ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH PART 2

ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH PART 2

1. Whose side are we on: Howard Becker 1967

   • A radical reading
     • "It is not possible" to do research uncontaminated by personal and political sympathies
       • "Therefore, that the question is not whether we should take sides since we inevitably will, but rather whose side are we on"
         • Authoritative constructions of reality are contingent upon a "hierarchy of credibility"
           • Bias: a label applied to research which represents the interests or perspective or marginal/subordinate peoples
             • When it opposes the powerful
   • Knowledge is socially constructed
     • Bias
   • "What do we do in the meantime?... We take sides as our personal and political commitments dictate... avoid distortions... limit our conclusions"
   • Source of bias: "distortions that might introduce into our work"
     • This has no place in social research BUT social construction bias is OK

2. Resolving ambiguity's - Hammersley 2000

   • Sociological point: research is politically partisan in its effects
     • 'Radical' research - questions official views
   • Methodological point: research in itself should be conducted to accurately depict social reality as lived/experienced by other people
     • Adhere to research subjects

3. Female circumsion - Daniel Gordon 1991

   • Phranoic circumsicision
     • "Drop by drop passage of urine and menstural blood"
     • Northern Sudan survey 1977-81 93% women
       • Process 6-10 yr girls
     • Suffering and pain
       • Procedure
       • UTS - 25%
       • Painful labor and difficult childbirth
       • Lack of sexual pleasure - 75%
   • Right or wrong?
     • Traditional
       • Promotes food health and fertility
       • Operation 'tahara' - purity
         • Scar 'nafsi' 'my own self'
       • Rite of passage
       • Moral adult making
       • Honor invested in women's (sexual) body
       • Family honour lies in control of women's sexual bodies
     • Not a random act of cruelty - it is culture
     • "Preferences for ritual are... deeply embedded solutions to group concerns" Gordon 1991
     • "Dilemma of cross culture ethics"
       • Should they declare it absolutely and obvious moral wrong - active role in exposing and stopping practice even though this would amount to imposing their moral standards on another people?
     • Should antho's be relativist and explain paranoiac circumsion as part of "a logic of daily life"

4. Cultural relativisim

   • "The concept of culture I espouse... is essentially a semiotic one... an interpretative one in search for meaning" Geertz 1973
     • Anthropologists job is to describe as accurately as possible the meaningful realities that other people inhabit
   • The meaningful reality we inhabit is a social construct
     • Varies cross-culturally
   • There is not essential, natural, ground upon which we can posit an absolute truth which transcends cultural and historical situadedness
     • Judge qualities of people through a position of exteriority

5. Ethical relativism

   • "If one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own" Herodtous 440BCE
   • All ethical standards - ideas of right/wrong - are culturally constituted
     • Vary cross-culturally
     • No universal, transcendent, standards by which we can evaluate the cultural practices of others
       • If we did we would impose our standards on those who do not share them
     • Good science must be ethically agonistic
       • Describe other people's meaningful realities but not morally engage with them

6. Max Weber: Science is a Vocation 1917

   • Secular modernity - irreversibly lost - rival perspectives
   • 'Warring Gods'
   • Scientist must give a truthful analysis of life's complexities
     • Must submit himself to the discipline

7. The pragmatic ethics of social scientific enquiry

   • Reflect on the ethical implications of your research on all levels with all stakeholders in mind
     • Ethical sensibilities
   • Whenever an ethical conflict arises, first clarify which level/stakeholder is concerned
     • Avoid bias
   • You have to take responsibility for your research yourself
     • Too hazardous = different approach