Paper short abstract:

This paper uses David Graeber’s work on the moral grounds of economic relations as a vantage point from which to reflect on the ethics of giving back in field research, drawing on my own fieldwork experiences in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka as well as examples from existing literature.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses David Graeber’s work on the moral grounds of economic relations as a vantage point from which to reflect on the ethics of giving back in field research, drawing on my own fieldwork experiences in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka as well as examples from existing literature. I argue that Graeber’s exposition of different moral logics for economic relations – hierarchy, exchange and communism – provides a valuable set of conceptual distinctions for thinking through what is owed by, and to, researchers in different research interactions. Engaging with these multiple moral logics highlights the diversity of ethical interactions researchers might have during fieldwork. It also raises important questions about which moral logics come to frame research relationships and the freedom of participants and others to choose the relative position they occupy in relationships with researchers. My approach, therefore, responds to the danger of researchers setting the terms of ethical interaction, through distant institutional processes and practices built on logics of exchange, in ways that might constrain the ability of interlocutors to meaningfully articulate their own positions in fieldwork relations.

Note: This conference paper is based on a journal article published in Qualitative Research in 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941221129802)