Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how young adults in Lagos challenge the depletion of their moral agency in different moral laboratories, hereby creating new meanings of the ‘good’. It also investigates how the moral entanglement of the ethnographer and interlocutor can both restore and deplete moral agency.

Paper long abstract:

Based on blended ethnographic research (Kozinets 2010) among young adults with depression in Lagos, Nigeria, I show how young Nigerians actively and consciously resist marginalization and challenge people, institutions and narratives that deplete their moral agency by creating or using alternative social spaces. In these transformative social spaces or “moral laboratories” (Mattingly, 2014), such as online platforms like Twitter or peer groups, they challenge the "social bases of self-respect" (Myers, 2015), thus creating new meanings of what it means to be ‘good’.

The intersubjective space between an ethnographer and their interlocutor can also become such a moral laboratory where moral agency is replenished (Myers, 2019) and where new meanings of the ‘good’ are created. The ethnographer and the interlocutor are morally entangled and their involvement with one another offers both an opportunity for moral repair and healing (Myers, 2019). It does, however, also present risks, especially when they share the experience and memories of depression. In data analysis and writing, the personal experience and interpretations of the ethnographer might blend with the narratives of the interlocutor, thus depleting their autobiographical power. In the case of such a shared experience, auto-ethnographic elements in writing can help to discern between the lifeworlds of the interlocutor and the ethnographer.

In conclusion, the focus on moral agency helps to capture new, alternative meanings of the ‘good’. Simultaneously, it pushes the ethnographer to critically reflect on the moral entanglement of themselves and their interlocutor to ensure that their research restores rather than depletes moral agency.