Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2022
Ethical Principles, Social Harm and the Economic Relations of Research: Negotiating Ethics Committee Requirements and Community Expectations in Ethnographic Research in Rural Malawi
Ansell, Nicola; Mwathunga, Evance; Hajdu, Flora; Robson, Elsbeth; Hlabana, Thandie; van Blerk, Lorraine; Hemsteede, RoelandAbstract
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.Keywords
research ethics; ethnography; methodologies; social harm; economic inequalities; MalawiPublished in
Qualitative Inquiry2022,
Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
Authors' information
Ansell, Nicola
Brunel University
Mwathunga, Evance
University of Malawi
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Urban and Rural Development
Robson, Elsbeth
University of Hull
Hlabana, Thandie
University of Lesotho
van Blerk, Lorraine
University of Dundee
Hemsteede, Roeland
IOD PARC
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG10 Reduce inequality within and among countries
UKÄ Subject classification
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221124631
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119436