Research Ethics and the Moral Enterprise of Ethnography

Conjunctions and Contradictions

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12902136
AutoresA Crabtree (0000-0002-8479-7066, Bournemouth University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen7
Número4
Páginas359-378
Fecha de publicación2012-07-17
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEthics and Social Welfare (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1749-6535 • E-ISSN: 1749-6543
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17496535.2012.703683
OpenAlexW1998221751
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas52

This paper explores the perceptions and experiences of four doctoral researchers to examine how research ethics committee (REC) processes have shaped and influenced specific health-based ethnographic studies. This paper considers how a universal tightening of ethical REC scrutiny at university level, as well as those governing the health and social care sector in the United Kingdom, impacts upon social research involving the inclusion of participants from certain groups. Increased restrictions in ethics scrutiny is justified as protecting vulnerable people from intrusive research and is embedded in legislation, specifically the UK Mental Capacity Act 2005. The general international trend towards greater ethical scrutiny is heralded as an uncontested social good, yet this unquestioned assumption is tested in relation to qualitative social research methodologies that seek to explore the experiences of ‘vulnerable’ individuals. It is consequently argued that ethics review restrictions are in danger of disenfranchising sectors of the community, excluding them from engaging in social research activities that would serve to highlight their experiential and lived conditions. The enhanced bureaucratic control of the doctoral process in conjunction with the REC is also discussed as inhibiting proposed studies

Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Sociology · Anthropology · Engineering · Ethics in Clinical Research · Ethics in medical practice · Philosophy · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics