts