On Being Let Loose in the Field: The Execution of Professional Ethics

Abstract

In recent years concerns over litigation and the trend towards close monitoring of academic activity has seen the effective hijacking of research ethics by university managers and bureaucrats. This can effectively curtail cutting edge research as perceived ‘safe’ research strategies are encouraged. However, ethics is about more than research governance. Ultimately, it seeks to avoid harm and to increase benefits to society. Rural development debate is fairly quiet on the question of ethics, leaving guidance to professional bodies. This study draws on empirical research that examined the lives of migrant communities in Northern Ireland. This context of increasingly diverse rural development actors provides a backdrop for the way in which the researcher navigates through ethical issues as they unfold in the field. The analysis seeks to relocate ethics from being an annoying bureaucratic requirement to one where it is inherent to rigorous and professional research and practice. It reveals how attention to professional ethics can contribute to effective, situated and reflexive practice, thus transforming ethics to become an asset to professional researchers.

The Ethics Ecosystem: Personal Ethics, Network Governance and Regulating Actors Governing the Use of Social Media Research Data

“…Some authors have noted that research ethics committees (RECs; Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in the US) hold most of the power in determining ethical norms of practice within the academy (McAreavey 2013). Others disagree, arguing that ethical behaviour is reinforced by the interaction of a number of actors within the academy, and a range of positions and voices influence conceptualisations of ethical practices (Cannella and Lincoln 2007).…”

“…Some feel that governing behaviour at this level is the sole-responsibility of researchers in line with their own understanding of ethics (personal ethics) that is in line with the definition of professional practice. McAreavey (2013) even goes so far as to suggest that researchers should ‘reclaim’ research ethics as an inherent component of the professional practice of research, and redefine their behaviour due to their own definition of ethical behaviour (McAreavey 2013). This idea is shared by Boden et al (2009) who warn that over-bureaucratic regulation and checking of ethical behaviour by other actors within the Ethics Ecosystem, as well as by a network governing ethical behaviour as separate from professional research behaviour, risks the application of an unacceptable level of power to halt scientific progress based on the mask of ethics regulation (Boden et al 2009).…”

The Embodied Countryside: Methodological Reflections in Place

“…However, being embodied and in place shifted my thinking as I attempted to continue with my plans and realised I needed to take into account the spatial circumstances. I reflect on this in my diary:

I was supposed to do a focus group on Saturday but unfortunately only two women showed up… I was going to do it in a school but the principal did not arrive and the school was closed… It was frustrating, but the thing is that the weather is getting worse and the rain has really damaged the roads .

In making the decision to invite the women to nominate where and when they thought we should meet I realised how decisions about fieldwork sometimes can only be made in place, and through an embodied experience (see McAreavey ).…”

“…In making the decision to invite the women to nominate where and when they thought we should meet I realised how decisions about fieldwork sometimes can only be made in place, and through an embodied experience (see McAreavey 2014).…”

“…I moderated the final focus group with the Martinez women displaced from the region in the front yard of a participant who lived in Santa Marta, the nearest city to Minca. In each instance I sacrificed a quiet and ‘proper’ place of interviewing in order to prioritise the comfort of participants, in the context of a rural setting where transport, proper roads, climate and access are all issues (see McAreavey ).…”