This handbook is about researchersâ encounters with ethical dilemmas in the conduct of social and health research in which a critical approach is being applied. Each chapter in the handbook is a story from the field in which authors, writing from different countries, in a range of disciplines, and using varying methodologies, narrate the ethical dilemmas that confronted them as well as the ways in which they navigated these dilemmas. Authors highlight a range of issues, including: struggles that require critical researchers, at times, to traverse traditional ethical imperatives; ethics conventions that unravel in the face of power relations encountered in the field; the blurring of boundaries between researchers and participants, and between the different roles researchers inhabit; how critical research that is declared ethical on paper can be judged by standards of social justice as unethical; how cross-national standards of research ethics may fall apart in local interpretations and adaptations; and the ways in which institutional power relations can hinder ethical practice.
There are four sections to the handbook, each focussing on particular ethical quandaries encountered by critical researchers. In the first section, entitled Encountering Systems, chapter authors explore the challenges posed by the systems with which social and health research ers engage during the course of conducting research. The ethics committees 1 set up to preview ethics protocols have become one of the most foundational systems that critical researchers have to navigate. Given the biomedical history of ethics review processes, critical researchers may face many challenges in seeking approval from ethics committees. In addition, authors in this section reflect on the institutions and wider social systems within which social and health research is often conducted, and which regulate and shape what is possible in critical research. The second section of the handbook is entitled Blurring Boundaries. Authors of chapters in this section tackle the question of when and how it becomes ethical to blur the boundaries imposed by conventional models of ethical research, in particular the relationships between researchers and participants. Some critical methodologies encourage this blurring, and this can result in challenges for the researcher while carrying out research and when âexitingâ the field . Chapters in the third section, The Politics of Voice, Anonymity and Confidentiality , speak to situations in which the requirements of anonymity and confidentiality may not be appropriate ethically or possible for individual participants or institutions, especially when participants want to be recognised for their contribution to the research. Authors outline a range of circumstances and considerations demonstrating how different responses are needed in order to work through alternatives to anonymity and confidentiality. The final section is entitled Researching âDownâ, âUpâ, and âAlongsideâ to capture the various structural positions participants can have in relation to the researcher(s). The authors address ethical complexities when conducting critical research that questions the framing of participants as being subject to research. Critical research continues to develop ethical ways of researching with the marginalised or with the elite, and deeply engaging with co-researchers who can research alongside academics.
The dilemmas raised in each section of the handbook are summarised in the introductory chapters to the section. In the rest of this overarching introductory chapter we outline what we mean by critical research and why the consideration of ethics in conducting critical research needs to be nuanced and complex. We discuss the potential of speaking simultaneously to overarching ethics principles whilst grounding ethics in local realities. Finally, we highlight why drawing on stories from the field in a range of geographical, social, and discursive spaces is useful in bringing key ethical issues to the surface. We argue that the challenges posed by authors featured in this handbook provide fertile ground for thinking through cross-national ethics principles in critical research, including the need for relational and situated ethics approaches.
Critical Approaches to Research
What it means to be a âcriticalâ researcher continues to be debated. Don Foster (2008), a South African psychologist , characterised critical psychology as âa rather loose, undisciplined and rag-tag headboard for quite a number of diverse streams of theorising and practicesâ (p. 92), and the same may be said about âcriticalâ research in the range of disciplines, departments, and other categorisations of fields of research evident in this handbook. While a researcherâs field (anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc.), career position in the hierarchies of academia, and subject positioning within âreal-worldâ systems may play a role in taking up critical research, the researcherâs epistemological and methodological positions are key. Indeed, critical researchers from very different fields may have more in common with each other intellectually than with their respective colleagues in the same field. This is because a number of theories that enable critical research (e.g., Marxism , feminism , postcolonialism , poststructuralism , critical realism ) have been taken up in a range of disciplines.
But what exactly are we talking about when we say âcritical researchâ? Perhaps the first clue is that critical researchers are rehearsed in defending their knowledge claims against âmainstreamâ hegemony, which is often cast in the shadow of biomedical and/or positivist research, as indicated throughout the stories in this handbook. As argued by Painter, Kiguwa, and Böhmke (2013), however, creating neat categories of âcriticalâ or âmainstreamâ research along the lines of âusâ and âthemâ may be neither possible nor useful. That said, one of the hallmarks of critical research is to be critical of the mainstream and to find better ways of doing ethical, meaningful research which contributes to social justice . In this handbook we address the long-standing marginalisation of critical research in many fields by giving prominence to rich examples of a diversity of critical approaches and their relation to research ethics.
Critical research also draws attention to mainstream assumptions about specific fields that become naturalised and shored up as the default. For example, in relation to health psychology, Murray (2014) noted that âthere is a tendency to ignore the very historicity of the field â (p. 7), which has been grounded in natural science and biomedicine . If mainstream approaches to particular fields are founded on taken-for-granted epistemologies, then how do these foundations shape what is considered ethical in research? And how does critical research develop a critical awareness of research methods with origins in fields antithetical to the critical endeavour? The central way in which this handbook addresses the latter question is through stories from the numerous fields of critical research.
Critical approaches to research are also characterised by reflexivity and self-criticality in relation to the purpose, methods, and ethics of the research. Reflexivity has been conceptualised as the ongoing application of critical reflection in research praxis (Finlay, 2002). It âinvolves taking an explicit look at the broader consequences of practices within a disciplineâ (Lyons & Chamberlain, 2006, p. 26). More precisely, the consequences and enmeshment of power relations between researchers and participants, researchers, and ethics committees, as well as the range of social and historical systems, are acknowledged and unpacked.
This kind of deep reflexivity is neatly demonstrated in the poem featured at the beginning of this handbook by Thirusha Naidu, also the author of one of our chapters. These verses were penned during a round-table discussion on the Science of Psychology in Africa and the global South hosted at the first Pan-African Psychology Union congress that took place in Durban, South Africa, in September 2017. In the poem, Naidu voices her frustration with assumptions about what counts as science; how research inscriptions capture, define, and reduce the âother â; and the blindness of certain methodologies, based in White masculinist science, to particular experiences and ways of being. Using metaphors of irrationality, foreignness, regression, the subjective, and undress, she highlights the colonialist , raced , and gendered nature of much research. She demands a space to do research differently, refusing to let particular understandings of research âcloud my lensâ. Simultaneously, she demands that researchers see her, as a potential research participant, on her own terms. Poignantly, she concludes that neither of these is easy: âWhen most White men Are taller than youâ.
The signifier âcriticalâ, demonstrated so clearly in this poem, contains the exact processes that underpin the approach that we take in this handbook, namely that what appears most obvious should and can be questioned; debates and contestations of issues are important; and difficult questions should be asked and thought about deeply. Murray (2014) argued that â[t]here are different meanings...