ethics of care

  • rooted in feminist and relational ethics
  • challenging traditional ‘masculine’ methods without comprising the rigor
  • context-specific and non-universal
  • care is not neutral, intersectional identities and inequalities
  • focus on situated knowledge, interdependence and vulnerability
  • witnessing injustice as a responsibility, engaging from a position of power
  • disowning the power and allowing for genuine relational care
  • who carries the burden
  • not soft or sentimental, but responsive and reflexive
  • care is embedded in histories of harm
  • dominant power forces don’t disappear when we enter the field
  • grounded in context, care in one situation may not be care in another
  • accountable to people and systems you work within - a responsibility to the communities
  • what are we failing to question
  • move towards inconvenience
  • care begins by recognising how power and ethics questions are embedded in systems and infrastructures
  • be willing to change if it starts to cause harm
  • responsibility and transformation
  • is the research effective if nothing changes?
  • are participants’ voices mediated, abstracted or aestheticized
  • are they framing the research too, what is the long-term implication
  • care as recognition, reciprocity and responsibility
  • if you hold information on someone’s life you’re now in continuous relationship with them, they’re a part of you moving forward and them you
  • reflect on how we are trained to claim knowledge
  • the divide between the one who knows and about whom is known
  • who gets to set the terms of what is reliable, vigorous, academic data
  • what does research look like through more relational and plural approaches
  • even with no direct participants you are still accountable to the people you’re thinking about/talking about/excluding