On the Track of C/overt Research: Lessons From Taking Ethnographic Ethics to the Extreme

0478833 - SOÚ 2019 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Virtová, Tereza - Stöckelová, Tereza - Krásná, H.
On the Track of C/overt Research: Lessons From Taking Ethnographic Ethics to the Extreme.
Qualitative Inquiry. Roč. 24, č. 7 (2018), s. 453-463. ISSN 1077-8004. E-ISSN 1552-7565
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA15-16452S; GA ČR(CZ) GJ16-18371Y
Institutional support: RVO:68378025 ; RVO:67985955
Keywords : collaborative ethnography * informed consent * institutional review board (IRB)
OECD category: Sociology; Sociology (FLU-F)
Impact factor: 1.795, year: 2018
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077800417732090

Despite the growing body of literature that critically assesses the ambiguous impacts of institutional review boards (IRBs) on anthropological research, the key standards on which the IRB evaluations are based often remain unquestioned. By exposing the genealogy of an undercover research in which the authors participated as ethnographer, supervisor, and research participant, this article problematizes some of these standards and addresses the issues of power dynamics in research, informed consent, and anonymization in published work. It argues that rather than addressing genuine ethical dilemmas, IRB standards and the ethical fiction of informed consent mainly protect researchers from having to openly face
the uncertainties of fieldwork. As an alternative, the authors put forth the notion of c/overt research, which perceives any research as processual and, in effect, becoming overt only during the research process itself. As such, it forces researchers to cultivate sensitivity to research ethics.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0274882