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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, Roeland

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.

Keywords

research ethics; ethnography; methodologies; social harm; economic inequalities; Malawi

Published in

Qualitative Inquiry
2022,
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