Sammanfattning

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.

Nyckelord

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

Publicerad i

Qualitative Inquiry
2023, Volym: 29, nummer: 6, sidor: 725-736
Utgivare: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC

SLU författare

• Hajdu, Flora

  • Institutionen för stad och land, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

Globala målen

SDG10 Minska ojämlikheten inom och mellan länder


UKÄ forskningsämne

Tvärvetenskapliga studier


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221124631

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119436