An Ethic for Social Research: Justice, Care, or Autonomy?

1. Anna Traianou Martyn Hammersley An Ethic for Social Research: Justice, Care, or Autonomy?

2. Duty versus consequences • Deontological approach: carry out those actions which it is your duty to perform because they are good in themselves; for example, keep promises, never deceive, etc. • Consequentialist approach: do what will produce the best outcome in the circumstances, for example by maximising utility (the greatest happiness of the greatest number).

3. Deontological Ethics Etymologically, ‘deontology’ refers to ‘the study of duty’. So the focus here is on what someone has a duty to do, as a matter of principle. There are religious versions of this principle: the ten commandments or sayings, for example. The best known philosophical version is Kantianism: For Kant, we must identify what is rational a priori, and what ethical implications follow from this.

4. Kant • Duties are determined by using a principle that (Kant claims) any rational agent would adopt simply by virtue of being a rational agent. • This principle is universalisability: maxims for action must be obligatory for any other agent facing a situation of the same general kind. Such maxims take the form of ‘categorical imperatives’: i.e. they are unconditional rather than instrumental. • Any categorical imperative assumes that something is of intrinsic value. For Kant, this can only be human beings. So: we should never treat people simply as means, but always also as of value in themselves.

5. Consequentialism Here, the focus is on whether the consequences of an action are good or bad. The best known version is utilitarianism, where the goal is to maximise happiness across individuals, each person being treated as of equal value. This is in potential conflict with a deontological position: For instance, the duty to keep promises of confidentiality versus the requirement to report a dangerous threat disclosed in an interview.

6. A conflict of principles ‘If in a society of twelve people, ten are sadists who will get great pleasure from torturing the remaining two, does the principle of utility enjoin that the two should be tortured?’ (MacIntyre 1967:238)

7. Recent emphasis on social justice in research ethics Some years ago, Yvonna Lincoln proposed ‘a vision of research that enables and promotes social justice, community, diversity, civic discourse and caring’ (Lincoln, 1995, pp. 277-278). More recently Mertens et al (2009:88) have advocated a ‘transformative’ approach in which the central question is: ‘How can research contribute to social justice and the furtherance of human rights’.

8. The implications of a social justice perspective Often, the argument here is that the principle of social justice ought to govern both the goal and the means of research, though there is some variation in emphasis: • The aim of research should be to promote social justice. This involves both addressing issues that relate to significant injustices and perhaps also using the research findings to challenge these. • How research is pursued should itself exemplify or embody social justice, in terms of how researchers deal with the people they study. For example, studying ‘with’ rather than ‘on’.

9. Some problems with justice • Pursuit of justice is a political goal, and politics is a distinctive form of activity from research. The exclusive goal of research is to produce knowledge. • While justice is one of the values that researchers can take into account in doing their work, it is not necessarily the most important one. More important, perhaps, is minimising serious harm. • When studying natural settings, researchers are rarely in a position to bring about major change; efforts to do this may not only damage the research but also the people involved. ‘Standing up for one’s rights’ can be costly, and the researcher can usually escape the scene in a way that participants cannot. • There are conflicting interpretations of what would be just. Not all equality is equitable.

10. Other approaches to ethics • Virtue ethics: Aristotle and neo-Aristotelians • Situationism: Existentialists and others • Relational approaches: the ethics of care, Levinas • Accidentalism (Caputo) • An aesthetics of existence (Foucault) We will focus on just two of these: the ethics of care and the ethics of Foucault.

11. The ethics of care • Rejection of universalism: focus on what is demanded by particular relationships, using that of mother and child as a model: equality […] is overshadowed [by the need for] relationships [to] be trusting and considerate’ (Held 1993:173). • Rejection of rationalism: what are involved are non-contractual obligations. • Downplaying of rational deliberation and impartiality in favour of empathy, and the experience of concrete need: an ‘intuitive or receptive mode’ is required (Noddings 2003:7). The ethics of care is a disposition and a process.

12. More on the ethics of care • Care lies in ‘the attitude which expresses our earliest memories of being cared for and our growing store of memories of both caring and being cared for’ (Noddings 2003:5). • Relational model of the self: Human relationships are not between equally informed people but between unequal and interdependent people, or as Eva Kittay puts it, it is about ‘dependency workers’ and ‘dependency relations’ (1999:20). • Partiality: We should make decisions about what would be right or wrong, good or bad, in ways that take account of our own relationship to the people likely to be affected by the decision and their level of vulnerability. It is right to differentiate amongst people in this way.

13. Implications for research ethics According to Gunzenhauser (2006:626) an ethic of care would require ‘fluid research goals’ since the researcher must set aside her/his own concerns, and become ‘engrossed’ in others’ experiences: ‘Researchers do not use their ethical positioning as foundational grounding for their knowledge claims. They instead proceed to learn the interests of others in order to understand how to care for them’ (Gunzenhauser 2006:643)

14. More implications for research ethics For Ellis (2007) a relational ethics recognises and values ‘mutual respect, dignity, and connectedness between researcher and researched and between researchers and the communities in which they live and work’ (p.4) A duty of care is spelled out most strongly indiscussions of research on sensitive topics, and in research on/with children and other vulnerable groups (e.g. people in care).

15. Criticisms of the Ethic of Care • Its application seems to be restricted to local social relations, particularly those within families; though there have been attempts to extend it beyond this. • How are legitimate calls on the mother, and on others, to be distinguished from illegitimate ones? • Is the ethics of care at odds with notions of justice? Can an ethical theory modelled on personal relationships address broader social problems of injustice and oppression? (Jaggar, 2000). In particular, is the ethics of care a rationale for the subjugation of women? Is it ‘a slave morality’ analogous to Christianity as viewed by Nietzsche?

16. Other conceptions of care: Heidegger • Contrary to Descartes and some other philosophers, our relations with the world are not primarily cognitive or theoretical but practical and passionate. • Care is not following rules but relies on informal knowhow, perception, and judgment. • Care is not just solicitude – actively caring for someone who needs help – but also directionality towards the future and the anxiety that this produces.

17. More on Heidegger • Contrast between inauthentic, dominating care for others and the authentic care which takes the form of ‘releasing’: it involves enabling others to stand on their own feet rather than reducing them to dependency. • The underlying commitment here is to autonomy: we are all called on to consider our own possibilities, ‘rather than the menu offered by the They, and to choose for [ourselves] what to do’ (Inwood 1999:38).

18. Foucault on ethics • Takes the model of ancient Greek ethics as a way of challenging contemporary morality: the care of the self (epimeleia heautou). • At the heart of his approach to ethics is: the idea of capacity, both individual and collective, to invent new ways of thought and life. • He is opposed to all restriction on that capacity. • By ethics, Foucault means stylisation, ‘a life style, a way of thinking and living’ (Bernauer and Mahon 2006:163).

19. Care of the self (επιμέλεια εαυτού) • ‘[Ethics is the] process in which the individual delimits that part of himself that will form the object of his moral practice, defines his position relative to the precept he will follow, and decides on a certain mode of being that will serve as his moral goal. And this requires him to act upon himself, to monitor, test, improve, and transform himself’(Foucault 1987:28) • ‘a certain way of attending to what we think and what takes place in our thought’ (Foucault 2005:11) • [It] ‘designates a number of actions exercised on the self by the self, actions by which one takes responsibility for oneself and by which one changes, purifies, transforms, and transfigures oneself (Foucault 2005:11).

20. Resistance as a virtue • We are continually subject to normalising powers that constrain our capacity to invent the new. • Care of the self amounts to the injunction to resist the effects of these powers so as to allow for the invention of new possibilities. • This does not require complete autonomy, complete independence from all previous ideas and habits, and from all situational constraints. That was the false assumption and dream of the Enlightenment.

21. Implications for research ethics? • Critique: The goal of research should be to unsettle the systems of thought that underpin current social institutions and practices, to show that alternatives are possible so as to make way for the new. • Ethical reflexivity: In the practice of research the researcher must subject to continual scrutiny the prevailing methodological and ethical ideas that are ingrained in thinking and practice, opening the way for new modes of research and living.

22. Foucault’s underlying principles • A concept of autonomy, albeit a relative one. It is impossible to free oneself from the effects of normalising forces, but the injunction is to exercise what autonomy can be wrestled from the socio-historical process so as to craft oneself anew; rather than accepting dominant positionings. • A second key value is to facilitate the emergence of difference or novelty. In this respect, Foucault’s position is a form of modernism, except that the old idea of mastering the socio-historical process in order actively to realise some envisaged ideal is abandoned.

23. Some questions • Why should autonomy be treated as the pre-eminent value? What about care, justice, and truth? • Not all new possibilities are desirable, and Foucault’s position has no capacity to evaluate them, in either theoretical or practical terms (Ramazanoğlu1993:11). It involves a kind of decisionism, leading to what might be called the Heidegger problem. • Far from being a new position itself, this ‘idolatry of the new’ is a characteristic feature of late capitalism. • There are significant costs associated with continual ethical reflexivity.

24. Conclusion • Our aim has been to open up the field of research ethics, in the spirit if not in the manner of Foucault, and to interrogate alternatives to deontology and consequentialism. • None of these alternatives is without its problems; and, as we have indicated, they are at odds with one another in significant respects. • Of course, any consideration of research ethics today takes place against the background of a significant growth in ethical regulation (Stanley and Wise 2010), a normalising force par excellence! But that’s another story.

25. An advert! Hammersley, M. & Traianou, A. Qualitative Research Ethics: Controversies and Contexts, London: SAGE 2012

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