Research and fieldwork ethics of human sciences with a focus on local and indigenous peoples (4op)

Osaamistavoitteet

This course shall prepare doctoral students for the ethical questions arising from empirical research in the field while working with local and indigenous peoples. We read and discuss together literature and documents on research ethics, starting with principal ethical codes of conduct from different professional associations, then delving deeper into topics such as fieldwork dilemmas and multiple ethical obligations. We become aware together how the obligations we have towards different groups in our research are not necessarily compatible. For example, concerning the community and its people we work with, is free prior informed consent always ethically appropriate? What if our ethical obligations towards community members get into conflict with funders’ requirements or even the law? How do we integrate our obligations towards funders with the obligations that we have towards the people with whom we work in the field? How do we live up to the obligation to make our research relevant locally? In addition, we take a look at research ethics from the point of view of academic institutions and other research assemblies. What are the ethically best ways of sharing research materials and results? In addition to studying existing literature, the lecturers in this course will discuss with the students ethically challenging situations from their own field research and encourage students to envision themselves in such situations before they embark on their own field studies.
The course is complementary with the introductory course "research ethics" (TUKO1246) but enrolment does not depend on having gone through it.

Upon completion of this course the doctoral candidates are able to:
1. Assess the cultural relativity of research ethics.
2. Assess the relevance of the principal codes of ethics of professional associations of various social science disciplines for their own research project.
3. Critically reflect on the principles of research ethics in relation to research impacts on the lives of their research partners in the field.
4. Understand the importance of the researcher's responsibility for judging ethical behaviour during fieldwork in different contexts.
5. Recognise conflicting obligations of a researcher to different groups involved in the research process, such as local and indigenous people, funding agencies, governments, professional communities.
6. Sharpen awareness of possible ethical dilemmas arising from fieldwork situations.
7. Formulate their own ethical responsibilities, obligations and rights as a researcher within the context of their own project.

Sisältö

The basic guiding principle in our research is always "do not do harm". However, contemporary research ethics go beyond “no harm” and often aim for a deeper value of research for being useful for research participants, communities, broader society or our planet. Moreover, we shall explore together that students are likely to encounter situations where they are going to be accused to cause harm for certain people while trying not to do harm to other people. Using examples from the teachers' own experience of working with local and indigenous peoples in the Arctic, the course shall enable participants to navigate such situations responsibly.

The course is going to be taught in four sections. Each section will require some reading before and after the sessions.


Section A: introduction
Course introduction: Florian Stammler, Lukas Allemann, Panu Itkonen: introduction to the ethical questions of course participants’ research. Discussing with the participants what kinds of ethical questions interest them. In order to make this section fruitful and an ‘ice breaker’ event, each participant submits before the intro session a one page description of the ethical questions that they are interested in for their research. In their one-page document, the participants are encouraged to focus on the ethics of their planned or ongoing research, rather than just providing a topic-abstract of their research project. Participants are NOT required to share sensitive intellectual property with all course participants. They should write their document according to what they think the course participants should know as background about the specifics of their research ethics in their dissertation projects. All participants should have read all the descriptions before the course to prepare for a fruitful discussion. Each participant prepares a set of questions about somebody else’s paper for the first course session. For this questions task, the teachers will assign the participants’ papers to each other.


Section B: ethical research guidelines, focus on indigenous peoples, anthropology and history
Lecture 1: Panu Itkonen: relation between Saami plans for research ethics and general anthropological guidelines and general research ethics guidelines (TENK) Assigned reading before the session: https://tenk.fi/sites/default/files/2021-01/Ethical_review_in_human_sciences_2020.pdf

Lecture 2: Lecture 2: Florian Stammler: the guidelines of IASSA, AAA, ASA. Short analysis of the principles and differences. Discussion round about the relevance for participants' research projects. Assigned reading before the session: the following guidelines, available at https://iassa.org/about-iassa/research-principles https://www.americananthro.org/ethics-and-methods - please read the full version of the 2012 ethics https://www.theasa.org/ethics/ - please read the full version of the 2011 ethics https://www.oralhistory.org/oha-statement-on-ethics/ https://www.ohs.org.uk/legal-and-ethical-advice/ click yourself through all the steps there These sets of guidelines are a good start for any scholars of any discipline who plan to do qualitative research with people.


Section C: research ethics in the field in practice: navigating dilemmas and conflicting responsibilities

Lecture 1: Lukas Allemann: fieldwork dilemmas from oral history work with the Russian Saami

Lecture 2: Florian Stammler: fieldwork dilemmas in Siberia: friend, spy or nephew?
• the diverse faces of informed consent and beyond
• ethics of intoxication during research processes
• privacy or transparency, authorship, anonymity or co-production
• to whom do we feel most responsible with our research?
• the ethics of participatory research
Assigned reading before the session:
To be announced later

Lecture 3: Panu Itkonen: ethics of good conduct WITHIN academia. Concerning, for example, the sharing of ideas or the protecting of intellectual property, furthermore, the ethics of research methods.


Section D: role games and assignments

Session 1: Florian Stammler, Lukas Allemann: students form a group (groups) and play the roles of a researcher, a state representative, an indigenous politician, and a funding agency representative, and play with informed arguments through field situations in research ethics with conflicting interests.

Session 2: all teachers: students present drafts of their research ethics chapters for their PhD thesis.

Lisätiedot

Participants should be ready to invest a total of +/- 100 h / 4 ECTS for this course
contact teaching: 22 h
Homework for students: 20 h reading, 60 h writing

Toteutustavat

lectures, discussion, discussing assigned readings, role games, participants discussing their own work under teachers' guidance. Onsite.

Suoritustavat

- previous ethical course introduction (TUKO1246) is recommended but not mandatory
- preparing before the course start a one-page document on your personal view on research ethics in your research project participation in the sessions and engage actively in discussions (do not miss more than 10 %)
- completing preliminary reading assignments and in some cases producing short summaries in writing about them
- preparing a draft ethics section (3000–8000 words) for their own research to be discussed in the final course session. The final written assignment will be sent to the assessing teacher only, while an oral version as a presentation will be shared with other participants during the final course session.