Projects per year
Abstract
Conventional research ethics focus on avoidance of harm to individual participants through measures to ensure informed consent. In long-term ethnographic research projects involving multiple actors, however, a wider concept of harm is needed. We apply the criminological concept of social harm, which focuses on harm produced through and affecting wider social relations, to a research project that we undertook in Malawi. Through this, we show how structural economic inequalities shape the consequences of research for the differently positioned parties involved. Specifically, we focus on dilemmas around transferring resources within three social fields: our relations with a Malawian ethics committee; our interventions in a rural community; and our efforts to engage the policy community. Each of these involved multiple and differently placed individuals within broader, multi-scalar structural relations and reveals the inadequacies of conventional codes of ethics.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Qualitative Inquiry |
Early online date | 12 Oct 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 12 Oct 2022 |
Keywords
- Malawi
- economic inequalities
- ethnography
- methodologies
- research ethics
- social harm
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Anthropology
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
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Dive into the research topics of 'Ethical principles, social harm and the economic relations of research: negotiating ethics committee requirements and community expectations in ethnographic research in rural Malawi'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Social Cash Transfers, Generational Relations and Youth Poverty Trajectories in Rural Lesotho and Malawi (Joint with Brunel University, University of Hull, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Malawi and National University of Lesotho) (ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research Grant)
Economic and Social Research Council, UK
1/10/15 → 30/09/19
Project: Research