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Accepted Paper:
Navigating responsibility: The moral logics of research relations
Ian Russell
(University of Edinburgh)
This paper explores the concept of responsibility in development research by examining the multiple moral logics that can be at play in research relationships, arguing that such an examination can lead to vital questions about the locations and temporalities that define 'responsible' research.
Paper long abstract:
This paper reflects on the concept of responsibility in development research by examining the multiple moral logics that can be at play in research relationships. It begins by discussing examples of these multiple moral logics - from transactional exchange to relations of care - drawing on research experiences in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka and previous work on the ethics of giving back in research in relation to David Graeber's study of debt. This focus on different modes of acting ethically in research relationships helps reveal vital issues related to how the governing moral logic for a given research interaction comes to be decided. Crucially, it enables a critical questioning of who makes such decisions and, thus, also the locations and temporalities of decision making. By advocating that the locus of such decision making should be within, or at least closer to, the contexts of the research relationships themselves, the paper begins to outline a more pluralistic and grounded idea of responsibility in research, one which may be better suited to decolonising research agendas. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this alternative framing of responsible research for the practices of institutional review and ethical protocol formation that currently govern the landscape of research ethics in development.