Abstract
In rejecting the ultimate authority of proceduralised ethics and instead emphasising the ongoing complexity of ethical manoeuvring, writing on ethics-as-process often presents the individual researcher as the authentic locus of ethical practice. This article seeks to distance from such humanist tendencies. It aims to shift attention away from the experience of the ethical researcher to consider, rather, the fixing of ethical stances in accounts of activity. Arguing for a comparative approach to the empirical, accounts of two different activities are examined: online research and online media consumption. A framework for describing the anchoring of ethical positions across these texts is introduced, one that challenges the achievement of ethical ‘security’ in research. It is argued that claims that the researcher is an authentic point of access to an ethical truth must give way to a consideration of the modes by which ethical claims are made.
Highlights
Responding to calls for ‘concrete and grounded contributions to ethical debates’ (Beaulieu and Estalella, 2012), this article develops an empirically informed reflection upon the nature of ethical manoeuvring in research
Like the academic ethical stances examined in the previous section, the positions established can be seen to be established in relation to different anchoring resources
My suggestion is that there are continuities in the way this is achieved between the academic and non-academic accounts I have introduced; but that we might consider the play of oppositions in the accounts examined to generate a framework for thinking about the fixing of ethical stances
Summary
Responding to calls for ‘concrete and grounded contributions to ethical debates’ (Beaulieu and Estalella, 2012), this article develops an empirically informed reflection upon the nature of ethical manoeuvring in research. Markham’s suggestion is that it is the researcher’s responsibility to assert a distancing break from ‘common sense’ decisions that might otherwise leave the basis of ethical practice unsaid Doing this is presented as involving individual acts of ongoing reflection and an ongoing process of mining the self to identify the root of our inclinations to act in certain ways: Ethical methods of research require getting to the heart of the matter, in both senses of the phrase. Rodham and Poyer’s account asserts a difference from other scholars in the field (those who have criticised unannounced observation) The position they establish is rooted more strongly in relation to the ethics of the research academy, adopting a more distanced relationship to the ethics of the researched settings.
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