Situated Ethics in Investigating Non-Government Organisations and Showgrounds: Issues in Researching Japanese Environmental Politics and Australian Traveller Education

Abstract

Situated ethics (Piper & Simons, 2005;Simons & Usher, 2000) provides a potentially powerful conceptual lens for reflecting on the research significance and researcher subjectivities entailed in contemporary educational research projects. This is the idea that research ethics is most appropriately understood and enacted in the specific contexts of such projects, rather than by reference to timeless and universal codes. This proposition is

Reconsidering the Value of Covert Research

“…Rather than offering a final answer on what is moral or not, situated ethics requires the researcher to morally question each of his or her actions to ultimately justify the choices made as an observer. Danaher and Danaher (2008) offer three steps for the researcher who chooses to engage in situated ethics. First, the researcher needs to unfreeze the ethical decision making by acknowledging the typically transitory and unpredictable nature of the field being observed.…”

“…A situated ethics perspective would have helped him limit the scope of his covert research by questioning the research objective of some unnecessary parts of his investigation. The second suggestion of Danaher and Danaher (2008) is to unsettle taken for granted assumptions of what is right and wrong. Lauder (2003) explains how during his observation of a right-wing group, he had no other choice than lying on his identity because of the physical risks he could be facing, while at the same time not judging the behaviors of the subjects.…”

Participatory research ideals and practice experience: Reflections and analysis

“…68–77). In our analysis, we critically examine our actual experiences in the project, compared with the apparent guarantees implied by these familiar frameworks, drawing on concepts of ‘situated ethics’ (Banks, 2006; Danaher & Danaher, 2008) and ‘reflexivity’ (Banks, 2006; Lovelock & Powell, 2004).…”

“…While institutional and professional codes prescribe ethical practice in research, situated ethics recognises that ethical practice is not external to contexts, but emerges within them (Banks, 2006, pp. 154–155; Danaher & Danaher, 2008), as relationships between participants (Banks, 2006, pp. 54–73, 155), and with concerns about knowledge/power relations between practitioner/researcher and client/participant (Banks, 2006, pp.…”

“…64–65). Situated ethics involves practices that are contingent and specific to particular dynamics of power where the researcher negotiates ‘tentative and sometimes uneasy relations’ (Danaher & Danaher, 2008, abstract) – ‘the complexities, nuances and subtleties’ – between participants (Danaher & Danaher, 2008, p. 61). In this approach to ethics, prescribed codes are understood as unfolding, ‘fluid and transitory’ (Danaher & Danaher, 2008, p. 61) practices in which knowledge creation and power intersect.…”