CHAPTER 11 The Ethics of University Ethics Committees: Risk Management and the Research Imagination

Kohn, Tamara; Shore, Cris

doi:10.1515/9781785335433-015

Cited by 4 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Like Lederman, we are not optimistic that more dialogue and education is the answer -especially in light of our own efforts over the past fifteen years to "colonize" our ethics committees from within. After all, regardless of how open any individual committee is to ethnographic research or other related methodologies, these encounters are structured by an intensely prefigured and highly bureaucratized process (Kohn and Shore, 2017). Thus, such pleas for reconciliation elide the ways in which institutional ethics review is embedded in imaginations of risk on every level.…”

Section: Perception Reality and The Question Of Harmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most research ethics frameworks, research is treated as an intrinsically risky enterprise (Kohn and Shore, 2017;Lederman, 2007a;van den Hoonaard, 2011;Bell, 2016). To quote from the Canadian research ethics guidelines, which are often lauded for their inclusive approach to social science research: 2 Research is a step into the unknown.…”

Section: Ethics Committees' Imaginations Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For respondents in both our surveys, these problems were compounded by the mandate of ethics committees to assess the legal risks of research for the institution. Although committees vary in the extent to which they are expected to focus on this, reputational risk management is a widely perceived function of the ethic review process (Kohn and Shore, 2017). The specific objection amongst our respondents was not that institutions were apprehensive about legal risks; instead, their concern was with the "conflation of ethics and liability" it produced.…”

Section: Ethics Committees' Imaginations Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Parsing ethnography in this way, I would argue, results in damage of a kind" (p. 381). However, adding insult to injury, the concern is that it undermines disciplinary training and knowledge production without actually improving ethical practice (Kohn and Shore, 2017;Lederman, 2016;Simpson, 2011;van den Hoonaard, 2011). Ethics review, for these respondents, was an epistemological assault on ethnographic research methods as open-ended and responsive to the interests and concerns of our research participants.…”

Section: Ethnographers' Imaginations Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Research ethics committees, ethnographers and imaginations of risk

Bell

Wynn

2020

Ethnography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ethnographers’ concerns about institutional ethics review are by now well-known and several hypotheses have been advanced to explain their complaints. Many have highlighted the lack of epistemological fit between ethnographic methods and ethics review paradigms. Others point to the existence of a “victim narrative” and suggest that circulating horror stories are unrepresentative of ethnographers’ experiences, or argue that ethnographers’ complaints disguise a self-interested and un-reflexive desire to avoid oversight. A final explanation suggests that resistance is restricted to an ageing cohort of scholars raised in an era before ethics review became the norm. Drawing on two surveys of ethnographers conducted a decade apart, we conclude that the most convincing explanation for the longstanding “chorus of complaint” is the fundamental epistemological conflict between ethnographic methods and the way ethics review is currently constituted. We conclude that the time has come to radically reframe and restructure ethics review regimes.

show abstract

Section: Perception Reality and The Question Of Harmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ethics Committees' Imaginations Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ethics Committees' Imaginations Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ethnographers' Imaginations Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Research ethics committees, ethnographers and imaginations of risk

Bell

Wynn

2020

Ethnography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…22See Kohn & Shore (2017) on the relationship between litigation risk and ethics boards, and Rothman (2017) for how related tensions developed in the United States.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An ethics of enchantment: forming affect and information in experimental paediatric medicine

Addison

2022

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Science and medicine have been cast as disenchanted arenas of modernity, even as scholars have illustrated the many enchantments of everyday life. Taking these conversations into the context of experimental paediatric medicine, I explore the dis/enchantments produced through the research ethics systems that govern interactions between medical practitioners and patients' families. Research ethics enact forms of disenchantment, aiming to produce the informed patient-subject who can knowingly submit to the unknowns of experimental medicine. However, by following one young patient's emotive disruption of the consent process, I suggest that we instead consider an ethics of enchantment: one that recognizes the affective logics of patienthood alongside the informatic. Elaborating how ethical practice is both institutionally structured and interpersonally improvised, I develop key conversations from the anthropology of ethics, and highlight the interplay of enchantment and disenchantment that constitutes modern medical subjects.

show abstract

Far from neutral: Research ethics committees, interdisciplinarity and fieldwork

Halkias

2024

Anthropology Today

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article critiques research ethics committees (RECs) for stifling social sciences research through rigid, one‐size‐fits‐all ethics protocols. It highlights how these protocols, rooted in medical science perspectives, ignore the complexities of fieldwork, and prioritize institutional protection over knowledge advancement. The article illustrates the bureaucratic barriers to sociological and gender studies research through a case study involving fieldwork in a Greek hospital, showing how intersecting hierarchies in the field can render REC instruments invasive or moot. This article aims to enrich academic enquiry by acknowledging the diverse realities of research subjects and methodologies.

show abstract

CHAPTER 11 The Ethics of University Ethics Committees: Risk Management and the Research Imagination

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Research ethics committees, ethnographers and imaginations of risk

Research ethics committees, ethnographers and imaginations of risk

An ethics of enchantment: forming affect and information in experimental paediatric medicine

Far from neutral: Research ethics committees, interdisciplinarity and fieldwork

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About