Last night, somebody was talking to me about ethics in literature. Whilst lying in bed this morning I thought about ethics and participatory geographies. When during participatory geographies are we being unethical? This could be linked to my last post when Blythe was unethical ignoring his participants. But when do we cross the boundaries? Emotions are almost weapons of mass destruction, in the fact that if they take over us too far they can ruin everything, especially in the case of research. If we let emotions cloud our judgement we no longer become the ethical research but swayed by our emotions. We over step the ethical line purely as a duty as pastoral care. Take this example. If you see somebody you are researching clearly has a problem how right is it to be to get too emotionally involve and break all ethical and moral codes. This is definately a tricky position and question as at what point is the boundary between ethical and unethical crossed? Also if you are involved in a community research project, like indeed I am how involved can you get in community life and the relationships with participants before you cross the ethical line? Thoughts?
Rachel
November 9, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I’ve never been sure, and hence, I think I’ve been particularly bad at following up research with action. It’s difficult knowing how far you go, and then how far you can take your ‘academic’ research back into the community. is that even possible? Once you’ve accepted the academic/non-academic divide, is that it? On the note about rural ethnography, I alwyas remember in Childerley by Mike Bell, he says that he thanks the villagers, even though they thought he was doing something else with the research…hang on, that’s pretty bad surely? But then again, I’m not overly sure that Blyhe or Bell professed to be doing anything other than ‘studying’ – does that make it less morally dubious? Does participatory work always have to have a big flashing neon title? Good topic Rach!
Matt