Presence as Politics in Qualitative Research Ethics

Feminist Engagements With "Risk" and Vulnerability

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2387199
AutoresG Love (0000-0001-8180-1448, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK), Liz Mcdonnell (University of Sussex, Brighton, UK)
Año2025
Volumen31
Número5
Páginas403-415
Fecha de publicación2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaQualitative Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1077-8004 • E-ISSN: 1552-7565
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10778004241256141
OpenAlexW4399787674
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas59

Qualitative researchers have critiqued Anglophone institutional ethics procedures as individualistic, rigid, and inattentive to complex power dynamics. From our positions as researchers, educators, and ethics reviewers in a U.K. institution, we argue that engaging with a "politics of presence" in situational and procedural ethics produces more ethically engaged qualitative research. By this we mean researchers and ethics committees opening themselves to power, discomfort, and challenge rather than the "absences" of risk management and governance-heavy ethics. Using autoethnographic reflections, we develop this argument through three themes: embracing vulnerability; relational presence; and honoring. The principle of presence is a tool and a political orientation that qualitative researchers and ethics committees should embed into their current practice to produce braver and more ethically engaged work

Environmental ethics · Feminism · Political science · Politics · Qualitative research · Social science · Sociology · Vulnerability (computing · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Social Science and Policy Research