Blurred Roles and an Ethic of Tagging Along

• In Event: Roundtable Session 48
  In Roundtable Session: Ethical Considerations in Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

This paper discusses how research ethics may be understood, not through conventionally used approaches in qualitative methodology, but rather through a posthuman understanding of the researcher’s position. Here ethics are not conveyed through generic approaches, but are regarded to evolve from a specific situation. By drawing on empirical data from a larger study of state educational officers, the paper elaborates on how the researcher seen as an actor of becoming may be put into an ethically challenging and unforeseen situation. Implications suggest that a posthuman questioning of the subject influences the understanding of research ethics, thus becoming actualized and produced when different research components plug-in to each other, focusing upon what can be rather than what has already been.

Authors

• Lotta Johansson, Lund University

• Jeffrey Brooks Hall, University of Oslo