Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives

Abstract

This article focuses on relational ethics in research with intimate others. Relational ethics requires researchers to act from our hearts and minds, acknowledge our interpersonal bonds to others, and take responsibility for actions and their consequences. Calling on her own research studies, the author examines relational ethics in ethnographies in which researchers are friends with or become friends with participants over the course of their projects. Then she examines autoethnographic narratives in which researchers include intimate others in stories focusing on their own experience. Considering ethical responsibilities to identifiable others, she discusses writing about those who are alive and those who have died. She then reflects on the ways co-constructed autoethnographies circumvent some of the ethical issues in traditional qualitative studies on unfamiliar others, yet avoid some of the ethical concerns in writing about intimate others. The last section presents advice for those who long to write about intimate others.

Learning from collaborative research on sustainably managing fresh water: implications for ethical research–practice engagement

“…As trust is (ideally) built, we have observed in our cases situations in which a researcher's identity might be clear upfront but can fade into the background over time, for example, when a researcher or research advisor ends up taking on a significant participatory project manager and facilitator role (e.g., cases 6, 7, and 8). Some researchers such as Ellis (2007) describe this change as a potential pitfall of long-term engagement with participants, but we can also see it as a strength of applied and reflexive research in which researchers have the option of a fluidity of role to support and broker effective research-practice in collaboration with communities and stakeholders over time.…”

“…Other scholars have identified that in situations in which professional ethics (such as those involved in funding or research codes of practice) and community norms intersect such as in collaborative research, different values are at play, and therefore, ethical framings can be fraught and contested (see Pradhan andMeinzen-Dick 2003, Orlove andCaton 2010). Ellis (2007) adds a third dimension of "relational ethics" to Guillemin and Gillam's (2004) two categories, which draws attention to the interpersonal bonds formed between researchers and participants. This is particularly relevant in the context of long-term collaborative research partnerships, where the lines between researchers and participants can be blurred when the focus is on managing natural resources such as water.…”

“…This requires us to both attend to our own practices as reflective practitioners (Schön 1984) and to understand better what is required in planning for and conducting research-practice collaborations. Many water governance authors involved in reflective practice describe lessons and responsibilities for effective collaborative processes (e.g., Seligman et al 1994, Ison et al 2004, 2007, Pohl et al 2010, von Korff et al 2010, 2012, Allen et al 2011, Fenemor et al 2011, Hare 2011, Kilvington et al 2011a,b, Camkin 2016), but here, we seek to understand the ethics that lead to these types of positive and collaborative research-practice.…”

In relationship: An illustrated autoethnography of counsellor identity development.

“…It is important to be aware o f the potential for exploiting others and to consider whether or how people are better off as a result of the study. As I write this, I wonder if what I have to write about could possibly be o f such worth but Ellis (2007) reminds me that stories offer the gift of companionship when others might feel alone. I think that is a worthwhile gift; it has been for me.…”

“…For instance, quantitative methods do not tell the reader about the individual lives behind the data. Furthermore, these approaches have been criticized as potentially "sterile" and insensitive to relational ties (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, p.2;Ellis, 2007).…”