[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

Charles Ess cmess at drury.edu
Wed May 5 05:43:26 PDT 2004


Dear Eero Tarik:

Yours are most important questions - they deserve extensive and careful
response.

1.  The primary reason for worrying about ethics in research (and anywhere
else) is to avoid harming people and violating their rights - including
rights to privacy, confidentiality, anonymity, and informed consent (insofar
as one follows medical and social science models: humanities disciplines
have different approaches - but the basic framework of attending to persons'
rights and avoiding harm still applies).

2.  The danger with "obsession with results" is that it runs the risk of
turning the human beings one is studying into means to one's own ends -
i.e., for the sake of results, researchers may be tempted to ignore the fact
that these are people they are interacting with, and whose rights they risk
trampling.  
Stated still another way, if our only ethical guideline is  "the end
(results) justifies the means" - we can justify everything from violating
basic research ethics (more on this in a bit) to such things as medical
experiments that intentionally cause harm to human beings (whether they are
the African-American subjects of the Tuskeegee Institute study of the 1940s
- or prisoners in Nazi and Japanese concentration camps).
 
This direction of ethical reflection is called consequentialism (because the
consequences of our acts are decisive).  In its more benign form of
utilitarianism (the good of the many outweigh the good of the few) - a
researcher might justify using his/her research subjects as means for the
sake of research results that promise to benefit the larger society.
For example (real-life): Canadian and U.S. laws require researchers (and
anybody else) to report child abuse when it is discovered - hopefully, in
order to protect children from abuse.  But a utilitarian might argue that if
s/he could carry through a study on present forms of child abuse - i.e.,
_without_ reporting the abuse but following it through to its sometimes
fatal ends - s/he just might discover enough about the mechanisms and
circumstances of child abuse to allow us as a society to put an end to it
forever.  
This would undoubtedly be a great good - especially for future potential
victims of child abuse.  But the knowledge and benefit would be bought at
the cost of ignoring the rights (and perhaps the lives) of current victims.

Another approach to ethical reflection is called deontology - it emphasizes
precisely such ethical basics as rights (as well as intentions,
expectations, etc.) as decisive.  For a deontologist - such basic rights
have a near-absolute value: they must _never_ be violated - because this is
to deny the essential humanity of the rights-holder - no matter what
benefits might accrue for the larger society.
For the deontologically-minded researcher - such a child-abuse study is
unacceptable.

But even if you're more utilitarian (as - _very_ generally speaking - more
people in the Anglo-American world are - in contrast with our more
deontologically-minded friends and colleagues in Europe and Scandinavia) -
as a researcher you'll want to be careful about lurking and other forms of
participant-observation methodology.  (Annette Markham, Elizabeth Buchanan,
and many others on this list can make this point far more eloquently than
I.)  
There are some famous cases of Internet research where such approaches have
badly backfired - e.g., from the male psychologist posing as a disabled
woman in the late '80s/early '90s to any number of chatrooms whose
participants have reacted strongly and _negatively_ when they've discovered
that a researcher has been observing them unawares.
The _consequences_ of this are bad for researchers:  many chatrooms are
basically now posted as "off-limits" to researchers.  And in a forthcoming
study, the authors show a rather direct proportion between the size of a
chatroom and its hospitality (better: lack thereof) to researchers as
announced and unannounced.   The news here is not good for researchers
thinking about lurking in smaller chatrooms, where the behaviors under study
might be more interesting than in larger chatrooms: not surprisingly, the
smaller the chatroom, the more people (rightly or wrongly) expect privacy
and respect for privacy - and the angrier they get when they discover a
researcher has been lurking among them.
The point is that even for a pure consequentialist, violating basic rights
to and expectations of privacy may be profoundly damaging to the possibility
of future research.

3.  (Next to finally), you ask a famous question:
> And, of course, who should judge the ethics of another anyhow?
The short answer to this question, of course, is: we are.  Like it or not,
whether always right or wrong, human communities attempt to establish
ethical standards and judge human behaviors by those standards.
In particular, my understanding is that in Australia, researchers and
researcher projects require approval in some way by the National Health and
Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council [see
<http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/issues/researchethics.htm>] - and our
Vice-President Matthew Allen can say more about that (smile).

For its part, AoIR has spent some time attempting to establish ethical
frameworks for online research that reflect the diverse methodologies and
national ethical traditions of its members - if you haven't seen it yet,
take a peek at <www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf>.
No one is saying these standards and the judgements they support are the
final absolute truth.  But at least I would say: these are pretty good
standards for reference - first of all, because they were developed through
a consensus process within the communities and stakeholders affected by
them.  As such, they are always open to criticism and revision - by the
communities and stakeholders affected by them.
Further - after its approval by AoIR in November, 2002, this document has
found good use among researchers and students around the world, suggesting
that it has at least partially succeeded in developing guidelines that are
indeed useful and relevant to a range of research methodologies and national
ethical traditions.
_Not_ that it's perfect or final - au contraire.  But it's a good start.

The longer answer (aren't you glad you asked?):
At least when my students ask "who's to judge?", they mean to say: no one
can judge anyone else - there are no universal ethical standards - and so
judgments of right and wrong are entirely relative to individuals and
cultures.
This position is called ethical relativism.  There are a few times and
places when, in my view, it's perfectly justified to be an ethical
relativist.  
[For social scientists who have teethed on _cultural_ relativism as a
methodological guideline - worry not!  While they may sound similar, there
are important differences between cultural relativism and ethical relativism
- see the AoIR ethics document for discussion.]
But for the most part, ethical relativism doesn't survive critical scrutiny.
A. Taken to its extreme, ethical relativism would prevent us from condemning
_any_ behavior - e.g., who's to say that child abuse, terrorist attacks on
innocent civilians, rape rooms and genocide are wrong?
B. The position is also self-refuting.  The nice thing about ethical
relativism is that it tries to endorse tolerance - i.e., some of my students
want to tell those opposed to homosexuality and same-sex marriages that they
cannot condemn these behaviors because "who's to judge" what's right or
wrong?  
But this leads to a contradiction.  The relativist wants to say that there
are no ethical universals - in order to then argue that we should
universally practice tolerance, i.e., to claim that tolerance _is_ (or
should be) a universal value.
(This contradiction is parallel to the self-refutation of epistemological
relativism: "There are no universal truths" - a claim that itself attempts
to stand, however, as a universal truth.)
(Fortunately, there are lots of ways other than relativism to ethically
protect homosexuality and endorse same-sex marriages)

In sum: to avoid the flaws and risks of ethical relativism - and to ensure
that the communities of researchers and those we want to study are able to
determine the ethical guidelines for our work (in contrast, say, with
institutional and national authorities who may be woefully clueless about
what we're up to) I think it's best for us to respond to the question "who's
to judge?" with, _we_ are, rather than dismiss the work of ethics as
unnecessary or impossible.

4.  Finally:
> is wanting to immerse oneself in
> research as an active participant with the same "no rules" approach as
> the other participants unethical and is it unacceptable to the broad
> body of researchers?
> Am I going to be lonely in my School of Unethical Research - members,
> 1   :-)
No offense intended - but for both strong deontological and consequentialist
reasons - I would hope so.  Not because I wish you harm - but because I
think human beings must be treated with respect, and I don't want to see
future research jeopardized by current researchers behaving in ways that
would (rightly) lead to anger and outrage.

I hope this helps -

Charles Ess
Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.                          Voice: 417-873-7230
Springfield, MO  65802  USA            FAX: 417-873-7435

Home page:  http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html
Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

> From: ET <et at tarik.com.au>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 18:53:58 +0930
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-l] ethnography and ethics
> 
> greetings aoir'ers,
> 
> I am trying to get my head around the issue of ethnography and ethics.
> 
> As I understand it, a researcher should announce themselves to the group
> they are researching and set guidelines etc for their involvement in the
> study group.
> This is seen as ethical,  correct??
> 
> But not everyone has the same ethical stance, the same morality, the
> same values.
> 
> I, for example, place far more emphasis on results than process - others
> place a higher value on process.
> 
> As someone obsessed with results, I would prefer to see a person immerse
> themself in a group unannounced and live and breathe and interact with
> the study group as one of the participants. To me, if one is studying
> humanity one should be part of it, exposed to the same experiences,
> feeling the full swing of their emotions through their research.
> The obvious criticism of such an approach would be that one is too
> involved and therefore potentially producing inaccurate research.
> But is such research any less accurate than the arms length - dont get
> involved - approach where the participants are wary of the watcher?
> 
> Does this desire to be immersed completely, passionately and unannounced
> make one an unethical researcher?
> Is such a form of  research bad, or is there a normal, healthy school of
> thought proud to promote itself as the school of unethical research?
> And, of course, who should judge the ethics of another anyhow?
> 
> 
> I suppose what I am trying to ask is, is wanting to immerse oneself in
> research as an active participant with the same "no rules" approach as
> the other participants unethical and is it unacceptable to the broad
> body of researchers?
> 
> Am I going to be lonely in my School of Unethical Research - members,
> 1   :-)
> 
> see ya
> 
> Eero Tarik
> Adelaide
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Air-l mailing list
> Air-l at aoir.org
> http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l





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