Relational Ethics Research Articles

Dorsal Practices—Towards a Back-Oriented Being-in-the-World

Dorsal Practices is a process-based, interdisciplinary artistic collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer–artist Emma Cocker. This research enquiry explores the notion of dorsality and the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness in relation to how we as sentient bodies orientate to the self, others (human, more-than-human), and interconnected world. Since 2021, Dorsal Practices has unfolded through the interrelation of three fields of experimental, embodied research practice: movement-based practices, conversation practices, and experimental reading practices. Dorsal Practices explores how the tilt or inclination towards dorsal (dis)orientation might enable new modes of thinking–perceiving and being–with, and more connected, sustainable ways of living and aliveness based on the reciprocal, entangled relationship between self/environment. We ask: How does the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our embodied, affective, and relational experience of being-in-the-world? Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a back-leaning orientation support an open, receptive ethics of relation? Central to this enquiry is an attempt to explore how different linguistic practices might be developed in fidelity to the embodied experiences of dorsality: how the experiences of listening, languaging, even thinking, might be shaped differently through this embodied tilt of awareness and attention towards the back.

“When we use that kind of language… someone is going to jail”: relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters

Abstract The aim of this article is to investigate ethical and aesthetic dimensions of negotiating linguistic differences between researchers and participants in the initial research consent process, based on data from a collaborative research project in adult basic education for immigrants, in which a large number of students initially refused to participate. First, we interpret negotiations of consent as relational acts, where teachers and multilingual staff facilitated moral proximity through their affinity or shared biography with students, allowing us to move from anticipated difference to events of subjectivity. Second, we analyze research ethics protocols, notably the standardized consent letter, as aesthetic signs that evoked an affective response, which variously recalled unfavourable subject positions within neoliberal or authoritarian governmentality, including memories of trauma. The dynamic connection between aesthetics and relational ethics highlights the shortcomings of current institutional ethics requirements, since aesthetic interpretation cannot be fully anticipated and instead requires meaning-making in concrete relational encounters.

Life Writing at the Terminus: Glacier Memoirs and Planetary Relationality

This essay examines the American glaciologist M Jackson’s While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change and The Secret Lives of Glaciers; the British glaciologist Jemma Wadham’s Ice Rivers: A Story of Glaciers, Wilderness, and Humanity; and the Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water, all of which employ autobiographical discourse to convey the enormity of the climate crisis as it is manifested in the rapidly accelerating loss of Earth’s glacial ice. I discuss these writers’ accounts of their turn to life writing to augment the limited persuasive force scientific data, their scaling of the temporality of glacier recession to the time spans of their own lives, their attribution of sentience to glaciers through an engagement with non-Anglo-European worldviews, and their expressions of grief at the impending death of Earth’s glaciers. I suggest that these texts demonstrate how the distinctive truth claims, temporal modalities, subject-positioning strategies, and affective appeals of life narrative provide a particularly supple hermeneutic schema in which an understanding of the moral ramifications of humans’ mutually dependent relationships with more-than-human nature - what Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru have described as ‘a planetary ethics of relationality’ - might be fostered.

Developing an evidence-and ethics-informed intervention for moral distress.

The global pandemic has intensified the risk of moral distress due to increased demands on already limited human resources and uncertainty of the pandemic's trajectory. Nurses commonly experience moral distress: a conflict between the morally correct action and what they are required or capable of doing. Effective moral distress interventions are rare. For this reason, our team conducted a multi-phase research study to develop a moral distress intervention for pediatric critical care nurses. In this article, we discuss our multi-phase approach to develop a moral distress intervention-proactive, interdisciplinary meeting. Our proposed intervention is a sequential compilation of empirical work couched within a relational ethics lens thus should point to enhanced potential for intervention effectiveness.

Children’s participation in research: tensions and dilemmas around ethical practice

Are young children respected and cared for or overlooked by the practitioner or researcher’s personal goals in research? Are issues, related to ethics in relation to children’s consent and participation in research lost in translation especially in terms of expectations and interpretation in different cultural contexts. This paper explores the diverse perspectives of issues around ethics related to research with young children in early years settings.. It questions the perceived tensions around adults’ decisions about children’s participation in research. The issues related to children’s voice, gatekeepers of consent, participation, power and children’s rights will be discussed and the extent to which they influence the decisions which adults make about children’s participation in any research.

“Can the radical other be operationalized?” A commentary to Heinz Streib’s article “Wisdom and the Other: Responsiveness in development between the egocentric and xenocentric style”

In this commentary to Heinz Streib’s article “Wisdom and the Other,” I provide a different reading of Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology. In contrast to the author, I stress the relationality of Waldenfels’ conception of the radical Other which can only appear experientially by withdrawing from a meaning-bestowing, ordering response. It is only indirectly, through the inevitable insufficiency of our responses that the Other or alien presents itself. The intertwinement of alienness and order, I argue, leads to a responsive ethics in which morality und amorality must be distinguished contextually and situationally, not in absolute, timeless terms. This is problematic for Streib’s attempt to operationalize the radical Other in wisdom research, in at least two respects. For one, to integrate the radical Other as an evidential object into psychological models of wisdom goes against the alienness of the Other in Waldenfels. Secondly, from the perspective of a relational responsive ethics, wisdom cannot be defined by certain psychological and ethical traits. This second point is illustrated by Waldenfels’ understanding of Socrates which deviates significantly from the one presented in the article.

Eating at Risk within Long-Term Care: A Case for the Relational Ethics Lens.

Within long-term care homes (LTCHs), conflicts occur between residents' desires, LTCH constraints, and healthcare providers' concerns about risks of harm. Due to the high prevalence of dysphagia and malnutrition in these settings, decisions regarding food choices are a common source of such tensions. Existing biomedical ethical models fail to capture the complexity of the interprofessional chronic care environment. This article proposes an alternative ethical lens, the relational ethics model. We describe a case illustrating the application of a decision-making framework with a relational ethics lens for a resident with severe dysphagia and malnutrition. We highlight how the bioethics model excludes important actors from ethical decision making. We encourage registered dietitians working in LTCH to incorporate a relational ethics model into their practice to help identify resident's values and bring attention to the interconnectedness of caring relationships and contextual factors. This approach can inform difficult decisions regarding the food and nutrition choices of residents and may facilitate meaningful outcomes for both individuals and the long-term care community.

Research ethics = You + me + “All our relations”

ABSTRACT Increasing awareness of racist and discriminatory structures, such as education and the penal system, is fueling a need for leisure scholars to reconsider their approaches to research. This article encourages readers to consider an alternative approach to doing research; one that is founded upon respect, trust, balance, and fairness. This alternative approach is described by authors as relational ethics. The manuscript discusses reciprocity, flexibility, and a readiness to respond as a part of the ethical protocols that were used throughout a research project that explored the healing experiences and needs of Indigenous women in a prison located in Quebec, Canada. The discussion includes the engagement of Indigenous and decolonizing research methodologies, the inclusion of medicine pouch workshops as an act of reciprocity, and a description of how the project was transformed; specifically, through changes in the delivery of workshop content, participation protocols, workshop length, interview guide, and additional resources.

Experiences within pharmacies: reflections of persons with visual impairment in South Africa

Healthcare access poses particular challenges to individuals with visual impairments, particularly regarding pharmaceutical products and services. In this study, we showcase how the context of a low- and middle-income country poses particularly compromising experiences within pharmacies for persons with visual impairments. The current study explores the experiences and needs of 21 participants with visual impairments within pharmacies. Through the lens of the relational ethics of care, we demonstrate, first, the importance of a trusting relationship between individuals with visual impairments and pharmacy staff as well as the responsibility that rests on participants to establish the afore-mentioned trusting relationship, and second, shameful experiences within the pharmacy, centering around threats to privacy. In many respects, a collaborative relationship between pharmacy staff and their visually impaired clientele results in a satisfactory experience for the latter. However, as far as sensitive information, services and products are concerned, participants generally feel vulnerable and uncomfortably visible.

인류세 시대, 교육에 관한 생태학적 고찰: 브뤼노 라투르의 근대 비판과 정치생태학을 중심으로

The Anthropocene, first proposed by Crutzen and Stoermer in 2000, has been actually felt as a concrete reality over the past 20 years. Global impacts of human activities, which have significantly increased since the Industrial Revolution, have led to a serious ecological crisis, and aroused critical reflections on modernity based on anthropocentricism. This study focuses on the critique of modernity and political ecology by Bruno Latour (1947―2022), for the purpose of establishing reflective points and theoretical foundations on education to proceed toward a path for ecologization in times of crisis. His political ecology begins with a critique of modern dualism and purification, which has separated nature from human society and culture. He focuses on the interdependence and network of inhabitants, living within the system of engenderment of the Earth, which is called “Gaia,” emphasizing the agency of non-humans and the symmetrical relationship between humans and non-humans. He also explores the possibilities of solidarity of a new ecological class in the direction of ecologization, concerning the habitability of vulnerable beings. Through an analysis of his critique of modernity and political ecology, this study suggests alternative points of education in Korean society from modern self-reliance to the relational ethics of interdependence and from economic values to ecological values. It then proposes educational transformation to seek ecological citizenship and expanded democracy, which concern the habitability of vulnerable beings and represent their ontology.

Ethics and corporate social responsibility in HR: A comprehensive review of policies and practices

The integration of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Human Resources (HR) has emerged as a critical aspect of organizational management, reflecting a paradigm shift in business dynamics towards sustainability and societal well-being. This paper provides a comprehensive review of policies and practices pertaining to ethics and CSR in HR, shedding light on the evolving landscape of responsible corporate conduct. In recent years, organizations have recognized the profound impact HR policies and practices can have on the ethical fabric of the workplace. This review examines the multifaceted dimensions of ethics in HR, encompassing recruitment, employee relations, training, and performance evaluation. It underscores the importance of fostering a culture of fairness, diversity, and inclusivity in HR processes, acknowledging the pivotal role HR plays in shaping the organizational ethos. Moreover, the paper delves into the intricate relationship between CSR and HR, emphasizing the role of HR in implementing and championing CSR initiatives. Companies are increasingly acknowledging their societal responsibilities and are aligning HR strategies with broader CSR goals. This involves addressing social and environmental concerns, promoting community engagement, and ensuring ethical supply chain practices. The paper explores the mechanisms through which HR can effectively contribute to the fulfillment of CSR commitments. Furthermore, the review examines emerging trends and best practices in ethics and CSR in HR. It considers the adoption of technology, the incorporation of sustainable HR practices, and the development of metrics for measuring social impact. The paper concludes by highlighting the imperative for organizations to align HR policies and practices with ethical principles and CSR goals, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between responsible HR management and sustainable business success. As organizations navigate an era of heightened societal expectations, a strategic integration of ethics and CSR in HR emerges as a cornerstone for fostering a socially responsible and ethically sound corporate environment.

Exploring caring collaborations in academia through feminist reflexive dialogues

AbstractThis study challenges the prevailing collaboration norms within academia, which predominantly adhere to meritocratic principles favoring masculine and individualistic values. These principles often result in a productivity paradigm centered on publications and high research performance. We contend that such collaboration norms perpetuate exclusionary practices, limiting the participation of women and individuals who do not neatly conform to the criteria of high productivity. Drawing inspiration from Long and colleagues' work in 2020, and guided by relational care ethics, we developed the notion that collaboration as a feminist strategy represents a transformative process of reflexive becoming and co‐learning, emphasizing connectedness and generativity through care. Our findings highlight that through the lens of care, we transcended differing viewpoints, transitioning from self‐centeredness to an other‐oriented approach characterized by empathy, mutual understanding, and acceptance. Emotions emerged as embodied forms of knowledge, enriching the process of co‐learning and co‐becoming. Based on this, we propose a new constellation of Feminist Caring Collaboration in the academy, emphasizing the inclusivity of diverse participants and their varied skills and competencies, with full consideration of individuals' needs and future growth opportunities. Furthermore, we advocate for a broader acknowledgment of emotions such as satisfaction, joy, friendship, and pleasure in the knowledge production process, recognizing their significance in individuals' fulfillment in work and various life circumstances.

Analisis Pentingnya Kode Etik Public Relation dalam Menjaga Citra Perusahaan

Public Relations (PR) has a crucial role in a company's success. PR helps shape a company's positive image in the eyes of the public, maintain good relationships with customers and stakeholders, support marketing strategies, and maintain the company's reputation when facing a crisis. This research uses the Literature Review Study research method. By using this method, research will explore the concepts contained in the PR code of ethics, such as honesty, integrity and social responsibility. The literature review will provide an in-depth understanding of the ethical values ​​that are the basis for maintaining and building a positive company image. This research shows that Public Relations practitioners as one of the links between a company and its public certainly have guidelines that must be implemented. This guideline relates to the ethics and morals that a Public Relations practitioner must carry out in supporting his work. Public Relations Ethics is used as a guideline for professionalism and consideration for a Public Relations practitioner in acting and making decisions. A Public Relations practitioner certainly has duties and responsibilities that play an important role in the company's image.

Incarcerated Men: Pain Experiences Shaped by Altered Independence and Loss of Autonomy.

Individuals experiencing pain while incarcerated depend on nurses, security structures, processes, and regulations for relief. The intent of this research was to understand men's experience of pain during incarceration to inform correctional nursing practice. Interpretive description, co-positioned with relational ethics, guided this study. Twelve incarcerated men participated in a single 1-hour interview that was audio-recorded and transcribed. The resultant text was analyzed for themes. The two main themes were dependence on staff and institutional processes and dependence on oneself and others who were incarcerated. Participants reported a substantial loss in their ability to access pain-relieving medications, products, and services. Unresponsive or delayed pain-relieving interventions from nurses contributed to their sense of indignity, disrespect, and injustice. The participants employed whatever was available, mainly exercise equipment and social support, to manage their pain. Nurses must engage with incarcerated patients meaningfully to understand and respond to contextual factors that influence their pain experiences. Participants identified loss of autonomy and dependence on nurses as barriers to their pain relief. Nurse engagement and responsiveness are crucial to altering incarcerated men's perceptions of injustice or helplessness while improving their pain experiences. Nurses must also foster autonomous pain-management approaches that men can use without limitations within correctional settings.

Caring for Pregnant Patients with Cancer: A Framework for Ethical and Patient-Centred Care.

(1) Background: Caring for pregnant cancer patients is clinically and ethically complex. There is no structured ethical guidance for healthcare professionals caring for these patients. (2) Objective: This concept paper proposes a theoretically grounded framework to support ethical and patient-centred care of pregnant cancer patients. (3) Methodological approach: The framework development was based on ethical models applicable to cancer care during pregnancy-namely principle-based approaches (biomedical ethics principles developed by Beauchamp and Childress and the European principles in bioethics and biolaw) and relational, patient-focused approaches (relational ethics, ethics of care and medical maternalism)-and informed by a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines. (4) Results: Five foundational discussion themes, summarising the key ethical considerations that should be taken into account by healthcare professionals while discussing treatment and care options with these patients, were identified. This was further developed into a comprehensive ethics checklist that can be used during clinical appointments and highlights the need for a holistic view to patient treatment, care and counselling while providing ethical, patient-centric care. (5) Conclusion: The proposed framework was further operationalised into an ethics checklist for healthcare professionals that aims to help them anticipate and address ethical concerns that may arise when attending to pregnant cancer patients. Further studies exploring clinicians' attitudes towards cancer treatment in the course of pregnancy and patient experiences when diagnosed with cancer while pregnant and wider stakeholder engagement are needed to inform the development of further ethical, patient-centred guidance.

More ethics in the laboratory, please! Scientists’ perspectives on ethics in the preclinical phase

ABSTRACT In recent years there have been calls to improve ethics in preclinical research. Promoting ethics in preclinical research should consider the perspectives of scientists. Our study aims to explore researchers’ perspectives on ethics in the preclinical phase. Using interviews and focus groups, we collected views on ethical issues in preclinical research from experienced (n = 11) and early-stage researchers (ESRs) (n = 14) working in a gene therapy and regenerative medicine consortium. A recurring theme among ESRs was the impact of health-related preclinical research on climate change. They highlighted the importance of strengthening ethics in relations within the scientific community. Experienced researchers were focused on technicalities of methods used in preclinical research. They stressed the need for more safeguards to protect the sensitive personal data they work with. Both groups drew attention to the importance of the social context of research and its social impact. They agreed that it is important to be socially responsible – to be aware of and be sensitive to the needs and views of society. This study helps to identify key ethical challenges and, when combined with more data, can ultimately lead to informed and evidence-based improvements to existing regulations.

Transdisciplinary solutions to methodological and ethical problems in performing arts psychology.

In the first part of this article, I argue that transdisciplinary research can help address both the WEIRD problem of homogenous samples and the categorical problem of overgeneralized practice conceptions in performing arts psychology. Like other areas of performance science, performing arts psychology engages with practices and practice-based knowledge that are studied differently by subject-specific disciplines. I propose a transdisciplinary research model that facilitates greater overlap and transfer between the scientific, subject-specific, and practice-based forms of research and knowledge that surround a practice. The potential benefits of such a model are more inclusive samples, diversified methods, grounded research questions, and widely applicable results. The problems mentioned above are also ethical. Psychological definitions of performance that derive from overgeneralized conceptions and overreliance on homogenous samples are transferred to diverse peoples, practices, and contexts as general knowledge. This fails to apply principles of equity and relational ethics, which in turn reveals some limitations of established ethics procedures. In the second section of this article, I therefore revisit my argument for transdisciplinary research, now with a focus on the triad of research ethics that is brought into a transdisciplinary project through the different priorities of scientific, subject-specific, and practice-based research domains; namely, procedural ethics, relational ethics, and principles of equity. Transdisciplinary researchers are not only negotiating across methodological paradigms that determine research validity, they are also negotiating across ethical values. Combining the two sections of the article, I argue that the challenge of negotiation can be flipped into a solution to the WEIRD and practice conception problems in performing arts psychology. I argue that whereas critical calls for radical departures were needed to identify these problems, solutions are available in bridges between different ethical and methodological approaches.

Information Quality of Regional Government’s Websites in Central Java Province

As stated in the Public Information Disclosure Act, Government Public Relations bears a dual responsibility, managing both the main website of the regional government and the PPID (Information and Documentation Management Official) websites. This research analyzes the content of the PPID websites of 29 districts and 6 cities in Central Java Province. This research used a website assessment instrument consisting of 84 questions. This instrument is a modification of the Industrial Website Evaluation Model which focuses on information quality and information disclosure policies in Indonesia. The research results indicate that the implementation of the public information disclosure policy has not yet fully aligned with government public relations ethics. Several aspects still require improvement. Government Public Relations needs to focus on empathy in managing the PPID website and needs to acknowledge the behavior of the public who tend to access the main website belonging to each institution, not the PPID website. Therefore, government public relations needs to distinguish between the content of the main website and the PPID website. However, commitment is required in managing the PPID website to ensure that people are motivated to access information and can do so effectively.

The Grotesque Aesthetics of Relationality: Sibylle Berg’s GRM Brainfuck (2019)

This article proposes that Sibylle Berg’s novel GRM Brainfuck (2019) expresses an ethics of relationality by showing the possibility, no matter how fleeting and precarious, of connections and collaborations, both physical and digital, between individuals and groups in the epoch of neoliberal fundamentalism, rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence and ecological breakdown. Narrative indeterminacy lays the aesthetic foundations for Berg’s portrayal of precarious relationality on the margins of totalitarian society, and it also articulates difference. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the novel as a hybrid form and his concept of the carnivalesque, the article argues that Berg’s narrative discourse and grotesque depictions of the body articulate the young protagonists’ resistance against the white elite techno-patriarchy. Berg’s thematization of the underground music genre, grime, also plays into her carnivalesque tirade against the status quo. Ultimately, her portrayal of relationality explores possibilities of human-machine kinship, even as the novel catastrophizes technological singularity. GRM Brainfuck is thus a form of cyborg writing, in Donna Haraway’s sense, that manifests in the carnivalesque narrative form.

AI-related data ethics oversight in UK policing

Abstract This paper considers the question of how police-related AI projects and data projects in general are normatively assessed in the UK. After locating data ethics in relation to policing ethics, I shall consider the workings of perhaps the leading regional data ethics committee in the UK. I go on to consider the approach of another committee that might in the future provide national data ethics advice for the police. Finally, I summarize the normative ethics frameworks in use in the two committees and their heavy reliance on the concepts of necessity and proportionality. I suggest that these concepts may have to be supplemented by systematic thinking about varieties of harm and the way in which severe harm may generate obligations to prevent it, where prevention may be assisted by AI models.