Considering the Almost Participant, or Rethinking Who Gets Left Out of Research

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Abstract

In this paper we theorize the concept of “almost participant.” This term describes the people in and around a research site who impact the study though are not official research participants– friends and classmates of participants, people who were recruited to our studies but declined, and people with whom a researcher interacts at the fringes of the field. This paper considers researchers’ relationships to these people and how it might be possible to interrogate what one learns from almost participants. Through this discussion, we query the notion that such people (and interactions) ought not be theorized because of the traditional approaches to ethics and consent that determine who ‘counts’ as informing our research and, likewise, who must be omitted.

Authors

• LJ Slovin, University of Toronto

• Sam Stiegler, University of Melbourne