Source: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/3118/4259
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:44:49+00:00

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Abstract: In Canada, social scientists are accountable to ethical guidelines, including the minimization of harm. Simultaneously, they are accountable to an academic community. But what of those moments in the researcher-participant relationship when these principles clash? They have at times done so resoundingly in our careers as qualitative interviewers, especially when we sought to ensure that information we implicitly understood and perceived as crucial would be duly stated by participants for the research record. Such attempts gave rise to deeply awkward interactions rife with emotions that even risked the premature termination of the interviews. In this article, we use methods from a feminist paradigm, and specifically standpoint and discursive positioning theory, to reflexively analyze the ethics in practice surrounding two of our own cases of awkward moments. Our analysis illustrates how the emotions of awkward moments can be symptomatic of everyday ethical conundrums. We particularly consider whether and how our engagement in reflexivity from these two vantage points can mitigate any real or imagined harm. We indicate how the understanding we develop from our analysis can lead to proactive recommendations for researchers to engage with their emotions and conduct themselves more ethically, both in the field and in analyses.
3.1 "Nine hundred ladies' room walls can't be wrong"
3.2 "I don't really think about it"
The moment began for Katherine as Charles responded to the routine question that she asked about a job as a director that Charles had done for a theater project. Before the interview took place, both knew that Katherine, the producer and playwright of the project, had hired Charles.
Nine hundred ladies' room walls can't be wrong. "For a good time call –"
You wanna give me your number for my co-author, who's gonna be so appalled when she reads this?
Oh, good, that's what I was going for.
What Katherine does next, however, complicates the interpretation we have given so far. We now turn to our second interpretation of this awkward moment.
(pompously, as if making a speech) The theater can be a highly sexualized environment.
And did you do your education here in Canada?
And if you were to, our weirdest question of all, if you were to think about your cultural heritage, your race or ethnicity, what would you state it is?
I don't really even think of it.
(quiet nervous laughter). Perfect. You don't even really think of it. Good. Because a lot of people will be like "Canadian," and a lot of other people will be like, um, "Irish," so however you define yourself?
Okay, got it. "Not really think about it" (writing this down on the demographic questionnaire). There we go. Okay. Perfect. And here you live with how many other people?
Ah, just me and Jennifer.
"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know."
We gratefully acknowledge the time and energy in which Charles and Andrew shared their stories and experiences with us. Years later, we remain thankful for their understanding of the art of ethics in practice.
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Amber GAZSO (PhD, University of Alberta) is an associate professor of sociology at York University. Her main areas of research include: citizenship; family and gender relations; research methods; poverty; and the welfare state. She specializes in research that explores family members' relationships with social policies of the neo-liberal welfare state. Her current research explores how people living with addiction experience social assistance receipt. A passion of her is the study and practice of qualitative methods.
Katherine BISCHOPING (PhD, University of Michigan), an associate professor of sociology at York University, studies the behind-the-scenes work of methodologists, gendered cultural narratives, and the role of narration in oral history and memory studies. Recently, Amber GAZSO and she coauthored "Analyzing Talk in the Social Sciences: Narrative, Conversation and Discourse Strategies" (2016, Sage), and Yumi ISHII and she co-edited a special issue of Oral History Forum d'histoire orale, entitled "Generations and Memory: Continuity and Change" (2017).
Gazso, Amber & Bischoping, Katherine (2018). Feminist Reflections on the Relation of Emotions to Ethics: A Case Study of Two Awkward Interviewing Moments [35 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19(3), Art. 7, http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-19.3.3118.

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