In her chapter on “Ethics and Feminist Research”, Linda Bell emphasizes that “ethical issues are embedded within feminist ways of doing research.” While this statement is arguably a truth universally applicable to all forms of research practice, Bell highlights an increased discussion in feminist research on the subject of ethical considerations. This is perhaps traceable to the newer, arguably more reflexive nature of much feminist research, as well as its growth out from under a controlling, hegemonic male viewpoint, allowing issues of governance and control to permeate the very framework of the research itself (Bell, 74). A distinction must be drawn here between morality and ethics, although I will argue that both systems are socially constructed and controlled, and that both can be assessed in collaboration with, or independent of, the other. The issues of ethics are often tied directly to aspects of regulation and control in research, to aspects of governance (Bell, 75). With the rise of Institutional Review Boards and ethics committees, academic and social research has certainly become more regulated, and therefore potentially more ethical. However, there are many problems with this implicit assumption that regulation equals ethical practices. In this critical essay, I will argue that ethics is a socially constructed concept which is used increasingly to regulate research practices, as a means of control in line with a particular set of dominant moral beliefs. I will examine the practice of feminist ethnography with a view to highlighting some of the problems inherent in using a universal, moral model of research ethics for purposes of regulation, as well as the potential problems with abolishing such a model.

Bells makes a distinction between ethics and morality, defining ethics as “a generic term for various ways of understanding and examining the moral life”, and morality as “the identification and practice of what one ought to do” (Bell, 74). By these definitions, morality differs depending on the society which organically constructs it, while ethics is theoretically a regimented artificial construction imposed by a governing body. Bell talks about a “fundamental shift” identified in research ethics, from a moral discourse to a system of regulation, in recent years. This raises questions about the nature of ethics in relation to feminist research perspectives, which are arguably fundamentally concerned with power relations and balances (Bell, 79). Bell suggests that feminist research’s focus on issues of power imbalances as part of its fundamental makeup makes it uniquely suited to examine issues of governance and control in recent ethics reviews and practices. While Bell raises the issue here of different perspectives on ethics, and how feminist perspectives on ethics and research procedures may differ from the views of an ethics committee, the issue of different types of research, outside of mainstream accepted forms of research, and how that research is viewed by normative academic ethical viewpoints, is largely glossed over here. However, if should be noted that Bell discusses issues relating to different types of feminist research which largely fail to meet the accepted model of “ethical research” as defined by the hegemonic, dominant research paradigms which seem to continue to influence the perspectives of ethical definitions and considerations.

To investigate this gap in Bell further, I will now discuss the issue of ethics in relation to feminist ethnography. Ethnography looks at a particular society from a personal perspective on the part of the researcher, using observation and participation, relationships and shared lived experience, to “get an in-depth understanding of how individuals in different subcultures make sense of their lived reality”(Buch et al, 107).

Feminist ethnography was pioneered by Elsie Clews Parsons, and American anthropologist from the early 20^th century, while ethnography as a whole found its beginnings in the work of Bronislaw Malinowski during WWI (Buch et al, 110).

Video on Malinowski

Ethnographers “use the self” as an instrument of knowing to conduct research, which raises issues of both bias, inability to replicate research findings, and the highly subjective nature of the research. It could be argued then that ethnographic research is hard to conduct ethically, from a top-down perspective anyway, as the ethical integrity of the research would rest solely on an individual’s perspectives, and it would therefore be difficult to determine a lack of ethical bias. I would argue however that from a moral perspective, ethnographic research may fair slightly better, as the lived experience shared by the research would perhaps allow the research to better understand the specific, socially constructed nature of moral ideals of a particular society. Eshun highlights the problems with this approach however, by emphasizing the seeming impossibility in successfully capturing the lived experience of another culture through ethnography alone: “Even if we were able to “capture” realities…what criteria could we legitimately use to evaluate or interpret ethnographic texts” (Eshun, 3).

Feminist ethnography-is it possible?

Despite these difficulties, feminist ethnographers arguably view the challenges placed in their way by dominant systems of governance as a sign their research is all the more necessary and needed, rather than a discouragement (Buch et al, 121). This is perhaps an indication that the way forward in determining and conducting ethical research does not perhaps lie in more stringent governance, or in individual morality, but in seeking to create a dialogue in the spaces between regimented ethics and subjective morality, and perhaps find a common social ground were a bridge can be built, grounded in the foundations of both perspectives.

 

Bibliography:

Links/images:

“Elsie Clews Parsons.” CUNY.edu. CUNY. http://csivc.cwsi.cuny.edu/history/files/lavender/graphics/elsie2.gif

Stacey, Judith. “Can there be a feminist ethnography?” Women’s studies in forum. 11.1(1988): 21-27. http://researchmethodswillse.voices.wooster.edu/files/2012/01/Stacey.pdf

WeegieLou. “Tales From the Jungle: Malinowski.” Online Video Clip. Youtube. Youtube, February 12, 2007.Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f22VsAlOwbc

 

Books/Articles:

Bell, Linda. “Chapter 4: Ethics and feminist research.” Hesse-Biber, S. J., ed. Feminist Research Practice: A Primer. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014): 73-106.

 

Buch, Elana D., and Karen M. Staller. “Chapter 5: What is Feminist Ethnography?” Hesse-Biber, S. J., ed. Feminist Research Practice: A Primer. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014): 107-144.

Eshun, Gabriel., and Clare Madge. “Now, let me share this with you: exploring poetry as a method for postcolonial geography research. Antipode. 44.4(2012): 1395-1428.

 

Maynard, Kent., and Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor. “Anthropology at the edge of words: Where poetry and ethnography meet.” Anthropology and Humanism. 35.10(2010): 2-19.