Ethical Moment Research Articles

(Un-)Protocoling post-qualitative childhood research: a novice researcher

ABSTRACT The binary opposition between childhood developmentalism and the sociology of childhood is unproductive due to childhood research’s uncritical adoption of childhood concepts of ‘agency’, and ‘ethics’, with minimal relational consideration of children and childhood socio-materialities. Popular childhood methods warrant critical discussions about their underlying assumptions of ‘children’s voices’, how researchers consider ‘data’. In light of innovative childhood methodologies, it raises the question for researchers of how to ethically engage with young children in both study design and dynamic fieldwork practices. This work attends to these layered epistemological-pragmatic debates through the example of an encounter between a 5-year-old child and a novice researcher during which death and dying are discussed. By closely examining the developments in theoretical conceptualisation, research protocol(s) design, and fieldwork experiences, this work highlights that childhood research is always becoming, thus requiring researchers to be able to both ‘protocol’ and ‘un-protocol’. Juxtaposing the dynamic ‘important ethical moments’ and procedural ethics guidelines through new materialist and affective lenses, this work argues that materiality and response-ability are key in understanding children’s agency, childhood ethics, and the assemblage composed of children, researcher, and childhood socio-materialities in childhood research.

Lévinas’s Philosophy of the Face: Anxiety, Responsibility, and Ethical Moments that Arise in Encounters with the Other

Abstract Lévinas’s philosophy emerges from his critique of the traditional sources of Western philosophy and employs phenomenological methods to transcend the conventional theology and ethics of subjectivity. Through a series of inquiries, Lévinas expands the narrow philosophical vision and problem domain related to the philosophy of the Other. This study examines the profound impact of Lévinas’s philosophy on contemporary philosophy and human society, particularly its elucidation of people’s anxiety, confusion, and overwhelm with the ethical dimension of life in postmodern society. In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, characterized by increased reliance on AI, decreased face-to-face communication, and significant shifts in lifestyle, the study of Lévinas’s philosophy gains heightened relevance. As we navigate these changes, Lévinas’s insights into anxiety, responsibility, and ethical encounters with the Other offer reflections on human connection and ethical engagement, urging us to reconsider our relationship with technology and prioritize meaningful interactions amidst societal transformations.

‘Can You Tell Me What Ethics Means?’

Accounts of doing ‘inclusive research’ – in which people with learning disabilities are considered as major stakeholders in the research agenda – have proliferated in recent years. These largely focus on the process of such pursuits, including project planning, research design, data collection, and disseminating results. Yet, whilst scholars have identified the challenges of doing inclusive research, they rarely sketch out the more messy, and everyday, ethical moments when doing research with people with learning disabilities. Drawing on an ethnography in two settings run for and/or with people with learning disabilities in the UK, I ponder the use of an advisory committee, the notion of ‘voice’, and the consent process, to explore how my experiences complicate the philosophies of, and desire for, inclusivity. I conclude by urging researchers attempting to work inclusively to put their approaches under the microscope, in ways that can support others to fine-tune their practices.

Making sense of the queer: Methodological explorations and tensions in Filipino queer ageing research

To queer or not to queer? This question consumed my situatedness whilst inquiring into Filipino LGBTQ+ ageing. I offer to problematise and contextualise the queer in methodological elements of my research. I draw from queer phenomenology (Ahmed, 2006), on being critically queer (Butler, 1997), the power and the self (Foucault, 1994a), the core Filipino value of kapwa (shared identity) (Pe-pua & Protacio-Marcelino, 2000), and queer ethical moments (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). These are explorations, and tensions result to queer (power) relations, queer ethical moments, and queer methodological turns. I use experiences from my Filipino queer ageing research as examples of my reflexivity in context. Problematising the use of queer and (re)orientating its intentionality in my methodological process are potential contributions to decolonising and queering of methodological and ethical conversations.

‘I’m going to call my friend to join us': connections and challenges in online video interviews with children during COVID-19

ABSTRACT This paper explores research with children through repeated online video interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides insight into the geographical and relational affordances provided by online interviewing, including repeated online interviewing, and discusses some of the kinds of unpredictability that can uniquely arise during online interviews. We draw on a qualitative research study conducted with children in Ontario, Canada, that explored their early pandemic experiences. With attention to children’s participation, knowledge production and relationality, we reflect on the challenges, advantages and unexpected ethical moments that arose through using online video interviews. We provide a comprehensive reflection on our longitudinal, online research with children during a global crisis by focusing on three areas: building relationships in online interviews; entering and exiting children’s worlds; and unexpected ethical challenges of online interviewing. Within these three areas we provide insight into relational dynamics shaped by the online space, how online video interviews with children can provide opportunities for them to share their feelings, the importance of careful planning when exiting research projects, and how online engagements provided relational spaces for understanding, building rapport, finding comfort, listening, and sharing during the early days of COVID-19.

Ethical challenges in participatory research with children and youth

The growth of relational, participatory, collaborative and emergent research approaches in recent years has brought new ethical challenges for research with children and youth. These approaches require greater consideration of the specific social and cultural contexts of the research, along with the greater emphasis on researcher–participant relationships that often occur over sustained periods of time. Very few tools are available to help researchers think through the everyday ethical dilemmas such research can raise. In this article, we review the theoretical underpinnings of feminist and indigenous research methodologies that have encouraged these emerging approaches. Through examining an 18-month Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project case study, we critically review ethical moments relating to negotiating consent over a sustained period of time, enhancing co-design and navigating power issues between adult and youth researchers. We conclude with a number of questions to ‘think with’ when reflecting on ethical research with children and youth.

More Than “Crumbs”: Emotional Entanglements and Situated Ethical Strategies in Qualitative Research

Emotional entanglements developing between researchers and participants are an unavoidable experience in qualitative research, whose methods largely rely on emotions, intimacy, and relationships. Despite urged to exercise reflexivity, researchers rarely have the opportunity to deconstruct the emotional aspects of their investigations, which are often perceived as problems rather than as resources. Drawing on feminist methodology, this article argues that emotional entanglements should be considered neither as methodological “troubles” that must be avoided at all costs nor as strategies to gain richer data, but as important ethical moments that can help researchers reconsider, re-adjust, and update the tools they employ to collect and disseminate data. Using “confessional tales” written during qualitative studies I have conducted with young people involved in a variety of subcultural practices, I explore strategies for dealing with emotional entanglements in a meaningful and ethical way. In so doing, this article aims to add to the literature on the tensions between formal ethics and ethics in the field.

Der Traum als Raum politischer Bildung in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur

Based on an international corpus of children and young adult fiction, I would like to explore the question of how ‘the political’ is articulated in these texts and what role dreams play for the discussion of political ideas. Dream narratives blur the boundary between reality and fiction and thus create a virtual space in which the young protagonists can experience themselves. Since modernity, children and young adult literature is supposed to address the process of personality development of both, the juvenile heroes and readers. On closer inspection, however, one realises that the articulation of personal dilemmas is often linked to social and political issues. This paper thus aims to investigate the interaction of the political and the personal, which places the ethical moment at the centre of political discourse, within the fictional dream worlds.

Ethical moments and institutional expertise in UK Government COVID-19 pandemic policy responses: where, when and how is ethical advice sought?

Background:The emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic has required a rapid acceleration of policy decision making, and raised a wide range of ethical issues worldwide, ranging from vaccine prioritisation, welfare and public health ‘trade-offs’, inequalities in policy impacts, and the legitimacy of scientific expertise. Aims and objectives:This paper explores the legacy of the pandemic for future science-advice-policy relationships by investigating how the UK government’s engagement with ethical advice is organised institutionally. We provide an analysis of some key ethical moments in the UK Government response to the pandemic, and institutions and national frameworks which exist to provide ethical advice on policy strategies. Methods:We draw on literature review, documentary analysis of scientific advisory group reports, and a stakeholder workshop with government ethics advisors and researchers in England. Findings:We identify how particular types of ethical advice and expertise are sought to support decision making. Contrary to a prominent assumption in the extensive literature on ‘governing by expertise’, ethical decisions in times of crisis are highly contingent. Discussion and conclusions:The paper raises an important set of questions for how best to equip policymakers to navigate decisions about values in situations characterised by knowledge deficits, complexity and uncertainty. We conclude that a clearer pathway is needed between advisory institutions and decision makers to ensure ethically-informed debate.

COVID-19 VACCINATION AND DENTISTRY: ARE WE FACING NEW CHALLENGES OR WORKING WITHIN OUR POSSIBILITIES? ANALYTICAL REVIEW

Objective. To systematize available data regarding COVID-19 vaccination aspects among dental specialists and highlight relevant occupationally-related features of vaccination challenges.
 Materials and Methods. Search of pertinent literature sources associated with above-formulated objective was provided via PubMed Central database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and Google Scholar search engine (https://scholar.google.com/). Criteria of publication date included 2020-2021 years period. Publications in English or at least with English abstract/summary were collected within primary sample for further preliminary content-analysis. All articles collected for in-depth content-analysis were evaluated due to the text-mining, text-identification and text-extraction principles with further clusterization and systematization of outcomes at the Microsoft Excel 2019 software (Microsoft Office, 2019). 
 Results. After full reading of articles’ texts 24 of them were interpreted as those containing new and/or unique information, interpretations or facts, out of which 9 were cross-sectional online surveys, 4 were editorials, 6 were literature/clinical reviews, 1 was brief report, 1 was opinion article, 1 was ethical moment, 1 was advice article, and 1 was web-source. New challenges related with COVID-19 vaccination within dental filed are represented by personal hesitancy of dental professionals and students, which in turn associated with provided information support, previous COVID-19 experience, fear of getting infected or transmit disease to the patients or family members, fear of potential development for post-vaccination side-effects, changes of occupational status, and interaction within dental team. 
 Conclusions. Further improvement of dental care field possible only after vaccination of dental professionals. Vaccination of dentists widening window of their possibilities regarding potential role of dental specialist as members of COVID-19 vaccine’s delivery team, improvement of quality of life among dental patients (after its decreasing changes during pandemic), and providing dentists with important role in so-called “behaviorally informed strategies” and public motivational programs aimed at amplification of positive willingness for COVID-19 vaccination among general public.

Out at School: Imagining a Slow Ethic of Care in Research-Based Theater

This article invites us to reconsider how we engage in ethical tensions and decision-making with the stories we are gifted as artist-researchers. Using a verbatim theater piece titled Out at School, we explore three moments of discomfort and growth that moved our collective approach toward a slow ethic of care. Within three ethical moments of dissonance, we investigate how to navigate a slow ethic of care in a project that is iterative and constantly shifting within and against our social and political world. By moving away from the desire for resolution, we argue for a process that understands the need to sit within ethical tensions as a way to commit to an ongoing slow ethic of care. We discuss our process, production, and performance as an invitation to critically reflect on ethical practices in research-based theater and reimagine ways to call in and move forward.

Dziennik jako forma życia. Zapiski Józefa Hena. Genezy, genealogie, archiwa

The article discusses the impact of the experience of the Holocaust and the war on the form and issues of eight volumes of Józef Hen’s literary journals I am not Afraid of Sleepless Nights. The “long shadow” of these traumatic events shaped both the history of their delayed origins, the form of the notes, and their main themes. The poetics of these diaries is based on the structure of a collage, which, on the one hand, connects the past and present, and on the other, it combines the chronicle of everyday life with night-time meditations, memories and reflections on history, wartime and post-war experiences and the Jewish fate. Hen contrasts these devastating forces of the twentieth century with his own philosophy of life, which is a special form of Jewish vitalism. The diary thus becomes a symbolic form of survival in the form of a literary, autobiographical work. All the volumes of Hen’s journals seem to be permeated by the effort to record, preserve and perpetuate what is characterized by the fragility and susceptibility to the corrosion of time – that is, life itself. Ultimately, thanks to this effort, the trace of the author’s own presence is also preserved. The collage poetics of the record, resulting from “composing”, makes it part of the work itself. The subject is transformed in it into an idiomatic “gesture”, i.e., a trace of a constantly repeated expressive act, which seems to retain traces of the author’s expressive gestures, his preferences, choices and ways of seeing, and the modality of individual feeling recreated in the text. In a way, it can be said that, according to Hen, journals are written to preserve the specific literary composition of existence. A diary understood as a “form of life” preserves a certain inalienable ethical moment, contained both in the need to give a certain order to the biography and to save the life experience itself – in its various forms. While history and everyday life constitute a source of a constantly reborn fear in Hen’s diaries, as they seem to still emerge in the long shadow of the Holocaust and the possibility of its possible repetition recognized in many events, the very ability to transform them into a diaristic record counteracts it therapeutically. For despite the fact that life can be destroyed, thanks to writing – as Hen’s final lesson seems to sound – something can always remain and survive.

"The Origin of All Immorality"

Although Levinas did not write about The Merchant of Venice, recent scholarship has explored Levinasian themes in the play. However, most of The Merchant instantiates not Levinasian ethics per se, but the cultural and other forces that work against ethics. In particular, theodicy, which Levinas sees as morally scandalous, is deployed by Christian characters to justify their ill-treatment of Shylock. A surface reading of the play would suggest that it is structured around clear binaries, with Christian “mercy” juxtaposed to legalistic, vengeful Jewish “justice.” However, a more nuanced reading, particularly one informed by Levinas’s philosophy, reveals ways in which Shakespeare seems to call these distinctions into question, and uncovers two genuinely ethical moments in the play: Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, and his implied, biblically informed critique of the treatment of slaves by Christians in Venetian society.

Participatory action research and visual and digital methods with refugees in Kampala, Uganda: process, ethical complexities, and reciprocity

Though there are some studies that have adopted participatory action research (PAR) approaches in sport, physical activity, and forced migration research, there remains a need for further examination of the ethical complexities associated with PAR and the use of visual and digital methods. The purpose of this paper is to outline the process of conducting PAR using visual and digital methods with refugees in Kampala, Uganda, and to identify and discuss key ethical complexities and considerations. The paper provides an overview of the methodology employed for this study, including specific steps taken prior to, during, and after the implementation of fieldwork. Key ethical moments of importance are highlighted. The paper concludes by suggesting ways forward for broadening conversations about the ethics of the use of visual and digital methods in studies of sport, physical activity, and forced migration research.

Fearful and Shameful: Affective and Ethical Reactions to Modernity in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

ABSTRACT As Heather J. Hicks suggests, recent post-apocalyptic fiction has engaged with modernity and its perceived problems. Frequently read alongside or even categorized into this emergent genre, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) recycles and yet appropriates its conventions to create small fissures in the predominance of negative feelings about modernity in our imagination, without falling for the temptation of utopian solutions. Indeed, Mitchell focuses on our affective responses to modernity, fear, and shame, most notably in Ewing’s and in Zachry’s episodes. Translating affective, personal, and even physiological experiences into a trans-historical and planetary narrative, Cloud Atlas attests to the ubiquity of fear and anxiety about the consequences of modernity and the shame of our own powerlessness and inaction. However, the novel also attempts to break the hold of such negative feelings in small ways; at important points, the rule of fear and shame collapses into what I call “minor ethical moments”. This paper, then, seeks to understand this affective and ethical dimensions of Mitchell’s text that have rarely caught critical attention and, I argue, distinguish it from the grand narrative of the end time often evoked in the emergent genre of post-apocalyptic fiction.

Practicing Ethics and Ethics Praxis

Purpose - This paper demonstrates the limited efficacy procedural ethics has for qualitative research. Ethics committee’s instructions have a short shelf life given the research question qualitative researchers create is volatile; that is, likely to change due to the inductive, emergent, informant-led nature of qualitative research. Design - This article draws on extensive literature to examine the void between the original research design and the messy reality experienced in the field. We focus on how researchers can practice ethically by recognizing the need for agile and responsive ethics praxis in their work. Findings - This practice describes the researcher, recognizing the initial support from an ethics committee and its limitations, but as the research gets underway assuming full responsibility for ethical considerations that emerge in the field. Practical implications - Researchers’ responsibilities entail recognising the dual faces of confidentiality; distinguishing external confidentiality from internal confidentiality. Other responsibilities in post procedural ethics include recognising and addressing what Guillemin and Gillam label big ethical moments and addressing these in different ways. Originality/value - At times, participants and researchers’ ethical protections are insufficient to deal with the unforeseen, requiring on the spot ethical reasoning and decision-making. Being prepared for and capable of ethics praxis is therefore crucial. Researchers should also assume they may find themselves at personal risk (physically, emotionally, reputationally) and in anticipation of that they should create a safety plan. Most importantly, the changeable nature of practicing ethical research requires researchers to establish a reference group that can provide impartial advice and guidance enhancing the ethical practice.

An Argument for Levinasian Ethics and the Arts With Considerations for Pedagogy

At a time when an ethics based on responsibility for the Other offers a counter to the individualism of neoliberal ideology, I argue that it is crucial to recuperate the possibility of creating the conditions for ethical moments of facing through all means possible, including art. I deliberate the possibilities for art in sustaining Levinas’s conception of an ethical intersubjective interaction, including: the call to listen to the Other, the implications of being called into question, the overflow of self, and the humility of response. To begin, I contemplate art as an Other that is able to face and break apart the bonne conscience. Second, I posit that the overflow that results from an interaction with the Other, as the bonne conscience is surpassed, can serve as a source of inspiration for artistic creation. Third, in the face of the ethical call, though one is first required to listen, one also has an obligation to respond; I contend that art can operate here, too, as a means of reply. I conclude the work with a discussion of the implications for pedagogy, including art as a means of broadening sociality.

Ethical issues when a dentist with an active practice dies

Ethical issues when a dentist with an active practice dies

Hegel’s Theory of War

Hegel is neither a worshiper of the war nor remains a realist who sees right-philosophically in its inescapability. This paper seeks to explain, in the light of his philosophy of history, the reasonable necessity of overcoming the war. According to Hegel, war, if inevitable, is desirable only as separate from the civic spheres and without personal hatred, but it has right-philosophically the significance of being the ethical moment in realizing the ideality of state unity. But this realization must also be based, in international relation, on the principle eligibility of the universal world spirit. This paper intends to show that the intellectual struggle for such eligibility leads to the search for an abstract, limited war without physical annihilation.

Customizing Methodological Approaches in Qualitative Research on Vulnerable Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism spectrum disorders often suffer from poor school inclusion, loneliness, and poor quality of life. Suitable support options for overcoming these risks are lacking, partly because children’s perspectives concerning their support needs are unknown. We need to improve the involvement of children in social research. However, involving children with autism in research is not always simple, and there is scant literature on qualitative methods for addressing challenges related to involving children with unique characteristics such as autism. Children with autism may lack mimetic expressions to reflect their feelings, and they may answer questions very briefly despite having a nuanced perspective on the issue addressed, thus leaving the researcher with few indicators to act upon. Consequently, it can be difficult for the researcher to “read” the child, assess ethical important moments, and adapt the methodology to the individual child. Based on a qualitative study of 22 children with autism in the capital region of Denmark, this article offers reflections on methodological and practical challenges in involving children with autism in research. Matching expectations between researcher and child, staying open to communication forms, and posing precise questions are shown to be important to have insight into the children’s perspectives.