Ethics in practice: Conversations about biobanks

Abstract

This paper uses the concept of ‘ethicality’ to analyse focus-group conversations in New Zealand on biobanking and genetic testing. ‘Ethicality’ has been used by Arohia Durie, a Māori educationist, to highlight how ethical talk and practice is historically and socially positioned, situated within specific life-worlds, embedded within always partial communities, and articulated within individual life narratives. This situated ethicality is identified in the talk of Māori and non-Māori research participants. The authors (a moral philosopher, two sociologists and a kaupapa Māori social researcher) argue that serious consideration of ethicality presents significant challenges to the abstracted character of much expert ethical analysis, while also illustrating connections between ‘ethics talk’ and expert discourses.