Using Others in the Nicest Way Possible: On Colonial and Academic Practice(s), and an Ethic of Humility

Abstract

In this article, we draw from two independent, completed projects that forced us to struggle with our ethics and how we understood the nature of the researcher–participant relationship. We move past the presumption that we social justice–minded qualitative researchers are “needed” to discuss how we understand ourselves to be meeting that need. Here, our intent is to trouble qualitative researchers’ underlying assumptions about help and harm when we are working against oppression and inequity and/or toward justice and equity, both for our subjects/participants and for society.