Working together for critical research ethics

Abstract

Cannella and Lincoln argue for a critical approach to the social sciences which ‘requires a radical ethics, an ethics that is always/already concerned about power and oppression even as it avoids constructing “power” as a new truth’ (2011, 81; emphasis in original). Referencing Spivak, they call for research relations which ‘address contemporary political and power orientations by recognising that the investigator and the investigated (whether people, institutions, or systems) are subjects of the presence or aftermath of colonialism’ (2011, 83). Such recognition fuels growing dissatisfaction with the formalised ethical review procedures required in, inter alia, North America, Australasia and the UK. This paper draws on an investigation of how students on a professional doctoral programme taught by a UK university in three Anglophone Caribbean territories perceived ethics review procedures. This programme emphasises decolonising methodologies and pedagogies, whilst recognising that these can be ‘perceived as yet another instance of imperialistic, colonial imposition’ (Lavia and Sikes 2010, 90). The paper seeks to re-present a critical research ethics in which ‘societal structures, institutions and oppressions become the subject of research (rather than human beings) [with a view to] avoid further creation and subjectification of an or the Other’ (Cannella and Lincoln 2011, 88).