Research Ethics for Human Geography: A Handbook for Students 2020934924, 9781473981768, 9781473981775

Table of contents :
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Preface:
A Student’s Perspective
1:
Introducing Ethics
2:
Geography and Ethics
Part 1:
Core Ethical Issues
3:
Positionality
4:
Consent
5:
Anonymity
6:
Sensitive Topics
7:
Power and Empowerment
8:
Emotions
9:
Expectations
10:
Statistics and Data
11:
Data Management
12:
Avoiding the Weaponization of Your Research
Part 2:
Approaches
13:
Radical Geographies
14:
Activist Geographies
15:
Participatory Approaches
16:
Indigenous Methods and Research with Indigenous Communities
Part 3:
Subjects
17:
Vulnerable Subjects
18:
Animals
19:Children and Young People
20:Historical Geographies and Archived Subjects
21:
Powerful and Elite Subjects
22:
The Environment
Part 4:
Spaces
23:
Public Spaces
24:
Private and Domestic Spaces
25:
Spaces of Development
26:
Voluntary Spaces
27:
Virtual Spaces and Social Media
28:Spaces of Disaster
Part 5:
Writing
29:
Writing Research
Glossary
References
Index

Citation preview

RESEARCH ETHICS for HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

Helen F. Wilson & Jonathan Darling

RESEARCH ETHICS for HUMAN GEOGRAPHY A Handbook for Students

WILSON_Research Methods for Human Geography_AW.indd 5

03/08/2020 11:07

Editorial arrangement © Helen F. Wilson and Jonathan Darling 2021

SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483

Editor: Alysha Owen Development editor: Robert Rojek Assistant editor: Lauren Jacobs Production editor: Katherine Haw Copyeditor: Catja Pafort Marketing manager: Susheel Gokarakonda Cover design: Francis Kenney Typeset by: Cenveo Publisher Services Printed in the UK

Chapter 1 © Helen F. Wilson and Jonathan Darling 2021 Chapter 2 © Jonathan Darling and Helen F. Wilson 2021 Chapter 3 © Romola Sanyal 2021 Chapter 4 © Chris Philo and Eric Laurier 2021 Chapter 5 © Helen F. Wilson 2021 Chapter 6 © Peter Hopkins 2021 Chapter 7 © Thomas Swerts 2021 Chapter 8 © Elspeth Probyn 2021 Chapter 9 © Jonathan Darling 2021 Chapter 10 © Niall Cunningham 2021 Chapter 11 © Helen F. Wilson 2021 Chapter 12 © Sara Koopman 2021 Chapter 13 © Raksha Pande 2021 Chapter 14 © Anthony Ince and Richard White 2021 Chapter 15 © Michele Lobo, David Kelly and Helen F. Wilson 2021 Chapter 16 © Renee Pualani Louis and Zoltán Grossman 2021 Chapter 17 © Jonathan Darling 2021 Chapter 18 © Kathryn Gillespie 2021 Chapter 19 © John Horton, Michelle Pyer and Faith Tucker 2021 Chapter 20 © Derek Alderman and Joshua Inwood 2021 Chapter 21 © Merje Kuus 2021 Chapter 22 © Jenny Pickerill 2021 Chapter 23 © Veronica Crossa 2021 Chapter 24 © Geraldine Pratt 2021 Chapter 25 © Jonathan Rigg 2021 Chapter 26 © Mónica Farías and Helen F. Wilson 2021 Chapter 27 © Sam Kinsley 2021 Chapter 28 © Katie Oven, Hanna Ruszczyk, and Jonathan Rigg 2021 Chapter 29 © Pat Noxolo 2021

First published 2020 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934924 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4739-8176-8 ISBN 978-1-4739-8177-5 (pbk)

At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in the UK using FSC papers and boards. When we print overseas we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the PREPS grading system. We undertake an annual audit to monitor our sustainability.

Finally we have a book that both expertly and accessibly outlines the myriad of ethical decisions that need to be worked through when embarking on research. This excellent text will be an invaluable resource for students undertaking research. Julian Bloomer, University of Limerick This is an important and timely book that will prove an essential resource for teaching about research ethics. It provides students with invaluable advice, information and reading as well as helpful examples of ethical practice in geographical research. Jo Little, University of Exeter This is an accessible and engaging text which provides a comprehensive guide to ethical considerations in human geography research. Through excellent contributions, conceptual discussion, and practical research guidelines it forms an invaluable toolkit for undergraduate and postgraduate geographers. Will Andrews, Bangor University This richly illustrated and incisive book brings together leading scholars to provide the most comprehensive and critical consideration of research ethics for human geography – and will now be the ‘go to’ text for students, teachers, and researchers. Mark Riley, University of Liverpool A comprehensive, clear, accessible and useful survey of ethical issues involved in human geography research. Yunpeng Zhang

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Contents List of Figures

xi

List of Tables

xii

Notes on Contributors

xiii

Acknowledgementsxxi Preface: A Student’s Perspective Amy Barron

xxiii

1 Introducing Ethics Helen F. Wilson and Jonathan Darling

1

2 Geography and Ethics Jonathan Darling and Helen F. Wilson

6

PART 1: CORE ETHICAL ISSUES

23

3 Positionality Romola Sanyal

25

4 Consent Chris Philo and Eric Laurier

33

5 Anonymity Helen F. Wilson

43

6

51

Sensitive Topics Peter Hopkins

7 Power and Empowerment Thomas Swerts

59

8 Emotions Elspeth Probyn

67

9 Expectations Jonathan Darling

73

10 Statistics and Data Niall Cunningham

82

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11 Data Management Helen F. Wilson

88

12 Avoiding the Weaponization of Your Research Sara Koopman

97

PART 2: APPROACHES

105

13 Radical Geographies Raksha Pande

107

14 Activist Geographies Anthony Ince and Richard J. White

118

15 Participatory Approaches Michele Lobo, David Kelly and Helen F. Wilson

130

16 Indigenous Methods and Research with Indigenous Communities Renee Pualani Louis and Zoltán Grossman

143

PART 3: SUBJECTS

157

17 Vulnerable Subjects Jonathan Darling

159

18 Animals Kathryn Gillespie

170

19 Children and Young People John Horton, Michelle Pyer and Faith Tucker

180

20 Historical Geographies and Archived Subjects Derek H. Alderman and Joshua Inwood

192

21 Powerful and Elite Subjects Merje Kuus

202

22 The Environment Jenny Pickerill

211

PART 4: SPACES

223

23 Public Spaces Veronica Crossa

225

24 Private and Domestic Spaces Geraldine Pratt

236

25 Spaces of Development Jonathan Rigg

246

Contents

ix

26 Voluntary Spaces Mónica Farías and Helen F. Wilson

256

27 Virtual Spaces and Social Media Sam Kinsley

269

28 Spaces of Disaster Katie Oven, Hanna Ruszczyk and Jonathan Rigg

280

PART 5: WRITING

289

29 Writing Research Pat Noxolo

291

Glossary303 References311 Index348

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List of Figures P.1 A selection of materials used by participants to aid reflection on place P.2 A collaboratively created collage of Chorlton, Manchester, UK

xxvi xxviii

4.1 Café customer disrupts the visual record

39

7.1 The CollectActif cookbook front cover, designed by a CollectActif member

64

9.1 The Talking Shop

75

20.1 Green Book (1956) business listings for several cities and towns in Georgia. Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue was one of the nation’s most prominent black business and entertainment districts during the Jim Crow era and the birthplace of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

198

22.1 Being shown how to fish on the Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia 22.2 Plastering an eco-house wall, Brighton, England

219 221

26.1/2 Preparing the food for the Sunday Olla266

List of Tables 17.1 Forms of research vulnerability 19.1 Characteristics of children’s geographies and interdisciplinary studies of childhood and youth 19.2 Considerations relating to harm avoidance when researching with children and young people 19.3 Ethical questions and strategies for using social and digital media when researching with children and young people

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181 185 186

Notes on Contributors Derek Alderman is Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee and Past President of the American Association of Geographers. He is a cultural and historical geographer specializing in race, social memory, social justice, critical place name study, and black geographies. The author of over 120 articles and chapters, much of Alderman’s research, teaching, and public engagement addresses the US Civil Rights Movement. He is co-author (with Owen Dwyer) of the award-winning book Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory (University of Georgia Press, 2008). His recent work focuses on the role of geographic mobility, travel, and tourism within the African American freedom struggle. Amy C. Barron is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Manchester. Her research explores embodied experiences of the age-friendly city, combining a theoretical concern with non-representational thinking and an empirical emphasis on developing creative and participatory methodologies for working with older urban residents. Her work has informed urban policies on ageing in the UK and has been published in Social & Cultural Geography. Veronica Crossa is a human geographer based at the Centro de Estudios Demográficos, Urbanos y Ambientales (Centre for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies), at the College of Mexico. Her research lies at the intersection between urban, political, and critical geographies, with a focus on Latin America. She has explored how urban excluded groups negotiate and struggle over changing configurations of power in their everyday lives, and has published her work in journals including Antipode, Political Geography, and Urban Studies. Prior to working at the College of Mexico, she was a Lecturer in Geography at University College Dublin in Ireland. Niall Cunningham is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Newcastle University, UK. He has interests in the spatial and statistical analysis of both typ­ ologies and lived implications of social class, inequalities of (im)mobility, and ethno-political conflict in both contemporary and historical contexts. He has co-authored three books: Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Society in Ireland Since the Famine (Indiana University Press, 2013), Social Class in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2015), and Everyday Europe: Social Transnationalism in an Unsettled Continent (Policy Press, 2019).

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Jonathan Darling is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at Durham University. His research focuses on the ethics and politics of forced migration and considers how cities engage with questions of asylum and refuge. He has published widely on the politics of urban sanctuary, on refugee activism, and on the ethics of working with vulnerable groups. He is a member of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Training Network ‘Solidarity in Diversity’ (SOLiDi), which examines cross-cultural solidarities in contemporary Europe. He is co-editor of Encountering the City (Routledge, 2016), and Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles (Manchester University Press, 2019). Mónica Farías is a National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Geography, University of Buenos Aires, and a faculty member at the Department of Geography at the University of Buenos Aires. Her research interests lie in urban inequalities, class formation, and everyday cultural practices in Argentina, and she has published on urban politics, solidarity, and political subjectivities in Geoforum, Gender, Place, & Culture, and also the Journal of Latin American Geography. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Washington (in Seattle), where she examined the transformative politics of asambleas populares in Buenos Aires. Kathryn Gillespie is a feminist geographer and animal studies scholar, working to uncover and transform the anthropocentrism and resulting violence embedded in human–animal relationships. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Geography and the Applied Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program. She is the author of The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and co-editor of Critical Animal Geographies (Routledge, 2015) and Economies of Death (Routledge, 2015). Zoltán Grossman is a Professor of Geography and Native Studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington state. He earned his PhD in Geography and Graduate Minor in American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2002, with his areas of study in human geography at the intersections of ethnic/racial nationhood, natural resources, and militarization. He is a past co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (2008–10), a co-editor (with Alan Parker) of Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis (Oregon State University Press, 2012), and author of Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands (University of Washington Press, 2017). He is a longtime community organizer, and was a co-founder of the Midwest Treaty Network in Wisconsin. Peter Hopkins is Professor of Social Geography and University Dean of Social Justice at Newcastle University, UK. His research interests focus upon: young

Notes on Contributors

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people, place, and identity; racism, Islamophobia, and Muslim identities; masculinities, ethnicities, and place; and intersectionality, equality, and diversity. He served as the Managing Editor of Gender, Place, & Culture from 2013 to 16 and has published on ethical issues including those associated with reflexivity, positionality, and participatory research. John Horton is a geographer based at the University of Northampton, UK. He is Editor of Social & Cultural Geography and a former Editor of Children’s Geographies journal. With Peter Kraftl, he is co-author of the book Cultural Geographies (Routledge, 2013), and Series Editor of a new major book series on Spaces of Childhood and Youth. Anthony Ince is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University. His work sits at the intersection of political and social geographies, examining how social justice and forms of self-organization are enacted in everyday life. His work has explored far-right political movements, labour mobility, and urban riots, with a concern with agency and the potentials of anarchist thought and practice underpinning these empirical subjects. He is co-editor of Sharing Economies in Times of Crisis (Routledge, 2016). Joshua Inwood is an Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Geography. His research focuses on how oppressed and exploited populations use social justice movements to change their material conditions, and he has explored the work of civil rights organizations and the social dimensions of segregation in the US South. He has published widely on settler colonialism, whiteness, and race in the US, and the intersections between racial violence, memory, and place identity. David Kelly is a Research Fellow at HOME, a transdisciplinary research hub based at Deakin University, Melbourne. HOME works with local communities to deliver affordable, sustainable, and connected housing, and within the hub David’s work focuses on the politics and performance of home-making and place identity among marginalized groups. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from Deakin University and has published work on the affective dimensions of place and intercultural encounters in Geoforum and Intercultural Studies. Sam Kinsley is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Exeter with a particular interest in technology and the future. His research principally concerns how technologies and technical practices are designed and imagined, and what this tells us about how we experience and imagine space and place. Sam’s current research concerns geographical imaginaries of automation. He has presented and published his research in various international disciplinary contexts and received the Progress in Human Geography Best Paper Prize in 2015.

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Sara Koopman is an Assistant Professor at Kent State University’s School of Peace and Conflict Studies, which was set up as a living memorial to the students shot by the National Guard there. She is a feminist political geographer interested in the socio-spatial aspects of peace and the ways that both peacebuilding and solidarity can fall into colonial patterns. She looks at how grassroots groups build alternative securities through solidarity, a process she has framed as doing alter-geopolitics. Her research is based primarily in Colombia. Merje Kuus is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. Her research examines knowledge and power in national and transnational policy-making processes. Her research empirically examines regulatory and diplomatic practices in contemporary Europe. She is the author of Geopolitics and Expertise: Knowledge and Authority in European Diplomacy (Wiley Blackwell, 2014), and Geopolitics Reframed: Security and Identity in Europe’s Eastern Enlargement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and also a co-editor of the Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics (Ashgate, 2013). Eric Laurier is a cultural geographer with an interest in practical reasoning and ordinary language. Inspired by ethnomethodological studies he has described how everyday life gets accomplished in particular places, like cafés, cars, and family kitchens. From his co-author, Chris Philo, Eric learned to appreciate the minor struggles that escape total histories. Michele Lobo is a social and cultural geographer based at Deakin University in Melbourne. Her research focuses on questions of whiteness, Indigeneity, and encounter in urban contexts. She has held Australian Research Council funding to study ethnic and religious diversity and shared belonging in Australian cities, and to explore creative and sensory modes of representing intercultural encounters. She is currently an editor of Social & Cultural Geography. – Renee Pualani Louis is a Kanaka ‘Oiwi (Native Hawai‘i) woman and Indigenous geography and cartography based at the University of Kansas. She has been mentoring the next generation of Indigenous geography academic leaders as co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers for over a decade. After completing her book on Kanaka Hawai‘i Cartography she has been concentrating on collaborating with Indigenous communities to draft and enforce research policies that protect their intellectual property and assert their sovereign rights as identified in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Pat Noxolo is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research draws on postcolonial and literary theory to explore the spatiality of Caribbean and British cultural practices. She has written widely on questions of international development, cultural politics, and in/security. She is lead researcher on the Caribbean In/securities and

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Creativity (CARISCC) research network, funded by the Leverhulme Trust; chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies; co-editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; and secretary of the RACE group of the Royal Geographical Society. Katie Oven is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Fellow in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at Northumbria University. Her research sits at the interface of human and physical geography, exploring how vulnerability and resilience to natural hazards is socially produced, with research conducted in Nepal, India, Kazakhstan, and the UK. In examining interdisciplinary approaches to disaster risk reduction (DRR), Katie has worked with a range of government and non-governmental organizations, with her research contributing to DRR policy and practice. Raksha Pande is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Newcastle University. Her research examines the intersections of postcolonial and feminist approaches within geography, where she has conducted research on arranged marriage practices among the British-Asian population in the UK, with articles published in Gender, Place, & Culture and Social & Cultural Geography, among other outlets. Her current work examines how young British-Pakistani women and men story their relationships, and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Chris Philo describes himself as a historical and cultural geographer, particularly interested in the spaces and places of people consigned to the ‘margins’ of human societies past and present. He also has a passion for the history and theory of geography, as both designated subject and a wider form of human endeavour, and has learned much from his co-author, Eric Laurier, about how ethnomethodology can speak to critical geographical scholarship. Jenny Pickerill is a Professor of Environmental Geography at Sheffield University. Her research focuses on inspiring grassroots solutions to environmental problems and on hopeful and positive ways in which we can change social practices. This work includes a concern for justice, recognizing that the broader context of environmental problems is often inequality, colonialism, racism, and neoliberalism. As a geographer she is interested in how these different issues connect, relate, and entangle at different scales and in diverse places. She has published and co-edited several books including Cyberprotest (Oxford University Press, 2003), Anti-war Activism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and Eco-Homes (Zed Books, 2016), as well as over 30 articles on themes around environmentalism and eco-housing. Geraldine Pratt is Professor of Geography and Canada Research Chair in Transnationalism and Precarious Labour. She is author of Working Feminism (Temple University Press, 2004) and Families Apart: Migrant Mothers

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and the Conflicts of Labor and Love (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), co-author of Gender, Work and Space (Routledge, 1995) and Film and Urban Space (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), and co-editor of The Global and the Intimate (Columbia University Press, 2012). She has co-written two plays pertaining to Filipino domestic workers in Canada (Nanay and Tlingipino Bingo). Elspeth Probyn is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her work crosses a number of disciplinary fields, shaping debates in gender, media, and cultural studies, alongside cultural geography and anthropology. Alongside previous work on embodiment, sexuality, and ethics, her current research questions the sustainability of food production and its ethical, political, and cultural dimensions. She is the author of a number of books, including Eating the Ocean (Duke University Press, 2016), Blush: Faces of Shame (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), and Carnal Appetites (Routledge, 2000). Michelle Pyer is Senior Researcher and Postgraduate Research Lead within the Faculty of Health, Education and Society at the University of Northampton, UK. Michelle specializes in research ethics and research with children. She has published widely in these areas, including a recent book, Children, Young People and Care (Routledge, 2017), with John Horton. She is currently working on an Erasmus+ funded project (CyGen), which focuses on the promotion of children’s digital literacy through education. Through close partnership working with children, teachers, and relevant stakeholders, an educational online platform will be developed to support teachers to teach digital literacy in the classroom. Jonathan Rigg is Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. Formerly he was Director of the Asia Research Institute and Professor of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He has undertaken fieldwork in Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam and published nine books on matters of economic and social transformation in Asia and the Global South. His latest book, More Than Rural: Textures of Thailand’s Agrarian Transformation, is published by Hawaii University Press (2019). Hanna Ruszczyk is an Assistant Professor (Research) at Durham University’s Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience and the Department of Geography. She conducts research on urban risk governance and resilience strategies in medium-sized, regional cities of the Global South. At the present time, she is working on her second edited volume, tentatively titled Overlooked Cities of the Global South. She is particularly interested in how gendered aspects of cities manifest themselves in creating and perpetuating risk. Before academia, she worked for two United Nations agencies, the International Labour Office and the United Nations Development Programme.

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Romola Sanyal is Associate Professor of Urban Geography at the London School of Economics. Her work examines the intersection of forced migration, urbanization, and planning primarily in the Global South. She is the co-editor of Urbanizing Citizenship: Contested Spaces in Indian Cities (Sage, 2012) and Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge (Manchester University Press, 2020). Thomas Swerts is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, who received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the nexus between irregular migration, social movements, and urban citizenship, and he has primarily specialized in urban ethnographic methods and in-depth interviewing. His research has been funded by the SSRC, NSF and the Mellon Foundation, and he has published in Global Networks, Mobilization, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. He has also contributed to edited volumes on citizenship studies, immigrant rights mobilization, and relational poverty politics. Faith Tucker is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Northampton, UK. She has research interests in children’s geographies, geographies of disability, and teaching and learning within higher education. Faith is on the editorial board of the journal Children’s Geographies. Richard J. White is a Reader in Human Geography at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Greatly influenced by anarchist praxis, his research explores a range of critical geographies focused on intersectional social justice and total liberation movements. In this context he is particularly interested in deconstructing the ways in which exploitation of humans and non-human animals intersects in society, as well as developing a new geographic imaginary based on peace and non-violence. He recently co-edited The Radicalization of Pedagogy, Theories of Resistance, and The Practice of Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, all 2016) and Anarchism and Animal Liberation (McFarland Press, 2015). Helen F. Wilson is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at Durham University. Her research explores the politics of lived difference, and she has published widely on the geographies of encounter, multiculture, urban life and living, and contested forms of co-existence. She is a member of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Training Network ‘Solidarity in Diversity’ (SOLiDi), which examines cross-cultural solidarities in contemporary Europe. She is the co-editor of Encountering the City (Routledge, 2016). Her forthcoming book, Robin, will be published by Reaktion.

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Acknowledgements This book was developed and completed across two institutions. It began life with us at the University of Manchester and was completed at Durham University. As such, it has benefited from the support and insight of a range of wonderful colleagues. In particular, we would like to thank Ben Anderson, Bridget Byrne, Mike Crang, Martin Hess, Ben Rogaly, Fiona Smyth, Chris Stokes, and Kevin Ward for their support, guidance, and collegiality. This book would not exist without the hard work and insight of each of the contributing authors and we would like to thank them all for their efforts and patience with the project. The book has benefited enormously from the generosity of several reviewers at different stages of the project. We are extremely grateful for their time and care. At SAGE, our thanks also go to Alysha Owen, Eve Williams, Robert Rojek, Catriona McMullen, John Nightingale, Lauren Jacobs, and Katherine Haw for their continued support and belief in a book on ethics for geographers. Finally, our continued thanks go to all of the students who we have had the opportunity to teach, engage with, and learn from.

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Preface: A Student’s Perspective Amy Barron

During my time as a student, ethics was typically understood as a time-consuming, bureaucratic exercise that carried extra stress in an already hectic semester of assignments. Beyond an ad-hoc signature scrawled on a form, ethics was often not the primary concern for students embarking on a research project. This lack of concern emerged not purely out of disdain for bureaucracy. Rather, it was perhaps to do with the intangible, ambiguous, and everyday use of the term. In conversation we hear the term ‘ethical’ deployed as a vague and catch-all phrase, a way of defending one’s actions, or as a branding mechanism for various products and services aimed at the consumer. In such a context, it is easy for students to lose grasp of its pertinence to the rigorous and considered task of academic study. In academic practice, ‘research ethics’ generally refers to the moral principles and actions that guide and shape research, from its inception through to completion, the dissemination of findings, and the archiving, future use, sharing, and linking of data (ESRC, 2015). But what are the criteria that make someone’s actions ethical beyond the performative, defensive function of the term and, crucially, how can students integrate ethics into their everyday research activities without dismissing them as a platitude? In this preface, I reflect on my own research interests and a number of ethical questions I encountered while carrying out my human geography undergraduate and master’s dissertations in the UK. Questions such as: Do I have a responsibility to include all the voices of those I worked with in my writing? What should I do if research participants change their mind about participating? And how can I manage the fact that some research encounters may prove upsetting for participants? Though it should not be seen as a panacea, I argue that my own experience offers a series of practical suggestions to temper research with ethical thinking. My research has taught me that where ethics is concerned there is no hard and fast rule. The universal ethical checklist that I and others searched for as student researchers simply does not exist. I do not suggest that advice should not be heeded, but rather that a normative checklist approach needs to be supplemented by a self-critical, imaginative, and ongoing

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reflection about issues that may arise both expectedly and unexpectedly during the course of research. This more fluid and flexible interpretation of ethics attends to the contextual nature of both what is being studied and how it is being understood at a particular moment in time (see Darling, 2014; Latham, 2003; Thrift, 2003a; Wilson, 2013a). Such context-based ethical understandings can be augmented by the sorts of methodological considerations presented in this book.

Ethical Commitments On reflection, ethics has always been implicit within my work. In the context of an ageing urban population, my research as an undergraduate, master’s and PhD student worked with older people to understand how this cohort can be better engaged in public policy (Barron, 2019). I was first introduced to these themes during my second year, when a professor of social gerontology delivered a lecture introducing ‘Age-Friendly Cities’ (WHO, 2007). Realizing my interest, I contacted the professor and my contacts snowballed from there, growing into a network of multidisciplinary members of staff and policy-makers. From this, I was asked to provide research assistance on a community group-based project in coordination with the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing at the University of Manchester, UK. Knowing that I would like to base my dissertation around these themes, I continued to visit this community group, building rapport and familiarizing myself with members. To date, I have conducted three studies with this group and regularly keep in touch, if only to say hello. But what does this have to do with ethics? Engaging with my participants over this prolonged period allowed me to demonstrate my commitment, respect, and understanding to them as a group of people, which for me is precisely the task of ethics. It helped me to communicate to them that I recognized and respected their time and energy, the commitment they were making, and the stories they were sharing. Ethics are not just something to be considered during fieldwork, but rather ethical consideration shapes all aspects of the research process, starting with its conception. I found that understanding ethics in this embedded, fluid, and encompassing way allowed me to engage in an ongoing, iterative dialogue with my participants. This facilitated a genuinely participatory approach, whereby research aims and questions were guided by the needs and interests of participants (see Lobo et al., Chapter 15 in this volume). Although older people are often pigeon-holed as a ‘vulnerable group’ on ethics forms (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume), I found that this rigidity did not account for the fluid and acutely subjective nature of ageing. An individual’s age alone did not define the difference between ‘ethical’ and ‘unethical’ research. Engaging with the group over a prolonged period allowed me to identify subjective nuances, to forge collaborative conversations between gatekeepers within the community group and individual members, and to identify those

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who were most suited to my research. Similarly, although power relations were diluted through my embedded engagement, it is vital to remain mindful of your position as a researcher and their position as a participant, as well as any preconceptions this may encompass. Because I was a young female working with older people, my participants tended to adopt a pastoral role, treating me as a grandchild: someone who needed looking after. Negotiating participants’ perception of me as a grandchild-like character and my role as a professional researcher at times raised difficult ethical quandaries. For instance, is it correct to accept the offer of lunch? Would they be offended if I did not accept? It is impossible to give a definitive answer here; it depends on the context and the individual in question. Decisions like this could only be made on knowledge gained from immersion with the group and an established relationship with the individual. This is just one of the reasons why there cannot ever be a universal checklist of what does, and what does not, constitute ethical practice. Not only is the world that social scientists study complex, messy, and unpredictable, but so are the lives of those whom we engage with. Research and ethical procedure cannot unfold in a predictable manner.

Negotiating Protocol and Practice In my experience, protocol and practice often run up against each other. As my university’s ethical guidelines dictated, participant information sheets and a copy of the consent form were distributed to the community group around a week in advance to allow time for questions. Having said this, despite having ‘read’ my information sheet and provided signed consent, it is surprising how many people, after the research was completed, asked what the purpose of the research was. Protocol clearly cannot account for everything. As such, ensuring that participants are aware of the nature of their involvement is a vital ethical consideration. To avoid this confusion, I reflected and revised how I was introducing the research. I devised alternative methods to communicate confiden­ tiality and anonymity, without actually using these words (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). For example, rather than using the word ‘pseudonym’, I stated that when this information is written, a different first name would be used. Similarly, while collecting data in a public context, it is not uncommon for spontaneous encounters with bystanders to become enrolled into conservation. For example, while taking a rest in a café and discussing how the city centre had changed, a lady overheard and enthusiastically joined in. Equally, while completing a photo-walk, a participant and I were unexpectedly invited into a lady’s house, where we discussed an assortment of historic books and maps of the local area (see Figure P.1). Although these unplanned encounters can catch you by surprise, it is often in these fleeting interactions where the most fruitful data is generated. To ensure that research was conducted with integrity and transparency, and to avoid disappointment I made sure I carried extra ethics information sheets, consent forms, and contact details.

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Figure P.1 A selection of materials used by participants to aid reflection on place

Much to my surprise, when I presented my master’s thesis research proposal, one of the questions asked was ‘What if a participant has a heart attack triggered by potentially traumatic memories evoked on your walk?’ To me, this seemed unlikely and impossible to mitigate for. As bewildering as this suggestion was at the time, accounting for the unlikely is part of the challenge of ethics. While thankfully, no such emergency occurred during the course of my research, many other unlikely scenarios did emerge. Although I maintain that it would be unfeasible to plan for such unlikely eventualities, I would always advocate that a degree of mindfulness and reflexivity is necessary to combat this. When completing one of my photo-walks, some memories provoked feelings of grief for one of the participants. How to negotiate such points of discomfort, pain, and grief is as crucial in the pursuit of ethical research as the decisions made months before fieldwork. What mattered was finding out how the participant wanted to continue, and how best one could comfort them. In these moments, research remains but as a secondary interest. Decisions on how to proceed in such circumstances should be determined by the participant, alongside considerations of whether, and how the researcher can work with them.

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At a similar stage in my research, another participant received a text message informing them of a family tragedy. Although the participant insisted that they wanted research to continue, time for a break, a general chat, and a cup of tea were necessary all the same. The best research in my experience is that which is both flexible and adaptive. In some of my walking interviews those with mobility needs took shorter routes or chose to drive, whereas those who enthusiastically embraced the research went on longer routes and brought along additional materials such as old photographs. While methods chapters might have been poured over in the finest of detail, methodologies need to be grounded in reality. It is not up to academics to circumscribe the parameters of participants’ engagement with research when individuals have different needs at different times. Moreover, and related to anticipating the unexpected, while methodologies might be defined with certain empirical parameters, one cannot truly foresee the breadth of what participants might want to discuss. Often they can engage you in the most personal of details from their lives. Put simply, if you are conducting research on a particular topic, you have no understanding of what this might invoke for the participant; it could be the conduit through which all aspects of life can be discussed and reflected upon. In my own research every effort was made to ensure the participants remained comfortable especially when out and about on the photo-walks, where rest breaks, either in cafés or sitting on public benches, were often taken. However, this effort to provide comfort can throw up new, unpredictable challenges. For instance, one participant decided they would like to begin their photo-walk in a local café due to bad weather. However, not long after we began to talk, the participant expressed how they were censoring the personal information they were willing to reveal in such a public environment where people might overhear. This highlights the contingent nature of ethics and demonstrates how the type of information that is discussed is, in part, determined by context and the type of questions that are acceptable to ask in a given situation. In this sense, walking interviews were ideally suited, as we journeyed through a variety of places that resulted in a wealth of both planned and spontaneous discussion points, but which also allowed relative privacy. For my master’s thesis I utilized the arts-based research methods of photowalks, photo-talks, and collaging in order to understand the interrelationship between sense of place and memory among older people in the neighbourhood context. It was hoped that this relaxed methodological approach, and the naming of the methods in this informal way (rather than walking interviews and focus groups), would help to create a more colloquial and enjoyable feel. All research was conducted in the participants’ neighbourhood and within the familiar community group facility during a regular weekly coffee morning. Although the environments were already familiar to the participants, when conducting research I wanted them to feel even more at ease. An important consideration was the type of mood and atmosphere I aspired to create for participants. Rather like designing a set, I considered which props were required

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for the performance to commence and which backdrop would be the most appropriate to create a suitable mood. For instance, when conducting a group collage exercise, I laid on the table some name cards, felt tips, and Post-it notes, along with photographs the participants had taken on their walk (and also a plate of biscuits) – to invite and direct people into the exercise from the outset (see Figure P.2). Conversation was always mindfully channelled from general conversation to topics of specific interest to the researcher. Group research poses its own difficulties: participants need to feel at ease and the researcher has to endeavour to ensure everyone has an equal voice. While completing the group photo-talk, I felt it important to remain reflexive of the group dynamic and how this might affect the type of information divulged. Although I was aware of existing power relations within the group, power relations often came to the fore in group discussion, with some people dominating conversation. I therefore encouraged quieter participants through subtle body languages such as smiling, making eye contact, and polite questioning. This allowed me to develop a useful skill to guide conversation without sounding rude or over-assertive. As a researcher, I learned to listen and guide discussion, by interjecting at the right time and signposting conversation. It is important to remember that, as a researcher, you are implanted into a group of people familiar to each other and with already existing power relations. You have to negotiate these in a way that is sensitive to established group dynamics, and show a level of understanding of these dynamics. Listening to participants beyond their voice and being mindful of their body language, facial

Figure P.2 A collaboratively created collage of Chorlton, Machester, UK

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expressions, and the type of information being divulged helps to negotiate this. This was particularly apparent when discussion became focused on broader societal issues, such as immigration, where some group members became visibly uncomfortable and requested that the conversation topic be switched to something they deemed more appropriate.

The Impacts of Research My own research also taught me that ethical considerations should not be left in the field. The sheer depth and detail of information I compiled, including ten lengthy transcripts and over 200 photographs, made me acutely aware of the politics enrolled in selecting stories, narratives, and photographs. I became conscious of how I sorted my data into neatly packaged vignettes and purposefully selected visual representations from the participants’ photographs. I constantly queried my selection of conversation snippets with the participants to ensure they were suitable. Several phone calls were also held with participants during the course of analysis to discuss which elements of our conversation they deemed to be the most significant, and if there were any areas of our individual conversations that they would prefer to not be shared with the group. Similarly, I utilized the photo-talk as a way for participants to select and discuss just three photographs that were the most significant to them. Working with participants in this way ensures you are utilizing the narrative they wish to be presented. I have also developed a concern for what might be termed the ethics of impact (see Pain, 2014a; Pain et al., 2011). More than simply developing an academic field, I felt a social responsibility to give something back to the community group that had so willingly engaged with my research. The enjoyment the participants took from the project was fed back to the community group coordinator who then kindly asked if I would present my work at their annual general meeting. For this, I compiled a short PowerPoint presentation including maps, photographs, and vignettes that were agreed with the participants in advance. Several participants volunteered to speak in the presentation about their experience, highlighting their enjoyment of the process. During methodological reflection after making the collage, other participants commented on the pleasure they derived from considering the places they could take me to: how it gave them a sense of purpose and encouraged conversation within their community. Following this, I was asked to write a small paragraph about my involvement with the community group, and the value of the group to the participants by the coordinator. Writing about how the participants were essential to my research, and describing the various activities we engaged in, helped to secure funding for the for the coming years, which was particularly gratifying. Similarly, I presented the findings of my research to policy experts in the city council, which resulted in ‘sense of place’ being incorporated as a key element of age-friendly development in Manchester, and

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my master’s thesis is now available as a resource in a local library. Once my research was complete for both my undergraduate and master’s dissertations, I continued to visit the community group occasionally and provided each participant with a summary of my findings to keep. I also gave flowers and chocolates to the community group leader and sent ‘thank you’ cards to each participant. This process helped me to realize how academic research should by no means remain in the ‘ivory tower’, but instead have the ability to transcend it in a multiplicity of ways. Of course, neither all research nor all researchers will be able to, or wish to, retain such a relationship with respondents during and after the research, but I was lucky to work with a group keen to continue an engagement with my ongoing research.

Conclusion If I reflect on the lessons I have taken from my own research experience, four key points come to mind. First, ethics are not just involved in the fieldwork aspect of research. Rather, they are enrolled from the very start to the end. Initiating contact with experts in the field early in the research process is vital. Similarly, ethical practice and research impact do not have to stop with your dissertation or paper. You have the chance to grasp an opportunity to make a real difference. Second (and related), ethics should not be viewed as an ‘addon’, but rather it needs to be implicit in the research process. Researchers must remain reflexive, flexible, and aware. In this sense, communication is vital. Researchers must show an interest beyond the work: make work transparent, and live, feel, and learn the research with the participants. Third, ethics is about not viewing research as abstracted from yourself and your moral values. A reflective awareness of positionality is pivotal (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), alongside a reflection on how you are viewed as a researcher. There can be a suspicion of so-called ‘experts’. Taking the time to build rapport and become embedded in the context can alleviate this. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is no hard and fast rule. Any ethical framework students are provided with can only ever offer general guidance. Frameworks cannot replace the need for self-critical, imaginative, and responsible ethical reflection about issues which may arise in the course of research, but they can help guide and illustrate how to proceed.

Recommended Readings Peters, K. (2017) Your Human Geography Dissertation: Designing, Doing, Delivering. London: Sage. This book provides a helpful overview of how to prepare, research, and write a geography dissertation. It is one of a number of recent books concerned with improving student understanding of research processes from design through to delivery, including ethics.

1 Introducing Ethics Helen F. Wilson and Jonathan Darling

Why Ethics? Have you completed your ethics form? This is a question almost guaranteed to produce a weary response, whether from undergraduate students, PhD students, or academics. Although there is international variability, the practice of completing an ethics review form before embarking on research is often an important aspect of research governance at all levels of university life. And yet it is a process that can often feel frustrating, a hurdle to cross before being able to get on with the ‘real’ task of research. In this context, it can be easy to think of ethics as only a form to be completed, and to find it separated from the experience of ‘doing’ geographical research. Too often, ethics can fail to gain the detailed and sustained discussion that it requires. A geographical education may involve an introduction to ethics, a short chapter in a methods textbook, or a conversation with a dissertation supervisor. These are all valuable resources but can be limited in scope and, at their worst, reduced to a process of box-ticking. Yet ethics is at the heart of our geographical imaginations, our understandings of the world, and our ability to engage with and intervene in that world. Looked at in this way, ethics is not a hurdle to cross before being able to continue on a path towards empirical findings and the writing of a dissertation, report, or paper. Rather, ethical concerns and choices are at the heart of all stages of the research process, from the posing of research questions to the dissemination of findings. It is this understanding of ethics, as a challenge fundamental to the practice of research in geography, that we want to develop in this book; it aims to give a more comprehensive, critical, and useful introduction to the diversity of ethical issues in geographical research. There are multiple manifestations of ethics in the research process, from the design of research and its selection of methods, participants, and approaches, to formal procedures of ethical clearance and review. Within the process of

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designing and undertaking ethical research, whether that be for a dissertation or a PhD, formal ethical review processes are merely one point of possible ethical reflection. The chapters that follow identify other points of reflection, and offer insight into how researchers have navigated some of these challenges in their own work. This is not a collection that will give you a series of easy answers. Indeed, in reading across the chapters you might notice some points of tension and disagreement. Instead, the collection is intended to prompt reflection on the multitude of challenges associated with research in human geography, and to offer examples and guidance on how others have negotiated these challenges.

Why Do Research Ethics Matter? Research ethics matter for a range of reasons. First, to start with procedural ethics and the form with which we opened this introduction, universities and public institutions have an obligation to ensure that their students and employees act responsibly. Demands for accountability and ethical conduct in research have grown in recent decades following high-profile cases of research misconduct, thereby leading to review processes that require all researchers to examine the conduct of their work (Israel 2015). Second, and linked to this concern with accountability, by acting ethically and conducting research in a sensitive and responsible manner, we can ensure that researchers are trusted by the publics they engage with. Abusing trust, acting irresponsibly, or conducting unethical research can play an important role in undermining public confidence in the work of researchers at all levels. Conducting uneth­ ical research is thus a concern not only for the individuals and universities involved (as they may be liable for censure), but also for the wider research community of which we are all a part (Hay 2016). Third, as Hay (2016) reminds us, it is important to conduct ethical research not just because procedures of monitoring are there to ensure that we do so, or because there are negative consequences of not doing so, but because it is the right thing to do. Conducting research that is responsible and accountable, and that avoids or minimizes any potential harm to those involved, is the best way to protect the rights of those we work with, be they individuals, groups, animals, or environments. As will be evident across the chapters of this book, many geographers not only undertake research on topics that demand ethical attention; they do so with the hope of effecting some form of social, political, or environmental change. Imagined as such, conducting ethical research is not just the right thing to do in these contexts, but also a crucial part of thinking through the issues themselves. In these contexts, the ethics of research and the ethics of the research topic are not easily disentangled. At the same time, our decisions to undertake certain forms of research, and to pursue specific topics, are themselves driven by our own ethical positions. For example, decisions to undertake

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research on industrial factory farming, environmental pollution, or global production networks and supply chains will be informed by our interest in these topics, but additionally they will often be shaped by our personal ethics and the issues that we perceive to be of most pressing concern. If ethical questions can drive geographical research, it is also notable that understandings of ethics have developed and shifted as new areas of geographical enquiry have developed. The emergence of new forms of social media and virtual networks have prompted new ethical questions about the status of online environments, and rights to privacy, as well as the need to reconsider established ethical norms, such as questions of consent (see Kinsley, Chapter 27 in this volume). Similarly, the development of critical research on animal and more-than-human geographies in recent years has demanded that geographers question ethical norms that are centred on an anthropocentric frame of reference (Gillespie and Collard, 2015). Considering how consent may operate in a context of research with non-human animals represents a site of new and emergent ethical issues for geographers (Gillespie, Chapter 18 in this volume). The ethical questions that geographers face in their research have thus shifted and developed as their areas of research have themselves found new ground. As a result, research ethics are far from set in stone. Rather, ethical understandings and approaches develop and change in response to new research, debate, and consideration. Ethics thus demands responsiveness and the ability to reflect on situations and contexts beyond any predefined set of rules or norms. At the same time, new thinking on questions of ethics has prompted geographers to develop new research, with the growth of work on ‘moral geographies’ and the ‘geographies of responsibility’ in the last twenty years being key examples (Korf, 2007; Massey, 2004; Proctor, 1998; Raghuram et al., 2009; Smith, 2000). These relations between geography and ethics are discussed further in Chapter 2. If much of our ethical consideration is not set in stone, research ethics come to matter precisely because it involves, and often demands, continuous reflection and judgement. As a result, this book is not designed as a ‘how to’ guide to ethical conduct within human geography. Rather, we hope that it will give some foundations for ethical reflection and the development of ethical research, through offering insights into some of the ethical issues and topics that are commonly encountered in human geography research.

Three Principles in Research Ethics With these considerations in mind, we highlight three common factors that run through many of the chapters in this collection, and that shape understandings of ethical research practice in geography. First, ethical considerations run throughout the research process. Ethical consideration is often assumed to begin and end with the process of fieldwork or the creation of research data. In part, this assumption is based upon

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the procedural nature of formal review processes, which are completed before entering ‘the field’. However, ethical questions shape the entire duration of any research. Ethics needs to be considered when designing questions, when considering which methods are appropriate for your work, and when developing approaches to access research subjects and materials. Similarly, ethical questions of accountability, transparency, and the likely impact of your work need to be considered when writing up your research and disseminating your findings. Ethical questions do not end with the conclusion of fieldwork. Ethical research involves constantly pausing and reflecting on the conduct, design, and impact of your work. Second, ethical issues are shaped by research context and as a result your approach to ethical questions will be particular to your research. It is for this reason that there is no complete guide to research ethics. What may be ethical in one circumstance, and one research location, may be problematic in another. As cultural contexts change, so do established norms of behaviour and conduct. This demands a good deal of preparation and careful consideration from you as a researcher, as you need to be aware of the context in which you and your research are placed. Third, building on the importance of context, ethics is a question of situated judgements that often occur in the midst of research itself. It is impossible to predict everything that may happen during a piece of research, be that changes in policy, unexpected events, new opportunities that arise in ‘the field’, or unpredictable responses. This means that ethics in practice is about more than reviews and forms; it is about educating yourself as to how you might respond to ethical questions as they arise. Ethics involves the ability to reflect on what the best thing to do in a situation might be, and to learn from past experiences. The chapters gathered together here all represent examples where researchers have been faced with this issue of situated judgement and sought to find the right thing to do in that situation. The aim of this book is to give you the resources to think about how you might make your own ethical judgements in your own research.

Outline of the Book The book develops an in-depth discussion of a variety of ethical issues across five sections and is designed for you to dip in and out of, in line with your own research needs. In each chapter, the authors provide an overview of the ethical issues related to their topic, but also draw on their own research experience and practice, to discuss how they have encountered and navigated ethical dilemmas in their work. The advice offered here should give you a starting point for your own reflections on research design, ethical practice, and how to identify and examine the ethical challenges your research may pose. A selection of recommended readings for each chapter will also give you useful pointers for where to begin exploring topics in more detail.

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After a brief introduction to some of the key issues behind the theory of ethics within geography, the first section focuses on Core Ethical Issues. Here, we draw together chapters that examine a range of common concerns for geographical research projects. These range from positionality and consent, through to data management and research expectations. These chapters will offer you concise introductions to key issues and useful indications of where to start in designing and practising ethical research. The next section, Approaches, focuses attention on four ways in which ethical considerations have shaped the epistemological and practical approach to research. While not exhaustive, this section focuses on approaches to research that explicitly foreground ethical concerns. Building on this, the third section, Subjects, explores how geographers have developed research with a range of different subjects and how distinct ethical considerations are raised with each of these subject groups. These vary from children and other vulnerable groups to animals and the environment as subjects of significant geographical interest. The fourth section, Spaces, draws attention to the different spaces in which geographical research is often situated, and considers some of the key ethical issues when researching both in, and about, such spaces. This includes public and private spaces, spaces of disaster, and the virtual spaces that have become the focus for a growing body of research. Finally, the book concludes with a reflection on the Writing of research. This chapter examines how the decisions you make regarding what you write, how you write it, and what you omit demand ethical judgement and reflection: words have power!

2 Geography and Ethics Jonathan Darling and Helen F. Wilson

Key Points •

Geographers have developed a series of ethical concerns centred on issues of social justice, responsibility, and care for human and nonhuman life.

•

Understandings of ethical practice, ethical review processes, and the very nature of geography as a discipline vary according to different national and institutional contexts.

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The discipline of geography continues to grapple with its colonial pasts and presents.

Introduction Ethics are of critical concern to many academic disciplines, yet the ethical questions that are posed, and the responses given to those questions, often vary internationally and from discipline to discipline. While there is no singular account of geography, geographers might be said to have developed a set of distinctive ethical concerns, orientations, and questions. Today, much geographical work is centred on issues of social justice, equality, and care for human and non-human life. Yet the relationship between geography and ethics focuses attention on many of the discipline’s exclusionary roots, with the knowledge of the world that geography offers being intimately tied to forms of colonial oppression. In this chapter, we outline some of the key connections between geography and ethics, highlighting how geographers have drawn on ethical theories of justice in their work, and have proposed new ways of thinking about responsibility and care that encompass relations beyond the human.

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At the same time, we highlight some of the ethical challenges geography faces, including its colonial legacies and continued inequalities, contemporary ethical review processes, and the difficulties of doing ethical research in an increasingly marketized academic landscape. We begin, though, by tracing some of the ethical questions posed by geography’s past.

Geography’s Colonial Legacies Throughout its history, geography has played a key part in imperial projects, state-building, and aggressive colonial, commercial, and military expansion – whether during the seafaring age of navigation and long-distance trade of early modern geography; the Enlightenment age of exploration and ‘­discovery’; or the emergence of university geography in different national contexts (Driver, 2001; Godlewska and Smith, 1994; Minca, 2009; Tang, 2009). During the era of European Enlightenment, which was marked by exploration and endeavours to represent the world and systematically describe, classify, and order it, ‘the world was […] understood as an object of geography’ (Withers, 2009: 471). Largely sponsored by nations as a means of reasserting or securing their power and advantage, the discipline of geography was described as ‘the queen of all imperial sciences’ (Richards, 1993: 13, in Heffernan, 2008:  11). Indeed as ­Heffernan (2008: 10) suggests, with the map, ‘geographers and cartographers provided the European imperial project with arguably its most potent device’. Geographical societies, such as the Dutch Geographical Society (est. 1873) and the Royal Geographical Society in London (est. 1830) were central to projects of exploration and travel and were often supported by governments to develop applied knowledge of colonies (Ernste and Smith, 2009). The Royal Geographical Society, has been described as having exploited, a vicarious national passion for muscular “heroism” in exotic places that was enthusiastically promoted by the British press’ (Heffernan, 2008: 8). As Heffernan (2008) argues, newly emerging school and university geography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was no less an imperial science than what had gone before. Alongside the discipline of history, academic geography was seen as a ‘tool’ to transmit national ideologies, and build patriotism (Albet and Zusman, 2009; Minca, 2009). Many forms of academic geography sought to explain and justify imperial projects and presence with theories premised on new forms of scientific racism and environmental det­ erminism, which ‘presupposed the need for a permanent imperial presence of intellectually and racially superior rulers’ and set out new interventionist programmes aimed at the environmental and moral ‘improvement’ of colonized peoples (Heffernan, 2008: 14). A collection on research ethics in human geography demands a reflection on the discipline’s history, for it draws attention to geography’s role in establishing long-standing patterns of power that have centred ‘non-Indigenous, white and otherwise privileged groups in the global architecture of knowledge

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production’ (Esson et al., 2017: 385; Jazel, 2019). Importantly, as many of the chapters in this book will attest, this is not a past that has been ‘resolved’ but is one that is still active and persistent in the ‘inequalities of the present’ (Noxolo, 2017; Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume), it is evident in extractive forms of knowledge production, Euro-American hegemonies, and the persistent whiteness of the discipline (Hawthorne, 2019; Hawthorne and Heitz, 2018) all of which are the focus for the struggle to decolonize geography. In drawing out some pertinent points, it is not our intention to provide a complete account of geography’s history and it is not possible, nor desirable, to provide a coherent or singular account of the discipline’s emergence. As Godlewska (1999: 305) has argued, it is often only periods ‘that are considered heroic or foundational, periods in which individuals can be identified as disciplinary touchstones’ that attract attention or become worthy of study. ­Furthermore, there are significant variations in how geography has developed as a discipline, which reflect the different (national) contexts and academic institutions in which geography is embedded (Harvey, 1984). This includes notable international differences concerning the relationship between human and physical geography, namely whether the two are considered to be integrated or treated as two separate disciplines (Harrison et al. 2004; Harrison, 2009; Massey, 1999). In contexts where geography is taught as an integrated discipline that comprises both physical and human geography, but where the natural sciences and scientific method form the backbone of the curriculum (Ernste and Smith, 2009), students of the discipline will have a very different sense of what constitutes human geography and human geographical approaches, to those that have engaged with human geography as a social science that straddles the humanities. These differences have significant implications for how ethics might be understood both practically and theoretically. For instance, a student arriving in the UK to study human geography might be surprised by extended discussions of positionality or subjectivity (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume) if they have previously been trained in the scientific method. These distinctions of outlook and expectation can shape our research practice, from the methods that we choose to explore a set of questions, to the ways in which geography is written and what we choose to emphasize in that writing (see Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume). Nevertheless, through the rest of this chapter, we seek to highlight a number of key trends in geography’s engagement with ethics as an orientation point for many of the discussions that emerge in subsequent chapters.

A Turn to the Margins The contemporary concern with ethics in human geography can be traced, in part, to the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1990s, when geographical research drew on strands of postmodern, poststructural, and feminist thought to consider issues of morality and their geographical consequences (Smith, 2000). In geographical scholarship, growing concern with issues of identity, and social and

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environmental justice, raised important questions about how geographers engage with the world (Smith, 1997). Critically, such debates had two central orientation points. First is an epistemological concern with how geographers might research and represent the world in a more ethical manner. It is here that feminist, postcolonial, and poststructural critiques of the universalizing claims of geographical knowledge come to the fore (Chakrabarty, 2000), and positionality, reflexivity, and the partiality of knowledge were placed at the centre of geographical debates to challenge the unspoken assumptions underlying seemingly ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ forms of knowledge production (England, 1994; Katz, 1994; Kobayashi, 1994; Rose, 1997). Popke (2003: 299) describes such work as reflecting a ‘distrust of metanarratives’ and ‘a healthy scepticism toward the universality of truth and know­ledge claims’. Drawing on a wealth of poststructuralist theory, Popke (2003) argues that geographers found valuable resources in a critical turn away from foundational normative theories of ethics and towards an ‘ethics of encounter’ that viewed the challenge to universal conceptions of ethics and justice as the opening up of new possibilities for responsibility towards others (Whatmore, 1997). Advancing such a poststructural ethics in geography meant destabilizing the notion of an ethics that could be applied universally, to focus instead on sets of responsibilities that are situated and located within power structures of race, class, gender, and position (Kobayashi and Peake, 1994). As Slater (1997: 68) argues, this account of responsibility was ‘linked to a notion of radical interdependence, in which the ethics of intersubjectivity are in the foreground’. Bringing to the fore this more messy, relational, and interdependent series of ethical concerns not only destabilized universal knowledge claims and assertions of value, but also turned critical attention to the ethics of working with – and further representing – socially, economically, and politically marginalized groups. Thus in emphasizing a concern with difference in discussions of ethics, poststructuralism emphasized the need to make judgements based not on universal moral laws or certainties, but on critical reflections of responsibility and position. The second orientation behind a renewed concern with ethics was a political imperative to intervene in situations and contexts seen to be unjust, so as to effect change in contexts shaped by inequality, discrimination, and disadvantage. This more normative dimension of geographical ethics informed various strands of Marxist, anti-racist, environmental, and radical geographies (see, for example, Castree et al., 2010) although this work has not been immune to the reflexive forms of critical thought associated with poststructural accounts of ethics. Indeed, much activist and radical research has drawn precisely on the need to reflect on positions of power and privilege and to destabilize the assumptions that underpin them. A number of radical geographical projects have been explicitly orientated around questions of social and spatial justice that have ethical, as well as political, implications (see Harvey, 2010; Soja, 2012; Olson and Sayer, 2009). In this sense, geographers have been at the forefront of a range of struggles for equality, and have sought to contest exclusionary normative geographies that seek to contain, vilify, and exclude difference

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(McKittrick, 2006). From challenging heteronormative social orders (Bailey and Shabazz, 2014; Bell and Valentine, 1995) and resisting neo-fascist populisms (McCarthy, 2019), to mobilizing environmental concern around the Anthropocene and its implications (Gibson et al., 2015; Yusoff, 2018), many aspects of contemporary geography are driven by a concern for questioning assumed social and political hierarchies and furthering calls for equality and justice as ethical and political values. In this sense, while geography may have experienced a ‘cultural turn’ in the 1990s, it might be argued that the discipline’s ‘moral turn’ might still be underway (see Olson, 2018; Schmidt, 2019). The question of a ‘moral turn’ within geography has been associated most fully with the work of David M. Smith and his efforts to propose a specifically geographical approach to moral questions (Smith, 1997, 2000). Smith’s work was critical in placing the theories of moral philosophers into conversation with geographical debates over development, environmentalism, and aid. In particular, Smith posed the fundamentally geographical question of ‘How far should we care?’ for others, and argued that this question should ground a moral approach to geography that considered issues of responsibility, obligation, and justice as spatially complex and contingent. It is in this geographical debate over the spatial scope of care, that another strand of ethical discussion arises: the geographies of responsibility (Massey, 2004). In the following section, we briefly reflect on this debate before considering how ethics in geography became institutionalized through review boards and committees.

Distant Others and Geographies of Responsibility In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a series of works within human geography sought to examine the many ways in which moral and ethical concerns intersect with, and are reworked by, geographical considerations of space, place, development, and the environment (see Corbridge, 1993, 1998; Popke, 2007; Proctor, 1998; Proctor and Smith, 1999; Smith, 1999, 2000, 2001). Within this work a central early concern was to consider the role that distance might play in the negotiation of ethical demands and obligations. Smith (1998: 17) argues that a desire to favour those in close proximity was ‘an understandable convention … until the modern era’. This is because distance has been argued to lead to moral indifference; distance, in this reading, ‘does not just reduce sympathy. It also reduces the feeling of responsibility’ (Glover, 1999: 100, cited in Smith 2001: 264). Such an ethics goes against cosmopolitan ideals of impartial, universal moral values and concerns: that certain values and rights should be morally applicable to all and that a sense of concern should be extended in a similar fashion. For Smith (1998: 20) the question becomes how best to extend ‘the sympathy we naturally feel towards those closest to us’. Part of this demand arises through an increasing recognition of the responsibilities which are placed upon us by ‘distant strangers’ in a context of globalization and increasing forms of global interconnection. As Corbridge (1993: 462) argues

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‘because we are in part responsible for the lives of others elsewhere we must bear a responsibility for the needs of distant strangers in times of distress’. Thus ‘there is no logical reason to suppose that moral boundaries should coincide with the boundaries of our everyday community: not least because these latter boundaries are themselves not closed, but rather are defined in part by an increasing set of exchanges with distant strangers’ (1993: 463). Here partialist sentiments of indifference over distance are placed in question as a growing ‘[k]nowledge of the operation of these processes, of how “we” in the affluent parts of the world impact on the lives and environments of distant others, can  lead to an extension of a sense of responsibility’ towards those others (Smith, 1998: 21). This question of caring for distant others has been taken up in a range of cases, from considering the consequences of natural disasters and their social and political construction (Clark, 2007; see also Oven et al., Chapter 28 in this volume), through to examining practices of ethical consumption (Barnett et al., 2010; Hughes, 2001; Malpass et al., 2007). It is this latter body of work, which considers the more direct connections that tie individuals and groups together in a globalized world, that has prompted recent reflection on geography as a site of ethical responsibility. Discussions of responsibility within geography draw on a relational account of space in seeking to address how care for others may be extended beyond these tensions between impartiality and partiality. In particular, work on responsibility highlights how any identity, place, or location is constituted through a set of social and spatial relations with other identities, people, and places. This relational account of space argues that our identities and the places we inhabit are created by their relations and can never be fully disentangled from them. For example, Massey’s (2007) account of London as a ‘world city’ highlights how the development of the city in social, cultural, and economic terms is reliant on its position within a series of networks of influence, trade, investment, and migration, such that London is constantly made and remade through its connections to other places (Datta, 2009). At the same time, Massey (2007) argues that this politics of connection works both ways, such that London is, in turn, constantly effecting those other places, networks, and people. For example, changing demands in the London labour market for lowwage workers impact on economies and labour markets in other parts of the world (Wills et al., 2010). The critical moral and political point that Massey draws here is that a set of responsibilities for how relations operate arises from the ways in which identities and places are created via relations. In this sense, relationality, as Allen (2008: 12, emphasis in the original) argues, orientates around ‘the idea that we should assume some responsibility for elsewhere’, and as such offers one means to approach debates on partiality and ethics. The connections of place allow distant worlds and distant issues to be drawn closer to our everyday lives, such that ‘[a]ccepting political responsibility, on this view, means, first and foremost, understanding how individuals, groups and institutions are tied into the global market system and then acting upon those

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connections’ (Allen, 2008: 45). Importantly, these are not merely responsibilities and relations that are spatial in nature, but also may be historical in terms of reflecting on how the present wealth and influence of cities like ­London are built on past injustices and violent extractions. In this context, responsibility might be tied to the wealth of postcolonial work within geography that highlights not only the responsibilities of location and implication that are noted above, but also those of particular subject positions: positions from which thought and practice occur, and through which contemporary inequalities are perpetuated (Jazeel, 2007; Jazeel and McFarlane, 2007; Noxolo, 2006; Raghuram et al., 2009). The language of relational responsibility takes considerations of partiality and impartiality, ethics, distance, and place that have been noted within geography, and begins to illustrate not only how demands arise through the simple fact of being ‘here’, but also how responding to such demands is a question of negotiation. In a world of seemingly ever-present connections and networks, a relational account of space argues that responsibilities arise not only through direct actions and implications, but also through simply being part of wider systems of injustice and inequality (Allen, 2008; Young, 2003). For example, Young’s (2003) work on sweatshops draws attention to campaigns such as No Sweat that seek to raise awareness of where clothes come from and under what conditions they are produced. But it also goes beyond this, to make the wider point of social and spatial implication – that regardless of our own individual consumption practices, there are ways in which we are all bound into exploitative forms of exchange, production, and consumption. Being part of a capitalist global system, and benefitting from that system, is enough to implicate us with a responsibility for the inequities of that system (Young, 2003). However, such discussions of responsibility have not been without their critiques. For example, Sin’s (2017) postcolonial critique of volunteer tourism highlights how responsibility can become a commodity that both devalues ethical reflection, and positions particular practices as unquestionably ‘responsible’. At the same time, the drive to expose and explore a set of responsibilities of connection has been argued to abstract from the ways in which ‘caring action is motivated not in monological reflection on one’s own obligations, but by encounters with others’ (Barnett and Land, 2007: 1069). Barnett and Land thus argue that there is a risk that simply having more knowledge of one’s responsibilities and relations may not be an effective spur to ethical action. Rather, ‘it might be intensely demotivating to be constantly required to recognize and act upon the responsibilities that may theoretically follow from one’s more or less intentional entanglement in complex spatio-temporal patterns of production, consumption, communication, distribution, exchange, and disposal’ (Barnett et al. 2010: 252). In response, relational approaches have increasingly focused on highlighting the political question of prioritization within responsibility, and of how negotiating varying demands to act responsibly is a central facet of the way in which contemporary forms of social j­ustice are enacted in necessarily imperfect, and often demanding, ways (Darling, 2009, 2013). At the same

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time, debates over responsibility have increasingly turned to the everyday and sought to embed ethical reflection within practices of care, community, and the performance of social relations (Bastia, 2015; ­Milligan and Wiles, 2010; Raghuram, 2016). It is to this more situated, intuitive, and prosaic terrain of geographical ethics that we turn shortly, but in order to do so we must first consider how ethical discussions have been influenced by institutional demands and processes of audit and review.

Ethical Conduct and Ethical Review Contemporary forms of ethical review in research are often traced back to a biomedical model of research practice that developed in response to a number of scandals in medical research. The most infamous of these was the ‘Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male’. This was a clinical study carried out between 1932 and 1972 by the US Public Health Service. The study set out to examine the development and progression of untreated syphilis among African-American men. The men involved in the study were never told that they had syphilis, or of the intentions of the study itself. Instead, they were given free meals and told they would be receiving free healthcare from the government as they had ‘bad blood’ and would need regular checks. None of the men were treated with penicillin, even after discovering that the antibiotic could successful treat syphilis in the late 1940s. The study was eventually ­terminated following a leak to the press in 1972. By this time, over 70 of the men involved in the trial had died from the disease, 40 had passed it to their wives, and 19 children had been born with congenital syphilis. The deeply unethical nature of this study prompted the development of clear ethical principles for future research, and the requirement for all US universities to operate institutional review boards to ensure the ethical conduct of research involving human participants. The basic principles for research that emerged from these debates were: •

Respect: Respecting the right of all individuals to autonomous self-determination (in other words, freedom to choose what happens to them, on an informed basis);

•

Beneficence: endeavouring to do good;

•

Non-maleficence: doing no harm;

•

Justice: essentially, fairness in distribution of the costs and benefits of research. (Couper, 2015: 201).

A concern with human subjects that emerged through the biomedical sciences has now become central to all social science research, with rules and procedures often emerging in response to abuses such as the Tuskegee

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scandal. The outcome for researchers has thus been a process of ethical review at all levels of research, overseen by institutional ethical review boards. Ethics review boards are constituted differently at different institutions, but their core function is to review the ethics of proposed research and judge whether such research should take place or not. Such boards may refuse to allow some research to proceed, or may request changes in the research to ensure it meets standards of ‘good ethical conduct’ and does not potentially harm those involved in the research. In most universities there are varying levels of ethical review. For instance, in the UK, undergraduate research might require a review within a department, while most postgraduate and staff research would probably require ethical review by a university board. These distinctions are also shaped by how ‘high risk’ the research is seen to be. If research is working with particularly vulnerable individuals for instance, such as homeless populations or survivors of trauma (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume), then it is likely to require a more detailed ethical review process before being supported by a university. As is evident across this collection, ethical review processes are not without their limitations. Critics of this model of ethical review argue that it operates as a mechanism of governmentality through which researchers are moulded into performing, often uncritically and without detailed ethical consideration, a presumed model of ‘ethical research’ in order to pass a review process (Halse and Honey, 2005). Rather than encouraging reflection, it has been argued that ethical reviews reproduce institutional discourses and assumptions over how ethics should be performed, which can often undermine or limit other forms of ethical practice. As Halse and Honey (2007: 342) suggest, such processes can encourage a homogenizing approach to research participants, which risks denying their agency and complexity as individuals, and runs counter to ethical principles of respect for others. Reflecting these governmental dimensions of ethical review as a discursive formation (Halse and Honey, 2007: 339), today all professional research bodies, and some funders such as the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), have statements about their ethical principles and guidelines, often building on the four principles outlined above. These inform the types of ethical standards and requirements that universities place upon their students and staff to undertake ethically sensitive research. While subject to criticism, ethical review processes can still be an important means to prevent abuses of the relative power of the researcher. Carrying out ethical review is thus a key part in the development and design of any research project, as all projects differ and so accounting for the ethical challenges of your research requires personal reflection on where those challenges may lie and how you might address them. Alongside critiques of the governmental dimensions of ethical review, such processes have also been subject to criticism by geographers on a number of bases. First, it has been argued that the principles put forward for biomedical research are not fitting for research in the social sciences (Dyer and Demeritt, 2008). As Couper (2015: 202) notes, this is because the ‘principle of avoidance

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of harm, combined with the deontological concern for all individuals, may also be at odds with human geographers’ concerns to expose injustices in society’. Second, as will become evident across many of the chapters of this collection, geographers have argued that such a model of ethical audit is unable to address the challenges of unanticipated ethical questions in ‘the field’ (Thrift, 2003a). It is these forms of situated ethical judgements and questions, which ethical review processes may inform, but never fully account for.

Situated Ethics and Situated Judgements Recent developments in social and cultural geography in particular have brought geographers to increasingly focus on this more situated model of ethics in their work. In part, this derives from a recognition that ethical review processes on the one hand, and strict moral guidelines or principles on the other, cannot fully prepare researchers for the challenges of research itself. As a result, Thrift (2003a) argues that geographical scholarship needs to go beyond moral guidelines to focus on how ethics are practised in everyday life and through sensibilities of relating to others. Drawing on a more classical account of virtue ethics, in which ethics is centred on seeking to live a good life, this more situated ethics is based on values of care, generosity, and training oneself to make ethical judgements in the moment. Ethics in this situated form becomes a type of ‘practical know-how’ (Varela, 1999) that is concerned with developing ways to live with, and respond to, difference; ways that are not pre-given but instead developed through practice. Rather than adhering to a set of moral rules, situated judgements are based on experimenting with how to respond to particular situations, and learning from those judgements in the future. While this may appear to be a far cry from the normative ethics of radical geography, it does offer a more relational and personal account of ethics as something that is experienced as a set of daily negotiations and decisions, always being made and reflected upon. This form of situated ethics might be seen to have two key antecedents in contemporary geography: first, work on non-representational theory, and second, a resurgence of work on an ethics of care. In the first instance, work on non-representational theory in geography, has foregrounded the performative dimensions of social and spatial relations and drawn attention to lived and embodied experience as a key site of c­ ritical study and examination (Anderson and Harrison, 2010; Dewsbury et  al., 2002). In this sense, a non-representational ethics has been argued to orientate around an immersion in ‘the immediacy of the now’ (Thrift 2003b: 2020), and the ethical potentials and challenges that embodied experiences and situated judgements raise (Darling, 2010). Non-representational work thus prioritizes a move away from a priori rules or moral judgements, and towards an ethos attentive to embodied experiences and encounters in practice (Popke 2009: 82; Boyd, 2016; Greenhough and Roe, 2010; McCormack, 2003). In this account,

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ethics is not ‘a matter of adjudicating action or seeking to enforce proper ­conduct’, but is rather about an ethos of ‘being open to new possibilities, a kind of witnessing through which we are exposed to the potential for beingotherwise’ (Popke 2009: 82–3; Dewsbury, 2003). A non-representational focus might thus be framed as seeking to build ‘an ethics of generosity’ (Thrift 2004: 93) towards others, based on the capacity to enter into encounters with others in a spirit of openness to difference. This ethos, or ‘generous sensibility’ (Popke, 2009: 84), might be argued to shift what is considered possible in any research encounter, and has developed into a wider range of work exploring the nature of encounter itself as a site of political and ethical transformation (Wilson, 2017b). The second driver behind a concern with a more situated, and sensibilityorientated mode of ethical concern, has been a growing interest in feminist ethics of care and how these inform geographical practice (Lawson, 2009; McEwan and Goodman, 2010). An ethics of care is centred on foregrounding relationships and connections to others, and, as such, is ‘an ethics based more on an orientation towards particular ways of being, rather than prescribed rules for action’ (Couper, 2015: 196). Akin to the situated forms of ethical practice noted above, an ethics of care is less interested in moral impartiality or universality, and more with specific relations and how these might reflect a set of values, often associated with concern for others, generosity, and even love. In this sense, as Popke (2006: 506) argues, ‘caring […] is not so much an activity as an attribute or orientation, a way of relating to others characterized by values of compassion’. In drawing on feminist critiques of universal moral theories, an ethics of care emphasizes values of empathy, compassion, and responsiveness, such that relations between individuals become a primary site of ethical consideration, and the building blocks on which wider relations and practices of care and responsibility might be founded (Sevenhuijsen, 1998; Tronto, 1993). In geography, this has developed around studies examining varied ‘spaces of care’ (Conradson, 2003; Milligan and Wiles, 2010) as sites for ethical reflection and consideration, including drop-in centres (Parr, 1998; Darling, 2011), hospices (Brown, 2003), and therapeutic landscapes (Conradson, 2005). In moving away from abstract moral reflection, and towards care as a lived practice that binds people together, an ethics of care foregrounds how ethics are practised in everyday life and through relations of family, friendship, work, and leisure (Gillespie and Lawson, 2017; Ho et al., 2015). Politically, an ethic of care is important as it seeks to valorize relations of empathy and compassion in everyday life that have often been sidelined in more masculinist accounts of moral action, and it further recognizes care as a form of labour (Tronto, 1993). Care, in this reading, is a key part of the work of social reproduction, but it is also an ethical value to be performed and sustained. As a result, practices of responsiveness to others become sites of ethical action and reflection, offering potentially rich terrain for geographical exploration and study. Crucially, care and its relational practice should not be uncritically universalized. Rather, as recent geographical work has highlighted, care is always a situated and emplaced

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practice, drawing on geographically specific conceptualizations of what care means, how it is practised, and who it involves (Raghuram, 2016). Care in this sense is negotiated, with often colonial power relations and hierarchies shaping expectations of who cares, and how. As such, postcolonial critiques have begun to open up the question of how different traditions and forms of care shape social and political worlds (Raghuram, 2016; Raghuram et al. 2009).

Caring Beyond the Human One further area of study has been the development of an account of care and ethics that extends beyond the human. A set of interdisciplinary debates on non-human agency have had a profound impact on social science research. Whether exploring how the ethics and politics of care become significant to human–soil relations (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017), the rehabilitation of ­endangered animals (Parreñas, 2018), or sustaining seas (Probyn et al. 2020), scholars have e­ xamined how care can ‘accentuate a sense of interdependency and involvement’ in more than human worlds (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017: 17). Within geography, one starting point for caring beyond the human was the turn to ‘animal geographies’ and the ‘posthuman’. In 1995, a concern with ‘bringing the animals back in’ responded to what Wolch and Emel (1995) described as a ‘deafening silence’ about non-human animals in social science research. Rather than treat animals as ‘signifiers’ of human meaning (Wolch and Emel, 1995), the call to bring animals back into academic research argued for the significance of animal agency, and the ‘differential constitutions and implications’ of human–animal relations (Philo and Wilbert, 2000: 4). In challenging the taken-for-granted status of animals, this work prompted consideration of what the theoretical consequences might be of admitting animals ‘into the company of the social’ as ‘radically different kinds of subject’ (Whatmore, 2002: 1, 11). The emergence of ‘animal geographies’ as a sub-discipline in its own right has been shaped by a wider ‘posthuman turn’. While there are many definitions, the turn might be said to refer to a broad suite of concerns ­ that ­variously seek to challenge the primacy that is afforded to the human ­(Braidotti, 2013). Broadly speaking, the emergence of posthumanism across the social sciences and humanities corresponded with a concern for unsettling the binaries that were inherited from the Enlightenment, for example nature/­ culture, human/inhuman. This prompted engagements with new discursive and ­bodily configurations (Halberstam and Livingston, 1995), commitments to ­hybridity ­(Whatmore, 2002), and arguments for taking ‘pleasure in the confusion of boundaries’ as well as responsibility for their construction (Haraway, 1991: 150). In seeking to displace the species hierarchies that Cartesian dualisms ­created, the rise of animal geographies and the influence of posthumanism or ‘more-than-human-geographies’ has had profound implications for how

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geographers engage with the ethical questions and practice that underpin research (Castree and Nash, 2006; see Gillespie, Chapter 18 in this ­volume). As  Buller (2014:  310) describes it, the sub-field of animal geographies is ‘a  porous shifting, and eclectic heterogeneity of ideas, practices, methodol­ ogies and associations […] one in which animals matter individually and collectively, materially and semiotically, metaphorically and politically, rationally and affectively; one in which “the social” of our social science is not a purely human domain … and not always structured by human orderings/otherings’. As with any work, it is imperative to situate these debates and acknowledge that the social that is often called into question is not a universal phenomenon, but a distinctly Western construction. Without this acknowledgement, universalizing claims about ‘the social’ subordinate other ways of knowing and being in the world and thus reproduce colonial ways of knowing (Sundberg, 2014; Todd, 2016). Additionally, while the concern with foregrounding non-human difference poses a challenge to human exceptionalism in ­Western thought (Srinivasan and Kasturirangan, 2016), geographers have noted a continued tendency to equate the non-human with animals, or to lump all non-humans together (Lulka, 2009). For instance, scholars across the social sciences and humanities have sought to reconsider the moral standing of plants and what they describe as ‘an entrenched intellectual heritage’ that sees plants occupy a lowly status of concern (Head et al., 2015: 399). Researchers have argued that, like other non-humans, plants too should both be engaged as subjects and prompt a rethink in how agency is conceptualized (Hall, 2009, 2011). For Head et al. (2014: 404) plant ‘responses are considered passive rather than active because human lifetimes provide the referential framework’, yet plants enact distinctive agencies. As Hall (2011) argues, at a time of environmental crisis, rethinking referential frameworks that exclude plants could not be a more urgent project. Such work not only challenges understandings of agency and ethics, but also forces a radical rethinking of categories of analysis, while raising a set of perplexing methodological questions about how it might be possible to gain access to agency that is independent of human lives (Clark, 2011). Indeed, part of the ethics of displacing the human from the centre of analysis is about recognizing that non-humans might act in ways that are beyond the reach of society (Lulka, 2009). This means, for instance, not starting from the assumption that work on hybridity and relationality need always involve humans. By way of an example, Head et al. (2014: 411) offer the case of the rubber vine – a plant that is considered an invasive species and thus subject to management, but also a killer of other plants and animals – to demonstrate that ‘the ethics of death and killing are never far from human–plant relations’. For Head et al. (2014: 411) and many others working with non-humans, taking the agency of plants and other non-humans seriously requires a rejection of ‘moral extensionism’, whereby understandings of human sentience and consciousness remain a yardstick for how we approach questions concerning the non-human. Whether working with plants, animals, or microbes, this involves an important

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conversation about whether we can ever go beyond a human lens and what this might mean for our research with others (Hodgetts and Lorimer, 2015).

Working and Learning in the Academy Up to this point, we have reflected on the transformations and disciplinary debates that have shaped geographical ethics and how geographers conduct research. To finish, we want to turn our attention to the conditions under which academic research is produced. Knowing how universities are structured is fundamental to understanding what enables and constrains academic labour, student learning, and what forms of geographical scholarship are possible (Castree, 2000; Jazeel, 2019). Simply put, shifts in higher education can have a significant impact on the research practices, capabilities, and motivations that are outlined in this volume. In a reflection on changes to the geographical Left and an argument for the renewal of geographical activism (see Ince and White, Chapter 14 in this volume; Pande, Chapter 13 in this volume), Castree suggested that it was not enough for geographers to re-engage with the world beyond the academy. Acti­ vism, he argued, should be ‘focused as much within higher education as outside it’ in order to contest and influence the political and cultural economies that impact our academic work (2000: 957). Geographers and others within the academy have done much to examine how universities have been transformed by neoliberalization and the development of a global marketplace in higher education (Brown, 2015; Mountz et al., 2015; Sheppard, 2006). While this is not a process that has happened evenly in geographical terms, and much of the writing focuses on Anglo-American institutions and Northern Europe, geo­ graphers have drawn out some shared tendencies that are valuable to reflect on. The withdrawal of state funds from higher education, increases in tuition fees, and dwindling resources, with expectations of doing more with less time and money, have corresponded with worsening work conditions, mult­ iple deadlines, cultures of overwork, and a rise in administrative burdens. The time and effort required to gain a degree, sustain a position, or secure the next one place limits on the time for ‘good scholarship […] time to think, write, read, research, analyse, edit, organise’ (Mountz et  al., 2015). Audit cultures and ranking systems that measure and assess teaching and research ‘produce academia as a space of economic efficiency and intensifying competition’ (Berg et al., 2016) between individuals, departments, and institutions. Such cultures mobilize narrow definitions of ‘success’ and research practice, define what forms of research and research subject are valorized, and drive the continuous quest for accreditation through securing research grants and prizes, publishing in the ‘right places’, or improving citation scores (Castree, 2000). Resisting such systems and cultures is especially difficult for those seeking tenure or occupational security at a time when permanent jobs are decreasing and fractional and short-term contracts are increasing.

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In a special issue of The Canadian Geographer (see Mullings et al., 2016), geographers have documented how the neoliberalization of the academy is implicated in the rise of mental ill-health and the production of anxiety among academics, university staff, and students alike (Conradson, 2016). These impacts are unevenly felt – shaped by iniquitous power dynamics, ­racism, white privilege, and the maintenance of normative ideas about what academic success looks like (often framed in ableist, masculine, and outwardly s­ elf-confident terms), with early career researchers, women, and black and minority ethnic staff and students disproportionally effected (Parizeau et al., 2016). The issues documented here raise important questions about how to do ethical research in institutions that are shaped by toxic cultures, unethical practices, and uneven structures of power that impact and constrain academic life in uneven ways. How, as Todd (2020) asks, might anxiety and anxiousness be incorporated into reflexive research practices as experiences that permeate academic life, research encounters, and the spaces of the academy (see Probyn, Chapter 8 in this volume; Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume)? What impacts do audit cultures have on participatory approaches? How do the time-pressures of academia limit the scope for scholarly activism? And how does the pursuit of a degree, accreditation, or research funding see some social justice issues emerge as more or less important? At the same time, it is important to consider how those same questions of social justice are unevenly recognized, expressed, and addressed within the academy, as questions of anxiety and toxicity cannot be detached from the long-standing structures of ­inequality that maintain them and that valorize some forms and performances of knowledge over others. For instance, as Esson et al. (2017: 385) argue, it is no good talking about decolonizing geographical knowledge without meaningfully addressing structures, institutions, and praxis, and how ‘forms of violence and “microaggressions’” experienced by Indigenous and racialized groups within the academy and in everyday life are both normalized and officially sanctioned by institutionalized arrangements’ (see also Kobayashi, 2006; Mullings and Mukherjee, 2018). A recognition of geography’s role in the establishment of colonialism must coincide with a recognition of how racist and colonial structures are maintained in contemporary geography and the neoliberal university (Esson and Last, 2019; Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume; Mbembe, 2016).

Conclusion In this chapter, we have outlined some of the many ways in which geographers have engaged with moral philosophy and ethical practice. In particular, we have highlighted how geographers have mobilized discussions of responsibility, care, and relational interconnectedness to foreground ethical relationships to others, be they human or non-human. Crucially, geography’s relationship with

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ethics has developed through a series of critical and ongoing dialogues about the legacies of geography’s colonial past; the inequalities of race and gender that continue to mark geography as an academic discipline; and the uneven labour of seeking to recognize and address such injustices in the production and recognition of knowledge. We have thus foregrounded how geography has increasingly offered insights into the entanglements of responsibility that shape our world, echoing Popke’s (2006: 510) claim that geographers ‘need to continue to develop ways of thinking through our responsibilities toward unseen others, and to cultivate a renewed sense of social interconnectedness’. At the same time, we have argued that such a sense of responsibility and connection must be grounded in a critical concern with social justice and equality in the very conditions of knowledge production.

Recommended Reading Kitchin, R. and Thrift, N. (eds) (2009) Disciplinary matters in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Oxford: Elsevier. (For a listing see p. ixiv, Vol. 1.) This collection of encyclopaedia entries gives an overview of the development of geography as an academic discipline in a wide range of international contexts, from Dutch geographies to Japanese geographies. In each case, entries focus on the distinctive nature of geographical debates in that country, highlighting the contextual nature of geographical knowledge and practice. It also includes information on subdisciplines within geography, as well as topics such as ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘research funding bodies’. Massey, D. (2004) ‘Geographies of responsibility’, Geografiska Annaler 86B (1): 5–18. This paper explores how geographers might develop an account of ethical responsibility that is attentive to global connections. The paper argues that taking a relational approach to space produces an ethical imperative to trace how actions undertaken in one place come to influence people and processes at local and global scales. Radcliffe, S.A. (ed.) (2017) ‘Themed intervention: Decolonising geographical knowledges’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42 (3): 329–448. This themed selection of papers explores recent discussions of decolonizing knowledge within geography, offering ways to unsettle assumptions of what constitutes geographical knowledge and how it is produced and by whom. As a means to challenge contemporary academic power relations, these interventions trace and disturb the colonial legacies of geographical knowledge production.

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Part 1

CORE ETHICAL ISSUES

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3 Positionality Romola Sanyal

Key Points •

Positionality describes how one’s identity, personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands the world.

•

It is important to consider positionality throughout the research process as part of a reflection on how knowledge is produced, by whom, and for what ends.

•

Reflexivity is the process through which researchers reflect on their positionality.

Introduction Reflecting on one’s position in the process of research is not an easy task. All too often, researchers are asked to consider their positionality, and to flag up how this may have influenced their work, leading in many undergraduate dissertations to a rather underwhelming and perfunctory few lines declaring one’s identity. The line ‘As a white, middle-class, male student …’ inserted at the beginning of an ethics section will no doubt be familiar to you if you have read through research reports or past dissertations. But why does such a declaration exist? Why does position matter? And, most importantly, how might positionality be better addressed than through such perfunctory terms? In this chapter, I briefly outline why positionality matters in geographical research, how it is entwined with practices of reflexivity, and how you might situate positionality at the heart of the research process.

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What is Positionality? Positionality is an acknowledgement that each of us are ‘positioned’ within social, cultural, and economic dynamics of identity, in ways that effect how we engage with, interpret, and produce knowledge about the world. Positionality is therefore an epistemological concern that demands that we think carefully about how we know what we know, the claims to knowledge that we make, and on what basis those knowledge claims are made. For example the position noted above, of the white, middle-class, male student, will shape not just how research participants respond to the researcher (influencing whether they agree to the research or not, on what terms, and what forms of information they may be willing to give), but also what questions the researcher asks, how answers are interpreted, and even which research topics are chosen or considered important in the first place. Position may thus refer to an individual’s unique mix of race, nationality, age, gender, sexuality, caste, and social and economic status. Positionality demands a critical consideration of how these identifiers may influence all stages of the research process, from how we read academic work and engage with and interpret this material, to what we see as legitimate knowledge, and how these influences then feed into the kinds of scholars we become. Positionality then influences the kinds of data collected for a piece of research, the information that becomes coded as ‘knowledge’, and the writing and representation of research communities (see also Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume). For geographers, a concern with positionality emerged in response to a range of feminist and postcolonial critiques of geographical knowledge and its production (see Jazeel, 2007; Katz, 1994; McDowell, 1992; Raghuram et al., 2009; Rose, 1997). In particular, feminist concerns to recognize and take account of position and write this into research practice criticized the false neutrality and universality of some claims to knowledge (see M ­ cDowell, 1992; Rose, 1997). These discussions highlighted that while all research is written ‘from somewhere’ and ‘by someone’, these positions were rarely acknowledged and, as such, some positions and locations appeared as universal defaults. No­tably, the ability to make knowledge claims (generally from the ­EuroAmerican core), which were assumed to apply the world over, rather than to specific parts of the world, was critical to the colonial project of knowledge production, and denied both the specificities of location, and the power relations of claiming to ‘know’ different parts of the world. Further, as postcolonial scholars have pointed out, Euro-American academia often has the power to be able to ‘represent’ subjects and geographies without reflecting on how these subjects and places can come to be representable (Said, 1978). It was on the basis of such claims to knowledge and authority to represent, which necessarily dismissed other ways of knowing as ‘local’, ‘partial’, or flawed, that colonial power was reproduced and maintained in both material and discursive terms (Said, 1978). Such forms of knowledge production continue to operate within academic research, and there are increasing calls, not only to engage in postcolonizing academic work,

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but for decolonizing geography itself. As Chandra Mohanty (2003: 528) notes, to meaningfully engage in decolonizing research, we have to think about whose agency is being colonized and whose agency is being privileged in pedagogies of scholarship. Haraway (1988: 587) argues that positioning is a ‘key practice [in] grounding knowledge’ as it highlights and recognizes the power that enables certain kinds of claims-making. In practice, this approach involves two critical steps. First, a reflection on positon, and second, the recognition and discussion of that position as part of the research process. Research may always be partial and situated, but as Chandra Mohanty (2003: 501) notes, the particular can have universal significance without the universal erasing the particularity of a context or having an unbridgeable gap between the two terms.

Reflexivity The first step in this process of accounting for position is reflexivity. As Mullings (1999: 348) argues, reflexivity involves researchers ‘making clear through selfconscious and critical introspection, their positionality vis-à-vis the research’. To be reflexive about the research process is thus to examine how one embodies particular identities that may shift and change over time and space. It requires one to examine one’s assumptions and position and to ask how these may be shaping the questions one asks, the research one undertakes, and the decisions one makes about what to write, how to represent others, and what becomes privileged as worthy of discussion. Research as a process involves a multitude of different points of decision-making, from the choice of topic and methods, to the selection of material for analysis and dissemination, all of which are necessarily affected by our position. Being reflexive means considering, and making clear, the extent to which our identities and position have shaped these decisions. Critically, the point is not to lessen the impact of our position on our research. This would only serve to reproduce the false neutrality of apparently ‘objective’ research. Rather, the point is to understand that research is always partial, subjective, and shaped through who we are, how we have been conditioned to think, and how the research process may change us as well. As Rose (1997) highlights, there are also limits to reflexivity. A fully transparent reflexivity of self-knowledge is impossible for a number of reasons. First, the research process is often a messy practice, involving the negotiation of different interests, expectations, and entanglements (Faria and Mollett 2016; see also Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume). As such, researchers ‘are entangled in the research process in all sorts of ways, and the demand to situate knowledge is a demand to recognize that messiness. The imperative of transparent reflexivity assumes that messiness can be fully understood’ (Rose 1997: 314); but the reality is that any coherent account of one’s position will necessarily omit some of these messy relations. At the same time, a transparent reflexivity is not possible because positions shift and change in and through the research process. As Gibson-Graham (1994) argues, relations between researchers and

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researched change as projects develop. Researchers are positioned differently once respondents know more about their research and carry different expectations of them as a result. Positions are not fixed and stable entities that can be audited once and for all, but are unstable and changing relations of knowledge between people and are actively being remade in the process of research itself. In this sense, knowledge is produced through the negotiation of shifting positions and relationships. In this sense, a transparent and complete account of reflexivity is bound to fail, as Rose (1997) argues, because it can never fully account for changes in position effected through the process of research and its outcomes. Similarly, as Mullings (1999) found in her research with the managers and workers of information processing companies in Jamaica, the positions we occupy are unstable precisely because different respondents and groups often view us differently. She found that in practice not only were ‘some of my personal attributes, notably gender and race, beyond my ability to direct, but also, the meanings that these attributes conveyed changed with each person that I interviewed’ (Mullings, 1999: 348). As a result, a singular account of positionality, or of being an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’ in a research context, is unrealistic as it ‘ignores the dynamism of positionalities in time and through space. No individual can consistently remain an insider and few ever remain complete outsiders’ (Mullings 1999: 340). As such, ‘reflexivity is a never-ending process’ (Kohl and McCutcheon, 2015: 759). If reflexivity is a ‘never-ending process’ how might it become part of our research? To address this point we need, as Rose (1997) argues, to dismiss the idea of ever being able to fully account for, and fully know, all of the many ways in which we are positioned in our research and how those positions will shape both our own decisions and the decisions of others. Instead, we might recognize that reflexivity is about relationships, and reflecting on how we are positioned, and position ourselves, in relation to others and to structures of power that shape how we view the world. Doing so, and making this present in your research, does not involve a declaration of your identity or a ‘positionality’ statement in a methodology chapter. Rather, it means taking seriously a sensitivity to position throughout your writing. Like any form of thinking and writing, an awareness of position, and of being self-reflexive, is a skill; one that can be refined with practice and developed with the help of others. For example, Kohl and McCutcheon (2015) advocate a model of negotiating positionality through what they term ‘everyday talk’ – the process of discussing our positions, views, and perspectives with those around us. They argue that doing so offers scope for a more critical discussion than simply declaring one’s identity as if reciting a checklist of characteristics, and also provides a means to complicate positionalities and ‘recognise the multiple power structures that impact’ research (2015: 753). Thus, ‘by talking to someone removed from the situation, their perspective can lend insight into the relationship between the power structures within which we are operating and our role as researchers, because they do not have to simultaneously look inside and outside’ (2015:  758). In this way, discussing positionality with your peers, friends, or colleagues, can

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be a valuable way of developing the means to critically reflect on how you are producing knowledge, what assumptions you are making, and how research might be done differently from a different position. To illustrate some of these aspects of positionality, and the negotiations and challenges raised by our positions, I want to draw from my own experience of research with urban refugees. Doing so will bring to the fore some of the ways in which positions are imposed and negotiated in the process of research.

CASE STUDY: NAVIGATING POSITIONS When I embarked on my doctoral research exploring the varied spatial practices, identities, and political mobilizations of refugees in Beirut and Calcutta, I made a conscious decision that my research was not going to be defined by my ethnic background. In other words, I was not going to be a South Asianist simply because I was of South Asian origin. However, I quickly found that a set of quite unsettling assumptions as to the type of research I should undertake were pervasive in many academic and non-academic settings. While my fieldwork in India went unquestioned, my work in the Middle East drew surprise, even among my interviewees. It seemed that while it was perfectly normal to have white researchers doing fieldwork in non-white settings, it was more unusual to see a nonwhite person doing work in a setting that was not her ‘home country’. While such assumptions were frustrating, they did bring with them opportunities, as Mullings (1999) notes of her positioning as both an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’. In my work, respondents often interacted with me in surprising ways to me because they saw me as ‘Indian’ (not as ‘­American’) and therefore as someone who would better understand their predicament. Later in my career, when doing fieldwork in Lebanon it was pointed out to me that my ‘outsider’ status was beneficial, because people could not box me into a political/confessionalist category and would not tailor their answers accordingly. In this context, my apparent difference was seen as a marker of independence and neutrality, and being an ‘outsider’ allowed different ­narratives to develop – opening new possibilities and closing down others. Crucially, navigating how one is read in these research contexts (as an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’), and what implications these roles have for research, are thus about reflecting on one’s position and its instabilities. Yet in both cases, a series of underlying assumptions of position, and the research that comes with that, still remain. For instance, despite having published a considerable number of scholarly pieces on the Middle East, I continue to be viewed largely as an expert on South Asia by various colleagues. Alongside this negotiation of position, I have long reflected on my positionality within my research settings as well. As I read posts on decolonizing academia, talking about the whiteness of research and teaching, (Continued)

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(Continued) I return to asking: should I not be asking the same questions of myself? In the UK or the US I may be seen as a woman from an ethnic minority background doing research and writing. However, my identity is not just that. In my research contexts, I embody other identities as well. Although I am not religious and do not come from a Hindu background, in India, by virtue of my last name I am often assumed to come from a Hindu background and to be upper caste. I also come from a large metropolitan city and from a middle-class neighbourhood, and I am part of an elite Indian diaspora as my family lives in the US. This situates me in very specific financial, class, and political planes. As a result, I have been asked questions by my interviewees about my caste background and about where I live, which in turn impacts who speaks to me, what they say, and how they say it. In a way, it works in reverse to the situation in Lebanon, because here I am embedded within the local context and its politics of privilege in particular ways, which has a distinct effect on the research process and outcomes. Within the Indian context certainly, much discussion has been taking place about caste politics within academia and the privileged positions upper castes enjoy in the industry and the discrimination that minorities from lower-caste, ethnic, religious, and tribal backgrounds face (Mander, 2017; Sitlhou, 2017). It becomes incumbent then for me to reflect upon how my identity and background enable certain privileges to be extended to me and to be withdrawn from others from other backgrounds, and also how my identity affects the ways in which people, including informants and gatekeepers, interact with me. What knowledge do I produce as a result of these interactions? In signalling all this, I suggest that we should always seek to consider how our class, our gender, our race, and our positions as a metropolitan elite (in my case) function to determine how we access knowledge, how we synthesize that knowledge, and who legitimizes that knowledge we have produced based on who we are and where we are. Again, we might consider that being a woman of Indian origin, I may find that my South Asian scholarship is viewed as being more ‘natural’ than my work on the Middle East. Yet such a question would probably not be raised of my legitimacy if I were a white researcher. In this sense, I am a body out of place in the work that I do. Importantly, this is not to discourage people from entering into any field of research or to dissuade them from doing fieldwork elsewhere. Rather, as Said (1978), Spivak (2008), and others have noted, it is to always be on guard and think about how our bodies and our subjectivities determine what we find, how we find it, and how we present this work. The danger of overlooking such reflexive practice lies in researchers viewing issues of development or inequality as taking place elsewhere (where poverty is visible, mappable, and knowable), of creating false binaries of here versus there – thus delinking issues of injustice that are of global significance. The result being that many researchers head off to work in parts of the world where they do not know the history, do not speak the language, do

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not understand cultural nuances, and do not appreciate their own positionality in conducting such research. Positionality and reflexivity in this context is not just about learning the local language, but about being able to remake ourselves, and to inhabit the realities of those others whom we wish to study (Spivak, 2008). As pressures on students and academics mounts, such deep engagement becomes increasingly difficult and we are left with knowledge that becomes increasingly problematic, detached, and dislocated. At its worst, such work can become a form of Orientalism that elides the careful and critical work of positionality and self-reflexivity. By contrast, reflecting on positionality throughout one’s research, from the choice of topic and its assumptions, to the selection of theories and themes to write about, illustrates a concern with responsibility in the production of knowledge, a concern that returns us to a postcolonial approach to knowledge and its politics (Jazeel, 2019).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined how positionality and reflexivity have been understood by human geographers, and how these concepts have shaped research practices and claims to knowledge. Drawing on work in feminist and postcolonial geographies, I have argued that positionality is central to understanding and acknowledging the epistemological environments that shape us. It is also critical to undertaking ethical and democratic research in recognizing, and accounting for, how the knowledges we produce through research are positioned in hierarchies of power, status, and position. Reflecting on my own position in relation to my fields of study, most notably through the assumptions that are made of my research on the basis of my gender, race, caste, and nationality, I have highlighted how thinking and wri­ting reflexively is never a singular moment or event. Rather, I have raised questions of how positionality infuses the research process more widely, and how it forces us to consider our responsibilities in the production of knowledge. Considering reflection as more than the task of identifying one’s position, but of actively discussing this position with others so as to recognize the power structures one is part of, offers one means to begin to embed self-reflexivity into research.

Recommended Reading Mullings, B. (1999) ‘Insider or outsider, both or neither: Some dilemmas of interviewing in a cross-cultural setting’, Geoforum, 30: 337–50. This paper examines how positions are navigated in the research process, with power relations between researcher and researched brought to the fore. In exploring the uncertainties that emerge through the research process, Mullings foregrounds the shifting roles of the researcher as both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ simultaneously.

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Rose, G. (1997) ‘Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics’, Progress in Human Geography, 21 (3) 305–20. This paper offers a critical discussion of feminist approaches to positionality and reflexivity in geographical research, illustrating the limits of reflexivity and how geographers have sought to negotiate those limits in novel ways. Taylor, Y. (2013) ‘Queer encounters of sexuality and class: Navigating emotional landscapes of academia’, Emotion, Space and Society, 8: 51–8. This paper examines the emotional landscapes of class and sexuality in contemporary academia and offers a series of ethnographic reflections on the challenges of entering, and achieving within, Higher Education.

4 Consent Chris Philo and Eric Laurier

Key Points •

Consent is more than a signature on a form: it is processual and not a one-off.

•

The seeking and giving of consent varies by time, place, and cohort.

•

Some groups can be marginalized by the concept of consent.

Introduction: Starting Consent is usually regarded as a foundational component of research ethics, in that it entails potential human research subjects – people – indicating, or not, their willingness to participate in a research project. The start of a project often hinges on the researcher, whether professor or undergraduate, securing such consent: without it, put bluntly, nothing can happen. Consent is clearly important, and most would agree that research should not be conducted on people without their consent; there are lamentable examples of such consentfree research occurring – such as historical ‘medical’ experiments on captive populations. It must be acknowledged that studies can have dramatic, maybe adverse, consequences for research subjects, notably medical-clinical research trials, but even in human-geographical enquiries there may be consequences, perhaps deleterious ones, when an individual relates painful parts of a lifehistory, answers questions about intimate matters, or is observed in the course of doing something (going on a march, chairing a meeting, painting a mural). Before commencing a project, a researcher should discern what is expected of their research subjects and identify possible risks to these participants, so that

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they can be clear about such expectations and risks when seeking the latter’s consent to being involved. There are human geography projects where consent may not be an issue: ones involving pre-existing data that is publicly available (such as in censuses) or historical ones where the research subjects are departed (although even here it may be necessary to seek consent from relatives and descendants if, say, the ambition is to use an individual’s personal papers – see Alderman and Inwood, Chapter 20 in this volume. In most cases, however, consent should be sought, whether informally, with people somehow signalling their agreement to participate, or formally, with people being asked to sign consent forms after being provided with information sheets about the project in question. At this stage, certain basics need to be agreed: about the extent of a participant’s anonymity and about the extent to which they might be allowed to view, alter, or redact data relating to them (Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). The upshot in the formal case is to create an auditable paper trail of consent-seeking and -giving, what might be cast as a ‘mini-contract’ between researcher and researched. Such formalities are increasingly demanded in the context of formal ethics review/approval procedures (operated by universities, health services, and other authorities) that must be negotiated in order for a project to start. Arguably, though, such procedures serve to abstract consent into a ‘technical’ matter (one divorced from the messy realities of what actually occurs on the rough ground of research), or to create an insurmountable barrier to some projects ever beginning.

Consent as Process ‘Consent’ is a complicated and over-burdened criterion for starting and stopping the involvement of persons in research projects. The complexity of consent is revealed in (often traumatic) legal cases over whether someone did, or did not, ‘consent’ to the actions – commonly sexual advances – of another. Here consent lies in the nexus of divergent and convergent desires, intimacy, verbal and non-verbal proposals, acceptances and resistances, ambiguity and assumptions, and pleasing and displeasing others: at some point one party wanting things to stop and the other to continue. Trying to decide whether one party has wronged the other is then bound into whether consent might or might not be adjudged to have been given. While sexual encounters may seem a troubling way to begin a discussion of ‘consent’ with respect to the ethics of undertaking research, there is warrant in immediately acknowledging the difficulties of deciding what consent entails and judging whether it has been given or refused. It raises the question of whether signing a consent form ahead of any encounter necessarily solves the problems that may surface as encounters unfold and situations change. It also discloses a deeper problem that swirls around the starting and stopping of research projects in relation to the ongoingness of consent and its negotiation.

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Given that research projects are ongoing encounters between researcher and researched, it is inappropriate to assume that consent given at the start of a research project – let us say, when a project participant reads/signs a consent form – is then straightforwardly given throughout a project. Departing from involvement in a research project at any time is usually permitted, and expressly stated in the consent form, and yet the signing of the form can easily be taken as the moment of becoming and remaining a consenting participant. A principal message of our comments is that consent is processual, not a one-off decision, and that the possibility of the research participant and/ or researcher stopping the process, not only at the beginning but also much further into the research encounter, should be factored into project work. The implication is that researchers should, on a regular basis, monitor and (when appropriate) seek to confirm that a participant is happy to continue consenting to their involvement. Yet the problem arises of how this ongoing checking can be done in ways that do not then seem to question much that is implicit in the relationship between researcher and researched. Constant questioning of what the researcher and researched assume to be known-in-common, indeed taken on trust, may be destructive of research relationships and the very trust needed to sustain them. Even so, researcher and researched should still be aware of when events or courses of action arise that require returning to the question of consent. To explore this issue further, we will work through episodes from our projects to consider how consent and its possible withdrawal show up on the rough ground of research, and hence to provide some guidance – if provisional and partial – with respect to the issues just raised.

Who Can Give Consent? A first problem is who is entitled to give consent. Legally, there are categories of individuals who are not thought straightforwardly able to give their consent because they are not considered to possess the necessary intellectual/reflexive capacity and are unable to be informed adequately. In response to this exclusion, various geographers working with children and people with learning disabilities have disputed ‘adultist/ageist’ or ‘ableist’ assumptions about consent (see Horton et al., Chapter 19 in this volume). They point to specific methods that can be creatively deployed to seek consent with/from such cohorts (Holt et al., 2019; Murray, 2018). Nonetheless, for such categories of people, what entails ‘consent’ remains contentious and may involve seeking consent from proxies (usually parents/guardians), which is never entirely satisfactory (see Gillespie, Chapter 18 in this volume, for tricky questions concerning consent and animals). There are other categories of human subjects who are – due to their circumstances – regarded as ‘vulnerable’ (socially, culturally, maybe politically or religiously) and for whom there could be issues around consent (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume). Sometimes the assumptions here are problematic,

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creating knee-jerk judgements about people and their cognitive capacity. Such an example arose in relation to Nancy Hansen, one of Chris Philo’s PhD ­students, who had a mobility impairment and was looking to interview others with physical impairments. She received feedback on an ethics application where doubt was cast on the capacity of her participants to understand information sheets and to give their consent: suffice to say, Hansen fiercely critiqued this glib equation of physical disability with mental unsoundness (Hansen and Philo, 2007). In Chris’s recent research relating to a project requiring NHS clearance, questions arose about the extent to which people with mental health problems are sufficiently compos mentis to give consent. There are members of ethics committees who believe that social scientists should not do (non-essential) qualitative research on/with people with mental health problems. Before starting the project, Chris had to create a detailed annex to a funding application, quoting from the likes of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, to justify why research on/with such people is crucial and arguing against simple judgements that effectively deny people with mental health problems the opportunity to be the subjects of – and actively to engage in – social scientific research. The issues here revolve around more than just consent, of course, but in a practical sense much rebounds upon the technical-procedural question of whether consent can be given in a manner acceptable to formal ethical review procedures. To underline, though, researchers do need to make a very careful appraisal of vulnerabilities in their target cohort for a research project that might be germane to the latter’s giving of consent to participate. For instance, is there the possibility that individuals might be fearful about not giving their consent, perhaps because they fear being perceived as uncooperative in a medical or legal context? In situations where people are persuaded to participate in something that they do not want to do, the research can arguably become coercive. There are many reasons why somebody might feel more or less compelled to consent to participate in a piece of research. For example, while the practice of giving gift vouchers to participants has become a common way of compensating participants for their time in some areas of research, it is worth considering how, or if, payments might become coercive, especially in contexts where research participants are not financially secure (Head, 2009). More specifically, it might interfere with whether participants feel able to withdraw their consent later in the process: would they worry about having to return vouchers if given at the outset of a project? If a research project is using a gatekeeper, it is also important to consider the nature of the researcher’s relationship with potential participants. When Eric Laurier was studying one café chain, the upper management placed him in branches where he was then left to discern, through conversations and the responses of co-workers to his presence, whether individuals felt obliged by management to participate. Relatedly, if the gatekeeper is a key service provider, perhaps a coordinator at a homeless shelter or an aid worker, is there a risk that service users might worry about losing their access to services if

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they do not agree to participate in a research project supported by the service provider? In many cases an appraisal of what factors influence consent requires a reflection on expectations. Participants routinely have unrealistic expectations about what the research might achieve, and it could be these expectations that shape their decision to consent. For instance, asylum seekers might wrongly expect that their involvement in research will support their ongoing applications for asylum (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume). Trying to flush out expectations early and late, and being clear with respondents about what the project is likely to achieve, what it can and cannot do, helps to build the ongoing conversation around consent.

CASE STUDY: SPACES OF CONSENT IN DOUBT There are forms of research where, in their eventfulness and unpredictability, researchers can run into rather different complexities of consent and how potential participants are informed about a project. In ethnomethodological studies based in participative work with an observational perspective, it can feature individuals who may not even know that ‘research’ is going on (Laurier, 2001; Wilson, 2011). To be sure, many observational projects will work directly with a select cohort of participants who have been recruited for the research, informed, and hence rendered able to give (or not) their informed consent. In the ‘mobile office’ research that Eric and Chris carried out in the 1990s (Laurier and Philo, 2003), we recruited a handful of car-based office workers. Eric shadowed each worker during their working day, sitting in their cars with them, talking to them on the move, and latterly videoing them while they were driving, parked up, or loading their work materials. These individuals obviously knew Eric was there and consented to his presence. There were, of course, specific stipulations made when seeking consent at the outset, to do with what data we would use (excluding, for instance, anything that might reveal commercially sensitive information about work practices). A large part of the ongoing, processual consent was managed by Eric when he was present with these subjects, which was solely for the carbased parts of their working day. When they entered their central offices or met with clients on their premises, Eric remained in the car or made his way elsewhere to write up fieldnotes. The field research stopped and started when car doors opened and closed, dictated by both formally set, and more informally negotiated, parameters of consent. That said, the consent process continued, in a transformed state, once the car journeys were complete. Short edited videos were made about each participant’s working day as a gift back to them, and Eric set up a sociable event to show the videos, to allow for group discussion of working life on the road and to mark his exit from doing the fieldwork. It was on watching (Continued)

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(Continued) the videos that one of the participants then became uncomfortable. Eric met with her privately after the event, where she revealed that she had not previously understood to what she was consenting, and it was only at this late stage that she was grasping what it meant to participate in a research project. Not only did she want the video destroyed; she also wished to withdraw all her other data from the project. While Eric tried to reassure her, he also accepted her right to withdraw her consent, even at such a late stage. Despite being ‘informed’ at point of recruitment and seemingly aware throughout, a research subject’s understanding of what it is to be a subject of research is almost always less than that of the researcher and will alter, sometimes dramatically, as their participation through a project continues. Moreover, it is usually towards the latter phases of a project that a subject begins to realize how they appear in a project and to understand what the project itself is about; and so, to reiterate, we stress the need to regard consent as processual, not a one-off. There are then public realm research projects where consent is more assumed, fleeting, and tricky than our car example, precisely because the research design is deliberately ‘naturalistic’ and place-based. Consent is assumed because recordings are being made in places where people are appearing ‘in public’: they are showing their public selves, which are taken to be widely available to others. To enter public spaces is arguably to consent to be a member of the public, which is of course why some members of society do shy away from such spaces (Boyle, 2018). Eric regularly teaches a qualitative methods course where his students attend public places to observe members of the public going about their daily lives in busy places like city streets, shopping centres, and railway stations. As such, anyone can potentially drift into and out of the research site: it cannot be controlled. The model of consent drawn upon by researchers and students when studying such public spaces is hence ‘parasitic’ on the assumed consent of persons as routinely appearing in public and managing their self-presentation here for an array of unacquainted other members of the public. It is hard to imagine how their consent could be ethically sought in advance, and envisaging tactics for seeking their consent ‘after the event’ is almost as difficult. The latter might involve catching individuals afterwards to let them know they have been recorded – noted, filmed, taped – in a research project and asking consent for these ‘recordings’ of them to be retained and used for research purposes, but this solution is awkward and relies on large teams to secure the permissions post hoc. There are research ethicists who believe that such research should not be done in the first place, but there are others who will accept the significance of such research and accept that here the ‘gold standard’ of ‘informed consent’ will have to be replaced solely by the researcher scrupulously anonymizing the recordings. There are places where publics gather and encounter each other that allow the researcher both to construct and to draw upon the spatialization

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Figure 4.1 Café customer disrupts the visual record of consent. In Eric and Chris’s studies of cafés and the public sphere (see Laurier and Philo, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c), we worked in cafés where the staff were informed of what we were doing and had given their consent for us to record what happens on their premises. In these sites, cameras placed on tripods were clearly visible, so much so that they were verging on being distracting and disruptive. A few customers used the space to show nonverbally their non-consent by moving out of shot, while others took pleasure (Continued)

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(Continued) in disrupting the recording process by making funny faces (Laurier and Philo 2006c; see Figure 4.1). Eric was himself on site (in a T-shirt with the university logo). Customers were forewarned with posters in the windows or doorways, and information leaflets about the project were left on tables, the latter indicating that the filming was part of social research, but that anyone uncomfortable about being part of the research (being observed, recorded on film, and potentially thereby furnishing ‘data’ for our research) should speak to Eric or contact us (via phone or email). Some potential customers, upon spotting what was happening, stopped at the door and did not enter the café, thereby exiting the project immediately: in effect they were non-consenting. Only a small number of customers asked for their images and voices to be erased from the recordings, withdrawing or non-consenting in another way. Interestingly, they also tended to provide accounts for why they should be erased: because they were supposed to be at work that day (and were not), because the nature of their meeting was confidential, or because they were meeting someone who they should not have been meeting! While the reasons are interesting in themselves, that these customers felt obliged to offer accounts also points towards the tangle around consent that lies at the heart of this chapter. In providing an account, customers displayed an awareness that their departure from the project might harm it in some way, thus, implicitly perhaps, demonstrating a recognition of the value of the research and our right to be there. They were, then, treating the starting or stopping of the research encounter in this kind of setting as one that stood in need of reasons (Barnett, 2008) Further features of what customers assumed they were consenting to became apparent to us when in one café, while Eric was eating his lunch, he left the tripod in the same position for half an hour. He was approached by the customers at the table in shot to say that they had given him plenty of their time, and could he now stop recording them and move the camera somewhere else? A request that can be construed as a partial or conditional withdrawal of consent, it also raises questions about the participants’ understanding of to what they were consenting. Eric apologized profusely and shifted the camera to another location in the café. These customers were not sensitive to being recorded as part of the café space but rather by the long concentration on just them, which led to the impression that they were being picked out as particular customers. Their complaint also helped Eric to refine his own practice of regularly moving the cameras around the café, to avoid making individual customers feel targeted and to make it visible that café customers were being dealt with as a collective. Customers highlighted how the duration of recording and the absence of other customers being recorded shaped the conditions of their consent: when they felt singled out, they revoked their consent to what, in their eyes, had become a different form of research encounter.

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Conclusion Our aim above has been to sketch out some of the basic considerations central to the place of consent in the wider horizon of research ethics, particularly addressing the seeking and giving of consent, varying by time, place and cohort; the reality of consent as processual, not a one-off decision; the need for ethical research to regard consent as more than simply getting signatures on the initial consent forms; and the complications arising in more observational projects, notably ones in the public realm where effecting a tight control over who is present and formally consenting, or not, is difficult if not impossible. Moreover, from our sketches of how research subjects have stopped their engagement with our research projects, we hope to have given some insight into how consent shows up in the messy realities of both doing research with groups ‘marginalized’ by the concept of consent and doing research in different kinds of worldly spaces. It is not just that we need to allow participants to stop the research at any time: we need to be attentive to the occasions when and where we expect consent to emerge and how such spaces are constructed, and in so doing also push ourselves to accept people stopping their involvement on those occasions where we did not expect them to stop.

Recommended Reading Laurier, E. and Philo, C. (2006c) ‘Natural problems of naturalistic video data’, in H. Knoblauch, B. Schnettler, J. Raab and H.-G. Soeffner (eds), Video Analysis: Methodology and Methods. Qualitative Audiovisual Data Analysis in Sociology. Oxford: Peter Lang. pp. 183–92. This article explains the setup and management of our ‘naturalistic’ field research in cafés, reflecting on the difficulties arising in studies of the public realm which are, of necessity, highly fluid and openended, hence complicating how matters of consent are usually handled. Mondada, L. (2013) ‘Ethics in action: Anonymization as a participant’s concern and a participant’s practice’, Human Studies, 37: 179–209. In this article, Mondada analyses how anonymization as a problem emerges during a research encounter. She then moves away from ethics at the point of permission by an ethics committee to much further in the process where participants are then being sensitive about what can be seen and heard in a recording. Murray, V. (2018) ‘Co-producing knowledge: Reflections on research on the residential geographies of learning disability’, Area, 51 (3): 423–32. Drawing on in-depth co-productive work alongside people with learning disabilities, this reading shows the creative methods that can be

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deployed in order to gain the consent/trust – and the active participative involvement – of people sometimes considered by research ethicists as ‘too vulnerable’ to be enlisted in qualitative social scientific research.

5 Anonymity Helen F. Wilson

Key Points •

Anonymity is the quality or state of being unidentifiable.

•

Anonymity can maintain privacy and potentially protect research participants and subjects from the negative effects of disclosure.

•

What is anonymized and how requires careful consideration and can raise difficult questions about ownership and voice.

Introduction At a conference on multicultural futures I was approached by an audience member after my talk. He had a pen and paper in hand and wanted to know the name of the school that featured in my research on playground encounters in Birmingham, UK (Wilson, 2013a, 2014). When I declined to provide the details he insisted that the information would be strictly confidential. Needless to say, I did not oblige. It later transpired that the man was critical of what he had heard in my presentation, which outlined how one school had worked to embrace multiculture and religious plurality. It was never clear what he had intended to do with the information if I had been forthcoming, but it was a disconcerting reminder of why anonymity – the condition of being unidentifiable – can be important. While it is not possible to always predict or control how our research and findings might be used (see Koopman, Chapter 12 in this volume), anonymity is often one way of protecting participants from the negative effects that may arise as a result of disclosing information.

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What constitutes a negative effect is context dependent and variable – perhaps social embarrassment, the exacerbation of a conflict, dismissal from a post or job, violence, or unwanted attention – but regardless of the effects, anonymity is generally considered to be essential to securing confidentiality (the state of maintaining privacy). For many participants, the promise of anonymity might be a key factor in their decision over whether or not to take part in research, what they choose to disclose, and when. The process of anonymizing data might seem like a straightforward task, but in practice achieving anonymity requires careful consideration and a constant reflection on what needs to be anonymized and how. What happens, for instance, if a research participant is explicit about their desire to remain identifiable but their identification might compromise the privacy of another participant who wishes to remain anonymous? How do you secure the anonymity of somebody who performs an easily identifiable role? What happens to questions of anonymity when working in public space? And how does anonymity become a more-than-human concern? Working across a number of different examples, this chapter attends to some of these questions to underline the ethical dilemmas that anonymity poses, and to explore the different considerations that are required across the course of a research project.

Negotiating Anonymity In the case of my research in Birmingham, with which I began this chapter, the school that I worked with had agreed to participate on the condition that they remained anonymous. This involved providing pseudonyms for all participants, concealing the name of the school, and withholding information on its exact location. However, in order to offer an account of the school, it was important to reveal something of its demographic data so as to place the ana­l­ysis and discussion of multiculture in context. This required working with the school to discuss how much detail could be disclosed without revealing the school’s identity. Given that Birmingham is one of the largest cities in the UK, it was still possible to locate the school within the city, and discuss its pupil intake, without compromising anonymity. The details that were revealed, however, could not be considered in isolation. While the demographic data of the school might not reveal the school’s identity, we had to consider whether this information, in combination with other details (such as the teaching programme, policies, class sizes, associated clubs, and so on) could inadvertently make identification possible. The school was happy with the measures taken but also recognized that anonymity could never be fully guaranteed. Had I been working in a different location, where there were far fewer schools, my descriptions would have required further consideration. For instance, if the school had been a specialist school of some kind where that detail was important to my analysis and description, it might have been more appropriate to locate it within the West Midlands region, rather

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than the city of Birmingham, or even be as vague as to describe it as a school in England. At issue here is balancing the degree of specificity required for ana­ lysis, with the need to protect the identity and privacy of participants. To turn to the question of how anonymity might be retained, it is important to go beyond the provision of pseudonyms in published work. For instance, good data management procedures are important (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume), such as the deletion of media files once transcription has been completed, the secure storage of any personal data and the anonymization of transcripts, while making sure that a record of participants is retained separately. There are other points in the research process where anonymity might be lost, including the use of interview extracts where a participant might refer to information that should be omitted, or the inclusion of photos that easily give away a location or participant. In student dissertations and projects, the appendix, which regularly includes examples of data, coding, analysis, and project details, is all too often neglected in processes of anonymization, leading to a situation where anonymity has been secured in the main text, only to be undermined by the supplementary material. To explore some of these issues further, I turn to three examples that each reveal something of the complexity of anonymity in practice.

CASE STUDY 1: ANONYMOUS POSITIONS For McDowell’s (1998) research on elites in the City of London, she interviewed seventy-five employees of three merchant banks between 1992 and 1993. To gain access she had to agree not to name the banks in which she worked, nor the individuals, and was consequently unable to take any photos. While the research recorded in-depth accounts of the respondents’ career details and attitudes (which were important to understanding the continuity of discrimination on the basis of class and gender in both recruitment practices and daily behaviour), questions of confidentiality meant that many of these details had to be omitted, including the status of the individuals that she interviewed. In some instances, particular anxiety about confidentiality required the creation of ‘composite characters’ from the responses. Despite these efforts, McDowell (1998: 2144) concluded: As many of my ‘subjects’ told me, they felt vulnerable as they opened their lives to my inspection and faced the prospect of reappearing, fixed on the page, and open to the cold gaze not only of the social science community but also their colleagues in the relatively small and close-knit world of banking where my attempts at anonymity may be insufficient to disguise them. (Continued)

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(Continued) There are three things that are worth drawing out here. First, McDowell’s work highlights a paradox. The analysis and findings depended on the very details that the participants wanted to keep anonymous, requiring that she anonymize identifying details, while also trying to retain something of the analytical details (Mondada, 2014). For instance, the job title or status of a participant might fundamentally change how their response to a question is understood and analysed. If that detail has to be omitted, it raises a dilemma for the researcher and how they communicate their findings. This can be a problem for researchers working with elite policy-makers, or those occupying senior or easily identifiable roles, such as members of parliament, or CEO’s (Kuus, Chapter 21 in this volume). Second is the reference to the creation of composite characters, which highlights the practice of taking the details and accounts of several people and bringing them together to create one fictional character that is based on real-life details and accounts. This practice of grouping data together allows a researcher to present their findings and the concerns of their participants, while working to protect their identity, and offers an important tool for social research where anonymity is of particular concern. As with all research practice, there can be drawbacks with this approach, including the risk of losing the specificity of already marginal narratives. Finally, McDowell recognizes that the research will be read and received by a range of different audiences that pose different challenges. For instance, in keeping with the focus of McDowell’s work, imagine a scenario where there is only one woman working in an office that is the subject of research. While the identity of that woman would remain anonymous to readers across the social sciences, she would be easily identified by any of her colleagues who read the final account, thus undermining her privacy. This raises another dilemma: if the woman’s gender is erased, her account disappears in a context where she is already a minority. This second point reflects on an instance where the use of a pseudonym is not enough (see Lahman et al., 2015). In many contexts, participants might be easily identified by reference to their race, age, ability, status, and other characteristics. Ellis’ (2007) ethnographic work in an isolated fishing community in Chesapeake Bay, USA, is a good example of this point. In a detailed reflection on the impacts of her work, she notes the pain that she caused by failing to consider the difficulty of anonymizing ‘the twins’ that featured in her research. Having been preoccupied with how her finished account would be received by her review board she had failed to consider what would happen if her participants read copies of her book and were able to easily identify each other and the characters in her narrative, with ‘the twins’ being especially easy to identify.

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CASE STUDY 2: ANONYMOUS IMAGES  In Johnsen et al.’s (2008) work on street homelessness, which used autophotography to allow homeless individuals to document their lives on the streets, they noted a number of difficult questions that arose in relation to participant anonymity. The first was linked to concerns surrounding the ownership of images, whereby participants wanted to be named and credited for the photos they had taken as part of the research and were disappointed that pseudonyms were used. This highlighted the differences that existed between forms of data, where a desire for identification had arisen only in relation to the photos and not their oral narratives, which had been provided on condition of anonymity. As a number of feminist researchers have argued, ethical procedures always work from the assumption that research is something that is done to research ‘participants’ (Halse and Honey, 2005). This has the effect of denying agency and rendering participants as vulnerable and in need of protection from the outset. Yet research can be empowering: retaining identities can be an important part of recognizing a participant’s contribution and ownership over their words and work (see Lobo et  al., Chapter 15 in this volume; Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). This was an issue that I faced when working with an international anti-violence organization when one branch wanted to be named and recognized for their work and another wished to remain anonymous (Wilson, 2017c). This required a lengthy discussion with each to reflect on the ramifications of their wishes for the other branches, before it was decided that the anonymity of both would be retained. In the case of the research project on homelessness, while ownership was considered important, concerns were raised in relation to the temporality of anonymity. It was noted, for instance, that in years to come individuals might not wish to have their ‘homeless pasts’ in the public domain, even if they had consented at the time (Johnsen et al. 2008: 204). Secondly, questions of anonymity arose in relation to the people who featured in the photos, and whether their faces should be obscured. While participants were asked to gain consent when taking photos of other people, doubt was raised as to whether this was always achieved in practice. Although this might seem like a straightforward issue that is easily addressed through obscuring identifying features, Johnsen et  al. noted that such processes worked to give the images an ‘alien’ or ‘other worldly’ air (2008: 204), which ‘reinforced the gap between readers and subjects’ (2008: 204) in a project designed to do exactly the opposite. Research in public space more broadly has frequently posed dilemmas for questions of consent and anonymity (see Crossa, Chapter 23 in this volume; Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). In the UK, for instance, anyone is allowed to take photographs in public space, and observations of (Continued)

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(Continued) people there are allowed because privacy is not ordinarily guaranteed in public space. However, observations of people in public should not go beyond what might reasonably be expected from strangers, and it is therefore often good practice to anonymize identifying characteristics, even while recognizing the additional dilemmas this might pose, especially where visual methods are concerned (Rose, 2012).

CASE STUDY 3: BEYOND THE HUMAN  A concern with anonymity should not be limited to research with human subjects. For instance, recent work on plant species threatened by the illegal trade of wildlife (Margulies et al. 2019) has drawn attention not only to a relatively neglected global issue, but also to the acute sensitivity of location data. The inclusion of detail on species location can unwittingly function as a guide for their illegal removal, demanding that care is taken to retain the anonymity of sites, even while site-specific detail might be important to the analysis or reporting. Similarly, work in animal geographies has noted the need to retain the anonymity of locations in contexts where non-human animals have been subject to persecution. For example, as part of Van Patter and Hovorka’s exploration of the complex ethical dynamics of human–feral–cat relations in Southern Ontario, they undertook field observations of feral cat colonies, as well as interviews with colony caretakers. These observations were a crucial part of a study concerned with offering insights into ‘the lived experiences of cats and how cats may establish themselves as part of broader landscapes’ to better foreground ‘cat agency, subjectivities, [and] contested claims to place’ (2018: 277). Given the contentious nature of the topic, and the ongoing calls by some groups for the eradication of feral cats, the locales of cat colonies were kept anonymous on ethical grounds, so as to protect both the caretakers and the feral cats. In my own work with urban kittiwakes in Norway and the UK, the contested presence of kittiwakes in the city (which has led to the illegal removal of nests during the breeding season as well as other forms of persecution) raises important questions about the publication of colony locations. While much of the colony is already public and difficult to miss, the value of publishing details of lesser-known sites requires careful consideration given that it might attract unwanted attention and thus potential harm. Like the other cases examined in this chapter, the role of anonymity in animal geographies is complicated by questions of agency. Although anonym­ ity can be an important tool, geographers have also endeavoured to demonstrate how the maintenance of anonymity can work to deny non-human

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animals agency and ethical concern. This is a point central to Gillespie’s (2018) work on dairy farming and the ‘cow with ear tag #1389’, where she follows the life cycles of individual animals and demonstrates how forms of abstraction can work to deny intimate knowledge, empathy, and thus alternative ways of relating to other species that might pose challenges to current systems of commodification and agricultural production. In seeking to challenge the political and ethical devaluation of non-human animals (Collard and Dempsey, 2013), resisting abstraction through practices of naming can become an important tool. This point comes through in Bear’s (2011) ethnographic account of Angelica the octopus, which sought to challenge the tendency within geographic research to focus on collectives such as species, at the expense of better understanding animal lifeworlds and subjectivities. In focusing on a named individual – Angelica – he prompts important reflections on ‘responsible anthropomorphism’ and the political implications of naming: whether that be a pseudonym or otherwise.

Conclusion For many researchers, ensuring anonymity – whether of people, sites, nonhumans, or organizations – is essential to ethical research. Anonymity not only protects research subjects from exposure but also can help to avoid unforeseen harms that may emerge when research is used in ways that researchers have little control over (see Koopman, Chapter 12 in this volume). Nevertheless, ensuring anonymity is rarely straightforward. It involves balancing a series of imperatives and demands, such as the tension between an individual’s right to anonymity and another’s right to identification, or the challenge of anonymizing identifying details, while retaining analytical detail. In this sense, negotiating how anonymity is practised, what needs to be anonymized, and at what stage of the research process are part of a wider practice of ethical research design and reflection. Anonymity should thus be a consideration that comes to mind not only at the point of analysing and reflecting on research materials, but also at the earliest stages of research design.

Recommended Reading Ellis, C. (2007) ‘Telling secrets, revealing lives: Relational ethics in research with intimate others’. Qualitative Inquiry, 13 (1): 3–29. This article offers a reflection on the ethical responsibilities that researchers have to ‘identifiable others’ in ethnographic work and in situations where researchers might be working with people whom they are already familiar with or are intimately related to. Lahman, M.K., Rodriguez, K.L., Moses, L., Griffin, K.M., Mendoza, B.M. and Yacoub, W. (2015) ‘A rose by any other name is still a rose? Problematizing pseudonyms in research’, Qualitative Inquiry, 21 (5): 445–53. This

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methodological paper focuses on the use of pseudonyms in social research. The authors provide a reflexive engagement with the use of pseudonyms in their work and examine questions of confidentiality and ‘power in participant naming’. Wiles, R., Coffey, A. Robinson, J. and Heath, S. (2012) ‘Anonymisation and visual images: Issues of respect, “voice” and protection’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 15 (1): 41–53. The article provides an overview of the ethical challenges that researchers are posed with when using visual methods, particularly in relation to the anonymization of individuals. It covers the different uses of images in research, the situated nature of ethical dilemmas, and the ongoing tensions that exist between the right to be seen on the one hand, and safeguarding procedures on the other.

6 Sensitive Topics Peter Hopkins

Key Points •

A sensitive topic is a topic that might cause distress, embarrassment, or anger, and thus requires care.

•

Research can be sensitive as a result of the topic, the group, the location, or the method of research, and a combination of these factors is likely to heighten the sensitivity of a project.

•

Informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, and dissemination may all require additional consideration when researching sensitive topics.

Introduction: What Makes Research Sensitive? The extent to which research is sensitive is often due to a range of factors including the topic, the position of the group being researched, the location of the study, the methods used, and the nature of the data collected. These different factors can often work in collaboration to increase the overall sensitivity of a project. Generally, a sensitive topic is one that might cause distress, embarrassment, or anger. As a result, it can be difficult to define in advance how ‘sensitive’ a piece of research may be, or how sensitive it may become, as the factors shaping the reception of research are open to change (Lee, 1999). In this sense, as Lee and Renzetti (1990: 512) comment in their classic account of ‘doing sensitive research’: The sensitive nature of a particular topic is emergent. In other words, the sensitive character of a piece of research seemingly inheres less in the topic itself and more in the relationship between that topic and the

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With the emergent nature of sensitivity in mind, Lee and Renzetti nevertheless point to a number of characteristics that might make research sensitive. These include ‘research that intrudes into a deeply personal experience, research that is concerned with deviance and social control, research that impinges on the vested interests of powerful persons, and research that involves things sacred to those being studied’ (Lee and Renzetti, 1990: 512; see also Kavanaugh and Ayres, 1998). It is important to understand what may make a project sensitive, and be aware that this may not become clear until fieldwork is underway. Drawing on the characteristics outlined by Lee and Renzetti (1990), we might consider four areas that shape sensitivity. First, a research project may be sensitive as a result of the specific issues or topics being researched. This includes research projects that focus on matters that tend to be considered as private and personal, such as someone’s mental or physical health, or their sexual relationships (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume). However, it is important to recognize that even if a topic is not considered ‘private’ or personal to some people, it may still be sensitive to others, and thus it is wise to approach all research with a level of caution. At the same time, some research may be sensitive not because the topic is especially personal, but because that topic has the potential to be politically charged or controversial. For example, studies of far right politics or student activism might be considered sensitive on these grounds, as would research examining discriminatory practices or experiences. In such cases, the sensitivity of a piece of research may only become clear after it is completed, especially in contexts where research garners significant media attention. While such attention can be hard to predict and prepare for, it is valuable to consider from the outset what potential sensitivities may be produced if your research draws public attention. Politically sensitive research with the potential for media attention thus requires careful consideration of how you can best protect those involved in the research. This may be through robust practices of anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume), careful planning of what is made public and how this material may be used (see Koopman, Chapter 12 in this volume), or through reflection on how sensitive research is written and communicated (see Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume), potentially in conversation with those directly involved in the research process itself (see Lobo et al., Chapter 15 in this volume). Regardless of the topic, the sensitivity of a project will be heightened if it concerns a marginal or vulnerable group (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume). The vulnerable nature of a group may be down to their age,

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their socio-economic status or position, their dependence on others, or their (in)ability to offer free and informed consent. It is for this reason that children and those in dependent relationships are often classified as vulnerable subjects who require a greater level of ethical consideration than other subject groups. The vulnerability of these individuals means that any research with them may be considered more sensitive due to the increased risk of harm. At the same time, vulnerable groups may be subject to stereotypes and negative media coverage that may work to further stigmatize and demean them. For example, asylum seekers are vulnerable because of their insecure immigration status, but this vulnerability is heightened by their persistent demonization within the press and much political rhetoric (Briant et al., 2013). A third set of sensitivities relate to the location of the research, both physical and conceptual. Where fieldwork takes place matters, not least because geography has a role in amplifying, or not, the sensitivities of a research project. Issues to consider may include whether the research is located in a marginalized community, within a particular institution, or in a controversial policy context. Similarly, the timing of research may also heighten sensitivities; conducting research after specific geopolitical events, at a particular time in the school calendar, or before or after religious events may alter the level of sensitivity of a project. For example, research examining public perceptions of risk and security on public transport is potentially sensitive due to the topic it explores and the fears that it may evoke in respondents, which might be heightened in the immediate aftermath of a terror event, or on or around the anniversary of one. Similarly, undertaking such research in cities that have recent experience of terrorism, such as New York or Berlin, may produce sensitivities that are less prevalent in other locations. A final set of sensitivities may arise as a result of the methods used in research and the nature of the data collected. The use of group-based methods – such as focus groups or participatory methods – means that data collection has a public component compared with more individualized methods such as interviews or diaries (Hopkins, 2007). In the context of sensitive research it is therefore important to consider whether these methods are the most appropriate forms of data collection. Considering whether respondents are likely to be comfortable discussing potentially sensitive topics in more public settings is thus important, as is giving thought to whether public discussions may in themselves raise new areas of sensitivity. For instance, research on the aftermath of the EU referendum in the UK and responses to Brexit may provoke new fault lines of sensitivity when people are discussing their views with others, as opposed to when interviewed on their own. A further methodological consideration is whether the data generated in a project may make participants and locations identifiable. In this way, how data is presented, and how research is represented, often adds complexity to the sensitivities involved, with the need to be mindful of anonymity (Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume; Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume).

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Ethical Implications With these varied sources of sensitivity in mind, the ethical implications of sensitive research are wide-ranging and often depend upon the nature of the sensitivities involved. How these sensitivities can be managed and addressed is therefore also dictated by the nature of the research. Sensitive research requires many of the same ethical considerations noted throughout this book, around consent, anonymity, representation, and security; however, aspects of these are heightened in the context of sensitive research. I want to draw out four areas to illustrate this in more detail. First, the gaining of informed consent is often a key component of ethical research (Heath et al., 2009), and this is especially the case with sensitive research where it may be necessary to spend more time and take more care with the gaining of informed consent (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). This is not just because of the sensitivities of the topics being discussed, but also because, as Kavanaugh and Ayres (1998) note in their work on bereavement, sensitivities may arise in the midst of research, in their case in the middle of interviews. In this case, they advocate the immediate re-negotiation of consent as circumstances change or unexpected events and narratives arise during research. Thus while many discussions of ethics argue that consent should be seen as a process rather than a singular point associated with a form, this processual account is critical in sensitive research. Similarly, additional reassurances on confidentiality and anonymity may be required in undertaking research on sensitive topics so as to reassure and protect participants, and these too should be seen as processual issues rather than one-off instances (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). Second, it is important to consider in advance how to minimize the potential distress caused by discussing sensitive topics for respondents and prepare in advance. Kavanaugh and Ayres (1998) highlight the need to ensure that, as researchers, we have prepared the ground for our research by making clear what respondents can expect from our research, and what issues may be discussed. At the same time, researchers have a responsibility to provide appropriate support to respondents in sensitive research; this might involve a debriefing process after an interview, or the signposting and referral of individuals to relevant support services or groups. Similarly, scheduling breaks in any research activity is critical, both for the research participants and for the researcher, as discussing sensitive topics can be exhausting for all of those involved. Preparing to undertake sensitive research thus involves a level of flexibility that may exceed that of other forms of research. This means being prepared to offer rest during interviews, and to direct questions into and out of sensitive areas so as to offer respondents a chance for recovery. In this way, it can be valuable to allow respondents to take fuller control in directing the research process and how issues are discussed. This might involve enabling respondents to set the pace of an interview and to allow difficult topics to emerge gradually at points of their own choosing.

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For example, in research on the everyday politics of fat, which was conducted with young people who identified as fat, overweight, or obese, any reference to weight or size was volunteered by the young people themselves (Hopkins, 2012: 1232). In a context where narratives around body size can lead to discrimination, exclusion, and stigma, it was considered unethical to ask potentially intrusive questions about young people’s weight or clothes size and far more appropriate to allow young people – who feel different as a result of their size – to have control over the discussion. Third, an awareness of, and sensitivity to, the influence of power relations is critical in all research (see Gallagher 2009; Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume); however, in sensitive research the impact of these relations may be heightened. Even though you may not consider yourself to be ‘powerful’, your participants may see you as being in a position of relative power in the context of the research. In projects of a sensitive nature, it is therefore particularly important to critically reflect on the different ways in which power operates, how you may be viewed by participants (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), and the ways in which the problematic effects of power may be managed or subverted. Importantly, discussing sensitive topics can rework the expectations respondents have of a piece of research, as Dickson-Swift et al. (2007: 338) argue: For many participants taking part in research on sensitive topics, it is the first time that they have told someone their story, and this can raise difficulties not only for them, but also for the researcher who is listening to the story. This sharing of hidden or unexplored aspects of people’s lives can change the expectations of the participants. It is therefore valuable to recognize that taking part in research may affect your respondents in unexpected ways, and may influence the relationship between researcher and researched. The power dynamics of this relationship run through all research, but the sharing of sensitive information and potentially distressing experiences has the potential to amplify those power differentials. Again, this is why finding ways to ensure that participants have a sense of ownership over the research process, and its direction, pace, and focus, is critical to managing the risks of sensitive research. Finally, building on the power relations noted above, it is important to consider the extent to which researching sensitive topics may affect us as researchers too. In this vein, Dickson-Swift et al. (2007) suggest that our own responses be considered in the design and development of research. For instance, they ask how we might react to difficult, uncomfortable, or distressing narratives, and what forms of support are in place for researchers during, and after, these potentially distressing research encounters. As with many ethical questions, this is a concern that runs throughout the research process, with the issue of exhaustion being a key concern in sensitive research (Johnson and Clarke, 2003). More specifically, as Dickson-Swift et al. (2007) note, the transcription of interviews on sensitive topics can be a point of particular difficulty, as it can

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represent an emotional experience of listening back to, and being exposed to, a range of potentially distressing narratives (see also Warr, 2004). Recognizing and planning for the potential impacts of sensitive research on us as researchers are thus a further consideration when designing your project. This might be through establishing a support network of friends and peers who you can turn to, or in the advice and guidance of a supervisor with experience of working in a similar context and with similar issues.

CASE STUDY: DOING RESEARCH WITH UNACCOMPANIED ASYLUM-SEEKING CHILDREN With these issues in mind, I want to briefly discuss an example of sensitive research from my own work to illustrate a number of these issues. This example comes from my work with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, individuals who are under 18 years of age and have fled persecution without their parents or other responsible adults (Hopkins and Hill, 2008). In 2005, the Scottish Refugee Council funded a project about the needs and experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Scotland. Clearly, this was a sensitive research project because of the marginality of the group, given their uncertain immigration status and their position as children. Added to their structural marginality, the focus of the project on the needs and experiences of the children adds an additional layer of sensitivity to this project. This research also took place in particular locations such as in residential children’s units and involved the use of individual interviews – some of which were conducted with an interpreter – adding yet further layers of complexity to the project. Given these sensitivities, it was necessary for us to be particularly careful about how we approached ethical issues during the study and how we made adjustments, given the sensitive nature of the project. We asked all participants to sign a consent form to confirm that they had freely agreed to participate in the study. We had provided them with an information leaflet about the project that explained why we were conducting it, what participants would be asked to do, and what we would do with the findings. In many other studies I have been involved with, this process normally passes quickly, following a couple of questions or points of clarification. However, with this project, many of the children were very suspicious about being asked to sign a consent form and were concerned that it might negatively influence their asylum application. For this reason, we had to take time to explain the nature of the study and why we were asking them to sign a consent form. We also spent time reassuring them about the meaning of consent and that the forms would not be shown to anyone outside of the research team (Hopkins, 2008).

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As with informed consent, anonymizing the names of participants is often seen as part of the process of conducting ethical research. With this project, given the specificities of the participants, experiences and circumstances, we had to be careful about changing not only their names but also what other information we revealed about them when we disseminated our findings. For example, we had to be careful about using participants’ actual ages and their countries of origin, as doing so (even with the use of a pseudonym) may have resulted in them being identifiable by a reader. One option here was to age-band the participants (for example, age 16–20), or to mention only their region of origin, as a means to provide additional information while protecting their anonymity (see also Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume).

Conclusion In this chapter I have outlined some of the challenges of conducting research on potentially sensitive topics. A range of factors determines what makes research sensitive, and these can be subject to change. This makes it imperative to be considerate and flexible in your approach to potentially sensitive topics. Offering details of support services and advice, enabling respondents to set the tone and pace of the research, and building in additional time to discuss concerns around consent, anonymity, and privacy – all present practical means to manage, but never fully alleviate, such sensitivity. Despite these challenges, research on sensitive topics can be enormously important as it often addresses social, cultural, and political issues that can be easily marginalized without the work of committed, and careful, researchers.

Recommended Reading Dickson-Swift, V., James, E.L., Kippen, S. and Liamputtong, P. (2007) ‘Doing sensitive research: What challenges do qualitative researchers face?’, Qualitative Research, 7 (3): 327–53. This paper examines the challenges faced by researchers undertaking sensitive research around health. It focuses on how research may affect the lives and experiences of both the researchers and the researched, with feelings of guilt, vulnerability, and exhaustion coming to the fore. Advice on how to manage sensitive research is offered and examples used to illustrate how these challenges may be addressed in practice. Hopkins, P. (2008) ‘Ethical issues in research with unaccompanied asylumseeking children’, Children’s Geographies, 6 (1): 37–48. This paper considers research with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Scotland, foregrounding how the sensitive nature of the research topic

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and the vulnerabilities of the research participants involved required a context-dependent research design that was attentive to the needs and experiences of the children involved. Kitchin, R. and Wilton, R. (2000) ‘Disability, geography and ethics’, Ethics, Place & Environment, 3 (1): 61–102. This collection of short commentaries offers a series of insights into the ethical issues involved in undertaking sensitive research about disability in geography. The emotions of research, informed consent, positionality, and the politics of sensitive research are all considered.

7 Power and Empowerment Thomas Swerts

Key Points •

Power shapes every part of the research process, from the choice of topic and the formulation of research questions through to data collection and the representation of research findings.

• Researchers should be attentive to the privileged epistemology that underpins their projects, reflexive about their own positionality, and critical about the potential ramifications of their findings. •

Research can facilitate social change and empowerment when it maximizes the research participation of marginalized populations, co-produces knowledge, and challenges dominant discourses.

Introduction ‘Power is everywhere’ as Michel Foucault once provocatively put it (1998 [1978]: 93). It structures the personal relations we are engaged in, the social worlds we inhabit, and even the most intimate understandings we form about ourselves and others. In view of its omnipresence, power also shapes and directs research in manifold ways (see Gallagher, 2008). Relations between advisors and students, academics and their peers, and researchers and research participants can all be typified as relations of power. In each of these relational settings, significant power differentials exist that affect how people behave, and whether what people say, think, do, or write is perceived

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as legitimate or illegitimate, authoritative or untruthful, and impactful or negligible. Likewise, all phases of the research process, from the initial choice of research topic through to the presentation and communication of results, are unavoidably drenched in power. Ethical questions related to power and empowerment should be on a researcher’s mind every step of the way. Before exploring how researchers can navigate the treacherous waters of power, however, a common misconception about power needs to be cleared up. People have a tendency to associate power with ‘those in power’ or with subjects who are commonly regarded as being ‘powerful’ (see Kuus, Chap­ ter 21 in this volume), yet power can take many forms, whether social, cul­ tural, economic, or political. Furthermore, while researchers tend to evoke the term to talk about the behaviour of governing elites, multinationals, or other privileged actors in society, they seldom associate it with the everyday undertakings of underprivileged populations like the urban poor, irregular migrants, or people in precarious situations, which can have the effect of disempowering such groups. The dominant ethical perspective to approach such populations, the ‘do-no-harm principle’, is centred on vulnerability (see Mackenzie et al., 2007; Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume). Yet, it makes as much sense to talk about power when we take into consideration the sub­ stantial hurdles that people in the latter category need to overcome to simply get by, organize themselves, or actively resist dominant forces in society. For a balanced discussion on ethics, researchers should therefore take into con­ sideration how their research can contribute to empowerment. The famous dictum ‘knowledge is power’ already betrays the intimate relationship between academic research and power. An ethical reflection on power and empowerment might thus seem to be straightforward for aspir­ ing researchers. However, it is disheartening to see how little researchers explicitly take power dynamics into consideration while designing, under­ taking, and representing their research. Indeed, all too often researchers tend to forsake their ethical duty to properly situate the power dynamics at play in their research by hiding behind the cloak of ‘objectivity’ and value-neutrality. There is therefore an urgent need to develop an overarching ethics of power (Harley and Langdon, 2018) that can inform and guide ethical decisions throughout the research process. Such an ethics of power requires reflexivity about the privileged positionality of researchers (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), and an openness to exploring how this privileged position can be put to use to combat uneven power rela­ tions. It also presupposes a commitment to emancipation and social justice that requires researchers to go beyond the position of the bystander who observes how things unfold from a distance. Building on the approach of Muhammad et  al. (2015), I argue that three dimensions of power are of particular importance within research, namely epistemology, positionality, and representation.

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Three Dimensions of Power A first dimension of power within research has to do with how researchers are often uniquely placed to legitimize and problematize social phenomena. This power stems from what Ackerly and True (2008: 696) call the privileged epistemology that researchers have, referring to the established rules and beliefs within academia about what is considered to be scientific evidence, convincing argumentation, and proper knowledge. Such established rules lend authority to academic interpretations of the world. The danger that comes with this author­ ity is that it can be (mis-)used to reinforce dominant understandings of how the social world is organized, and research can inadvertently reproduce power inequalities as a result. A second dimension of power pertains to the relationship between self and others. In order to ‘unlearn’ privilege, researchers need to be reflexive about their own positionality and how it affects research practice, relations with par­ ticipants, and research outcomes. A reflexive researcher ‘does not simply report “facts” or “truths” but actively constructs interpretations of his or her experi­ ences in the field and then questions how those interpretations came about’ (Hertz, 1997: viii). Taking into account positionality requires researchers to be attentive to their own multiple identities – how they are positioned in terms of gender, ethnicity, education, class, legal status, nationality, and cultural mem­ bership – and to ask how these various positionings cause them to think, write, and interact with others. Moreover, through reflexivity, researchers might find that their positionality introduces power differentials between themselves and the researched community. Negotiating such power differentials requires researchers to emphasize open communication, enable participation in the research process, and explore the possibilities for the co-creation of knowledge with research participants. This leads to a third dimension of power in research, namely the politics of representation and the responsibility researchers have for the stories they (co-)create (see Pittaway et al., 2010; Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume). For Pittaway et  al. (2010: 248), this responsibility means moving beyond do-no-harm principles to a ‘negotiated reciprocal benefit that challenges researchers to justify their projects with reference to the benefits delivered to the vulnerable groups themselves’. Put differently, researchers need to consider how their representation of people’s stories is likely to affect and reflect back on the communities under scrutiny. This reflection depends on a continuous process of negotiation between how respondents think their stories should be represented and how researchers would like to represent these stories for academic purposes. An ethics of power thus demands that researchers seek ways to ‘give back’ to the precarious populations they study by exploring opportunities to change the conditions of that precariousness (see Swartz, 2011).

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CASE STUDY: DOCUMENTING UNDOCUMENTED ACTIVISM In the remainder of this chapter, I will illustrate how I encountered these ethical dilemmas of power and empowerment in the context of two research projects on undocumented migrant activism. The first project was an ethnographic study that investigated the use of personal narrative and emotion as political tools by DREAMers in Chicago (see Swerts, 2015, 2017). The second study relied on participatory action research (see Lobo et al., Chapter 15 in this volume) to study the strategies of undocumented activists in Brussels to gain public recognition for their active citizenship. The guiding thread throughout both of these projects was the question of how undocumented migrants, who are regarded as vulnerable and ‘powerless’, can organize themselves collectively to gain a political voice. It is easy to pretend that I immediately knew how to frame my research when I first stumbled upon a church occupation by sans-papiers in Brussels in the late 2000s, but this was not the case. The literature that I came across primarily focused on the survival strategies of what some authors called ‘illegal’ migrants and, naïvely, I initially used the term ‘illegal’ in early drafts of my research proposal. It was only after I had been exposed to numerous stories, and was made aware of the public campaign to get rid of the ‘I-word’, that I came to realize that such categories were ethically problematic. Such an example demonstrates how researchers can reinforce or undermine dominant discourses from the outset, in this case through the unthinking reproduction of a category that both criminalizes and dis­ empowers migrants. In this instance, I was in a position that allowed me to categorize a group of people. Ethical reflections on power relations not only affected the framing of my research questions; they also shaped how I selected my field sites. I felt that the literature on survival strategies for migrants failed to grasp undocumented activism as a social phenomenon, and so I turned towards work on political mobilization and the development of political networks instead. This literature foregrounds the role that labour unions, churches, and ethnic minority organizations played as ‘schools’ where migrants could learn the rules of the political game. Convinced that I knew what to do, I began with interviews and observations at well-established immigrant rights organizations in Chicago. A few weeks into my research, though, I realized that although these organizations claimed to represent the cause of undocumented migrants, I hardly ever encountered any undocumented migrants who were actively involved in, or occupied, a leadership position within them. It became increasingly clear that the power relations that structured my field sites were uneven and imbalanced. I did, however, come across a relatively small, emerging collective of undocumented youth who were organizing ‘shout it out’ circles on campuses and in neighbourhood centres where people were encouraged to share the experiences

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and hardships of life in the shadows. I was faced with a dilemma: should I persist with the organizations that I had identified in my proposal and started researching, or pursue the insurgent forms of youth organization? I chose the latter. Being reflexive about my own positionality was a prerequisite for gaining access to the field. At several moments during my ethnographic fieldwork, I was forced by undocumented activists to ‘check my privilege’. This expression refers to the sensitivity that youth activists had developed for the power differentials between citizen ‘allies’ and people without legal status (see Swerts, 2018). As a Caucasian, European male with a student visa and a scholarship from an established academic institution, I was perceived as a privileged outsider from the beginning. I therefore had to prove myself to be worthy of the ‘ally’ label. The youth I worked with had clear expectations (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume) about what being an ally meant. Most importantly, becoming an ally required me to unlearn my privilege and accept a subordinate role within the organization. I learned to limit my interventions to note-keeping, facilitating logistics, negotiating with the police during demonstrations, and driving people around whenever I could. When I was asked by activists to talk in a panel about media representations of undocumented youth, I gladly accepted, since this presented an opportunity for me to denounce illegalizing discourses and to utilize my skills in communication and public discussion to help further the aims of the movement. Similarly, I used my privilege as a strategic tool both to share knowledge with undocumented students about the application process for college and to secure much-needed resources to support their activism. Choosing to do research on a topic like undocumented activism also requires attention to the politics of representation. When researchers claim that they are ‘giving voice’ to precarious populations by simply quoting their stories, they fail to recognize the need for people to have their own voices heard. Wary of these power dynamics, I focused on processes of voice-making by analysing the storytelling strategies that migrant activists had developed as a model to politicize and organize their peers. I shared my findings and theoretical interpretations about these practices with respondents and asked them to reflect back on them based on their experience. In this way, I tried to bring the academic knowledge I was creating into dialogue with the expert knowledge they had accumulated through lived experience. Recognizing the importance of self-representation for undocumented migrants also means that effort should be made to facilitate access to existing forums and, when inexistent, create new forums for activists to spread their knowledge and message. Hence, I co-presented my research together with activists at numerous occasions during classes, workshops, and conferences. Finally, researchers who study immigrant activism have an ethical duty to actively explore opportunities for social change and empowerment. (Continued)

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(Continued)

Figure 7.1 The CollectActif cookbook front cover, designed by a CollectActif member A more recent project illustrates this focus on empowerment through research. For example, during the height of the European ‘refugee crisis’, I worked with colleagues to explore the civic interventions of a small undocumented-led collective – CollectActif – in an urban refugee camp in Brussels (see Depraetere and Oosterlynck, 2017). After the camp had

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been violently dismantled by state authorities, we sat together with the activists to explore their needs. One of their needs was to have their active citizenship recognized by civil society organizations. In response, two action research interventions were co-conceived with CollectActif; first, we applied to open calls for civil society awards, and second, we teamed up with a local artist and graphic designer to produce a booklet that told the story of CollectActif and the strategies they had developed to combat food waste and fight for immigrant rights. The first intervention, which utilized our expertise in grant writing, resulted in them winning two major awards. The second intervention allowed us to map the trajectory of the collective, and also provided the activists with a product they could use for external communication. We used our own research resources to fund the costs of graphic design and printing (see Figure 7.1). We later heard that the activists had successfully used the booklet to gain municipal funding, despite their undocumented status. In this way, we had been able to partake in and support their struggle, while learning about the forms and dynamics of recognition and active citizenship in the process.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that a consideration of the ethics of power rela­ tions should inform all research, regardless of the subject matter or methods involved. As a result, the following questions should guide researchers: What power relations might structure my field of study? How does my research potentially reinforce or challenge dominant discourses and perspectives? How can I negotiate the power differentials between myself as a researcher and the researched community? Can my research become a vehicle for empowerment and social change, and if so how? These questions require a permanent sensi­ tivity and reflexivity on the part of researchers to detect and engage with power differentials, while recognizing that we can never fully know all of the possible relations in which we might be caught up. These questions also constitute an open invitation for researchers to take a stance, intervene in public debates, and tackle the politics that inform their research projects head-on. Despite such an invitation it is important that researchers remain realistic about the impact they can have on power relations in society. When a sanspapiers respondent in Brussels got arrested, for example, I could do little more than write him a letter and translate the press releases from French to Dutch during the campaign to free him. Our efforts failed and he was deported. How­ ever, when an undocumented student approached me after a lecture in Brussels about his dream of attending university, I did use my position as an academic to set up a meeting and to apply pressure on the university administration. The student was eventually accepted. What both examples show is that while researchers themselves might lack the power to radically reconfigure power relations in society, they can nevertheless help to spark change by providing underprivileged populations with tools for (self-)empowerment.

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Recommended Readings Gallagher, M. (2008) ‘“Power is not an evil”: Rethinking power in participatory methods’, Children’s Geographies, 6 (2): 137–50. This paper uses the case of participatory research with primary school children to explore how relations of power and resistance are understood through the research process, and how power relations might be reworked through participatory techniques. Mackenzie, C., McDowell, C. and Pittaway, E. (2007) ‘Beyond “Do No Harm”: The challenge of constructing ethical relationships in refugee research’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 20 (2): 299–319. This paper examines the ethical challenges of working with refugees, with a particular focus on how the agency and autonomy of refugee participants can be assured. Moving beyond ‘doing no harm’, the paper argues, is critically about finding ways to empower refugees through research and to enhance the agency of participants. Swartz, S. (2011) ‘“Going deep” and “giving back”: Strategies for exceeding ethical expectations when researching amongst vulnerable youth’, Qualitative Research, 11: 47–68. This paper offers a range of ethical strategies to enhance the opportunities for empowerment through research. Drawing on work with youth groups in South Africa, the paper considers how relationships with research participants were developed that challenged existing power structures and sought to address vulnerability.

8 Emotions Elspeth Probyn

Key Points ••

As researchers we need to be mindful of the implications and effects of emotions and how we deal with emotional research.

••

Emotions can force a heightened sensibility to the self and the other in moments of research encounter.

••

Emotions can be deployed in pursuit of social justice.

Introduction: Emotions and Geography Emotions are an integral part of scholarly life and practice. At every level of academia, we experience rejection, dejection, and sometimes elation in terms of how our work is received. This occurs for undergraduates right through to professors. When we are read, at times it feels like we are being personally scrutinized. Emotions are, however, particularly rife in the work of research – of all kinds. For example, textual analysis is not without its emotional conflicts: sometimes you can hate a text whereas sometimes an idea will seemingly change your entire outlook on life. In this chapter, however, I shall particularly focus on ethnographic research, as this poses especially challenging relation­ ships between ethics and emotions. In Steve Pile’s simple and useful character­ ization ‘“ethnography”, deploy[s] variations on participation and observation’ (2010: 11). These methods attempt to engage with and provide accounts of ‘proximate and intimate situations and events’ (Pile, 2010: 11). Research, esp­ ecially in geographical and cultural studies, is always an encounter. In terms

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of theories, we are in some ways born into an ongoing conversation, and as we read texts we encounter people’s thinking and threads of other encounters with those ideas. As Helen F. Wilson recounts, ‘encounters are not free from history and thus while the taking-place of encounters might be momentary, they fold in multiple temporalities’ (Wilson, 2017b: 462). This is particularly true of the physical encounters that are at the heart of ethnographic research. As Wilson uncovers: Arising from the late Latin […] meaning against, contrary or opposed to, the first definition of encounter is a face-to-face meeting between adversaries or opposing forces and thus a meeting ‘in conflict; hence a battle, skirmish or duel’ (OED, 2015). As such, ‘encounter’ is not an empty referent for any form of meeting, contact or interaction, but is instead historically coded. (2017b: 452) This definition reminds us that research encounters are not natural or neutral of history, politics, and difference. A long history in feminism warns research­ ers to be always vigilant about the power differentials inherent in all encoun­ ters (McRobbie, 2000 [1991]; see Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). As Robyn Dowling et al. argue: Critical reflection – of the politics of methodologies, the conduct of research and the researcher – has long been central to qualitative methods across human geography, though arguably most pronounced in feminist geography. This remains the case, where an ongoing reflec­ tive impulse is manifest in a number of feminist pieces using auto­ biography and ethnography. (Dowling et al., 2016: 681) Along with many, I would argue that paying attention to emotions in and of the ethnographic encounter foregrounds the necessity of self-reflexivity (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), and hence raises one important ele­ ment in ethical research – intellectual reflection (Laurier and Parr, 2000: 98). In fact some emotions, such as shame, force a heightened sensibil­ ity to the self and the other in moments of encounter, including the other of the self (Probyn, 1993, 2005). As Rebekah Widdowfield notes, while ‘there is general acknowledgement that the researcher affects the research process […] there is less appreciation (or certainly in academic writings) that this is often a two-way relationship – not only does the researcher affect the research process but they are themselves affected by this process’ (2000: 200, emphasis in original). Widdowfield goes on to describe how she had to overcome her emotions in her fieldwork on lone parents living in ‘abandoned and derelict’ inner-city Newcastle, UK. Principally she was ‘angry at the injustice and inequality in society which leads to such dispar­ ity in people’s life chances and opportunities and, consequently, the quality of their lives’ (2000: 204, emphasis in the original).

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Reflecting on how her emotions jostled with the more positive emotions of some of her interviewees, Widdowfield reminds us ‘to consider the value of bringing emotions into accounts of the research process – what is the purpose of such a discussion, what will it achieve and for whom?’ (2000: 206). While there is now a great deal of research on the place of emotions in geography, and indeed there is now a sub-field of ‘emotional geographies’ as well as ‘affect­ ive geographies’ (Davidson et  al. 2005; Thien, 2005), it seems to me that Widdowfield’s question encapsulates the exigency of reflecting on the ethical implications of research. Ethics in this framing is not in the realm of morality that seeks to codify and proscribe behaviour (‘thou shalt not’); rather, atten­ tion to the ethics in and of research asks: What are the implications? Who will benefit and how? As researchers, we therefore need to be mindful of the implications and effects of emotions. Keeping this simple framework in mind – that the ethno­ graphic encounter involves the emotions of the interviewer, the interviewee, and the trans-personal emotions arising from the encounter – I now turn to a snippet from fieldwork I conducted some years ago. This is not to frame this particular snippet as exemplary. Indeed, it is problematic on several level, a discussion to which I will return.

CASE STUDY: RESEARCHING ANOREXIA The brief was to interview people in a hospital anorexia treatment programme located in a paediatric section. The study was made in conjunction with paediatricians who largely guided its brief. They wanted to compare the media consumption patterns of those in the recovery programme with so-called ‘normal’ individuals. All those in the treatment programme turned out to be young white women. I wasn’t happy with the conceptual framing of the study. Very early on in my academic career I argued against the media-effects model of understanding anorexia. This model has only become ever more prevalent with public, government, and often academic discourse blaming the prevalence of thin models and other ‘bad images’ of women as the reason – often the cause, – of why young women especially become anorexic. At the time, I used historical medical archive material from the 1870s that featured anorexia nervosa. William Gull coined the term in 1873 when he presented, and then published, a talk on the condition. Unbeknownst to Gull, across the Channel the French physician Ernest-Charles Lasègue similarly published a paper entitled De l’Anorexie Hystérique, and who likewise had not heard of Gull’s work. My argument, following the historical study, was that anorexia was more about control: for young girls (in particular) who had no control or status, the only thing they could control was eating. My article, ‘The Anorexic Body’ (Continued)

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(Continued) (Probyn, 1987) therefore argued that the mass media could not be the sole cause of anorexia. This brief background may indicate why I was not best pleased with the narrow focus on media consumption. My displeasure was compounded by the fact that the medical establishment, or rather paediatricians, were taking on one rather ill-considered element within what is now a large field of critical feminist analyses of anorexia (see for example, Boughtwood and Halse, 2008; Warin, 2010). Nonetheless, I turned up at the hospital to interview the young women. There were about six, some with nasogastric tubes hanging down. They were painfully thin – a sign perhaps of rebellion against the medical regime given that the first action is to ‘feed up’ patients, something that is anathema to most people with anorexia. They also looked hopelessly bored. Another popular understanding of people with anorexia that stems from Hilde Bruch’s well-known book, The Golden Cage (1984) is that people with anorexia tend to be bright and have overachieving mothers. This, of course, needs to be qualified to account for other factors, and to disrupt its classist depiction as well as the tendency towards blaming mothers. Nonetheless the girls looked bright – and bored to death. I introduced the study, noted its ethics approval, and stated the main thrust of our questions. I also added: ‘Not that it matters but when I was your age I was hospitalized for anorexia.’ The girls talked about how they hated how people thought anorexia was ‘glamorous’, and how hard it was for them at school. They were not terribly interested in talking about the media; in fact they talked about how stupid it was that people thought the media was to blame. When I asked them about cooking shows they perked up. I have an intuition that is borne out by talking to former people with anorexia that cooking for others is very important. ‘Oh yes I am addicted to them’, said one, as the others concurred. Another said she couldn’t watch them with her friends because they thought it was weird – starving girls obsessed with watching people cook may seem strange to many. I wrapped up the interview and got out of the hospital as fast as I could. Later, one of the paediatricians remarked to my colleague that she thought my admission of having had anorexia was ‘unprofessional’. This enraged me – literally I raged for several days. The visceral memories crowded in, and in fact they were present when I was doing the interview. Being stuck in a ward, being scrutinized by the medical establishment, being trapped in what felt like a regime of force-feeding, having people’s stupid ideas forced upon me … . My rage segued into another form of anger. I raged against those who had framed the study in such a way as to perpetuate the simplistic understandings that imprison people with anorexia. I was angry about the lack of progress in treatment. I was furious at the lack of connection with the patients. I raged against the casual dismissal of my desire to connect as ‘unprofessional’. And then I felt a hot shame that I had done something wrong.

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Reviewing the Case ‘Sometimes I feel as if I’m made of glass – like I’m transparent. And every­ one can see right into my insides. It makes me want to scream, “Get out! Get out of me!”’ (cited in Lester, 1997: 484). These are the words of an unnamed young girl in a study conducted by Rebecca Lester. They capture for me some of the ethical quandaries involved in the ethnographic case study I have just described. The image of an individual cast in glass who is on show for all to see and to touch seems like quite an apt way to describe how the medical establishment entrapped individuals in their practices and discourses. Then I enter as a feminist social scientist to further prod and poke. While the pilot research project was of course scrutinized by the hospital ethics committee and passed, I still feel uneasy about the ethics of interviewing the girls. But I doubt that I disturbed them. Who knows, perhaps they felt a moment of interest in an otherwise dull regimented day? Perhaps my tentative reaching out to them by siding myself with them in the acknowledgement that I too had suffered in a hospital ward brought them something small to hold on to. Perhaps they looked at me with incomprehension, thinking: how could that middle-aged, normal (e.g., ‘fat’) woman ever have been me? And what of the plethora of emotions produced? Well for a start, they were all in me – if not totally about me. I did publish an account of my rage, taking as my title ‘Glass Selves’ from the unknown young woman’s descrip­ tion (Probyn, 2011). While of course this ultimately returns to me as the author, perhaps along the way people may read it and connect with some of the feelings. Perhaps students will read it and understand that academic research can be about feelings, that you can express emotions, and that you will of course come across emotional territories when you are conducting research – especially interviews and ethnographic research. In concluding I will return to Widdowfield’s injunction ‘to consider the value of bringing emotions into accounts of the research process – what is the purpose of such a discussion, what will it achieve and for whom?’ (2000: 206). I have already discussed how I felt unethical in colluding with the research brief set by the paediatricians. After that one interview I disengaged with the project. My own research ethical frame is both simple and complicated. I seek to research and write in a way that attempts to alleviate stigma – to try to break the glass cages that are erected around some individuals whether because of anorexia or sexuality or other factors. This is coupled with a commitment to demystify academic processes and research. I do this in teaching where I encourage students to use ideas to think about and sometimes feel differently about their own experiences. Ultimately my intervention stays largely within academic realms, so I doubt that my emotions helped the young girls one bit. Perhaps what I should have done with my emotions was to turn them directly on those in charge of the project. But then I’m afraid that would have been more about me.

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Conclusion The take-home message is: Yes, emotions count in ethnographic research. But you need to make them count. Just like ideas, they have to do something; they have to be generative. To paraphrase the title of Gill Valentine’s ground-break­ ing article, this is to conduct research and deploy our ethics and emotions in pursuit of social justice (Valentine, 2003).

Recommended Readings Probyn, E. (2005) Blush: Faces of Shame. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. This book provides explanations of how emotion and affect are different, yet both of importance in research. It also demonstrates one way of using and writing emotion, in this case that of shame. Todd, J.D. (2020) ‘Experiencing and embodying anxiety in spaces of academia and social research’, Gender, Place, & Culture. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/0966369X.2020.1727862 (accessed March 27, 2020). This article offers a reflection on the experience of anxiety and anxiousness while undertaking research as a postgraduate student. It argues for the importance of reflecting on experiences of anxiousness and folding them into reflexive practices, writings, and research outputs. Valentine, G. (2003) ‘Geography and ethics: In pursuit of social justice – ethics and emotions in geographies of health and disability research’, Progress in Human Geography, 27 (3): 375–80. This short article sets out how emotions work within geographical analyses of disability and more broadly issues of social justice.

9 Expectations Jonathan Darling

Key Points ••

Three principal groups might have expectations of research – research participants, the social networks researchers are part of, and the resear­ chers themselves.

••

Managing research expectations is important as it affects how research is understood and what effects it has.

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Research expectations often reflect power relations of position, auth­ ority, and influence and thus can be hard to negotiate in an ethically sensitive manner.

Introduction Expectations shape all forms of research. This might include expectations we have about the research that we may, or may not, be able to undertake; the expectations that our research participants might have; or the expectations of our institutions, friends, families, supervisors, or advisors. Having expectations of research is a fundamental part of considering what it is we want to explore through research, what questions we might ask, and how we discuss and present the work we have done. Expectations also matter as they can shape how our research is received, and what consequences it can have. In this sense, considering the expectations that surround research is an important ethical question to contemplate before, during, and after research. Different sets of expectations are often applied to different types of research. Take, for example, Routledge’s (2002) account of the expectations placed upon him by environmental organizations during collaborative research

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on tourist development in Goa. Routledge recounts not just the differential power dynamics at play in being a privileged researcher working in the Goan context, but also the expectation that his research would act as a tool for resistance in the context of challenging the practices of developers. The issue of how research intersects with activism, and more specifically how researchers are expected to act politically, ethically, and socially, is one that has received notable attention in critical geography (see Chatterton et al., 2010; Derickson and Routledge, 2015). Of course, expectations are never static. The kinds of expectations that are attached to different forms of research will differ, and research expectations develop and change over time. For example, Mandel’s (2003) discussion of conducting fieldwork on women’s livelihood strategies in Benin illustrates what happens when the expectations that were formed during desk research were reworked on arrival in ‘the field’. In a similar vein, Billo and Hiemstra’s (2013) reflections on fieldwork highlight how expectations come and go across the course of research, with prior assumptions being reworked, but also at points returning to prominence, as encounters with new infor­mation, people, and contexts make the negotiation of expectations a constant part of the research process. These short examples thus illustrate the different expectations I will unpack further throughout this chapter, to consider how expectations come to matter in research, and how we might deal with them in an ethically sensitive manner.

CASE STUDY: RESEARCHING ASYLUM My doctoral research was centred on Sheffield and an exploration of how asylum seekers experienced the city. As part of this work, I undertook a multi-method approach that combined discursive methods of document and interview analysis with ethnographic methods of participant observa­ tion and diary-interviews. This blend of methods represented an attempt to examine the everyday lives of asylum seekers, and in particular the work of a drop-in centre for asylum seekers called the Talking Shop (Darling, 2010, 2011; see Figure 9.1). I attended the Talking Shop twice weekly as a volunteer and researcher over a ten-month period. During this time, I got to know asylum seekers who were considered ‘regulars’ and spoke to them regarding their experi­ ences of the city. As my relationships with asylum seekers and volunteers deepened, I attended a range of events as a helper, PhD student, and researcher, including charity meetings, theatre productions, and festivals, as well as public demonstrations and marches. In the context of this form of research, the need to be sensitive to the marginality of asylum seekers as highly vulnerable individuals is paramount (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume). In practice, this does not mean simply adhering to the formal ethics of audits, review boards, and good ractice.

Expectations

Figure 9.1 The Talking Shop Rather, it also means thinking critically about how the realities of fieldwork go beyond these formal mechanisms, to reflect on what Guillemin and Gillam (2004) term ‘ethics in practice’. A practical and practised concern with ethics recognizes that processes of ethical review are often limited in their applicability once faced with the complexities of fieldwork as it unfolds. For instance, negotiating the relationships that ran through the Talking Shop involved a continuous reflection upon how I was viewed as a researcher and as a volunteer at one and the same time. It also required a reflection on how gaining informed consent became more com­ plex in a context where friendships developed and I became a part of other people’s everyday lives (Darling, 2014), while being attentive to ensure that granting consent itself was not seen as an expectation among potential research participants (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). In ethnographic work such as this, expectations play an important part in shap­ ing how research happens and comes to matter to different people. With this in mind, I want to discuss three sets of expectations: those of research participants, those of the social networks researchers are part of, and those of researchers themselves.

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Participant Expectations The first source of expectations was my research participants. As a range of scholars have noted, it can be common for researchers to be viewed as external ‘experts’ or authority figures (Mackenzie et al. 2007; Pittaway et al., 2010). Part of the problem of being positioned as an ‘expert’ is in having to respond to the expectation that you have the power to effect positive change. It is thus vital to be explicit about the role you occupy and what may come from your research in order to avoid the risk that individuals take part in research in the hope that they will benefit directly from their participation. Because I worked as a volunteer as well as a researcher during my time in the Talking Shop, I was spared some of these ‘expert’ expectations, yet in their place I was subject to a different set of expectations by both asylum seekers and other volunteers. Instead of being positioned as a figure of academic authority, I was positioned as a privileged citizen who might effect change through social and political capital. For example, as a volunteer, I was asked to take on a range of responsibilities, such as accompanying asylum seekers to meetings, and calling solicitors and local authorities to make enquiries on their behalf. These responsibilities were all part of the relationships that were central to the drop-in centre, but they were also practices that strategically employed my privileged position as a British citizen. My role accompanying asylum seekers to appointments was thus valuable for both the support provided through being there, and in the fact that asylum seekers reported being treated differently when accompanied by British citizens (Stamp, 2014). Importantly though, I was not trained or licensed as a legal advocate for asylum seekers, and thus the forms of support I was able to offer were social rather than legal in nature, again highlighting how expectations often come into contact with a range of personal, legal, and experiential limits. Over time, as my connections with those I worked with deepened and I learned more about their lives, stories, and experiences, their expectations of me developed. This meant expectations to sign a petition or attend a demonstration, and to write letters of support to MPs and councillors in solidarity with those waging anti-deportation campaigns. Similarly, as my research developed in new directions and I interviewed asylum seekers in contexts where my role as a volunteer was less prominent than my role as a researcher, expectations also changed. Asylum seekers I worked with would look to me with the hope that I may, in some way, be able to help in their asylum case. This was never an assumption that I supported or encouraged; indeed it was one I actively tried to dispel via regular reminders of what could be expected from my research and my role. Nevertheless, this assumption was a regular occurrence – that my research would eventually translate into some form of ‘expert’ position of authority and influence that could help individual cases. Of course, these expectations were not held by all of my research participants. They were subject to change and development as our relationships

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evolved. However, the assumption that I was positioned to do something, to help in some way, was never totally removed. So what does this mean for research? First, it means that a consideration of how you can establish and maintain reasonable expectations of you and your research is of critical importance from the outset. This means clearly outlining the process, aims, and potential outcomes of your research on participant information sheets, in emails or telephone conversations with potential participants, and in discussing your research with different groups. Second, it may mean distancing yourself and your research from other organizations and being clear about what you can, and cannot, do. For example, in my research I made clear to all those whom I worked with that my research was independent of the British state, the Home Office, and any other organization that might influence individual asylum claims; this included NGOs and refugee support organizations. This was important not just to maintain the independence of my work, but also to communicate expectations around what I might be able to achieve as a PhD student. I could sign petitions, offer translation support, and attend demonstrations, but I wasn’t able to perform legal advocacy, or influence the asylum determination process. Third, it is important to return to, and review, the expectations that participants have of your research as it develops. If you work closely with participants over a sustained period of time, it is natural for them to develop different expectations of you and your work. This can mean reminding people at opportune moments of what you can and cannot do and returning to that initial account of your work provided at the start. At the same time, your own sense of what is possible, and what you may be able to offer, will also develop during a period of research. It may be that you meet, or even exceed, the modest ambitions you start your research with, in which case it is valuable to reflect on how you develop expectations of yourself as research progresses.

Social Expectations The second source of expectations is among those who might engage with your research through different social networks. Just as research participants will have expectations of what you are doing, so will your personal and professional networks (including friends and family, fellow students, colleagues, and supervisors). Researchers might undertake research not because they are merely interested in it, but because they want to try to effect some positive change, however conceived. Managing the expectations of others is therefore important, because it can shape the reception of your research. In funded academic research, expectations will also come from the funding body that supports it. In the UK, for example, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) provides funding to social science projects that demonstrate the potential to ‘impact’ society. This means that in putting together

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applications for funding, researchers have to provide an account of what outcomes their work will produce, and how they will seek to shape social policy. Similarly, in undergraduate and postgraduate research projects, you are often asked to develop a proposal that outlines the aims of your research, the questions you are addressing, and the potential outcomes of that work. Research proposals thus present the first opportunity to shape what others expect of your research. For this reason, it is essential to think carefully about how you frame your research in any proposal, be that for funding or for an undergraduate dissertation. The same principles of research design apply, as how you communicate what you wish to do establishes expectations in those who read your work, be they a grant awards panel or a dissertation supervisor. Ultimately, these expectations matter because these people are likely to be the individuals or groups who assess the quality of your research. Beyond these formal sets of expectations, as researchers we must also negotiate a wider network of social relations and ties. For example, as an undergraduate student I did my dissertation research on plans to build an immigration and asylum detention centre in a village in Lincolnshire, near the town in which I was raised. Because of its proximity to my home town, the topic of this research was of interest to a number of people I had known since growing up, from school friends who had read about the proposals for the centre in local newspapers, to my family and a number of family friends. Their interest in my project was different to that of research participants, for they were not directly involved but rather curious about the issues discussed and the conclusions I might reach. On the one hand, this interest was supportive as it conveyed a sense of value to the topic I’d chosen to explore. Yet, on the other hand, it also conveyed expectations that were hard to meet. I remember feeling a pressure to have ‘something to say’ about the proposed detention centre from quite early in the project, and not wanting to disappoint friends and family who had taken an interest and wanted a conclusive account. Similarly, these individuals held different perspectives on the case, and would, often implicitly, expect me to confirm and support their views, which was not always possible. The challenge of such a position was furthered by the fact that I was researching an issue that was divisive within the local community and this context also served to shape different expectations of my work. This is not to suggest that such interest was not welcome, but that the expectations of those around us can also influence how we think about, and communicate, our work. In responding to the expectations of our social networks, it is therefore essential to consider three things. First, as with research participants, there is a need to be mindful of how you are always, knowingly or otherwise, shaping expectations of your work among others. This might be through your writing on the subject or through your conversations, with the latter also calling for a consideration of what is appropriate to discuss in relation to your research. This leads to a second concern, which is the need for careful judgement about how you explain your research. The depth and detail you give on a topic will

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help to frame the response you receive. Finally, consider the sensitivity of the topic that you are researching and how this may influence the expectations of others. Some areas of research, on issues such as immigration or gentrification for example, can be controversial and thus require careful consideration of how you present the work you do and to whom, and what expectations are formed in doing so.

Your Expectations The final set of expectations to consider are your own. As a researcher you approach your work with a particular position, expectations of others, and sets of social, political, and cultural assumptions. These facets of your personality do not disappear once you begin a piece of research, and neither are they inconsequential to the work you do. Your position shapes your research; it informs the questions you ask, the language you use, and the arguments you make (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). Research is very much a personal endeavour and, as such, it is bound up with our emotions, relationships, and sense of self (see Probyn, Chapter 8 in this volume). Much like our position, there is no way to escape our expectations as researchers: they are an essential part of the research process. But, as Billo and Hiemstra (2013: 314) point out, it is important to think carefully about how we might manage the ‘possible disjunctures between our expectations and reality’. In considering your own expectations, it is worth reflecting on a number of questions. First, what are you hoping to achieve through doing the research? Second, how realistic is it to expect that you will be able to achieve this? And third, do your expectations of what you will achieve match your expectations of what the research will entail? This final question is often crucial as it considers two different types of expectations we all have – of the outcome of our work, and of the work we will need to do to be successful. For example, if I had the expectation that my research with asylum seekers in Sheffield might change Home Office policy towards asylum seekers, then it would be unrealistic of me to also expect that my research could be conducted quickly and with only a handful of short interviews. Being realistic about the limits of research, and one’s capacities and skills as a researcher, is thus important. This is particularly the case when undertaking an undergraduate dissertation, where your available time and past research experience may be limited, and both of these factors will shape what you can expect from your research. Research can be a difficult, and at times lonely, process. In this context, adding extra pressure to yourself through unrealistic expectations is not productive. A useful source of guidance here can be discussion with your peers, as they will have faced similar considerations and can often offer a comparative perspective through which to consider what it is realistic to expect of oneself as a researcher (Billo and Hiemstra, 2013).

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that research requires a constant negotiation of three sources of expectation – those of research participants, the social networks of the researcher, and your own as a researcher. Crucially, these sources of expectation do not exist in isolation: they interact and at times come into conflict. For example, my expectations of the changes I would like to see as a result of my work may be different from the expectations of those I have worked with, and it is always important to have a discussion about what these differences are and where they arise from. In my own work, these varied expectations from research participants and others informed my own expectations, and reshaped my understanding of what was, and was not, possible within research. In Sheffield, I was able to inform the practice of the Talking Shop so as to offer greater agency to asylum seekers in their relationships with volunteers. For me, this represented a minor but significant achievement that hopefully made some difference to the lives of asylum seekers in the city. But equally, I am in no doubt that some of the asylum seekers I worked with expected me, as an ‘expert’, to intervene in their cases and challenge the Home Office on their behalf, a position I was not legally qualified to take. Consequently, managing expectations demands a clear sense of where expectations have come from, whose expectations should be prioritized at different points within a project, and how you can deal with the disappointment of not fulfilling all of those expectations all of the time. In summary, expectations matter. They shape research and more importantly can shape how research is received and what effects it has. Expectations have to be negotiated in practice – they are shaped by what we do, what we say, and how we present ourselves. However, they are also never entirely in our control. There is therefore a constant need to be cautious, for as Duneier (1999: 14) reminds us: ‘[t]hough participant observers often remark on the rapport they achieve and how they are seen by the people they write about, in the end it is best to be humble about such things, because one never really knows.’

Recommended Readings Darling, J. (2014) ‘Emotions, encounters and expectations: The uncertain ethics of “the field”’, Journal of Human Rights Practice, 6 (2): 201–12 This paper explores the emotional entanglements and attachments that are created through ethnographic fieldwork with asylum seekers in the UK, focusing on the messy and uncertain negotiation of ethics in ‘the field’. In doing so, it pinpoints how expectations shape the relationships at the heart of all research. Heller, E., Christensen, J., Long, L., Mackenzie, C.A., Osano, P.M., Ricker, B., Kagan, E. and Turner, S. (2011) ‘Dear diary: Early career geographers collectively reflect on their qualitative field research experiences’,

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Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 35 (1): 67–83. This paper offers a series of collective reflections on fieldwork practice and how a range of students navigated the challenges of fieldwork in human geography. Reflecting on the power relations, predicaments, and politics of research, the paper offers an insight into the practice of dissertation research. Mendel, J.L. (2003) ‘Negotiating expectations in the field: Gatekeepers, research fatigue and cultural biases’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 24 (2): 198–210. This paper examines the practice of fieldwork in Benin researching women’s livelihood strategies. It focuses on how navigating the expectations of different interest groups, gatekeepers, and audiences proved critical to the fortunes of the research project.

10 Statistics and Data Niall Cunningham

Key Points ••

Data are the raw material by which we can know and understand the world around us. We cannot separate data from the ways in which they are created and analysed.

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The analysis and interpretation of data is not an endpoint in itself, and the implications of how we choose to represent our data can resonate outward with unforeseen consequences.

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New forms of data are providing great potential for geographical research but they also raise important ethical questions.

Introduction We are in the most active and escalating period of data accumulation this planet has ever witnessed. As Kitchin (2013: 263) notes, the proliferation of data generated through internet use, smartphone functions, and credit card transactions marks an exponential growth in the forms of data created and stored about us. These forms of mass data production, on everything from our consumption habits to the time we spend walking the dog in the morning, have become such ubiquitous parts of daily life that we rarely consider their implications. The rise of so-called ‘Big Data’ – referring to large-volume datasets that are increasingly complex and comprehensive, and which require computational analysis to identify patterns of human behaviour – has been argued to offer both significant opportunities for social scientists, and also significant challenges (see Kitchin, 2013, 2014a).

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Not least among these are a series of ethical challenges. Notably there is a growing concern that the ability of geographers and other social scientists to recognize and respond to the challenges of quantitative data generation and use have not kept pace with the growth of technologies that create, interpret, and transmit data in new ways (Hesse et al., 2019; Taylor, 2015). The rise of Big Data has therefore thrown into stark relief a set of ethical questions around the production, use, and value of quantitative data, most notably the extent to which we are all subject to various forms of ‘dataveillance’ (Lupton, 2016), and the extent to which we consent to this condition. The complexity of these processes of data capture and use may be new, as in the use of algorithms, but many of the ethical questions at the heart of recent debates are longstanding concerns that effect all forms of quantitative research, whether utilizing data that is ‘big’ or ‘small’. In this chapter, I set out to examine some of these questions and to consider how geographers might approach the ethics of data use. I consider what critical questions we should ask ourselves about the data we produce, use, and present to the world, to reflect on the role of data within geographical research.

Data and Geography Data are critical in any forms of research because they represent our way of knowing, and thus by extension our way of trying to understand and represent the world around us. The types of data we collect, the ways in which they are generated, and the methods that are used to process and analyse those data will inevitably lead to particular representations of the world. The decisions that must be made about what to include and what to exclude mean that only selected dimensions of an issue can be foregrounded, or indeed addressed at all. Just as asking particular research questions will shape the issues addressed in a project, so will the choice over what data to generate and how to analyse this data. Indeed, decisions around the use, inclusion, and analysis of data of all forms (be it qualitative or quantitative) are at the heart of research design and, therefore, of thinking about research ethics. This is because at every point in this process, there is human subjectivity informing those decisions and assumptions, meaning that the process of how we can and should gather data, and to what end, is never an impartial one. It is informed by our interests, our skills, and our positions (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). While we might often take these processes for granted, the ways in which data are generated, accumulated, stored, processed, sold, lost, analysed, presented, and generally used are profoundly contentious. For example, scandals over the selling of data from mobile phone companies to marketing agencies, or of intelligence agencies overriding privacy concerns to monitor internet use on a widespread scale, point to the importance of data ownership and ethics in our everyday lives (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume). If we consider

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varying forms of quantitative data in human geography, what ethical issues do we need to be attentive to?

The Ethics of Data First, if the data we generate for research are driven by a set of subjective decisions as noted above, it is critical to recognize that data are not ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ in any clear sense. While it may appear that responses to a questionnaire, census data, or a large-scale survey present less clearly subjective responses than an interview narrative or set of ethnographic notes, these responses are still snapshots of partial, and necessarily subjective, knowledge. This means that there is no reason to presume that quantitative data of this form is any less affected by issues of positionality (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), consent (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4), or anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5) than any other form of research material. Crucially, this also means that research involving quantitative data, whether that be primary data generated by yourself or secondary data (in which you analyse pre-existing data such as a census) all requires ethical thought and consideration. If you draw on existing datasets this still constitutes the views, values, and experiences of human subjects, just as a historical archive does (see Alderman and Inwood, Chapter 20 in this volume), and as such this requires ethical recognition. Second, we should be attentive to the ethical questions raised in using data that has been generated by others, or for other purposes. While many projects will involve the generation of new quantitative and qualitative data in the form of questionnaire responses or interview materials, where there isn’t the time or resources to develop large-scale data sets, much research, especially among undergraduate students, relies on the use of secondary data sources. These sources, such as census data, large-scale public surveys, or governmentled indices of socio-economic indicators, can be incredibly valuable sources of information for geographers and can produce original research. However, they too pose ethical questions, most importantly the need to be clear on where such data is from and how it was constructed. In using secondary data, we should thus ask ourselves under what assumptions and conditions was it generated, what forms of consent were attached to it, and what was the context of its creation? In circumstances where you have not directly generated data, you need to ensure that you are clear as to how that data was produced and to avoid a decontextualization of data that can allow it to appear neutral or objective. To offer an example on the significance of context, a few years back I was involved in a major investigation into social class, the BBC’s Great British Class Survey (GBCS) experiment (Savage et al., 2013), a project which highlighted how data have their own social lives and potential to interpose in the world (Beer and Burrows, 2013). In order to examine contemporary understandings of class beyond a purely economic model, the BBC hosted a survey

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on their website which invited members of the general public to respond to a wide range of questions which probed areas of social and cultural life in addition to other key attributes such as age, gender, and ethnicity. The survey drew an unprecedented response, with 160,000 people participating between its launch in early 2011 and April 2013, with a further 160,000 participating in the months immediately following on from that, making it the largest exercise in ‘digital sociology’ ever undertaken in the UK. However, the data generated were skewed towards a younger and more affluent section of the British population than was representative of society as a whole. As a result, a smaller survey was commissioned by the BBC, which involved a team of researchers completing the survey with a more representative sample of just over 1,000 people (Devine and Snee, 2015). The outcomes of the survey generated significant debate across the social sciences, with questions over the extent to which the definitions of social class developed through this approach have political and ethical implications beyond the reach of the research coming to the fore (Tyler, 2015). The question arises: by using data to rank people by a novel metric like cultural capital, were we reflecting the unseen realities of an unequal world, or were we ourselves acting to construct and reinforce those divisions (Savage et  al., 2015)? Like many ethical questions in research, there is no ‘correct’ answer to this conundrum. Rather, the GBCS example highlights the importance of knowing the context of the data you are using. Any researchers wishing to use the GBCS data as a secondary source will approach and understand that data differently if they are aware of the debates surrounding its politics and ethics. At the same time, the GBCS highlights how the generation of data raises ethical questions about whether that data is interpreted and used in ways that exceed the original intentions and aims of researchers. Third, and connected to the question of context, is the need for researchers to be mindful of ‘function creep’ in their use of secondary data. ‘Function creep’ refers to the way in which data, ‘collected and used for one purpose and to fulfil one function, often migrate to other ones’ (Lyon, 2008: 506). Thus while it is important to know where data comes from, and the conditions of its production, it is also critical to not misuse data for purposes that contradict its original intentions. For example, Taylor (2015) examines how the release of mobile phone tracking data from Côte d’Ivoire on a mass scale to researchers by the mobile network Orange led to a wide range of applications, not all of which were intended by the network itself. These ranged from tracing potential consumption patterns and mobility pathways, to the potential to track irregular migration routes and inform government policies on population quarantine and biosecurity measures. While on a larger scale than most student projects, this example illustrates the need to consider carefully the extent to which data are being used appropriately and are not being applied beyond their initial function. It is therefore critical to ask questions of data and how appropriate data sets are for addressing the questions you are posing in your own research.

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Is there a risk of misrepresenting or misusing data? And if so, are other sources available that might address such concerns? The fourth key consideration emerges from the growth of Big Data and the proliferation of data generation noted at the outset of this chapter. While the generation and use of quantitative data has often relied upon assumptions of anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume), the protection of anonymity has arguable become harder when so much data is available on individuals. In this sense, Taylor (2015: 321) argues that ethical frameworks have not kept up with the ‘novel problem of group privacy, where the harm occurring from data misuse takes place on the aggregate level rather than the individual, and stretches current conceptions of privacy’. There are two considerations of note here. First, that the aggregation of data into groups to avoid individual identification, a common measure of anonymity previously used, may serve in some cases to make groups subject to harm or risk. And second, that the growth of publicly available data from social media and other sources can be used in combination to trace and identify individuals, even where individual anonymity is sought. This question of the ‘precariousness of de-identification efforts in large data sets’ (Hesse et al., 2019: 565) means that caution should be taken over assumptions of anonymity in data, and links to other potential identifiers should be carefully considered. This is the case, Hesse et al. (2019) argue, not least because the extent to which user agreements are read and understood on social media is variable at best (see also Kinsley, Chapter 27 in this volume). The implication here is that consideration should be given at the outset as to what data is actually needed in order to address a set of research questions. Do you need participant identifiers as part of a data set? Do they add anything or do they simply risk identification for an individual or group without adding to the research value of the material itself?

Conclusion In this chapter, I have sought to outline some of the ethical questions that come with the use of various forms of quantitative data in geography. While we live in a time of data proliferation, and the rise of Big Data has focused attention on a range of ethical concerns, many of these issues are longstanding questions in the generation and use of both primary and secondary data more generally. Questions of anonymity, the interpretation and use of data, and the context in which it is generated all come to the fore when we examine these issues, and all require careful thought in designing research. Most significantly though, researchers should resist the tendency to view quantitative data as somehow more neutral or objective than other forms of research data. All data is produced within specific contexts and from specific positions. Even the apparently objective allure of Big Data and its turn to algorithms mask human decisions and judgements that are as subjective and contextual as ever. For example, if we turn to the example of transport and cross-border security, it might seem

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that digital technologies have a great deal to offer in screening large populations to identify potential risks, as indeed they do. Yet the algorithms designed to identify such risks do not operate in isolation from the social world in which they were created (Amoore, 2013). It seems from research that the calculation of ‘risk’ and the seemingly omnipotent processes of biometric identification underpinning them are both reflecting and reconstituting social inequalities and prejudices around race, for example, which reflect the everyday and persistent realities of the imperfect offline, non-digital world (Browne, 2010; Noble, 2018). The need to question data, whether big or small, new or old, quantitative or qualitative, is thus a fundamental part of conducting ethical research in human geography.

Recommended Reading Hesse, A., Glenna, L., Hinrichs, C., Chiles, R. and Sachs, C. (2019) ‘Qualitative research ethics in the Big Data era’, American Behavioral Scientist, 63 (5): 560–83. This paper outlines some of the key ethical challenges associated with a rise in various forms of data, from social media and internet use to large-scale surveys. Savage, M., Devine, F., Cunningham, N., Taylor, M., Li, Y., Hjellbrekke, J., Le Roux, B., Friedman, S. and Miles, A. (2013) ‘A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment’, Sociology, 47 (2): 219–50. This paper discusses the outcomes of the Great British Class Survey, reflecting not just on the categorizations of class produced through this process, but also the challenges of the research approach itself. Taylor, L. (2015) ‘No place to hide? The ethics and analytics of tracking mobility using mobile phone data’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34 (2): 319–36. This paper examines the case of mobile phone data being made available for the tracking of mobility across the Côte d’Ivoire, and considers some of the implications of this data use for questions of privacy and consent.

11 Data Management Helen F. Wilson

Key Points ••

How researchers handle data can have significant ramifications for research participants and research integrity.

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Data management refers to how data is stored, protected, processed, validated, disposed of, and archived.

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The development of a data management plan is often a key component of ethical review procedures.

Introduction Why is data management an ethical issue? In 2016, 37 patients at Derriford Hospital in the UK were informed that a former employee had accidentally discarded their medical records in a charity clothes bank. The records, while incomplete, contained confidential data including names, National Health Service numbers, and the details of future appointments. After she was noti­ fied of the incident, one patient – who described herself as ‘apprehensive’ – recounted her shock, disgust, and worry over the possibility of identity theft. In addition to an investigation at the hospital, the breach of confidentiality was reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s independ­ ent body set up to uphold information rights in the public interest. The hos­ pital issued a statement to confirm that they had conducted a comprehensive investigation to ensure that lessons were learned from the incident (Gayle, 2016). This opening example is a case of bad data management. It broke patient confidentiality agreements, exposed patients to fraudulent activity, and caused

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emotional distress. As this chapter will demonstrate, how data is handled can have a variety of repercussions for research participants, as well as significant implications for the integrity of research findings. It is precisely because of the considerable ethical and legal obligations involved in data management that it is rare to find published academic examples where researchers reflect on their own research practice and the management of data. For this rea­ son, this chapter predominantly draws on cases from beyond the academy to illustrate the implications of poor data management. With this in mind, the chapter offers an introduction to research data management, outlines why it is important, and details what steps can be taken to ensure that research data is handled ethically. While data management is often a mechanistic pro­ cess, requiring that researchers follow a set of clearly outlined guidelines of good practice, it also poses significant ethical challenges in that it maintains the crucial relationship between researcher and participant. Poor data man­ agement thus entails going back on commitments made to participants, pot­ entially exposing individuals to varying forms of risk, and undermining the integrity of the research.

What is Data Management? Data management refers to the processes by which research data is stored, pro­ tected, processed, validated, disposed of, and archived. An effective data man­ agement plan should always prioritize the needs of research participants and should be central to securing and sustaining their anonymity if requested (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). How we handle data is particularly impor­ tant when it contains sensitive information or information that can lead to the identification of research participants. It is for this reason that having a data management plan in place is normally central to gaining research approval within institutional settings. Often, projects will have only one person responsible for the collection, storage, and integrity of the research, but data management protocols apply to anybody might have access to the data or be directly involved in its collec­ tion. This might include translators or mediators and anyone else involved in handling the data, such as professional transcribers. In some cases, it might be necessary for third parties to sign non-disclosure agreements, to ensure that they adhere to the project’s commitment to ethical data management. Good practice in data management entails a series of core measures to ensure the security, anonymity, and integrity of research data, but legal respon­ sibilities for data protection and privacy vary from country to country. For example, in the UK, the Data Protection Act 2018 outlines a series of data protection principles that individuals and organizations must follow in order to meet the standards of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the USA, however, there is no single data protection legislation in force, but rather a complex network of laws at federal and state levels that seek to protect

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the personal data of individuals. In Australia, data protection legislation is fur­ ther supported by the Australian Code for Responsible Conduct of Research, which puts in place specific data protection requirements for researchers and organizations. The changing national context of data protection and manage­ ment principles makes it impossible for a chapter such as this to comprehen­ sively summarise data protection legislation and requirements globally, not least because such legislation changes as new forms of technology produce new types of personal data that may require distinct protections (see Kinsley, Chapter 27 in this volume). Nevertheless, it is important to check what data protection legislation is in place wherever you are working, and to be mindful of changing legislations for data transfer and mobility if you move between national contexts during research.

What is Sensitive Information? The European Commission (2019: n.p.) state that, under EU law, sensitive data refers to: •

date of birth

•

racial or ethnic origin

•

religious beliefs

•

sexual life

•

political opinions

•

trade union activities

•

details of criminal offences

•

physical or mental health.

However, information collected through research can be sensitive for a much broader range of reasons (see Hopkins, Chapter 6 in this volume). For example, information collected on vulnerable research subjects (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume) will often be classed as sensitive even if it does not fall into the categories listed above. This means that definitions of sensitive information may change in different types of research and are often driven by a combina­ tion of university guidelines and disciplinary standards. Central to the ethical management of research data is the process of secur­ ing informed consent from participants for the use of their information. Where possible and appropriate, participants should be provided with a consent form to sign (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). This form should outline how their data will be stored, managed, and archived so that they can make an informed decision about their participation in the research and how they would like their information to be used after the project has ended.

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Security and Storage Because research data often contains sensitive and personal information, data security is paramount. If data is to be stored on personal computers, tablets and digital recorders it is important to ask who has access. Researchers have a duty to protect their data, and so as a minimum, laptops, computers, and external drives should be password protected; and if the data is sensitive, it should be encrypted. USB sticks are easily misplaced or left behind, and it is not uncommon to find them left in libraries, lecture theatres, or plugged into computers with all of their confidential data freely available! This is not just a matter of losing valuable research, but a matter of breaking one’s ethical responsibility to pro­ tect participant information and confidentiality. In 2012, the importance of data encryption was highlighted when a NASA laptop was stolen from an employee’s locked car. While the laptop was password protected, it was conceded that sensi­ tive information had not been encrypted and that the password could easily be by-passed, or the hard drive removed, putting sensitive data at risk (Klotz, 2012). All personal computers, tablets and digital recorders used for research are expected to have up-to-date anti-virus software to prevent the loss of data through malicious activity. At the same time, it is increasingly important to con­ sider the security of online data storage options, such as iCloud or Dropbox. Crucially, the security and integrity of these systems can never be fully guaran­ teed, as they are stored beyond the immediate control of the researcher. As such, while they may be useful repositories for material that can be accessed when on the move, researchers should be wary of using them to store research data, and should avoid using them for any form of sensitive or confidential data. The secu­ rity of online data can also become an issue when transferring research for the purpose of transcription. While some researchers, especially students, are likely to undertake their own transcription, in some cases it may be possible to employ professional transcribers to do so. If this is the case, consideration needs to be given to how files will be transferred for transcription, and at what stage tran­ scriptions will be anonymized. Files to be transferred should always be encrypted and backups of all files kept in case of file corruption during transfer. If USB sticks are easily misplaced, then so too are notebooks and other forms of documentation. For this reason, it is often wise to keep the transpor­ tation of data to a minimum, and to keep all data in a secure location such as a locked drawer or office.

CASE STUDY: 2007 CHILD BENEFIT BREACH In 2007, Alistair Darling, the then Chancellor of the UK, announced the loss of two discs that contained the personal details of 7.25 million families (Continued)

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(Continued) who were claiming child benefit – involving the details of nearly half of the British population. These discs held sensitive data, including date of birth, addresses, bank accounts, and employment details. According to Darling, the responsibility lay with a junior official at HM Revenue and Customs, who had ‘breached all government security rules’ when they sent the discs via unrecorded post to the National Audit Office in London. This was a significant breach of data security that led to national concerns about fraudulent activity, prompting a plea to members of the public to be vigilant of unusual activity in their bank accounts. An immediate review of government data privacy protocols was demanded. The incident was described as ‘the most fundamental breach of the faith between the state and citizen’ (Wintour, 2007).

Data Disposal As was evident in the opening example from Derriford Hospital, how we dis­ pose of data is just as important as how we store it. This includes both the disposal of data during the research process and the disposal of data after the project has come to an end. During the research it is common to amass interview recordings and other forms of digital data. If transcribing the data, it is good practice to do this as soon as possible, so that the data can be anonymized. Once the data has been transcribed, it is often advised that all digital copies should be destroyed, and it is important to remember that some devices have trash cans or recycle bins which need to be emptied to ensure that material is permanently deleted. It has been known for borrowed university equipment, such as digital recorders or laptops, to be returned with all of the data still on it! It is increasingly common to use digital file shredding software to ensure the complete removal of files following the conclusion of research. If paper notes or other forms of documentation con­ taining sensitive material are no longer of value, or have been transcribed, these should also be shredded to prevent the documents from being retrieved.

Integrity In 2013, a report on the relationship between public debt and GDP growth challenged the findings of a previous study by claiming that ‘coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of sum­ mary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represented the relation­ ship’ between debt and growth (Herndon et al., 2013). In short, the integrity of the research was undermined by errors introduced during analysis and the exclusion of relevant data. The accuracy and completeness of data are thus an ethical issue and one that can be undermined by poor data management.

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The integrity of the research can be ensured by: (1) continuously checking for data errors; (2) ensuring the effective management of multiple data versions and; (3) keeping a log of contextual information. At various points in the research, errors may be unintentionally intro­ duced. For example, if working with a large data set, it can often be important to select interview transcripts at random and check them against the digital data, as a way of monitoring the quality of transcription. Minor errors can have significant impacts! Take the example below, where one word has been missed. It might seem like a minor error, but it changes the magnitude of what is described and thus the emphasis placed upon the breach:

Recording: It was considered to be a fundamental breach of trust by the government … Transcription: It was considered to be a breach of trust by the government …

If digital data is difficult to understand, it is good practice to indicate this on the transcript, to identify the points at which comprehension is lost (e.g. ‘[inaudible … 1min12secs]’). Misrepresentations can occur when researchers try to second-guess what was said during an inaudible part of a conversation and can produce misleading results. Random checks should be done too for data that has been converted for analysis, such as Word documents that have been imported into other programs. For researchers employing translators, it is also good practice to have them checked by a third party (who have also signed a non-disclosure agreement) to ensure the accuracy of the translated data, while keeping in mind that no translation can ever be an entirely ‘true’ representation of the original text. As data is anonymized and transcribed, and notes and codes are added to files for the purpose of analysis, multiple versions of the same data are created. As a result, ‘version control’ is a vital part of data management and essential to research integrity. It is wise to keep a secure and encrypted folder of origi­ nal versions to be returned to in case errors are introduced to later files. As I have demonstrated, errors threaten the integrity of the research and thus the ethical responsibilities of the researcher. If important information is accidentally removed during analysis, or figures are wrongly transcribed, inaccurate and mis­ leading findings may be produced to the detriment of both the research par­ ticipants and the research itself. Finally, research data can be useless when it is taken out of context. When analysing data and citing it in final reports or dissertations, contextual informa­ tion about where and when the data was collected, how it was collected, and to whom the data relates is essential. Given that personal information is some­ times removed as part of a researcher’s responsibility to preserve anonymity, it

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is paramount to have a strategy for recording the contextual detail that allows the researcher to better understand the data. This data about data is termed ‘metadata’ and it is an essential tool for both managing data effectively and making it easy to use and re-use in future work. Each anonymized transcript should have a unique identifier and this should be stored separately from the contextual data for the transcript. This means that only the researcher should be able to link the anonymized transcript with the contextual data, which might include information about who produced the transcript, who was involved in the interview, and in what context. If the link between the contextual informa­ tion and the data is broken, information central to understanding and analys­ ing the data is lost, and so too is the value of the data.

Data Sharing It has become increasingly important for researchers to make research data available after a project has come to an end by depositing it in an open access data archive or repository, such as the UK Data Service. Making data available for further use is important for two reasons. First, it allows for the verification of results, the importance of which was highlighted by the report on public debt and GDP (gross domestic product) growth cited above. Second, it enables the data to be reused by other researchers who might find further value in it and thus maximize the benefits gained from the research data (although see Lobo et al., Chapter 15 in this volume, for the challenges this poses). This is unlikely to be an issue for student researchers, but data sharing is a require­ ment for some publicly funded research and should be included in the project data management plan, with clear information provided to participants about how and where the data will be stored. Some data might be considered too sensitive for sharing, in which case some transcripts might be eliminated and destroyed at the end of a project, while some participants might have agreed to the use of their data for a limited period of time only. The deletion of this material is central to a researcher’s enduring responsibility to their participants, which should be prioritized above any potential value that the data might hold. Any remaining data needs to be appropriately prepared for data sharing. This includes, at a minimum, the removal of any information that may jeopardise the anonymity of participants (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). If the information is time-sensitive – for example, if it contains material that may be market sensitive, have economic implications for specific firms or companies, or be politically sensitive during an election period – data sharing might involve the imposition of an embargo for a set period of time, to ensure that its release does not have damaging effects. For example, in the run-up to each UK general election, a pre-election period called ‘purdah’ is imposed, meaning that all arms of the government and civil service are unable to make announcements that may be advantageous to

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any candidates or parties. In the UK context, this includes the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), who are restricted during this period from announcing research findings or data that may be politically sensitive. Instead, an embargo is placed on such material until after the results of the election, at which point data can be released and reported.

Conclusion As this chapter has demonstrated, the impacts of poor data management are wide-ranging. At the most basic level, poor data management can lead to the loss of important data, but more seriously the mishandling of data can amount to a breach in ethical conduct and/or legal requirements. This breach takes two forms: first, in the mistreatment of research participants and the breach of confidentiality agreements; and second, in the form of misleading findings that are based on errors and incorrect data. Good data management is thus intrinsic to the ethical conduct of research.

CHECKLIST ••

Have a data management plan in place before you commence your research and be familiar with the data management requirements of both your institution and/or your funding body.

••

Include information about data management procedures in consent forms.

••

Ensure that all devices used to store research data are password protected and that sensitive data is encrypted.

••

Ensure that all devices used to store research data are protected by up-to-date anti-virus software.

••

Avoid using online storage facilities to transfer or store data unless it is encrypted.

••

Ensure that all non-digitized data is stored in a secure location.

••

Undertake random checks on transcribed and translated data to ensure that errors have not been introduced to the data set.

••

Only share data if it can be fully anonymized, and consent for enduring use has been granted by the research participant.

••

Destroy any remaining data within a designated time, as set out at the start of the research.

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Recommended Reading Corti, L., Van den Eynden, V., Bishop, L. and Woollard, M. (2019) Managing and Sharing Research Data: A Guide to Good Practice. London: Sage. This book offers a practical guide to data management, offering advice on the creation, storage, and use of both primary and secondary research data, including forms of social media and big data. It discusses how data should be secured and protected, and how metadata can be produced to keep track of data edits and changes throughout the research process. Pryor, G. (ed.) (2012) Managing Research Data. London: Facet. This collection offers practical advice on a wide range of data management issues, from data management plans and storage, to legal and contractual obligations. It considers the roles and responsibilities of different actors in the research process, and discusses data management frameworks and expectations in Europe, Australia, and the US. UK Data Service (2018) Dissertations and their data: Promoting research integrity in undergraduate projects. Colchester: University of Essex, UK Data Service. www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/622144/dissertations_and_ their_data_promoting_research_integrity.pdf (accessed March 29, 2020). This online resource pack offers students and supervisors practical examples of good practice in data management, templates and checklists for data storage and security, and advice on how to navigate a range of issues in data transparency, collection, and presentation.

12 Avoiding the Weaponization of Your Research Sara Koopman

Key Points ••

A variety of actors track, intercept, and could potentially misuse geogra­ phical research.

••

It is pertinent to reflect on how both unpublished data and published research may be used to do harm.

••

Serious precautions are needed to ensure that research materials cannot be used to do harm to those involved in research or to wider communi­ ties of interest.

Introduction One of the key principles of ethical research is to do no harm. This includes ensuring, as much as possible, that your research is not misused by others in harmful ways. In this chapter, I focus on one form of misuse – the appropriation and use of research publications, findings, and data by armed groups, whether they be governments or non-state actors. This is significant because one of the growing risks in our current political climate is that, even if you are careful not to accept any of the growing military funding in geography, your research might still be weaponized by armed actors (not only the military and

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police but other security agencies, as well as rebel groups). Especially after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the US National Security Agency widely reading emails, tracking the sites you visit on the internet, and listening to ambient conversations through cell phones, it is important to think about how to do research safely and ethically in a time of high surveillance in general, and high US military interest in the work of geographers in particular. In this chapter, I share ways I have been forced to think about how both the US and the Colombian army could weaponize my research, so as to inspire you to think about how your own research might be misused to do harm. If you do any kind of research, but particularly if you research peace and justice organizing, it is now more important than ever to have heightened awareness of the likelihood that the military (or police) not only will be reading your published work, but also could be tapping your emails, phone calls, and even live conversations. This can happen far from formal ‘conflict zones’. For example, recent leaks confirm that Hacking Team software is widely used around the world to listen to ambient conversations held in a room with a cell phone, even when it is off. With these dangers in mind, the chapter proceeds as follows. First, I outline the growing military interest in geography and highlight some of the challenges and dangers this poses for us as geographers. I then use the example of research on international protective accompaniment in Columbia to explore some of the ways in which research can risk becoming weaponized, before finally discussing how to protect your research data, and your work more generally, from misuse and appropriation.

Military Interest in Geography Since the founding of the discipline, Geography has been a handmaiden to militaries and used as a tool for empire. Recently, this enrolment has been taken up a notch. Because the field of anthropology has clearly stated that the US Army’s Human Terrain Systems is ‘an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise’ (AAA Executive Board, 2007), military attempts to know (and control) the so-called human terrain have explicitly shifted to geography.1 Because even the term ‘human terrain’ has been so heavily critiqued, the military has now widely replaced it with the term ‘human geography’, and their materials increasingly point to the importance of human geography for waging war. Medina (2016) makes this explicit in his astounding article, entitled ‘From Anthropology to Human Geography’. He bluntly says that the shift has been strengthened because the ‘backlash’ among geographers in response to the México Indígena/Bowman Expeditions scandal has been much less than anthropology’s response to the enrolment of their discipline by the military. (This was a case in which geographers did not inform Indigenous research subjects in Mexico that they had US military funding to map their territory). He believes that geography is more welcoming to the military than anthropology because we are less empathetic to, and more distant from, our research subjects!

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I hope that we can prove him wrong. But the military’s renewed interest in geography makes it more likely that they will read and weaponize our work. Our work might be added to the military’s huge database without us ever knowing it, since it is unlikely to appear in Google Scholar (Wainwright, 2013). Morin (2003), for example, had her introductory chapter on landscape from the textbook Key Concepts in Geography cited in an operational guide for the Marines on how to read the cultural landscape so as to better control a population quickly upon arriving in an area. Though it is hard to track down these uses of our work, we should keep the possibility of it in mind when publishing. A focus on how published work might be used should be considered alongside the potential for unpublished research data to be hacked. While we can never know all of the potential uses to which our work may be put, seeking to avoid its misuse begins with carefully considering what the implications of research and writing might be for those whom we work with and research, whether individual participants or organizations, or ourselves as researchers.

CASE STUDY: INTERNATIONAL PROTECTIVE ACCOMPANIMENT Let me tell you a bit about how these issues have played out in my own research on international protective accompaniment. Accompaniers serve as unarmed bodyguards for populations at risk in civil conflicts. They are primarily from the US, Canada, and Western Europe, and use their passport privilege to protect local peace workers in conflict zones. Accompaniers walk with people under threat. They walk both literally and politically, con­ necting peace movements to those working for peace in other places. As part of my work I have fostered conversations among accompaniers about how colonial patterns make their work possible, and how to navigate those as they also work to wear down the systems that make some lives worth more than others. At the 2014 American Association of Geographers conference in Tampa, a fellow geographer came up to me on the sidewalk to enthusias­ tically tell me that she had taught my article about accompaniment and alter-geopolitics (Koopman, 2011) to the US Special Forces – and that they loved it! I was stunned. As you might imagine, that was not the audience I had in mind when I wrote it. But actually, accompaniers are very aware that the military is watching them, and they have always assumed that the military would read my work carefully and could use it against them. As a result, after finishing my PhD I spent well over a year in painful negotiations about what was safe to share publicly. It was important to ask: Do the insights from the research that could make accompaniment more powerful (Continued)

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(Continued) outweigh any risks of military misuse? Surprisingly, this weaponization question was not asked by my institutional ethics review board, nor was this concern raised by my PhD committee. Despite this, the question of what was safe to share required careful consideration not just of how anonymity might be protected in such instances (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume), but also of the implications for consent on the part of research participants where the outcomes and uses of research are hard to control (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). To say that ‘If you have any doubt, simply do not publish’ is too easy. That would quickly steer us all away from doing research with peace and justice groups, particularly in conflict zones, but also in the US, UK, Aus­ tralia, and Canada, where these groups are also increasingly under high police surveillance and even infiltration. Avoiding potentially sensitive or challenging research topics in this way can serve to silence the important work done by activists (see Ince and White, Chapter 14 in this volume), and can entrench problematic assumptions that work on sensitive topics is best avoided (see Hopkins, Chapter 6 in this volume). Instead my advice is to think through carefully how your published work might be misused, and to talk that issue through with your research collaborators and participants. The accompaniers I work with have reason to be cautious. In 2008 while I was doing fieldwork in Colombia, one of the organizations I col­ laborate with, the Fellowship of Reconciliation Peace Presence (FORPP), confirmed that their email account had been hacked by the DAS (Departa­ mento Administrativo de Seguridad, state intelligence); this was substanti­ ated because the Colombian government used some of those emails in a court case. Though I was always cautious, I immediately worried again about having said something in an email to them that could have put the threatened Colombian peace activists whom FORPP accompanies, at risk. The DAS was so enmeshed with paramilitaries in Colombia that it was eventually closed down in 2011 after a series of scandals. Most of the surveillance equipment the DAS used was provided by the US, which sent more than six billion US dollars in military aid between 2000 and 2010 to Colombia, making the US a powerful player there. Accompaniers from the US use this power, and the way it makes their lives count more in Colombia, to ‘make space’ (as they themselves put it) for the threatened Colombian peace activists whom they walk with. Accompaniers’ bodies on the ground are a signal to the military and paramilitary forces that threaten the Colombian human rights workers, but their bodies alone are not enough. When FORPP got this proof that the Colombian army was monitoring their email, they sent an action alert to their supporter list and generated some 800 pressure emails, which they used to get a high-level meeting with the US State Department. They made specific requests for certain messages to be sent to particular agencies of the Colombian government, and from them to local officials

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in the region where FORPP works. This is how accompaniment works, through leveraging these chains of connections to people and places with power (Koopman, 2014). My writing about the work of accompaniers could serve as another link in these chains. One of those US Special Forces students exposed to my work in 2014 could very well end up being a military adviser in Colombia, or teaching Colombian military at the US Army’s School of the Americas (SOA, formally now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the most elite of many such training institutes) where they are the largest group of students. Perhaps having read my article they would have and teach more respect for Colombian peace communities, or the international peace activists who accompany them. I do not doubt that my colleague had this intention in teaching it to them. But forgive me if I am dubious. Instead, I think that it is important to consider how my research might be used against them. In my own case I think my article is safe for military use, but I did black out portions of my dissertation before my university put it online, although I had to get special university permission to do so. Apparently I was the first to ever make this request. I am not saying that the military should never read our work, but rather that caution about what they might be able to do with it is warranted. The Colombian DAS invasively tracked human rights activists, to the extent of following and taking photos of their children, which were then used to send them death threats. These tactics may well have come from US training, as threatening the children of activists was a method in the leaked training manuals used at the SOA.2

Protecting Your Data In an era of high surveillance, it is also important to be cautious so that your unpublished research data does not fall into hands that could misuse it. If you are doing research with peace and justice activists under threat, they will likely be very open about their activism and political activities and have fewer concerns about that information being intercepted. However, they often struggle to keep their private lives private and safe. For example, as in the case above, the information about where their children go to school and when they come home might be information that you should go to great lengths to keep safe. Wilson’s chapter on data management (Chapter 11 in this volume) provides further advice on preventing your research data being misused, but here I will highlight three key points. First, get two-step verification for your email. Second, bag your phone. For those of us who do interviews and group discussions, smartphones have made life much easier. It is now possible to record long interviews on most phones, even to do video interviews. But if you have any suspicion that the potential content of that interview could be misused in any way, I recommend that you not use your phone and get a small digital recorder instead. Turning

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off your phone is not enough to stop the potential recording of conversations in the room however. Some say that taking out the batteries does it, while some human rights activists stick their phones in the refrigerator for certain conversations! It is much easier to put it in a small signal-blocking bag instead; and these are affordable and available online. This may seem paranoid, but recent revelations have shown that the software for listening to conversations in the room through your phone has been purchased by governments around the world. Finally, when you write down fieldnotes by hand, if you are concerned about their content you can take a photo of them and put that behind encryption, then destroy your hard copy of the notes.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have pointed to the increased US military use of, and involvement in, our discipline as a way of highlighting the danger that our research might be weaponized, that is, used by various armed actors (both state and non-state) to harm people and to damage the reputation and work of different organizations. In my case, likely Colombian military scrutiny meant that protective accompaniers did not consider it safe to share much of the internal debates within the movement about different ways to do accompaniment. There was a persistent concern that sharing such details might jeopardize their work, and in doing so put at further risk the lives of the threatened Colombian peace activists whom they accompany. This is a loss because having this discussion publicly could affect both the way this growing peace tactic is done around the world, and its effectiveness. Similarly, the misuse of research materials poses threats to social movements and organizations that coordinate and sustain forms of protective accompaniment. The misuse of information can be used here to not only identify and threaten such work, but also to discredit its validity or damage the reputation and support of those working as human rights defenders. These concerns are real, and I am cautious about what I share publicly, and I encourage you to do so as well. When working with any group that may be targeted by violent actors (for whatever reason), there is a need to take serious precautions to ensure that research data cannot be used against them in any way. In this sense, it is crucial that our ethical commitment to do no harm with our research should extend to ensuring that others do not use, and are not able to use, our research to do harm to others. This requires caution regarding not only what we say publicly, but also how we keep data private.

Notes 1  Price’s (2011) book Weaponizing Anthropology describes this debate in anthropology. There are now several books on the weaponization of various disciplines, including Weaponizing Maps by Bryan and Wood (2015). 2  The manuals are available on the website of SOA Watch at www.soaw.org/soa-manuals/ (accessed March 30, 2020).

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Recommended Readings Bryan, J. and Denis, W. (2015) Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas. New York, NY: Guilford Press. This book looks at the long history of military misuse of participatory mapping to do harm, particularly to Indigenous peoples. It is particularly useful for those interested in participatory mapping. Sheppard, E. and James, T. (2016) ‘Forum on geography and militarism: An introduction’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106 (3): 503–5. This introduction to a special issue discusses in depth the past and current relationship between geographers and the military. The special issue itself includes an article by Shannon O’Leary about her special forces class mentioned in this chapter. Wainwright, J. (2013) Geopiracy: Oaxaca, Militant Empiricism, and Geographical Thought. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. This book discusses in depth the Bowman Expeditions scandal mentioned in this chapter. It explores a range of statements from research subjects in Oaxaca, Mexico, affected by this case.

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Part 2

APPROACHES

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13 Radical Geographies Raksha Pande

Key Points ••

Radical geographical work has often drawn upon Marxist, feminist, and anti-racist perspectives to shape research.

••

Key to radical geographical work is not only understanding social and political problems but also finding solutions to them.

••

Radical geographical research poses a number of complex ethical chall­ enges associated with how research engages the voices of marginalized groups.

Introduction The research done within the radical geography paradigm is influenced by the classic Marxist invocation that while ‘the philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it’ (Marx 1975 [1845]: 423). This implies an engagement with research aims that not only seek to identify and understand societal problems but also are involved in finding solutions to them. The scholarly identity underpinning much radical geographical research is that of an academic-activist. This is to say that it is about doing research which involves a quest for social justice and the promotion of an emancipatory and progressive political agenda. This chapter will begin by outlining the origins of radical geography; it will then highlight some key research themes in this area, before discussing the main ethical challenges involved in doing radical research. Radical geography in the Anglophone world traces its roots to the 1970s. It emerged as a response to the changing social and political context of the

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time (dissent against the Vietnam War, anticolonial and anti-racist struggles, and the 1968 student protests in France) which was characterized by a growing unease about widespread social and economic inequality, racism, sexism, and the threat of nuclear war. In addition to being a product of the radical political climate of the 1960s, radical geography also emerged as a critique of the conservative positivism of the quantitative revolution in geography. The quantitative revolution had sought to recast geography as a spatial science where measuring and identifying human–environment interactions in purely quantitative terms were seen as the main aims of the discipline. Geographers increasingly became disenchanted with this approach as they wanted not just to record social problems, but also to understand their causes and identify solutions. Radical geography was thus born out of this two-fold response to the changing political context of the world and the departure from quantitative and deterministic approaches within geography (although see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). From the start, Marxism became the underpinning philosophical paradigm driving radical geographical approaches. Marxism outlined a method of socio-economic analysis that focused on class relations and on promoting a radical economic and political programme of working-class emancipation. Deriving from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, most famously their 1848 work The Communist Manifesto, Marxism critiqued the development of capitalism and the forms of class exploitation that enabled wealth to be extracted from an oppressed proletariat and accumulated by a ruling class of bourgeois business owners, merchants, and industrialists. In pointing to the contradictions of capitalism as a mode of accumulation based upon inequality and crisis, Marxism argued for a radical reworking of socio-economic conditions. This was premised upon the proletariat gaining ownership over the means of production, thereby more equitably distributing the products of their labour and ushering in a model of communism based upon principles of equality over a capitalist desire for accumulation. While this brief outline does little justice to the multiple complexities of Marxism (see, for example, Singer, 2018), it is these key strands that were critical to the development of radical geography. Marxist ideas were taken up by a range of geographers keen to explore forms of social and economic inequality throughout the 1970s and 1980s. David Harvey’s Social Justice and the City (1973), Doreen Massey’s Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production (1984), and Neil Smith’s Uneven Development (1984) were all important examples of a turn to Marxist analysis. In each case, these texts draw on a Marxist focus on class relations and the inequities of capitalist accumulation to critique present conditions – of urban development in Harvey’s case, of neoliberal globalization in Smith’s, and of how economies of production operate in Massey’s – and to propose more socially just responses. It is this dual approach to the politics of inequality, concerned with both analysing present forms of exploitation and with proposing radical alternatives, that shaped much radical geography.

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However, as geographers began to engage with political and social questions that extended beyond considerations of social class and inequality, and into discussions of race, gender, colonialism, sexuality, and the environment, they also discovered the limitations of the Marxist approach and the solutions it proposed. These limitations were highlighted by the political context of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union marked not just a period of transformation across much of central and eastern Europe, but also the apparent failure of communist regimes. Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) book The End of History and the Last Man marked this moment in particularly triumphalist style, arguing that the failure of the Soviet Union signified the ‘victory’ of liberal democracy as a political system, and of capitalism as an economic model. While reflecting a narrow and heavily Eurocentric reading of history, these arguments did nonetheless highlight a moment in which Marxist ideas were seen to carry less weight in political discussion. Within radical geography, critiques of Marxism emerged most clearly from feminist geographers (see Kobayashi and Peake, 1994), who argued that a concern with class-based analysis only, served to overlook the ways in which class oppression and exploitation intersect with systems of patriarchy and gendered oppression. These approaches meant considering the intersectional nature of different forms of oppression and exploring radical alternatives that did not rely on only addressing one, singular site of identification or exploitation. Black and anti-racist scholars were especially influential to the development of intersectionality, having evidenced how the experiences and marginalization of Black women were repeatedly sidelined by research that failed to account for the ways in which racism and sexism overlapped and intersected to produce unique forms of marginalization (Crenshaw, 1991; Hancock, 2016; Hopkins, 2019). Similarly, throughout the 1990s, postmodern and poststructuralist approaches led radical geography to more fully consider and account for more subjectivity-driven epistemological foundations derived from feminism, anti-racism, and postcolonialism, as opposed to the determinism of Marxism (Massey, 1994; Rose, 1993; Soja, 2010). In this context, radical geography is no longer a stand-alone field within human geography it draws its inspiration from a wider foundation of subfields such as feminist geography, geographies of ‘race’ and racism, post­ colonial development geography, and participatory action research (see Lobo et  al., Chapter 15 in this volume). In fact, it would not be wrong to argue that most radical geography research is now done under the aegis of what is termed ‘critical human geography’ rather than ‘radical geography’. The change in nomenclature also reflects the marked tension that has affected radical geography approaches from their inception – namely how to reconcile the activist identity with that of a scholar and the related demands of neoliberal academia. This means that much radical geography work sometimes can be limited to scholarly critique rather than being explicitly interventionist in its approach. Despite these tensions, it is important to recognize some

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of the central threads running through radical geographical research in its various guises. The central themes driving much radical geographical research can be divided into three main approaches which (a) address inequalities arising out of neoliberalism (b) promote scholar activism (c) employ participatory approaches to research. These approaches will be addressed in more detail in Chapters 14 and 15, but I will introduce them in turn by discussing one key example for each.

Addressing Inequalities Arising Out of Neoliberalism A concern for why structural inequality and uneven development exists and how it can be addressed has been central to the work of many radical geographers (Gibson-Graham, 1996; Massey, 1984; Smith, 1996). A key example of this research can be seen in the work of geographer Jane Wills. She has tracked the development of the living wage campaign since it was launched by London Citizens in Walthamstow, East London, in 2001. As an economic geographer, she has examined how subcontracting practices, whereby workers are hired through intermediaries such as temp agencies or franchises instead of being directly employed by the organization concerned, depress wages for workers, while increasing the profits of private companies. Her communitycentred research on in-work poverty (a result of the minimum wage not being enough to cover the basic costs of living) involved working with people who were directly affected, such as the cleaners at her then institution, Queen Mary University of London, to build a business case for a living wage (a geographically indexed wage that more accurately reflects the cost of living in different cities). She not only researched the phenomenon of the living wage but also worked with community organizers such as London Citizens to provide advocacy and policy evidence in support of a London living wage (Wills, 2008). Her work is an exemplary case of radical research which was successful in its aims (5000 cleaners in London are paid a living wage as a result of the campaign) but it also underscores the importance of academic engagement with community organizers.

Promoting Scholar Activism The scholarly identity of the academic-activist is the bedrock of much radical research. This involves a reflexive recognition on the part of academics that they cannot just be armchair critics but have to actively take part in promoting social change. This has meant not only working with community organizers to influence formal policy-making but also making radical interventions to address key social issues (e.g. the work of Kye Askins (2009), Jenny Pickerill (2009), and Paul Routledge (2002)). A key example of an academic-activist is the life and work of Richa Nagar, a feminist geography professor, based in

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the USA. Nagar has worked with the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, a movement of farmers and labourers, in a multi-sited community theatre project (based in Mumbai, Lucknow, and Minneapolis) called Parakh, with Mumbai-based artist Tarun Kumar. Parakh brings together amateurs and professional actors to reflect on social issues through literary texts and through their own stories. Nagar explains her ethical engagement with storytelling – each member of the collective does not merely listen to the story of another, but also asks: ‘What is my ethical responsibility as a receiver of this story? What can I offer to become an ethical receiver of the story?’ (see http://richa.nagar.umn.edu/pedagogy/alliance-work). Her scholar activism has radicalized researcher–participant collaborations in ways that have sparked critical conversations in the academy about globalization, gender, race, and development (Nagar, 2002).

Participatory Approaches to Social Research Radical geographers have also been influenced by participatory action research (PAR) to work with interested groups and communities by asking what kind of research and outcomes they think are needed (Cahill, 2007; Kindon, et al., 2007). Participatory geographical research involves working with interested communities who are actively involved in developing the aims and objectives of the research to find answers and solutions to problems that they themselves have identified (see Lobo et  al., Chapter 15 in this volume). Caitlin Cahill’s work is an excellent example of participatory research. She is a communitybased youth studies scholar, who has used participatory approaches with young people to ask questions and suggest solutions to urban issues of gentrification, youth policing, and racism. She has worked with young people of diverse ethnic and academic backgrounds to co-found an intergenerational social justice think tank in Salt Lake City, Utah, called the Mestizo Arts & Activism Collective (https://maacollective.org/). The think tank acts as an activist community for young people to research the questions that they wish to investigate, in order to develop and implement action plans to bring about change in their communities. By questioning the cult of the expert, participatory approaches are concerned with disrupting the hierarchy implicit in the knowledge-making exercise by democratizing the research activity and questioning the purpose of purely academic research.

Key Ethical Issues in Radical Geography Research: A Call for Ordinary Ethics Ethics are not just a problem of knowledge but a call to a relationship (Gayatri Spivak, 1996: 5)

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All research, to some extent, can be understood as a call to a relationship – a relationship between the researcher and the researched (the people and the issues). Since radical research aims not just to address academic questions but also to seek to have a meaningful impact on the lives of the people being researched, ethical questions are implicated at the very start of the radical research relationship. Consequently, the main ethical issues germane to radical research are bound up with the questions of how to realize and manage a meaningful, equal, and mutually beneficial relationship with your research participants. While ethical conduct in research is primarily called for to ensure that no harm comes to the participants during the research, radical research aims also require that some good is done with the research. As noted above, radical research is political. It is frequently this political agenda that establishes what ‘good’ might come from research. These political positions thus influence the conduct of radical research and provide the guiding force when faced with ethical dilemmas in the field. So, it is really important, when doing radical research, to clarify your own philosophical and ethical principles and the personal and political commitments that you want to make to your research participants. Here, the notion of ordinary ethics is useful. We are trained to think of ethics either as the purview of philosophers or associated with institutional bureaucracy aimed at following the law and maintaining university reputations (see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). For radical research, one way of thinking about ethics is to cast it as an ordinary practice (as opposed to a special consideration for ethics forms or ethics committees), one where ethical acts are implicated in everyday life and ethical action is inherent in our engagement with the world. As Lambek argues: ‘human beings cannot avoid being subject to ethics, speaking and acting with ethical consequences, evaluating our actions and those of others, caring and taking care, but also being aware of our failure to do so consistently’ (2010: 1). This notion that ethical practice is integral to the human condition can be seen as central to the conduct of radical research where the researcher’s ethical judgement is used to select the topic to be studied and is involved in every step of the research process including the writing and dissemination of the research results (see Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume). The exercise of the researcher’s ethical judgement is prospective (involved in research planning; evaluating what to study, why, how, and for whom), immediate (implicated in the doing of research; asking what is the problem in the field; is doing the right thing depending on the context), and retrospective (research writing – acknowledging the success and the failures; asking what has been done/achieved and for whom). It is therefore critically important, when doing radical research, to see ethics as work in progress: as you learn about yourself and your participants, your ethical principles and priorities may change and it is thus crucial to maintain a degree of reflexivity with regards to your own political position (see also Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume).

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In addition to working on clarifying your personal ethical stance and commitment to your research participants you also need to be aware of issues related to the concepts of voice, representation, responsibility, and failure in doing radical research.

Voice The desire to ‘give voice’ to marginalized communities is a common research aim, particularly when doing radical research with a feminist and anti-racist stance. This often involves documenting previously unheard stories of marginalization or making structures of oppression visible that have been overlooked by mainstream society. Giving voice, then, can be the first step in a radical research project. While the desire to lend voice is admirable, the question of who can, and more crucially who has the right to give voice to whom, is a key ethical issue. Very often the power relations inherent in the research process are manifest in the voice-giving project. For instance, researchers from high-income countries are better placed (in terms of project funding) to give voice to those living in poorer nations, and feminist scholars stationed in wellresourced institutions in the Global North find it easier to give voice to women in the Global South. As a radical researcher, the ethical question you need to ask yourself is why you are best placed to ‘give voice’ to your research participants other than the fact that you may have the resources (funding) and incentive (to get your dissertation or PhD) to do so. The ethical action here is not to give up on the project of giving voice (it is important that the work of advocacy and activism doesn’t always fall on the shoulders of those who are most oppressed) but to make sure that you earn the right to give voice to your research participants rather than assume that you naturally have the right to do so (see Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). To earn this right will involve the strategy of really listening to your research participants through a reflexive recognition of the uneven power balance between you and your research participants (Griffiths, 2018) and a willingness to engage in a joint political commitment to understanding and articulating the issues raised by them (Raju, 2002). Practically this may involve making sure that you make contact with already existing activists and organizations working in your field and see if you could work together with them, helping and supporting your research participants to express their own voice and to be heard in new ways. It may also involve the radical notion of co-authoring work with your research participants such that this voice is shared rather than lent.

Representation Closely related to the question of voice is the issue of cultural representation. The question here is how you will represent your research participants, in both senses of the word. First, as in re-presentation or interpretation of a culture’s

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practices, and second, as in representation or speaking on behalf of a people. Since interpretation is always involved in representation, the decisions of what will be the most ethical representation of your research and its participants sits at the heart of radical research. How will you ensure that your representation (which is normally textual) is accurate and faithful to the realities of the social context in which you conducted your research? Practically this may involve taking care with the terminology you use – consider what words and terms you will use to represent your participants. For example, one of my students, Irene Arputharaj, who works with survivors of acid-attack violence in India, has laboured over which term to use to refer to her participants: survivors or victims? In consultation with her participants, she found that the term survivor-victim was the most suitable to capture how her participants understood themselves (Arputharaj, forthcoming). Additionally, you may also wish to consider the use of words and phrases from the native language of your participants (if you are working in a nonEnglish-speaking environment) to represent them and their realities in your text. For example, in my own research, I found that while ‘arranged marriage’ was the term most often used (by media outlets and researchers) to describe matchmaking practices among South Asians, my research participants themselves preferred to use the Hindi/Urdu word rishta to talk about their marriage practices. This word can be translated into English as ‘a relationship match’, which captures the affective register of the marriage practice better than the mechanical-sounding ‘arranged marriage’. To more effectively capture my research participants’ understanding of the practice, I subsequently decided to use rishta, with appropriate translations, when writing about arranged marriages. You may also consider alternative forms of representation (in addition to text) such as visual and creative methods to more ethically represent your research participants and their cause.

Responsibility The notion of having a responsibility to your research participants is also crucial in radical research. Here the notion of responsibility is relational, highlighting the fact that by virtue of your location and the resultant relationship with your research participants, you may be implicated in the production of the very power imbalances and inequalities you are investigating. This idea of responsibility also implies that just by being part of a society and following its rules, most of us contribute to a greater or lesser degree to the production and reproduction of structural injustice, which we need to be aware of. Since, as human geographers, we research the world while also being a part of it, the ethical responsibility for radical research involves recognizing both, when we are part of oppressive structures and/or when we are being oppressed by them. As one important example, take the notion of postcolonial responsibility. If you are based in a nation that was a former colonial power and do research in a former colony, it is ethically imperative that you reflect on how you will be

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received by your research participants, as a representative of a former colonial power, and what you will do to make sure that you allow for the possibility of a relationship with your participants such that the injuries of colonialism and racism are not simply forgotten or forgiven but faced and acknowledged. This involves recognizing a situated ethics of care and accountability towards your research participants. As Spivak puts it, ‘We all know that when we engage profoundly with one person, the responses come from both sides: this is responsibility and accountability […] The object of ethical action is not an object of benevolence, for here responses flow from both sides’ (1996: 269–70).

Failure While the ethical issues of voice, representation, and responsibility discussed here are to be negotiated carefully in the conduct of radical research, it is also important to remember that the notion of failure – and its acknowledgement – is, in itself, an ethical stance. When doing research, you may not always be as successful as you might have wished because power inequalities cannot be easily overcome, undone, or even predicted. So, it is important to recognize, when you haven’t been successful, to reflect on the reasons for the failure and to learn from them. More significantly, in some instances failing to do what you had planned may be the most ethical thing to do. This is really important. When doing research that involves some form of community organizing you may find that given the social and cultural context of a situation, your radical action plan may be insensitive to local culture or may be trying to enact too much change too quickly. Here the possibility of entertaining failure as an option is itself an ethical act.

CASE STUDY: UNDERSTANDING THE FEMINISM OF THE OTHER WOMAN  My work with women of South Asian (specifically Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) heritage in Britain involved research on arranged marriage practices. When I started the research, the policy and media discourse about arranged marriages routinely portrayed women in arranged marriages as victims of patriarchal family norms where they had little to no choice in the matter. In preparation for my interviews, I thoughtfully crafted my research questions so that women would not feel uncomfortable talking to me about issues of coercion and forced marriages. As I spoke to the women, I found that none of them would talk about being forced into marriage. I was made to realize by my research participants that, just like the newspapers and government reports I had been reading, I was conflating forced marriage with arranged marriage. (Continued)

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(Continued) My interviews with the women revealed instances of agency and choice where women were not necessarily forced into marriage but had carefully negotiated the arranged marriage norms of their family to arrange a marriage of their choice. However, my academic background and political leanings to a specific kind of radical feminism (that believed in direct action through a naïve rejection of arranged marriages in favour of so-called love marriages) made it tricky for me to recognize and appreciate the narratives of choice and freedom that my research participants were talking about. More significantly, I also learned that I had not fully recognized the diversity and nuances of postcolonial feminist practices. It was only when a research participant said to me that ‘my feminism was not her kind of feminism’ that I realized my ethical failure: I had been so wrapped up in my own ‘Indian version of a Westernized middle-class feminism’ that I had not kept an open mind to recognizing that feminist action can come in many forms and that it may not always involve a complete rejection of your native cultural practices (such as arranged marriages) in favour of a more Western ideal (love marriages). One of my research participants called me out on my radical feminist unease at recognizing that she could be a feminist and still have an arranged marriage: You see I am not a modern feminist; I don’t regard men as adversaries, how can I? They are my brothers, my fathers, my uncles and my husband. I could not live with myself … being against them … it would be too much of a loss. But then again I know I can’t always live under their control … they are victims of culture too..so I had to fight, manipulate, work. Your kind of feminism doesn’t work for me it … it is too airy-fairy … my feminism is a fit-for-purpose kind of thing … though you wouldn’t see it at first with my headscarf and all [laughs]. My ethical challenge in this research then involved first opening up my heart and mind to narratives that may not fit my own politics and understanding of feminism. More significantly it involved making discursive room for the other woman’s feminism to exist alongside mine in my writing and my research. I did this first by listening without judgement when my participants spoke of respecting their father’s wishes when it comes to their marriage partner and to upholding the family honour by agreeing to have an arranged marriage. I also made sure that I was sensitive to their conceptions of feminist agency and power encapsulated in, as one of my research participants called it, ‘a feminism fit for purpose – not airy-fairy university feminism’. Epistemologically, this involved poststructuralist and postcolonial feminist analysis. Practically, it involved retraining myself in the virtues of tolerance and acceptance, which was not always easy. But, I feel that eventually I got there when I was able to represent (in writing) the women’s stories under the heading of ‘I arranged my own marriage’ (Pande, 2015), showing how routine acts of agency and different modalities of power characterized their postcolonial conception of feminism.

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Conclusion This chapter has provided a brief overview of radical geography research. It has outlined some of the key ethical issues involved in doing radical geography research from a feminist and anti-racist stance with reference to the concepts of voice, representation, responsibility, and failure. It has also shown, through a case study, how opening up a space which allows the other to exist in her own terms is crucial to radical feminist praxis.

Recommended Reading Gibson, K. (2014) ‘Thinking around what a radical geography “must be”’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 4 (3): 283–87. This paper considers how geographers have drawn on various political and theoretical traditions to propose radical alternatives to contemporary social and political conditions. Discussing relations between anarchism and Marxism, the paper offers a valuable overview of different dimensions of radical geographical debate. Smith, N. (2005) ‘Neo-critical geography, or, the flat pluralist world of business class’, Antipode, 37 (5): 887–99. This paper outlines a series of debates within geography over the nature and status of ‘critical geography’, and how for some this term denotes a radical restructuring of society, and for others has become a means to reproduce an exclusionary status quo of capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism. Spivak, G. (2004) ‘Righting wrongs’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103: 523–58. This paper considers the problematic role of human rights as a means to ‘right wrongs’ that rely upon the intervention of the privileged, and considers how focusing on ‘human wrongs’ may offer a more radical understanding of how positions of privilege and rights are constructed in the first place in ways that obscure the violence of their production.

14 Activist Geographies Anthony Ince and Richard J. White

Key Points •

Activist research faces particular ethical challenges, often due to the position of the researcher as a supporter of, and active participant in, the group being studied.

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Working with large groups and movements with fluid membership and high turnover can add additional complexity to core ethical issues.

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When designing and conducting activist research projects, it is essential to emphasize a mindful sense of solidarity to the group or cause as an ethical commitment.

Introduction: What is Activist Research? The first question we might usefully ask is ‘What is activism?’ At a fundamental level, an activist is a person who demonstrates a commitment to act in order to achieve desired goals. Activism tends to embody a vision as to how the world, or certain parts of it, ought to work. This may be a conservative vision (to prevent change) or a transformative vision (to enact change), but some kind of future-orientated goal usually drives activism. What we usually term ‘activist geographies’ tends to focus on participation in groups and movements as praxis and a method of study. Activism has traditionally been seen as anathema to the ‘objectivity’ and ‘rigour’ of academic research, yet the voices, stories, and experiences that emerge through researchers engaging directly with activists and activist movements are of tremendous significance and value. Indeed, as well as pushing geographical knowledge forward in new critical directions, activist research

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has enabled geography to have a greater relevance beyond the academy, creating new, potentially empowering ways of interacting with ‘publics’ that are all too easily ignored. A growing interest and acceptance of academic participation in movements and campaigns as a research method is, however, not without difficulty, especially in relation to ethics. In particular, the identity of ‘the researcher’ is completely recast: they become an active component of the research topic; and interviewees and participants become allies, or even friends, rather than passive containers of knowledge ripe for ‘extraction’. The research itself is no longer merely a distant analysis of dynamics, relationships, and causality, but an effort to somehow strengthen or support a group or cause. This chapter explores a number of these ethical challenges, and suggests ways of addressing them. Before doing so, we give a brief historical sketch of activist geographies, leading to a focused discussion of what activist research actually is.

A Brief Genealogy of Activist Geographies It may come as a surprise to discover that activism is embedded at the very roots of geography. While many well-known pioneers of geography were complicit in the expansion of colonialism, capitalism, and state-building (e.g. Ferretti, 2017; Kearns, 2004), other contemporaries were highly critical of such complicity. Perhaps the earliest of these ‘activist geographers’ (although the term was rarely used before the 1990s) was the French anarchist Élisée Reclus (Ferretti, 2013). Alongside writing numerous academic books, Reclus was engaged in radical social movements ranging from anti-marriage activism, vegetarianism, and radical newspapers, to participating in the Paris Commune of 1871. It was Reclus’ protégée, Peter Kropotkin, who most consciously bound geography and activism together. Kropotkin had served in the Russian army in Siberia before turning to anarchism, and he spent much of his scholarly life supporting struggles, in exile or on the run, while producing geographic research that sought to produce a scientific basis for a more libertarian and egalitarian society (e.g. Kropotkin 2009 [1902]). After Kropotkin’s death in 1921, and a long period with few activist currents in geography, it was in this spirit that a new generation of geographers took it upon themselves to reanimate geography with an activist orientation. Unlike the anarchism of Kropotkin, Reclus, and their collaborators, this new generation was inspired chiefly by Marxism. In the late 1960s, in tandem with the more purely academic work of the likes of David Harvey and Richard Peet, and in the midst of a wave of new social movements around economic, gender, sexual, and environmental justice, a geographer called William Bunge established the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute. Bunge and his students inverted the traditional model of research by bringing the field study site to his own working-class neighbourhood. Throughout this experiment,

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Bunge designed his research to support the struggles and movements that were erupting in the neighbourhoods and workplaces around him, surveying and mapping urban inequalities in ways that had never been done before (Bunge, 1977; Heynen, 2013). With the rise of feminist, anti-racist, and postcolonial geographies (see Pande, Chapter 13 in this volume), the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a notable increase in the extent and nuance of geographic engagements with activist groups and agendas. Significantly, the global ‘anti-capitalist’ movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s provided an empirical focus for these conceptual and theoretical developments to crystallize, and a huge expansion of activist research took shape around the diverse causes and approaches within this ‘movement of movements’ (see Notes from Nowhere, 2003). Here geographers such as Routledge, Pickerill, and Chatterton sought ways of using research as a weapon for the struggles in which they were already embedded. In contemporary geography, this long tradition of critical perspectives, allied with a renaissance of anarchist geographies (Springer, et al. 2016), have led to a rich field of activist work, alongside a diverse theoretical and conceptual toolkit with which to understand, analyse, and articulate the many complexities of activist research. Given this breadth and depth of thinking, it is important to consider the nature of activism and its relation to research practice.

Activism’s Blurred Boundaries As a practice, activism can be an important part of civic and democratic participation, and the primary means for ordinary people to have an impact on the world beyond voting and lifestyle choices. However, the notion of activism itself has come under scrutiny among geographers for the exclusionary nature of its binary distinction between ‘activist’ and ‘non-activist’ – the implication being that the activist is somehow morally and politically superior to those perceived as passive, apolitical, or apathetic (e.g. Maxey 1999; Shukaitis and Graeber 2007). Some have even called for geographers to ‘give up activism’ as a label for politically engaged research in order to destabilize this false binary and open ourselves more fully to the importance of listening to and engaging with ‘non-activist’ perspectives (Chatterton, 2006). Responding to this challenge, geographers have undertaken various positions within critical research, including an orientation to the borderlands of what constitutes activism or non-activism. Examples here include Taylor’s (2014: 306) research and involvement with a local currency group who ‘generally did not describe themselves as activists’, and McLean and Fuller’s (2016: 580) reflections on individual actions and practices on climate change that ‘may not always be conceptualised as activism’. Critical scholars continue to contest this clumsy binary between ‘activism’ and ‘academia’, in which researchers wrongly perceive the world as divided

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between the ‘ivory tower’ of the university and the messy world ‘outside’ (e.g. Lees, 1999). This reading fails to accommodate the position of universities as part of a meshwork of diverse institutions and actors, including the state, charities, businesses, social movements, communities, and ecosystems. Research can be a part of activism if we refuse and question these boundaries and undertake our research in ways that are oriented towards action (Halvorsen, 2015). Activist research therefore requires sensitization towards questions and dilemmas that other methods may not necessarily encounter. This is because the relationship with research subjects is shaped by the common goals, perspectives, or strategies that bring activists together. These bonds are forged through shared ethical sensibilities, but the positionality of being a researcher creates tensions, frictions, and challenges, as well as opportunities (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). For the rest of this chapter, we explore some key ethical dilemmas and questions specific to activist geographies, addressing the multiple factors that need to be considered in this challenging but immensely rewarding area of research.

Ethical Dilemmas in Activist Geographies: Power, Positionality, and Participation Activism is ultimately about power: getting it, fighting it, maintaining it, shaping it, or dismantling it. But power relations operate within social movements and activist groups too, and it is essential to be mindful of how the position of the researcher fits into this matrix of relations. Many discussions of research ethics in this book and beyond address the issue of researcher positionality (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). In an activist context, positionality is magnified by the activities and risks involved in activism. Consider a hypothetical example of activism: a campaign against the closure of a women’s health clinic. A working-class woman with children might not have the financial capacity to pay for additional childcare, meaning that she might be less able to participate in the campaign. Think also about the risks to her livelihood if she is arrested or identified by the press; if she lost her job, her ability to cope financially would probably be less than a more affluent counterpart. The positionality of the activist researcher therefore requires especially careful thought. Depending on different positionalities, people’s experiences of institutions such as schools or law enforcement can be hugely varied, and it is especially important to recognize a diverse range of viewpoints not only as valid data for research purposes but also as valid life experiences. These issues are especially pronounced when different oppressions (e.g. class, race, gender, sexuality) intersect in activist groups. Many activist groups sometimes engage in illegal activities, which is often a by-product of their status as ‘outsiders’ in relations of power and governance. This question of how researchers should negotiate illegal activities ethically is fundamental, yet guidance here can vary considerably. It is instructive

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in the first instance to find out how your university research ethics guidelines address this. Is the question of legality addressed explicitly and in depth? Or, if mentioned, are ‘legal’ requirements mainly related to compliance with data protection legislation? As an excellent illustration of the former, the University of Sheffield (n.d.) in the UK explores in detail the dilemmas that researchers may encounter. They suggest that ‘[a]s a private member of society, there is, however, no general legal obligation in the United Kingdom to report to the relevant authorities all illegal activity that one observes or learns about. However, there may be moral obligations to report [illegal activities]’ (n.d.: 1). In the final summary, the document refers to a ‘general principle […] to report to the relevant authorities any actions or planned actions, discovered during the course of research, which they believe are likely to result in serious and immediate harm to others. Beyond that, however, much will depend upon a researcher’s own moral compass and judgment’ (n.d.: 2, italics added). Using one’s ‘moral compass’ is complex in practice, especially since divulging information could directly contravene the ‘duty of integrity and confidentiality’ that is often enshrined in laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume). A sensible and practical approach that may help avoid such potentially problematic dilemmas can be found by recognizing that ‘this duty of confidentiality may be negotiable in that it requires the confidant not to disclose information unless authorised to do so and only in ways agreed’ (Corti et al., 2000: n.p., emphasis in the original). With this in mind, it becomes essential that the activist researcher clearly identifies boundaries and expectations in terms of the information sought, how this information will be used and so on, and that this will be foregrounded as part of obtaining a respondent’s informed consent (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). In the intense spaces and activities of activism, some of the most difficult ethical dilemmas can in fact concern personal relationships such as friendships. Traditionally, research is conducted through maintaining a sense of ‘distance’ between the researcher and subject – the researcher is usually an observer, external to the situation studied – but when participating in groups and movements, the solidarity that binds participants together creates new dynamics between the researcher and the people they are researching. It is important to ask yourself, for example, how close friendships with other activists might affect the stories you tell, the things you notice, and the issues you grapple with in your research. Finally, despite the many ways in which researchers can deliberately or inadvertently place themselves in positions of authority or privilege, there are also ways in which the researcher – especially student researchers – can be excluded or disempowered. As we will see, researchers can be treated with considerable suspicion, especially in radical groups that are sensitized to how power can be used to oppress others, and among groups with negative experiences

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of undercover police or journalists. Moreover, another reason to be mindful of how you negotiate personal relationships among activists is that errors of judgement, personal disagreements, differences of style, or social cliques can lead to a challenging environment for the researcher.

Reflexivity and Consent Perhaps one of the most difficult ethical issues relating to activist geographies is that of consent. While issues of consent are common to most research projects (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume), what is most likely to set activist research apart is the matter of gaining consent from collectives. When working with large groups and movements with fluid membership and high turnover, ensuring that participants are informed and agree to your research can be problematic. The researcher’s job in the consent process is most certainly not to persuade the broader collective to allow the research to go ahead. Rather, think of this as an iterative process of emergence over time: you bring your proposal to the group, they discuss and debate its merits and drawbacks, then on the basis of their feedback you return later with a revised research plan; as this process continues you have a proposal that is acceptable to both you and the group, keeping in mind that the risks taken by others (and the group as a whole) are likely to be greater. Once the research has been approved, it is good practice to continue ‘checking in’ – updating others on research progress, asking for feedback, and exploring new ways to improve the research design. Although individual consent forms continue to be important when conducting interviews, as an active participant in a group with a common purpose, collective consent is not recorded using this individualized method. This is because the decision to allow the research to go ahead is ultimately a collective one. The site of consent-seeking is therefore important, and generally formal meetings are good spaces in which to have these conversations, since decisions and debates are usually recorded in minutes which are distributed to all participants, including those who were absent. One must be wary, however, of the time constraints in meetings, and practical decisions relating to the group’s core activities (e.g. planning actions, discussing strategy, dealing with press enquiries) should always be prioritised. In broader movements with no clear organizational ‘centre’, full, informed consent is generally impossible. In these circumstances, there will nonetheless be moments of convergence (e.g. conferences, fundraisers, demonstrations) where it will be possible to at least informally speak to individuals and groups about the research. Moreover, online communication channels, especially social media, can be useful tools for communicating with large numbers of disparate individuals about the research. However, the anonymity and distance that the internet provides can lead to abnormally strong – sometimes even vitriolic! – responses from a vocal minority.

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CASE STUDY 1: GAINING CONSENT IN SQUATTED ‘SOCIAL CENTRES’ The opening case study draws on the experiences of the first author, Anthony Ince. Social centres are empty buildings that have been occupied and opened up as community-based hubs for activist groups and events. Here, activists regularly come and go, and participation in these spaces can grow and change over time. Securing informed consent from these highly transient people to undertake an activist-ethnographic study of a social centre in London proved highly challenging. The challenge was made easier though in that I initially participated as an activist before beginning the study. This meant that I had the opportunity to build up trusting relationships with individuals, as well as developing a better idea of how decision-making worked in the collective. Formal decisions were made in two ways: face-to-face weekly assemblies and online discussion via an email list. Proposing the research in both communicative spaces allowed maximum exposure to participants, and emphasizing a wish to shape the research in a suitably useful way allowed for a process of debate and deliberation to take place before collective consent was eventually given. But consent didn’t stop there: informally in conversation and at key convergences (e.g. events), I mentioned the project explicitly to ensure that new activists were informed and changing circumstances were addressed in the way the research was conducted. It was a challenging process that required considerable time and care, but when working with a group that is always in flux, consent is necessarily an ongoing process. Whatever the means through which consent is sought, it must be an ongoing and conscious process. A key part of this is reflexivity (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), which in large groups or movements might involve being mindful of cliques, informal hierarchies, and exclusions that might render consent only partial by virtue of groups and individuals who are systematically excluded from decision-making structures through their position. As such, whereas the researcher must be mindful of their own positionality within these power relations, it is essential to be aware of others’ positions too, and how they may shift over time and in different spaces. Whose voices are the loudest? Do they speak for all? How could you help quieter or marginalized individuals and groups to express themselves in decision-making processes?

Anonymity, Risk and Exposure As already noted, the risks involved in activism can be considerable – not only for individuals experiencing intersecting oppressions but for all participants. Depending on the nature and context of activism, participants may be risking jobs, friendships, homes, freedoms, physical health, or a host of other things

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they value. Much of this risk comes about through engagements with authorities and those with the capacity to inflict harm: from police, law courts, bailiffs, and political opponents, to employers or abusive partners. As such, our commitment to anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume) and the wishes of research participants should be especially robust when practising activist geographies. Be mindful that academic publications, even undergraduate dissertations, are archived and often available for public access. Every publication potentially could be a source of incriminating evidence that others could make use of (see Koopman, Chapter 12 in this volume). As an activist-scholar, working with a group or movement that has entrusted you to manage the research safely and ethically, you have a fundamental duty to protect the wellbeing not only of specific research participants but also the broader cause of which you are a part. This does not mean that you cannot challenge or disagree with others, but that the research being undertaken must not put them in any (additional) danger or trouble. At a basic level, standard precautions apply to the generation and storage of research data (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume). However, beyond this, a range of important considerations emerge, especially when working with radical groups, those taking illegal/unlawful direct action, and those under heightened threat from opponents (e.g. anti-fascists at risk of physical attack from the far-right). It is important to consider whether information such as locations, dates, or descriptions of individuals and events could be used against participants. Ask: ‘Is it really necessary to provide this level of detail to support my argument?’ Often, the answer is no. Relatedly, the use of photographs, especially with individuals’ faces visible, is generally not recommended unless it is possible to gain explicit consent from all individuals featured in the photograph, as there could be significant repercussions. If there is any doubt about whether to include a piece of information in a published research document, a good first option is to contact the individual(s) concerned and ask them. Sending a draft copy of a research paper or dissertation to participants can also be a good way of soliciting feedback and undertaking critically supportive conversations (see Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume). Beyond the illegality of some activities, there is a wide range of reasons why individuals might want to avoid recognition, including less obvious concerns such as reputation, visas, or bail conditions. If you fear that some information might make an individual identifiable and it is not possible to contact them to check, follow a simple rule: If in doubt, leave it out. Conversely, there may be situations in which individuals wish to be named (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). Recognizing and respecting the value of others’ input can be an important part of the solidaristic relationships at the centre of activist research, and it might be worth considering whether individuals should be mentioned in acknowledgements. Indeed, if they have provided substantial support and input into a project, an academic may find it

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appropriate to list them as co-authors (see Lobo et al, Chapter 15 in this volume). However, the wellbeing and safety of the collective should always come above the wishes of ‘key’ individuals where their naming would identify the wider group and others.

Analysing and Disseminating Activist Research A key dimension of activist research concerns how findings are compiled, analysed, and communicated. Academic language, debate, and publications are well-known for being exclusionary and inward-looking, so breaking down these boundaries and making research accessible and useful outside the academy is an important challenge. Moreover, academic norms push research towards a singular narrative that might inadvertently strip away some of the diverse voices and experiences to be found among social movements. An important ethical question, then, is how can we communicate in ways that are useful to social movement priorities and respectful of their diversity? There are multiple ways of achieving a relatively accessible and broadbased set of outcomes, but some key principles help with this decision. First, it is necessary to (critically) embrace the partial, or unfolding, nature of research findings. Research is a process that takes time to develop and mature, giving you the opportunity to have an ongoing process of what might be called ‘feed-forward’1 in conversation with others. It is an opportunity to ask yourself and others ‘Am I on the right track?’, ‘Are there perspectives that I am omitting?’, and ‘Am I communicating in the right way?’ Second, it is important to consider what may be most useful to the group or movement at any given time – not only in terms of content but also the medium through which the knowledge is conveyed (e.g. text, video, or other materials). This is not always easily identifiable but, through ongoing conversations with others and individual reflection and assessment of situations, it can be possible to make constructive interventions. Third, one must return to the issue of positionality, especially in relation to the medium through which communication of findings takes place. Particularly when working with a diverse group – with potentially a range of languages, education levels, and other factors – it is essential to maintain a careful balance between rigour (the validity and nuance of the points you want to make) and accessibility (the complexity of language and terms used). The notion of ‘dumbing down’ complex arguments is patronizing and often unnecessary – an individual may not know the meaning of certain words but they will probably understand the processes, issues, or dilemmas you are discussing if you articulate them well.2 Finally, remember that even if you are producing non-academic materials, as a researcher you are still bound to the key principles of research ethics. This means that informed consent, anonymity, and data security should remain paramount throughout.

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CASE STUDY 2: REPRESENTING DIVERSE VOICES AFTER THE EAST LINDSEY OIL REFINERY STRIKES  The second case study draws on the experience of a research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This project sought to investigate local people’s and communities’ understandings of globalization, and involved a five-strong research team (see MacKinnon et al., 2011) In January 2009, 800 engineering construction workers went on un­ official ‘wildcat’ strike against the use of low-paid migrant labour to replace many of their jobs at the East Lindsey Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire, UK. In the days that followed, several thousand of their colleagues across the UK followed suit, eventually forcing some substantial concessions from employers. Some strikers used the controversial slogan ‘British Jobs for British Workers’, leading to accusations of racism and xenophobia. While researching the strikes, however, it became apparent that those xenophobic individuals shown in the media were in the minority, and understandings of the slogan were diverse and complex. The task was to make this clear, as labour activists and researchers, while also remaining critical of exclusionary ‘anti-foreign’ attitudes. In response, the research team identified an online discussion forum where hundreds of participants had organized and discussed the strikes. This forum acted as a ‘digital archive’ that was already largely anonymized through forum members’ use of pseudonyms. By analysing over 200,000 words of discussion, the research team identified multiple perspectives directly from the strikers’ voices themselves, thereby being able to represent that diversity in publications. Interviews with participants allowed for cross-checking of this data to reduce the chances of over- or under-representing the significance of certain viewpoints (see Ince et al., 2015). The research produced not only academic papers but also a non-academic report that foregrounded these multiple voices, and the wider structures which the strikers were negotiating, as the basis for both activist and policy responses to the underlying issues that sparked the strikes. The approach taken was not perfect, but it indicates how thinking creatively about methods can help to represent the diversity of social movements more effectively.

Conclusion The last two decades have seen activist geographies become increasingly accepted, popular, and even ‘trendy’ (Ruddick, 2004: 235). Yet, this thing we singularly call ‘activist research’ captures a wide range of identities, practices, and methods that constitute activist geographies, and indeed ourselves as activist geographers. Certainly, the existential, political, and bodily exposure and vulnerability involved in much activist research opens us up to these many

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different possibilities and challenges. Positioning oneself as a researcher in an activist role forces us to address big questions relating to ethics and research practice. The activist researcher must be prepared to be surprised, confused, wrong-footed, and confronted in this process. They must also be prepared to confront their own assumptions, privileges, past experiences, and beliefs, and how those factors shape their analytical framing of an issue. What happens when you are faced with a diversity of voices and experiences that do not fit your singular narrative? Is it possible to be a ‘distant’ researcher when the distinctions of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, ‘researcher’ and ‘friend’, and ‘research subject’ and ‘observer’ are collapsed through visceral experiences of campaigns and struggles? In the midst of this confusion and contingency, a simple principle for ethical conduct in activist geographies is solidarity. This is essentially the recognition of commonality and interdependence between researcher and subject. It is important because it seeks to establish a relationship of equals, and institutes a commitment to reflexive, transparent research practice through sharing common goals, while also rendering supportive academic critique a valid part of democratic debate. In doing so, the activist researcher maximizes their chances of underpinning their projects with a sound ethical basis.

Notes 1  Practically, this involves generating formative feedback in an ongoing manner (e.g. commenting on drafts and working papers, or discussing in person), before completing the final piece of work. 2  The website www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html has a number of useful guides outlining how to ensure that your writing is accessible and understandable.

Recommended Readings Chatterton, P., Fuller, D. and Routledge, P. (2007) ‘Relating action to activism: Theoretical and methodological reflections’, in S. Kindon, R. Pain and M. Kesby (eds), Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation and Place. London: Routledge. pp. 216–22. This self-defined ‘confrontational’ chapter insists that all researchers should honestly reflect on their priorities and motivations: ‘Why are you doing this research?’ and ‘For whom is this research intended?’ If a genuine commitment to social transformation can be identified, then the authors offer valuable guidance to help navigate the complex challenges of how to: develop solidarities with groups or individuals; work together with others; challenge power relations; and reflect on how the research process may make a valuable contribution to wider activism. Routledge, P. and Derickson, K.D. (2015) ‘Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33 (3): 391–407. By critically thinking through the notion of situated

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solidarities, this paper reflects on the multiple challenges faced by scholar-activists and offers constructive advice and practical guidance to address them. This is an important paper for all politically engaged researchers who are looking to engage positively in activist practices and contribute meaningfully to academic discourse. Ruddick, S. (2004) ‘Activist geographies: Building possible worlds’, in P. Cloke, M. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds), Envisioning Human Geographies. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 229–46. This chapter speaks to the importance of action over words: anyone can label themselves as an ‘academic-activist’! Being or becoming an academicactivist is something altogether different, demanding: critical selfreflection; vulnerability in crossing the boundaries of (academic) privilege into everyday life; and demonstrating the necessary (political) commitment and sustained relationships with those individuals or communities they seek to help.

15 Participatory Approaches Michele Lobo, David Kelly and Helen F. Wilson

Key Points ••

Participatory research aims to democratize the research process by involving the ‘researched’ in all stages.

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Participatory research presents a challenge to hegemonic approaches to knowledge production by positioning research ‘participants’ as knowledge producers.

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Institutional ethics procedures can pose dilemmas for participatory research.

Introduction Participatory research is founded on an ethical and political commitment to collaboration, in order to counter hegemonic approaches to knowledge production within the academy. As an approach, participatory research aims to cultivate a space in which different forms of knowledge can be generated and valued. It demands continued reflexivity and attentiveness to these situated knowledges through a distinctive set of ethical engagements and commitments. As we work across boundaries and scales in developed/developing worlds, participatory approaches recognize that those who have experienced oppression, dispossession, racism, violence, and socio-economic disadvantage, and the structural formations that shape them, are ‘experts’ in effecting positive change (Chambers, 2006; Nagar, 2014; Pain, 2004; Sultana, 2007).

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In this chapter, we offer an introduction to participatory approaches and the common methods and techniques of participation. We then turn to consider some of the limitations of participation and the dangers that are involved when assumptions are made about the ability to undermine hegemonic structures of power. Having offered an account of some of the challenges that participatory approaches present, we explore dilemmas that arise when the ethical commitments of participatory research clash with the requirements of procedural ethics, producing tensions in ‘the field’ that call for care and responsibility. We conclude with some reflections on participatory research in northern Australia, examining how the ongoing brutality of racism, displacement, and dispossession in a white settler society are experienced and endured by diverse migrant and Indigenous groups.

Participatory Research and the Call to Action There are a range of theoretical resources with radical lineages that call for involving participants in every stage of the research process, from the generation of questions and the identification of foci, through to the analysis and implementation of strategies for change (Gibson-Graham et al., 2013; LahiriDutt, 2011). Such a stance presents a challenge to normative conventions of research that tend to present the researcher as an expert in search of truths, while participants become the passive object of study (Halse and Honey, 2005). In order to create more collaborative projects, participatory approaches recognize the varied skills, knowledges, and histories that all participants bring to the table, while also placing an emphasis on building capacity and skills so that participants are positioned as co-researchers (Bawaka et  al., 2016; Sultana, 2007). Participatory research thus tends to be embedded and local given its focus on situated knowledge and a concern for enabling change on participants’ terms – a form of everyday activism that positions the researcher as a learner. Although participatory approaches often centre collaboration, some researchers prefer ‘participatory action research’ (PAR) to not only emphasize dialogic engagement but also give prominence to enacting ‘research-informed change’ (Pain et al., 2007: 29). As Mason (2015: 499) describes it: The entangled relationship between PAR’s epistemology and ontology can be summarised as seeking to understand the world by trying to change it for the better, where ‘better’ is defined by the particular research partners but typically involves their empowerment in the teeth of oppression. If action and capacity-building is a key component of PAR then ‘success’ cannot be measured by outputs alone, but by the process, capacity, skills, dialogue, and relationships that have been facilitated (Basnet et al., 2020; Pain, 2004). Participatory approaches draw on a wide range of research methods and

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can often involve training participants in research techniques so that everyone can participate in the collection of data. The choice of research methods is often shaped by a concern for securing maximum involvement, making it necessary to question who is involved, what skills they have, and how diverse people can be brought together. For example, in her work on austerity with unemployed and precariously employed women in the UK, Raynor (2018: 694) demonstrates how collaborative theatre-making can prioritize the lived experiences of ‘otherwise “less-heard” and/or marginalised research partners’ through exploring how stories are co-developed, made visceral, and enlivened through a range of performance practices. Participatory techniques might therefore include interviews or focus groups, but also diagramming (Kesby, 2000), mapping, storytelling, auto-photography, and participatory video and arts practices (Hickey-Moody and Harrison, 2018; Kinpaisby 2008). These methods and techniques are often used to overcome obstacles to participation, which might include varying abilities, cultural differences, literacy levels, and a preference for communicating and engaging in ways that don’t rely on ‘talk’ (Lobo, 2018; Pain, 2004).

Limitations Participatory research is not without critique. Important interventions have underlined the various ways in which so-called ‘participatory’ work can be an illusion that masks uneven power-relations that can be further exacerbated through ‘participation’ (Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Jordan, 2009). It has been noted that this is a common occurrence when participation is reduced to ‘a set of techniques’ instead of a genuine commitment to collaborating with communities in partnership (Cahill et al., 2010). At the same time, Gallagher (2008) has challenged simplistic conceptualizations of power and empowerment, arguing that critiques of participation need to reflect on the multiplicities of power relations and their subversion. For example, in the context of children’s geographies, he highlights the ‘complex multivalency of power’ and notes how researchers might be underprepared for ‘the ways in which children may exploit, appropriate, redirect, contest or refuse participatory techniques’ (Gallagher, 2008: 137). Such a lack of preparation, he argues, may further exacerbate the hierarchies that participatory research is supposedly designed to unsettle by insisting upon forms of participation that aren’t wanted, in the false belief that they are somehow ‘empowering’ (Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). In a further reflection on the workings of power, Kesby et al. (2007: 21) identify a variety of ways in which participatory research might go awry, such as instances where: participants might grant researchers the status of ‘expert’; ground rules for a project or activity might be imposed on participants by researchers; promises about outcomes might be used to guarantee participation; or coercion might occur if participation is seen as the only route out of a set of challenging circumstances.

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Dilemmas in the Institution It has been argued by a number of scholars that formal ethical review procedures can often present dilemmas for researchers doing participatory and action-orientated work and leave little room for their own interpretation of what it means to be ethically responsible (Askins, 2007; Khanlou and Peter, 2005). In this respect, researchers often find themselves in ‘ideologically uncomfortable spaces’, which requires that they remain constantly vigilant about the potentials to become complicit in the very systems and power relations they seek to dismantle (Halse and Honey, 2005: 2160). Indeed, as Askins (2007: 351) notes, if those who cherish PAR consider ethics as ‘emergent through social relations in place’, then how can any one person or body claim to have any kind of authority regarding ethics? Ethical codes such as those set out by university ethics committees might even have the effect of absolving researchers from engaging with the messiness of ethical decision-making, as issues present themselves because they already have ethical clearance by the time the project commences, allowing ethical practice to fall away as a core concern. In this respect, there are five chief concerns in participatory research ethics: collaboration and the status of the participant; intimacy and relationships; ownership of knowledge; timeframes; and writing/publishing.

Collaboration and the Status of the Participant Many advocates of participatory research place importance on collaboration, whereby the research engages with communities in order to ‘mutually identify a problematic, uncover its sources, and then negotiate contextualised solutions’ (Blake 2007: 412). Yet too often, as Blake argues, the process of ethical review positions research participants as ‘an object upon which research is done’ (2007: 414). Not only does such positioning make reflexive beings disappear, but also it starts from the assumption that participants ‘are always, already exploited by the researcher and harmed by the research’ thus warranting mechanisms for protection (2007: 414). While protecting participants from harm (or minimizing it) is critical to good, ethical research, the ‘at-risk’ participant only ever appears as a powerless, vulnerable subject, to be discussed by ethics committees and hearings but never invited to one as an active partner capable of negotiation and consultation. If researchers value participation throughout the research process, this creates inherent tensions. Fundamentally, any process that considers participants to be an object of study rather than an active collaborator creates a chasm between the researcher and the community with which they are working, and overlooks the complexity of social relationships. The researcher in this context is automatically granted a status above the participant in a way that stands in contradiction to the emphasis that participatory research places on disrupting power relations.

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Intimacy and Relationships As Cahill et  al. (2010: 407) have argued, much participatory action research involves intimacy and intimate relations, and working with people who in various ways are considered close to the researchers. This might involve working with friends or family (Ellis, 2007), or with the community in which the researcher is already embedded, or with relationships that have been developed over a long period of time. Yet, most ethical review procedures will require information about how participants will be recruited (thus assuming that no prior relationship exists), and often assume that no relationships will continue beyond the timeframe of the research project. As advocates of participatory research have suggested, the kinds of intimacy that are often central to action-orientated research challenge assumptions that the researcher can enter and leave ‘a field’ (Katz, 1994) or simply ‘detach’ at the end of a project (Cahill et al., 2010). Despite formal ethics procedures, in practice it can become difficult to negotiate a context in which you are researching with friends or in your own neighbourhood. How are boundaries to be managed? When are you doing the research and when have you stopped? Collaborators might be implicated in each other’s lives (Torre, 2009), and the bureaucratic processes that formalize relationships can have the effect of eroding trust (Blake, 2007). While consent forms and research information sheets are often seen as central to building trust, the introduction of consent forms can have the effect of undermining what were previously ‘easy’ relationships and creating a contract between friends that can constrain the intimacy that was central to the work and the development of the research project. For example, Chacko’s (2004) research in rural India highlights how Eurocentric research frameworks pose ethical dilemmas when knowledge is embodied and intimate relationships can emerge by chance with ‘strangers’ in the field.

Ownership of Knowledge Blake (2007) asks what is at stake when a focus on the protection of participants is reduced to a concern with anonymity. How might participants negotiate ownership over their own words and ideas? Anonymity can be essential for all manner of reasons, but it can also have the effect of writing participants out, such that they lose their agency and right to be identified as authors of the research ideas, words, and outputs (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). If participatory action research is about foregrounding collaboration and challenging the assumption that knowledge lies within the academy, then naming participants can be an important mechanism for crediting them for their knowledge. For example, participatory research in Darwin and Broome, Australia, made Lobo and Kelly aware of how the preservation of anonymity could be interpreted as disrespectful, particularly when listening to stories told by Aboriginal peoples who were keen to be identified by name (see Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume).

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Ownership is a concern that remains long after the project has ended. For instance, in the UK it is common for funders to request that anonymized data be deposited at the end of a project so that the data can be used by other researchers (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume). The rationale for such a demand is to ensure that publicly funded research can have wider benefits and impact. However, in practice, the signing of consent forms and the depositing of data transfers the ownership of words away from participants and the communities involved, such that they have no further say in how they might be taken up elsewhere or used for different purposes in different contexts. While ensuring that publicly funded research has wider use is often seen as good practice, there are unacknowledged implications that pose a different set of ethical questions.

Timeframes Because of the desire to develop meaningful collaboration and relationships, participatory research is often slow and incremental, which can be at odds with the timeframes that are imposed on research projects by universities, funders, and degrees. Indeed, as Kindon et  al. (2007: 2) suggest, the process of PAR might be considered ‘cyclical’ in that, together with participants, researchers identify a problem or an issue that requires some form of change, undertake research to facilitate action, and then reflect on this action in order to begin a fresh cycle of ‘research/action/reflection’. This kind of cyclical working often jars with institutional timeframes and assumptions about the linear development of research. In reflecting on the different time limits that are sometimes imposed upon a project, Mason (2015) highlights the importance of ‘exit strategies’ in contexts where relationships and participatory work can’t be continued. This requires reflection, for instance, on what happens when a degree is completed, funding runs out, or a job contract comes to an end. While recognizing the dangers of making assumptions about the position of the researcher as being one of privilege, Mason underlines the importance of passing on roles and responsibilities, while also considering in what ways the researcher might continue to collaborate with partners in one way or another.

Publishing/Writing Most research grants or student assignments are expected to produce some form of output. Too often such written outputs make writing as a collective ‘we’ difficult because it is the individual that is assessed and ultimately held accountable for the written piece and data collected (Cahill et al., 2010). If the knowledge is co-produced, this raises thorny ethical questions for the researcher. In some instances, these questions can be negotiated by including participants as co-authors, but this is not always an option, especially in student assignments (see Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume).

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At the same time, academics within the neoliberal university are under ever-increasing pressure to publish and are subjected to performance reviews of various kinds (see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). In these ­contexts it has been frequently noted that collaborative, community research can be undervalued (Kindon et al., 2007) and that the management of a career or degree can come into conflict with an emphasis on producing different outputs – reports, campaign materials, theatre productions – ahead of any academic publication (Pain et  al., 2007), requiring that researchers address competing commitments. Having outlined the ethical dilemmas that can arise when navigating a commitment to participatory research, the remainder of the chapter offers reflections from Michele Lobo and David Kelly’s research in northern Australia.

Participatory Approaches in Darwin and Broome In this section, Michele and David explore the challenges of engaging in participatory research in Darwin (Larrakia Country) and Broome (Djugun/Yawuru Country), two urban areas in resource-rich ‘remote’ northern Australia with histories of discriminatory policies that have dispossessed Indigenous peoples. In both instances, they discuss the research trajectories that led them to explore methods and approaches that encompass elements of a participatory approach. In doing so, they do not argue for a singular model of ‘doing’ participatory research or that they are emblematic of any such model. Rather, these cases offer reflections on how both researchers came to engage with participatory approaches in and through the negotiations of their fieldwork. For this section, special thanks are owed to the research participants, Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation, Multicultural Council of the Northern Territory, Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network, Darwin Community Arts, Northern Institute, and Charles Darwin University, Australia.

CASE STUDY 1: SEEING DARWIN Michele’s research focused on Darwin, a city that, prior to the introduction of Australia’s policy of offshore detention for asylum seekers, housed four asylum detention centres and a range of lower-security sites of community detention in ‘apartments’ and ‘lodges’. Given this carceral context, and the hostile rhetoric around asylum in Australian public life more broadly, it is no surprise that there is fatigue as well as suspicion of researchers in Darwin who make promises to ‘improve the life of the population on the ground on a daily basis’ through participatory research but rarely do, particularly if they ‘breeze in and breeze out’ from ‘down south’ (Interviews, Darwin 2012). Researchers from Australia’s southern cities like

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Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth often conduct fieldwork in the tropical north during the cooler winter months of June to August when the weather is more pleasant. Perhaps they are akin to ‘winter birds’ or sheeter pakhi, a Bengali word used by researchers in Bangladesh to describe scholars from elsewhere who avoid the hot summer or humid rainy season in tropical places when conducting participatory research. As a Melburnian and Australian woman of Indian heritage who encounters ‘in your face’ racism as well as the subtleties of white privilege, the tropical heat, torrential rain, sandflies, mosquitoes, frogs, lizards, and even large bats in Darwin and Broome felt welcoming. It was like being ‘back home’ in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) but with the privilege of air-conditioned public buses, air-conditioned research accommodation, as well as an uninterrupted provision of running water and electricity. These tropical atmospheres, encounters, and infrastructures strengthened my commitment to conducting participatory research that centred the everyday life of racialized peoples in reimagining belonging and citizenship. In this way, my research focused on exploring the everyday manifestations of race, identity, and belonging among diverse groups of Darwin’s residents, attentive to the haptic, embodied, and affective ties that emerged between them. I spent long days outdoors from 8am to 9pm walking the Darwin streets and meeting residents (including ethnic/ethno-religious minorities and Indigenous peoples) in public spaces such as beaches, parks, public squares, open-air markets, shopping centres, and community halls. ‘Hanging out’ in shady groves with ‘long-grassers’ (Aboriginal people who ‘live rough’) and travelling daily by bus made me aware of the diversity of Aboriginal languages spoken in Darwin as well as common words that we shared such as thonga, a Hindi word for paper bag. These informal conversations with residents as well as support from organizations such as Larrakia Nation (the traditional custodians of the land on which Darwin was built in 1869), the Multicultural Council of the Northern Territory, faithaffiliated NGOs, ethnic-minority organizations, as well as migrant advocacy networks, presented the opportunity to engage in interviews and focus groups. These methods provided a voice for Indigenous and ethnic-minority participants, produced in-depth insights into their everyday lives, and enabled me to reflect on power relations in the field through the process of critical self-reflexivity that was attentive to emotions (Lobo, 2010; see also Probyn, Chapter 8 in this volume). But participants were often tired of such conversations with researchers and did not always want to talk, particularly when conversations were recorded or their oral English skills did not align with dominant ‘Australian’ ways of speaking or expression. I had to think and act in ways that deviated from strict guidelines set out by institutional ethics committees. I went for beach walks with Larrakia rangers as they cared for Country as well as walks with asylum seekers living in community detention. (Continued)

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(Continued) I met ‘long-grassers’ in shady groves along the beach where I painted with them at the bi-weekly event organized by Larrakia Nation that focuses on healthy engagement and wellbeing (Lobo, 2018). I cooked and sewed with senior citizens and humanitarian migrants and participated from the sidelines at cross-cultural football matches (‘Football Without Borders’) that welcome male asylum seekers. Through the process of ‘hanging out’ at informal events, relationships of trust and care began to emerge. It was difficult, however, to gain insights into embodied encounters with people, things, and places that were part of their everyday life through ‘talk’. It seemed like ‘common sense’ to explore these visceral encounters that nourished co-belonging with human and more-than-human worlds through photographs and videos when ‘talk’ focused on outrage, anger, and despair circulated by dehumanizing government policies and everyday racism. The camera enabled residents to express affects, sensations, and intensities from these multiple worlds that were difficult to articulate in words (Lobo 2019a, 2019b), but the ethics of negotiating and conducting such research with vulnerable participants was a concern raised by the university ethics committees. It was important that I teach participants how to use a small video camera and ensure that anyone who might be captured by video photography in public spaces provide consent. I anticipated negotiating participation in the ‘field’ to be extremely difficult. Not least because this involved using a small video camera and adapting to the varied technological competencies of my participants and myself. However, in practice, this was not as difficult as I had imagined. I asked participants to use the camera to express how they felt in semipublic/public places; there was curiosity, eagerness, joy, and relief when I told them they would be behind rather than in front of the camera. Prompts used if and when required were: ‘Why do you come here?’, ‘What do you like and dislike about this place?’, ‘How do you feel in this place?’ and ‘Can you use the camera to express what you feel?’. Through this process residents of diverse backgrounds, in particular, ethnic/ethno-religious minority migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and Indigenous peoples, individually and collectively participated in producing films of events that entangled them with the many people, non-humans, landscapes, and seascapes of Darwin. The affordances of digital technologies, the ethical process of negotiating participation, and the editing process with three researchers was a creative one but also time-consuming. Collectively we engaged in producing collaborative films of 24 events from more than 300 hours of video footage, but I exercised power in exploring emerging themes and final editing decisions. Although I showed these films to the participants and minor changes were suggested, they were not involved in the actual process of editing even though they were happy to hear that I would show the films at exhibition and conference venues in Australia as well as overseas. As I continue to publish findings from my fieldwork which commenced in 2012,

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the most vulnerable Indigenous and ethnic-minority residents made me aware that it was necessary to slow down as well as perform care and responsibility in collaborative research that makes sense of the ‘maze’ of lived experiences. Rather than own this knowledge, my aim is to follow cultural protocols of acknowledging Larrakia people, traditional custodians of the land, and perform feminist geographies of ‘caring with’ (Askins and Blazek, 2017: 16; Askins, 2018) residents of diverse cultural backgrounds who participated. These gestures are important in decolonizing research that privileges Western frameworks and ways of engaging in fieldwork. As scholars situated within privileged institutions who aim to be ethical, perhaps participatory research with ‘vulnerable’ participants teaches us how to move, inhabit, and engage in collaborative research that values the agency that runs through multiple human but also morethan-human worlds.

CASE STUDY 2: BECOMING-ACTIVIST  In preparation for the field while in Melbourne, David’s research design process was typically formulaic. Labouring over reviewing the literature, making organizational connections in Broome, crafting research and ethics proposals, and scrounging for fieldwork funding marked what seemed to be a clear distinction between preparing for and doing fieldwork. Upon ‘arriving’ in the field however, it became clear that such a distinction was far less pronounced except for a drastic shift in climate, geography, and the rhythm of everyday life. The research design was constantly updated and reshaped through situations and moments in the field that demanded flexibility and reflexivity. Personal and academic life continued as I became entangled within the field, implying that ‘the field’ was not a hermetically sealed time and space, but more a bleeding continuum of fieldwork events (Katz 1994). Katz (2013: 762) argues that preparation and doing is ‘all fieldwork’; it takes a while for the researcher to realize it, but unfortunately academic institutions rarely do. Despite attentive planning and close mentoring, changes in research relationships, place contexts, and political interests meant that the design and focus of the project had to be recomposed with sensitivity to new knowledges. New knowledges and situations were precluded by the dramatic withdrawal of my organizational partners based in Broome, just as I had arrived in the field to commence gathering research material. In the fray of this moment the project necessarily became reorientated in the service of othered knowledges. These knowledges were most evidently embedded within a number of activist projects currently being performed. Thrusting myself into the politics of place, I became a supporter/ contributor of activist projects that included a movement against the (Continued)

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(Continued) forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities and another against the practice of hydraulic shale-gas fracking on Aboriginal land (Kelly, 2019). Using my body as ‘an instrument of research’ (Longhurst et al. 2008), it became necessary to embrace the mess of the moment and throw it into uncomfortable situations. I participated in public activist events and met with Aboriginal protest organizers in anxious terms on their ground, and with time to nurture relationships, the project actively and enthusiastically committed to a trajectory that ‘embraces dissensus’ (Crane and Kusek, 2014: 112). This was in part a tendency embedded within the ethos of the research – in that I was attempting to address ongoing colonial dispossession – but it was also serendipitous that I found myself in a space outside of an industry that seeks to serve the interests of Aboriginals in Broome. In the wake of disengaging with incorporated institutions, the project sought to privilege the voices and imaginations of the dissenters, a group of people who don’t quite fit within those institutional structures and who include Djugun, Yawuru, Nyginya, Jabbir-Jabbir, and Bardi people and their non-Aboriginal allies. In doing so it embraced a politics that set the scene for a disagreement with institutions and structures that quell dissent. Enveloping oneself in the messy politics of place that amplify marginal voices ‘deviate[s] from mainstream ways of conducting ethical research’ but is ‘instrumental in negotiating Aboriginal participation’ (Lobo, 2014: 21). In order to negotiate participation in this research, according to participatory action research principles, a leap of faith was required in which I positioned myself as an outsider, in spaces that centre Aboriginality. I went to the homes of participants, shared meals and drinks, went to social gatherings, and protested along-side at rallies. I performed mundane tasks such as collecting everyday provisions around Broome with one participant, which I took back to his off-the-grid home nearly 200kms out of town. I drove protest organizers from Broome to Derby in order to attend an important Kimberley Futures meeting and set up a street protest. It was in these reciprocal moments that I was able to negotiate and co-design a participant-driven mode of research. This participation required an embodied commitment that went beyond plain language statements, spoken promises, and consent forms. What I could produce as a material outcome of the research encounter would be a narrowly written and read account in the form of a doctoral thesis. The ability for this research to bring about real change, in line with the real change sought in their activism, could not be promised or predicted. It was the good will, generosity, and establishment of friendships with activists and their allies that enabled a participatory mode of action research. As fellow activists, rather than researcher and participant, the knowledge produced as an outcome of interviews and other ethnographic data was collaborative in effort. In this sense, I regarded my position as an activistscholar who aims to reconcile the deficit of traditional qualitative research

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outcomes for researched groups through ‘being useful’ (Taylor 2014). In line with principles in action research, this project sought to ‘give back’ to its participants (Kesby et al., 2007) – at first through negotiating shared objectives, but subsequently from the establishment of friendship and solidarity networks that outlive particular social movements and research projects. Years after the research has ‘ended’ (it never really does) I am still in touch with these friends; we meet if we can, and we check in to see how each are doing. Through communicating findings in publications, classrooms, and seminars, and working with other activist/advocate communities, the effects of participatory research accumulate over time and leverage further interventions that interrelate as challenges to structural inequity. For instance, in the creation of friendships, alliances, and shared ideas, I was able to continue being useful through everyday activisms in an academic institution. As Chatterton states, the activist-scholar is ‘someone who sees the value in radical education and the public debate of ideas which challenge the norm’ (2008: 421); spaces reserved for the challenging and dissemination of ideas enable this. Having allies that are embedded within the structures that have too-often perpetuated and reproduced inequalities might be regarded as an activist project. In order to enable the opportunity to give back, it was imperative that I break with the ­position o ­ f the researcher, embrace dissensus and embark on the embodied process of becoming-activist. Participatory research requires commitment beyond the normative parameters of qualitative research, be that the location of the ‘field’, the role of researcher in being ‘objective’, or the temporality of research connections. These participatory moments were precursory moments that informed the research design, which included interviews and participant-photography conducted months into the formation of connections and exchange of knowledges. They established ground rules and allowed for participants to vet and then vouch for my own politics: the personal politics of the researcher cannot be more valuable in these participatory scenarios. Participatory research of this kind involves a commitment to attuning to the political desires of research participants, and in this example, requires a commitment to becoming an activist within already established solidarity networks.

Conclusion Participatory approaches can take many forms, but what is held in common across this diversity is a commitment to collaboration and the disruption of hegemonic forms of knowledge production. As we have outlined, this commitment to collaboration can sometimes clash with the requirements of procedural ethics, raising tricky questions about the status of the ‘participant’, the negotiation of intimacy and relationships, the ownership of knowledge,

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the timeframes of research, and the production of outputs. In addition to such clashes, it is vital to ensure that ‘participation’ does not mask uneven powerrelations in the false belief that all forms of participation can be empowering. Involving participants in every stage of the research process and recognizing their varied skills, knowledges, and histories are necessarily a messy process that requires constant dialogue, negotiation, and compromise.

Recommended Reading Cahill, C., Sultana, F. and Pain, R. (2007) ‘Participatory ethics: Politics, practices, institutions’, ACME, 6 (3): 304–18. This paper introduces a special issue exploring the ethical challenges of participatory research, and the tensions between academic institutions and participatory ethics. The introduction offers an accessible account of the specific ethical questions raised by working in a participatory manner, and considers how geographers have sought to negotiate those questions in practice. Kindon, S., Pain, R. and Kesby, M. (eds) (2007) Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation and Place. London: Routledge. This edited collection offers a series of insights into the practice of participatory research, and a critical introduction to how participatory approaches are mobilized in different social and disciplinary contexts. The collection considers some of the intellectual foundations of participatory research, and some of the challenges and dangers that have been associated with a turn towards participation across the social sciences. Nagar, R. (2014) Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms across Scholarship and Activism. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. This book examines the complexities of feminist activism and scholarship, drawing on experiences of transnational research on development and its gender politics, to consider how questions of co-authorship, translation, and community engagement shape research and its diverse outcomes.

16 Indigenous Methods and Research with Indigenous Communities Renee Pualani Louis and Zoltán Grossman

Key Points ••

The discipline of geography must overcome both its distinctly colonial heritage, and its continuing relationship with power structures that define how knowledge is created and (re)produced.

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Indigenous research methods are consistent with Indigenous philosophical understandings of the world, which are generally considered bio-centric, eco-centric, and/or kin-centric in nature.

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Collaborative projects with Indigenous peoples should make the community and its own ideas and self-determination processes central to the project.

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Introduction Indigenous peoples were engaging in research long before the arrival of their colonizers. Unfortunately, too often colonizers were unable to appreciate the place-based knowledge that Indigenous peoples maintained as part of their own longitudinal studies of their interaction with the places where they live, work, and pray. As research has evolved away from the ‘imperial gaze’ that scrutinizes the exotic ‘other’, to acknowledge Indigenous participation in the co-production of knowledge, so have research methods evolved from distinct and divided roles of researcher/researched to more intimate interactions and an emphasis on forming long, meaningful bonds. When we were co-chairs of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group (IPSG) of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in 2009–10, the AAG was embroiled in a crisis over violations of research ethics by two professors at the University of Kansas who were coordinating the American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expeditions in Oaxaca, Mexico. Indigenous communities involved in the ‘México Indígena’ participatory mapping project were in an uproar because they had not been adequately informed that the project had been funded by the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, nor that the data would be shared with the US Army (Bryan and Wood, 2015; Wainwright, 2012). The IPSG critiqued the project, and we made information from both sides of the conflict available to IPSG members and the public. Rather than simply deepening the Specialty Group’s role in the controversy, we looked towards averting such debacles in the future by opening up discussion on research ethics – much of which informs this chapter – and following the path of other disciplines that are facing up to their responsibilities with Indigenous communities. At the same time as the Bowman Expeditions controversy, we noted that increasing numbers of geography students were approaching us with questions about research ethics in their existing or proposed projects with Indigenous communities. As a way to proactively address these commonly asked questions, we decided to draft the AAG Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group’s Declaration of Key Questions About Research Ethics with Indigenous Communities (IPSG, 2010),1 to which we will return in the second half of our chapter. It is important to underline that working with Indigenous communities and nations brings up many cultural, political, ecological and spiritual questions that are rarely addressed in conventional ethics boards or statements – such as collective decision-making, diplomatic protocol, and reciprocity, oral consent processes, protection of sacred sites, concepts of time and predictability, and the use of data for exploitation or repression. Conventional ethics guidelines and board processes (such as the institutional review boards in the US) have proven inadequate for building collaborative relationships, because their primary purpose is to protect institutions from legal liability and the financial recriminations of research projects. We maintain that the primary purpose of ethics guidelines (for academics wishing

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to carry out research with Indigenous peoples) should be to work in collaboration with those Indigenous communities that choose to be involved in research, in order to assist them in the protection of their rights and security. In some cases, ethics requirements are instituting cookie-cutter rules that do not fit all situations – such as requiring paperwork with non-literate populations or requiring anonymity for individuals who want their voices to be heard (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). These rules are often treated by prospective researchers as mere bureaucratic hoops to jump through, rather than understanding the meaningful need to negotiate with Indigenous peoples over the terms of research. In what follows we offer an introduction to the process of decolonizing knowledge as an important part of the discussion on ethical practice. We then offer an overview of Indigenous methods before we set out a series of questions that become important to the conduct of more ethical research in and with Indigenous communities. As we argue, recognizing the sensitive nature of research relationships with Indigenous peoples does not need to halt geographic research with Indigenous communities. On the contrary, this is the very reason geographers should begin building mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous nations: to bring more integrity to our field, and to enrich geographic enquiry. Many communities welcome researchers who work with integrity on Indigenous terms, and some have established their own boards to review research.

Decolonizing Knowledge The discipline of geography must overcome its distinctly colonial heritage, and its continuing relationship with power structures that define how knowledge is created and reproduced (see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). This retrospective process will require acknowledging how a historic sense of superiority and entitlement affects how geographical research is conducted. In the 21st century, there is a larger purpose to the re-examination of ethics protocols with Indigenous peoples. Geography – and geographers – are being tested. Will we as a community pass the test, in the eyes of Indigenous peoples? Our academic work is often full of moral ambiguities, complexities, and contextualizations. There is, however, also a time and a place for moral clarity. We feel that now is the time, and Indigenous nations are the place. The process of decolonizing knowledge requires two things. First, developing a critical understanding of how colonial-based relations of power and knowledge-production shape research practices, and second, reshaping these practices based on principles of Indigenous self-determination. These principles are outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which requires that Indigenous Peoples have ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’ of any actions that may affect their wellbeing, and makes clear that this principle applies to the taking of ‘cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property’ (UN General Assembly, 2007).

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Indigenous Methods Engaging in Indigenous research methods is a means to reshaping the colonialbased power dynamic of knowledge production. Indigenous research methods have a distinct socio-political overtone as Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith explains in her book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples: Self-determination in a research agenda becomes more than a political goal. It becomes a goal of social justice, which is expressed through and across a wide range of psychological, social, cultural and economic terrains […] The processes, approaches and methodologies […] are critical elements of a strategic research agenda. (1999: 116) To Smith, Indigenous decolonization ‘has not meant a total rejection of all theory or research or Western knowledge. Rather, it is about centring our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes’ (1999: 20). This is an important distinction to understand. Indigenous research methods are consistent with Indigenous philosophical understandings of the world, which are generally considered bio-centric, eco-centric, and/or kin-centric in nature. They can vary greatly depending on geographic diversity, professional development, and existing inter/intrasocial relationships. In her paper, ‘Can you hear us now? Voices from the margin: Using Indigenous methodologies in geographic research’, Kanaka Hawai‘i scholar Renee Pualani Louis clarifies the differences between ‘research done within an Indigenous context using Western methodologies and research done using Indigenous methodologies’ (2007: 134). They include, at a minimum, accepting and advocating Indigenous knowledge systems and positioning Indigenous community members in active decision-making capacities, from determining the research agenda to controlling the flow of information shared. Much of this can be achieved using a ‘collaborative’ research paradigm. The ‘collaborative’ research paradigm goes beyond ‘participatory’ research, by making the community and its own ideas and self-determination processes central to the project. Constructing power relations in which the academic researcher acknowledges that Indigenous communities and people also produce knowledge is key. Moreover, as collaborators Indigenous peoples are no longer treated simply as ‘informants’, but knowledge-holders and experts on particular topics in relation to their own identities, histories, environment, and definitions of self-determination. Knowledge about Indigenous peoples is not the same as Indigenous knowledge, which is held by the people themselves. Mapping Indigenous lands is likewise not the same as Indigenous mapping, which uses Indigenous methodologies. Simply put, research about ‘the other’ can be superseded by collaborative research relationships.

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Working with Indigenous Communities: A Conversation Rather than draft a statement or guidelines on proper research ethics from an authoritative position, we (the IPSG) wish to open a conversation about how to conduct more ethical research in and with Indigenous communities. We offer a shortened version of our statement (IPSG, 2010) below. We have collaboratively compiled a list of questions that we would ask of prospective researchers approaching Indigenous communities – and more importantly, what we believe researchers should reflect upon and ask themselves. This is not a mere checklist or recipe to follow, but rather an approach to doing collaborative geographic research with Indigenous communities. Just as the research needs of Indigenous communities may vary across political, economic, and environmental contexts, so too will the questions pertinent to ethical research vary. As such, the development of collaborative research with Indigenous peoples is highly dependent on the specific local contexts of people and place. Researchers must be aware that formulating ethical guidelines may involve negotiation, nuance, and sometimes contradiction. These statements and questions are intended to stimulate researchers to think before they research, and to internalize collaborative attitudes during the process of researching. Yet the primary moral principle that guides this complex process is actually quite simple: The principle of respect.

Formulating the Project The process of collaborative negotiation resembles diplomatic protocol, and in fact emerges from nation-to-nation relationships (particularly in countries where treaties form the basis of intergovernmental relations). These protocols begin with a recognition of trust and integrity, and are anchored in mutual benefits and reciprocity. If the researcher arrives in a new community to do research assuming that they will be welcomed, they are not behaving as a proper guest. If researchers assume that they are guests in the community, then they are more likely to be welcomed. Rather than approaching a community with a set research agenda, or an assumption that the research findings will benefit the community, it may be more fruitful to approach the community with a set of skills, and draft an agreement on how the skills may best be used for mutual benefit. It is necessary to approach this interactive process with honesty and humility, particularly in the case of projects that have not yet been funded. 1. Timeframes are different across cultures, and research grant timeframes or dissertation deadlines often fail to meet the needs of collaborativebased research. It is important to consider how much time has been given for the review, implementation, and completion of the project. It is also important to reflect on whether it is the academic or institutional calendar that is guiding the pace of the project or the Indigenous community’s own

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2. How much of a role does the community have in shaping the research framework? Is the research agenda too defined and time-sensitive, thus limiting the community’s input? Conversely, is the research agenda too ill-defined and open-ended to work successfully, burdening the community with too much of a role in shaping its framework? As a compromise between the two extremes, how can the researcher lay out the defined skills they can offer to the community, but leave the final shaping of the project open for the community to determine? 3. Is the process of gaining free, prior, and informed consent taking into account both individual and collective (community/legal representatives) consent? How have you ensured that the process of approval is going through the proper channels of Indigenous government or community leadership? Who is giving the permission to conduct the research in an Indigenous community and what is that person’s and/or organization’s role in the community? How do they represent (or fail to represent) the community with whom the researcher wants to work? Have the community members themselves given free, prior, and informed consent? 4. How is the project addressing written forms of consent versus oral forms of consent (such as a statement recorded on tape), which some Indigenous people may prefer? 5. Too often ethics protocols (such as institutional review boards in the US) are designed to protect the researcher and institution from legal recriminations or financial liabilities. How does the project ensure that it is protecting the security and wellbeing of the Indigenous community from any harmful effects that might arise from the research? 6. In some cases, a research project emerges from pure theory or human curiosity rather than an application to current circumstances. If your research interests are not matching the current concerns of the people who you are working with in that time and place, how are you respectfully communicating and negotiating how it may benefit them in the future, or more broadly benefit other people or communities (for example, through influencing policies or representations of Indigenous communities or peoples)?

Researcher Identities Academic researchers have the option to go beyond simply researching Indigenous peoples and cultures. They can also research the interaction of Indigenous

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and non-Indigenous societies and communities. Non-Indigenous researchers can take responsibility for studying the actions of their own communities and governments, and work with Indigenous communities to remove obstacles and barriers to the full exercise of self-determination. Non-Indigenous researchers may need to take responsibility to expose ethics violations in their own institutions, and not just wait for Indigenous peoples or organizations to object to research practices. 1. It is important to consider in what ways non-Indigenous researchers can be trained in cultural respect and sensitivity so as to inform their dealings with Indigenous communities and individuals, both in their research and other social settings. 2. Are the mentors or supervisors of the researcher fully aware of the dynamics and complexities of working with Indigenous communities? Are they asking for a clear, defined plan in circumstances where predictability is low and flexibility is needed? 3. How can the project’s research methodologies go beyond academic disciplinary methodologies and incorporate or take into account Indigenous research methodologies? (This is the path or process the Indigenous community itself would use to investigate the topic.) 4. The principle of reciprocity can extend to the sharing of knowledge. In some cases, communities benefit from knowledge they have gained from researchers. How prepared are you to share the insights of your discipline, or Western scientific knowledge, so they can incorporate or use it for their own purposes? (After all, much of Western scientific knowledge was originally extrapolated from Indigenous peoples, and then imposed as categories on them.) 5. How could you explore options for research that do not include ‘studying’ Indigenous peoples? Non-Indigenous communities or institutions are a primary obstacle or barrier to Indigenous self-determination so it may be more helpful to Indigenous communities for you to study non-Indigenous policies or attitudes. If the Indigenous community does not want you to conduct research within its community, it is important to ask how your research might be shifted to focus more on your own community, or on broader social relations, policies, and institutions that affect Indigenous peoples. 6. Are the researchers accepting funds from sources that may affect their relationships with Indigenous communities? For example, are they funded by military or intelligence agencies for projects in Indigenous regions facing repression? It is important to recognize that gathered data may undermine the communities’ security (see Koopman, Chapter 12 in this volume).

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Partnerships Indigenous scholars and communities have expressed that researchers need to form partnerships with Indigenous communities when formulating the research project, rather than presenting these communities with a formulated research plan. For instance, the researchers cannot assume that because they want to solve the political or economic problems of an Indigenous community, that the community necessarily wants them to do so. Moreover, a community ultimately decides if they want the researcher as an ally; this is not something that can be self-assigned and it may take time for a community to trust a researcher, especially because of negative historical experiences with researchers. 1. How involved is the Indigenous community (and its legal representatives) in formulating the research plan? How is the community shaping the ultimate purpose and goals of the project so it can eventually benefit them? Is it fully aware of the skills and capabilities of the researchers, so it can help set the direction of the project? 2. To what extent is the community and its legal representatives receiving full information on the forms, methodologies, funders, and sponsors of the research project? 3. Have you provided a written description of the project, written in accessible prose, that explains the project to non-academic individuals? Are you prepared to explain the project orally to non-academic individuals, and take questions about the project? 4. In situations of disputes within and between Indigenous communities, how will you deal with questions of divided leadership and direction? How does the project’s agenda seek to heal or sidestep divisions? Does it have any potential to exacerbate or widen those divisions? How willing is the researcher to engage individuals or communities that have questions about a project that has already been approved by other individuals or communities? 5. Has the project set up a research advisory group of representatives from the Indigenous community and/or government? What is the plan in place for the transfer of skills and knowledge that would enable a local Indigenous research group to take charge and eventual control of an ongoing project? 6. How will a researcher collaborate with an Indigenous community that retains its own language? Will you learn the language if requested? Will you refrain from doing so if the community wants to exercise control over its dissemination?

Benefits Benefits of the research should flow to the Indigenous partners, including acknowledgement, fair return, and royalties. Researchers should reciprocate

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for this knowledge with appropriate service to the community, and by not flaunting the knowledge that has been shared with them. Many Indigenous communities and individuals assert that it is ethical for them to have control over what aspects of their traditional knowledge or intellectual property is shared or is kept in their possession. 1. How is traditional knowledge included in the project, if requested by the partner community? Has the researcher had clear conversations with the community about which parts of the Indigenous knowledge cannot be shared with the public? 2. In situations of government oppression or hostility from the dominant population, how does the researcher collaborate with the communities in a safe way to confront these circumstances and intervene for their rights? What steps does the researcher need to take when asked to be an ally in situations of economic and political oppression? Is it important to ask whether the presence of researchers benefits the safety and security of the Indigenous community and whether the presence inadvertently draws undue attention and harm to the community? Could it draw unwelcome attention to the researchers themselves, or put them in harm’s way, and thereby divert public focus from the harm being done to the Indigenous peoples? 3. Are benefits from publications, such as royalties, patents, copyright, trademark, etc. being kept by the researchers as individuals or channelled to empower and assist Indigenous communities? How is the researcher examining their privilege when conducting research in places affected by extreme poverty and/or violence, and returning to more comfortable circumstances? Are there ways to ‘spread the wealth’, instead of merely benefiting one’s career? 4. What plan do the researchers have to highlight Indigenous expertise on Indigenous issues – establishing Indigenous peoples as experts? When researchers are approached for talks or interviews, are Indigenous leaders or community members also (or instead) invited to speak on the topic? Will the project heighten the profile of primary-source experts as well as secondary-source researchers, and will it highlight the work of Indigenous scholars as well as non-Indigenous scholars? 5. How and where will the research be published, and how will copies or presentations be provided to affected Indigenous communities? In what language(s) will the research be published? Does the researcher have plans to translate all or part of their work to make it accessible to the collaborating Indigenous community, and to make it accessible to institutions that might be able to work with the community?

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Findings Most Indigenous partners want the opportunity to review and revise drafts of the findings and have access to the final product. The form of the findings is also critically important to building cultural understandings. Quantitative data without qualitative context can create misimpressions and may not serve the needs of the community. Findings based solely on data and people-as-objects fits within Western academic methodologies and GIS mapping, but not Indigenous cultural methodologies. Instead of nouns and objects, many Indigenous languages are based on verbs and actions; they are driven by the process rather than the goal. Framing research findings in terms of ongoing processes – the means rather than the ends – can help continue the interaction with Indigenous cultural systems. 1. How are the voices and direct viewpoints of Indigenous people – in written and oral form – presented and incorporated into the findings? Is oral information recognized and treated as equal in credibility to the written form? 2. Is Indigenous knowledge being legitimized only when it corresponds to Western discipline-based knowledge, or respected as a source of knowledge on its own merits? Are subjective or experiential values of Indigenous peoples presented as their perspectives, or set aside in favour of purely ‘objective’ knowledge? Is Indigenous knowledge being presented as contested, volatile, or challenged, or as a given that is accepted within Indigenous communities? Is the researcher attempting to contrast, heighten the tension, or draw similarities between Indigenous knowledge (‘Indigenous science’) and Western science, or instead presenting Indigenous knowledge as possessing value in its own right? 3. What becomes of the research materials and findings after the research project is completed? Who has ownership of or access to the research materials? Does the Indigenous community that consented to the project have the option to revise or block the findings if it feels that it violates its security or rights? What measures are being taken so that the research findings or materials are not being made available (purposely or inadvertently) to third parties that might use the information to harm the Indigenous community’s security or rights? 4. How is the confidentiality or anonymity of research participants being fully respected and guarded – even long after the project is over? For instance, how are the details of sacred practices and locations of sacred sites being protected in either written or oral form? 5. Have community representatives reviewed the overall project findings in their entirety? Have they been given the findings in written form, and invited to an oral presentation?

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Relationships Relationships with Indigenous peoples should be maintained not simply within the confines of Western ethics or legal principles (including concepts such as ‘intellectual property’) but also within Indigenous cultural frameworks. This may mean researchers forming lifelong bonds of service, maintaining a relationship to the community, even after it no longer serves their funding or career interests. Traditional protocols – specific to local circumstances – may include reciprocity or diplomatic gifting, mutual assistance outside the boundaries of academic studies, and discussion of personal and family perspectives. 1. What are the proper channels to follow in approaching Indigenous elders and leaders? Is gift-giving or the transfer of sacred materials expected as part of making requests or recognition? Are other forms of service or material assistance desirable, even outside of the project boundaries? 2. Are you prepared to discuss your deeper personal motivations, not only the goals or methodologies of the project? Such questions may touch on your values, identities, and relationships, and include ‘Why did you get involved in research involving Indigenous people?’, ‘Who is your family?’, or simply ‘Who are you?’ Can you speak from your heart as well as your mind, directly and honestly, without dominating the discussion? 3. Are there other things that might be more valuable to the community than an academic research project? What other options are there to work in collaboration with Indigenous communities struggling for their rights and lands? Could activism, investigative journalism, lobbying advocacy, a witness presence, or service labour be more valuable? 4. What long-term relationship is being built with the Indigenous community, even after the project funding and career interests are no longer in play? How can the researcher be of service to the community in the future? Can the researcher maintain commitments to long-term relationships in an uncertain job market and life? How will the researcher deal with these commitments to people and place? In the final analysis, is the primary goal of the research project to build a relationship with the Indigenous community, and further its larger interests, or to serve the interests of academic careers or institutions? 5. Some Indigenous communities value the reproduction of knowledge – such as through intergenerational teaching – as much or more than the development of new areas of knowledge. Is the outcome of the research project solely to accumulate new knowledge? Does the project place value on revisiting and renewing established areas of knowledge, in order to reinforce community understanding?

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Conclusion As researchers, we need to figure out and/or remember why we do research in the first place. Do we want to conduct research that extracts knowledge and sees it as another ‘resource’ that can be used, objectified, and commoditized (not unlike extractive approaches to the earth)? Or do we emphasize research that decolonizes knowledge, as a process of self-determination of and by our fellow human beings? As we have argued, it is important to ask what a more sustainable and collaborative approach to research looks like: how does the research that we do ultimately help to keep knowledge in the hands of Indigenous peoples so they can continue to live on the earth? As the Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (2008: 86) writes in his book Research Is Ceremony: It is the forming of healthy and strong relationships that leads us to being healthy and strong researchers […] The reverse may also be true, in that the research process may also build or strengthen a sense of community. Through maintaining accountability to the relationships that have been built, an increased sense of sharing common interests can be established. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999: 120) expands upon the important role that respect plays in creating mutually beneficial relationships: From indigenous perspectives ethical codes of conduct serve partly the same purpose as the protocols which govern our relationships with each other and with the environment. The term ‘respect’ is consistently used by indigenous peoples to underscore the significance of our relationships and humanity. Through respect the place of everyone and everything in the universe is kept in balance and harmony. Respect is a reciprocal, shared, constantly interchanging principle which is expressed through all aspects of social conduct. The IPSG maintains that as geographers doing research with Indigenous peoples in their respective places, we may acquire funding, institutional support, degrees, publications, and the respect of our academic colleagues or supervisors by doing so. But without respect and integrity in our interactions with Indigenous peoples with whom we conduct research and receive knowledge, we actually end up with very little. Conversely, even a relatively obscure geographer can have a fulfilling career through genuinely listening to and learning from Indigenous peoples about what is most important to them.

Note 1  Numerous IPSG members assisted in the drafting of the statement at the 2010 AAG annual meeting in Washington, DC, and it was approved by our fellow IPSG board members Christine Castagna, Rebecca Dobbs, Julianne Hazlewood, Chantelle Richmond, and Ezra Zeitler.

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Recommended Readings Kovach, M. (2010) Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. This book discusses how Indigenous methodologies flow from Indigenous knowledge, and are both allied with and distinct from Western qualitative approaches. The study offers guidance to scholars conducting research in the academy using Indigenous methodologies. Louis, R.P. (2007) ‘Can you hear us now? Voices from the margin: Using Indigenous methodologies in geographic research’, Geographical Research, 45 (2): 130–39. This paper offers insight into what Indigenous methodologies entail as alternative ways of thinking and approaching research practice. It examines the historical context of research on Indigenous peoples and details how geographers can develop more ethical research relationships. Smith, L.T. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. This book calls for the decolonization of research methods. It offers an overview of the relationship between the cultural formations of research and European colonialism, and articulates a new agenda for Indigenous research with distinctive ethical protocols.

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Part 3 SUBJECTS

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17 Vulnerable Subjects Jonathan Darling

Key Points • Vulnerable subjects are individuals and groups who are seen to be particularly at risk of harm, coercion, or exploitation. •

Working with vulnerable subjects requires careful and considered attention to issues of consent, coercion, inclusion, and dissemination.

•

Much geographical work with vulnerable subjects has been driven by an explicit social justice aim of seeking to improve the lives and conditions of marginalized groups.

Introduction: Debating Vulnerability This chapter focuses on research participants who are classed as ‘vulnerable’. As a category, vulnerability is used to identify participants who may be at a higher risk of harm through research than others. Given their interest in questions of marginality, social justice, and equality, geographers and other social scientists have a long history of working with groups that may be classed as vulnerable, in part to address some of the social and economic challenges that vulnerable individuals may face. Such work has often been driven by a concern with social justice and a desire to effect positive change as a moral foundation for research itself (see, for instance, Cloke, 2002; Waite et al., 2014; Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). This has led to a growing appreciation of not just the ethical challenges that different forms of vulnerability may pose, but also the complexities of the category of ‘vulnerable’ itself. In this chapter, I outline some of these complexities and argue for the need to consider vulnerability as a dynamic and intersectional factor that requires careful consideration

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throughout the research process. Working with vulnerable subjects in research is an incredibly important commitment for many geographers, but it demands careful reflection, adaptation, and thought. This chapter aims to explore how you might go about building such considerations into your own research as an important part of ethical practice. The category of ‘vulnerable’ is rarely defined in precise terms in ethical guidelines or documents despite its ubiquity in ethics review processes and forms. Indeed, Levine et  al. (2004: 44) describe vulnerability as ‘one of the least examined concepts in research ethics’, arguing that the term has become too closely aligned with the capacity to provide informed consent to be of real value. Much of the critical debate on the status of vulnerability as a criterion within research ethics arises from the field of bioethics, where the designation of vulnerability is seen as a core concept for research practice and, crucially for public health and medical interventions (see Macklin 2003; Rogers et al. 2012; ten Have, 2016). These debates centre on three primary areas of concern. First, on a philosophical level, discussion has considered how the vulnerabilities of marginalized groups are produced through social, economic, and political structures of inequality and precariousness (ten Have, 2016; see also Butler, 2012). Second, on a more practical level, the absence of clear criteria for determining vulnerability in many ethics review processes and guidelines is argued to hinder the ability of researchers to identify how groups become more, or indeed less, vulnerable (Bracken-Roche et al. 2017; Macklin 2003). Finally, critics have also expressed concern that a turn to classify groups as ‘vulnerable’ may serve to stereotype them and enforce assumptions about their capacity, and willingness, to be involved in research (Levine et al., 2004; Luna, 2009). For example, recent debates in refugee studies have challenged the categorization of refugees as inherently vulnerable subjects, arguing that doing so risks removing the agency of individuals to make choices, engage in research, and act politically (Nyers, 2006). A singular category of ‘the vulnerable’ may therefore serve to lump together a diverse range of ethical questions and concerns and may obscure the agency of individuals. As such we should proceed with caution to consider how subjects and groups become defined as ‘vulnerable’ and with what consequences for their participation in research.

From Vulnerability to Vulnerable Subjects Despite these debates over vulnerability, the use of ‘vulnerable subjects’ as a category within ethics review processes is now commonplace, and something all researchers are likely to be asked about at the outset of a new project. As noted above, it is rare for ethics policies or guidelines to explicitly define vulnerability. Instead there is a tendency to rely on a set of characteristics or groups who qualify as vulnerable, and these are then used to inform the reflection on the ethics of working with such subjects. For example, in the UK,

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the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC’s) Framework for Research Ethics describes a series of cases in which research requires a more in-depth ethical review process, one of which is research involving: potentially vulnerable people, for example children and young people, those with a learning disability or cognitive impairment, or potentially vulnerable individuals in a dependent or unequal relationship. (ESRC 2015: 8) This is a relatively common definition of vulnerability. It indicates that the inclusion of potentially vulnerable subjects in the research process demands a closer level of critical scrutiny and ethical reflection. At the same time, it attributes vulnerability to a number of specifically designated groups of people – children, those with a learning disability, and those in a dependent or unequal relationship. While these three groups constitute vulnerable subjects, they do not exhaust this category and it is worth noting that how dependent or unequal relationships are defined is left open. Other ethical guidelines include a range of more specific groups that might be classified as vulnerable. As illustrated in Table 17.1 below, Bracken-Roche et  al.’s (2017) work on ethical frameworks used in social science and biomedical research indicate a variety of potentially vulnerable groups, alongside the key vulnerabilities they are seen to embody. This process of categorizing vulnerability in relation to specific groups, based on their assumed characteristics and qualities, is the most common way in which vulnerability is identified in research ethics. Table 17.1  Forms of research vulnerability (adapted from Bracken-Roche et al., 2017: 8) Subject group

Vulnerabilities

Children and young people

Limited freedom or capacity to consent; also vulnerable to undue influence and exploitation

Prisoners

Vulnerable to coercion and undue influence due to position within social hierarchies of authority

Patients in emergency settings

Vulnerable to harm and lack of consent due to potential incapacity to make decisions or express agency

Refugees and asylum seekers

Vulnerable due to position in social hierarchy, lack of legal status, and risk of exploitation

Homeless people

Vulnerable due to position in social hierarchy, potential dependency on charities, and risk of exploitation

Adults with learning difficulties

Vulnerable to coercion or undue influence and may be in dependent relationships with carers

People in dependent positions

Voluntary consent may be compromised by expectations of benefit or censure from superiors

People in institutional settings

Ability to safeguard their own interests may be limited by their setting, and their situation may compromise the voluntariness of consent due to a dependent status

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Most commonly, vulnerability is identified at the research design and ethical review stage when researchers are expected to answer a question as to the vulnerability, or otherwise, of potential respondents. For undergraduate students this may emerge through discussions with a supervisor, or through the choice of research topic. In my own experience as a dissertation supervisor this is an extremely common point of discussion. Given that I undertake research on forced migration and sanctuary (see Darling 2017; Darling and Bauder 2019), I am regularly in the position of supervising undergraduate students who wish to work with asylum seekers and refugees. These are vulnerable subjects due to their lack of legal status, their socio-economic position, often their lack of language skills and cultural familiarity, and the fact that asylum seekers and refugees are particularly susceptible to mental ill-health. A critical point in our supervisory discussions is thus to consider whether it is really necessary for this research to take place, and whether it is essential that asylum seekers and refugees themselves should participate in it. This is critical because the time constraints of an undergraduate study may mean that students are unable to fully commit to the demands of such research, and may lack the research experience to navigate the challenges of sensitive research (see Hopkins, Chapter 6 in this volume). I ask students: to consider whether there are other forms of research that may be more valuable, such as studying policies or representations around migration; to reflect on how they will ensure that the needs of asylum seekers and refugees are incorporated into what they are doing; and to consider how realistic it is to be able to offer something back to participants given the limited timescale of the dissertation process. This is not to deter students from such research, but to ensure they are aware of the added expectations and responsibilities of working with such vulnerable subjects. In this way, it is critical to consider whether your research may include vulnerable subjects and, as Table 17.1 illustrates, on what basis they may be considered vulnerable. Table 17.1 is not intended as an exhaustive account of vulnerable subjects, but rather serves to indicate some of the key categories of people who are often classified in research as vulnerable, alongside the reasons behind these classifications. It is important to recognize that vulnerability is not an innate quality of such groups. Instead, vulnerability might be considered a continuum, with the categorization of vulnerable subjects operating as a means to encourage us to reflect on the potential vulnerabilities of all of our respondents. In this sense, all researchers should be considering many of the questions posed in this chapter, irrespective of whether their research subjects fall, formally, into the ‘vulnerable’ category or not. With a more holistic account of vulnerability in mind, Luna (2009, 2014), for example, advocates a move away from a singular notion of vulnerability tied to a specific group or characteristic, and towards a concern with ‘layers of vulnerability’ through which to account for the multiple vulnerabilities that individuals may experience. In relation to the experiences of elderly research participants in a study of health care in Latin America, she argues

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that a layering approach demonstrates how different forms of vulnerability emerge at different points in the life-course, and how varying forms of response and intervention from researchers can address those vulnerabilities in a more specific manner (Luna, 2014). Such work serves to remind us that despite the classifications noted above, vulnerability is context-specific and, as such, some groups and/or individuals may become more or less vulnerable at different points as a result. Equally, all research has the potential to make some groups vulnerable and to expose them to harm, hence the need for clear ethical oversight and consideration. The designation of a ‘vulnerable subject’ is thus a specific means to illustrate those who are especially exposed within research, but the absence of such subjects does not mean the absence of any forms of vulnerability from a research project. This is why a case-specific and contextual approach to research is required. Building on these considerations, the next section outlines a number of the ethical issues and considerations that come to the fore when we consider research with vulnerable subjects, before providing an example from geographical work with homeless persons as a means to illustrate the various tensions around vulnerability as an ethical category.

The Ethics of Vulnerable Subjects The first ethical consideration often cited when working with vulnerable subjects is to consider the necessity of working with such groups in the first place. This is not to advocate a prohibition on working with the vulnerable, as this can be exclusionary. Rather, it is important to ask whether the research objectives you have can be met without the inclusion of vulnerable subjects, and whether the risks of inclusion for vulnerable groups are warranted by the potential benefits of the research. This means that the inclusion of vulnerable subjects in research requires a level of justification that goes beyond other sampling techniques. If the aims of the study can be met without the inclusion of vulnerable subjects, consider carefully on what basis you are choosing to work with potentially vulnerable groups and what, if any, benefits the research may have for them. Once the question of inclusion has been considered, it is important to reflect upon the implications of inclusion for the research design. As Bracken-Roche et al. (2017) highlight, when vulnerable subjects are included in research, there is a need to ensure that the design of the research is responsive to their needs and priorities. In this sense, working with vulnerable subjects requires additional reflection on the ethical challenges of the research process. Working with some vulnerable groups will require a criminal records check that needs to be completed before any research is undertaken. For example, in the UK, a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) clearance check is required. This process checks the criminal records of researchers to ensure that they do not have a history that would make them unsuitable for work involving children or vulnerable

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adults. This level of additional scrutiny and consideration needs to therefore be built into the research at an early stage in order to allow time for relevant checks to be undertaken before the research can begin. In this process of reflection, a number of key issues should be considered that specifically arise from the vulnerable nature of research participants. First, it is critical to consider what makes an individual or a group vulnerable in the first place. Recognizing the form of vulnerability an individual may be subject to, and how this affects their potential relationship to the research process, will enable a greater degree of responsiveness to the needs of vulnerable subjects. At the same time, there is a need to be sensitive to the fact that many participants may not consider themselves ‘vulnerable’ and would challenge such a designation. In these contexts, being aware of your own presumptions of vulnerability, and how these might stand in contrast with procedural definitions and/or how research subjects understand themselves, are critically important. Asking yourself what it is you know about your research subjects, what assumptions you are making at the outset of the research, and how your research may serve to make some individuals more or less vulnerable should be part of the research design process. Second, vulnerable subjects will often require specific measures around questions of informed consent to ensure their safety and inclusion within a research project (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). For example, some vulnerable groups, such as refugees, may be resistant to recording informed consent through a signed consent form. This may be due to fears of identification and documentation, or of how such documentation may be used based on previous experiences, and in such cases alternative forms of consent may be sought. In my own research, options include gaining verbal rather than written consent or asking a third party to witness consent without the need to identify the participant directly (see Darling, 2014). At the same time, many vulnerable subjects should be given an extended period of time in which to make decisions on participation, especially those who may be susceptible to undue influences or who are easily influenced, and all such requests for consent should be decoupled from any institutional or support context. This is particularly important where researchers have accessed potential participants through a charity, institution, or service provider, and where participants may be dependent on that organisation for their wellbeing. For example, in research with homeless people in the UK, Cloke et al. (2011) worked with a variety of homeless charities and drop-in centres to explore relationships between volunteers and homeless service users, and they interviewed both groups in doing so. Given that Cloke et al.’s contact with their homeless participants was facilitated through drop-in centres, it was critical that they presented clear information on their research which outlined that it was independent of the drop-in centres and the services provided there. This meant avoiding a situation in which homeless individuals might feel under pressure to consent to be part of the research or risk losing access to services that they rely upon. Being clear as to the independence of any research is vital to avoid potential coercion in the

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recruitment of participants, and to managing expectations of the research and its potential benefits for participants (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume). Alongside these relations of dependency, in contexts where research involves some level of unequal relationship that may affect the ability of a subject to offer free and informed consent, researchers are often advised to encourage participants to discuss their participation with someone who can support them in making their decision about involvement (Macklin, 2003). A further key concern is that, given the increased risks associated with participation for vulnerable subjects, their inclusion is often argued to carry greater expectations about the outcomes of any research and where the benefits of such research should lie. In this vein, a number of research councils argue that vulnerable groups in particular should be given clear opportunities to see its outcomes and benefit from research (Bracken-Roche et al., 2017). This commitment to ‘give something back’ (Cloke et  al., 2000) is often part of good ethical research more generally. However, with vulnerable subjects it arguably takes on a greater significance given the increased risks of harm, coercion, or exploitation that are present. Thus, just as the inclusion of vulnerable subjects in research needs careful consideration and justification, so too does the extent to which outcomes may benefit those involved in the research. For all the focus on benefits, there is of course a duty here not to overplay the potential benefits of research participation to vulnerable groups and to be realistic about what can be achieved. Indeed, the management of expectations may be of greater importance with vulnerable subjects than other potential participants (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume). However, this should be balanced with the need to explore ways to provide some benefit from the research for participants where possible. This may take the form of seeking to change social policy or inform the public around questions of social justice (see Cloke et al., 2000), or through feeding findings back to groups or institutions that may better address the needs of vulnerable subjects as a result of the research. To develop these areas of concern a little further, the remainder of the chapter focuses on research with the homeless as an example of projects with vulnerable subjects and how this research negotiated some of these issues.

CASE STUDY: ENCOUNTERING HOMELESSNESS To exemplify some of the aspects of research with vulnerable subjects that I have outlined so far, I draw on two connected projects that worked with homeless people in the UK. The first focused on exploring the lived experiences of a range of ‘visibly’ homeless women (May et al., 2007). The second examined the experiences of rural homeless groups, and offers a (Continued)

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(Continued) series of critical reflections on the ‘doing’ of research with those marginalized in and by society (Cloke et al., 2000). In both cases, the researchers were explicitly concerned not just with the ethical concerns their work raised, but also with working with groups who had often been overlooked in past research on homelessness. Street homeless women had often been overlooked because of a presumption of the gendered dynamics of homelessness and the greater visibility of male rough sleepers (May et al., 2007), while rural homeless groups were doubly marginalized by a focus on homelessness as an urban ‘problem’ and by a concentration of resources and support services in urban areas (Cloke et al., 2001). In this sense, both projects worked not only with subjects considered vulnerable due to their lack of secure housing status and resources, but also with subjects who were readily marginalized in previous research and policy discussions. In the first instance, May et  al.’s (2007) work demonstrates the varying ways in which vulnerability was expressed in the lives of visibly homeless women, illustrating some of the complexities and multiplicities of vulnerability noted in the first section of this chapter. For example, they highlight how rough sleeping played a dual role particularly in the vulnerabilities of homeless women. On the one hand, rough sleeping was often an expression of a vulnerable condition produced through social exclusion, poverty, and escaping abusive and coercive relationships. On the other hand, rough sleeping produced a range of further vulnerabilities, including the danger of sexual harassment and abuse, an exposure to risks associated with drug and alcohol use, and a risk of becoming dependent on limited and often scarce charitable resources. In this context then, multiple forms of vulnerability interacted, and the initial condition of being a ‘vulnerable subject’ (that of being homeless) gave rise to a series of other points of ethical concern for researchers. This again indicated the need for a context-specific account of vulnerability and its differentiation in the lives of individual homeless women. For example, May et al. (2007: 136) highlight how, for some women, drop-in services offered points of support during rough sleeping, while for others such sites ‘represented a space of fear rather than care. Indeed, the markedly volatile atmosphere to be found in both day centres and hostels led many women to avoid them altogether, or else to try and blend into the shadows.’ In this sense, May et al.’s work and their attentiveness to the different identities and experiences encompassed within the category of ‘visibly homeless women’, demonstrate the shifting nature of vulnerabilities in practice, and offer a good example of how to recognize and account for these subtleties in the writing of research. In the second example, Cloke et  al. (2000) discuss the ‘ethical turbulence’ of working with homeless people in rural settings, and draw on their own diary accounts of how, as a research team, they navigated various ethical dilemmas in their research. Their project explored how rural homelessness was experienced, and raised similar points of vulnerability

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to those noted by May et al. (2007). However, their discussion of the ethical challenges raises two further critical considerations. First is the fact that working with vulnerable subjects served to highlight, for them, the distance between themselves – as researchers – and their participants. Such distance, and the sense of being an ‘outsider’, are a common facets in much research (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), yet working with vulnerable subjects may make this distinction starker and more significant. As Cloke et al. (2000: 144) write of their experience of discomfort in the research process: ‘discomfort stemmed from an acute realisation of the difference between our powerful, (variously) affluent and problem-free lifestyles […] and the plight of our interviewees […] Almost everything about us marked us out as outsiders to the worlds of homelessness.’ Second is the way in which competing moral imaginaries of how ethical questions should be negotiated within the research team were exacerbated by the vulnerable nature of research subjects. For example, Cloke et al. (2000) describe a debate over whether it was justifiable, and even valuable, to photograph some of their homeless participants. This involved gaining consent from participants to photograph them and the rough-sleeping conditions they lived in so as to highlight these experiences and conditions further, going beyond simply the narratives produced through interviews. For one researcher, as long as ethical consent was obtained, this practice was viewed as a means to lend greater impact to the research findings and thus contribute positively to ‘broader aims of “giving something back” through wide dissemination of our findings’ (Cloke et  al., 2000: 148). However, for another member of the team, this practice did not sit well with their own moral imagination. They felt it unlikely that they would want to use such images to affect an audience and, as such, felt that they were not appropriate to take or use. These competing accounts of what is ‘right’ within research do not necessarily rely on strict guidance on anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume) or consent (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume), but rather point to the need for reflexivity within the negotiations of a project. Such reflexivity, Cloke et al.’s (2000) work highlights, is made all the more important in a context where ‘giving something back’ carries greater weight due to the vulnerable nature of the research participants.

Conclusion In this chapter I have outlined the importance of two things: (1) the value of research with subjects who may be classed as ‘vulnerable’ for a variety of reasons, and (2) the need to have greater levels of ethical consideration and protection in place where such subjects are involved in research. Although the precise nature of ‘vulnerability’ and its application in research are subjects of debate, there is nevertheless consensus across the social sciences that working with vulnerable subjects requires careful and considered attention to issues of consent, coercion,

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inclusion, and dissemination. While all researchers should be attentive to such issues in the design and development of their work, working with vulnerable subjects requires a heightened sensitivity to the potential effects of research for those involved and the potential risks that inclusion may bring. Although ethics review processes and guidelines do offer layers of protection for the vulnerable, these are never able to fully encompass the intersectional nature of vulnerabilities. As such, it is critical for all researchers to be aware of how vulnerability may intersect with their work in direct, and often indirect, ways. When viewed in this more holistic manner, vulnerability becomes an essential part of the negotiation of research, as Cloke et al. (2000: 151) conclude: For good or ill, the very act of entering the worlds of other people means that the research and the researcher become part co-constituents of those worlds. Therefore we cannot but have impact on those with whom we come into contact, and indeed on those with whom we have not had direct contact, but who belong in the social worlds of those we have talked to. Much of this impact is, frankly, unknown. For every visible occurrence of distress or other harm, there are hundreds of invisible impacts among networked actors. Ultimately, such matters are entwined with the need to avoid exploitation of research subjects, and to give something back to them through the research process […] These dilemmas are most often worked out in particular situated contexts, in which appropriate sensitivity to gender, culture and otherness will form an integral part of ethical negotiation.

Recommended Readings Caretta, M.A. and Jokinen, J.C. (2017) ‘Conflating privilege and vulnerability: A reflexive analysis of emotions and positionality in postgraduate fieldwork’, The Professional Geographer, 69 (2): 275–83. This paper explores the vulnerability experienced by early career researchers undertaking ethnographic research in the Global South. Considering how researchers might be made vulnerable through varying forms of exclusion, the paper reflects on how vulnerable positions emerge in the practice of fieldwork, and how these might be navigated. Cloke, P., Cooke, P., Cursons, J., Milbourne, P. and Widdowfield, R. (2000) ‘Ethics, reflexivity and research: Encounters with homeless people’, Ethics, Place & Environment, 3 (2): 133–54. This paper explores some of the ethical challenges faced by a team of researchers exploring experiences of homelessness in rural Britain. Questions of representation, reflexivity, and working with respondents deemed ‘vulnerable’ come to the fore, as does the need to negotiate different understandings of what ‘the right thing to do’ is within the research process.

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Meek Lange, M., Rogers, W. and Dodds, S. (2013) ‘Vulnerability in research ethics: A way forward’, Bioethics, 27 (6): 333–40. This paper outlines the key discussions on the category of vulnerability in bioethics, and how this category has been applied across the social sciences. Reflecting on a social model of vulnerability that goes beyond ethical review boards, the paper explores the vulnerabilities of dementia sufferers, and how research with this group generates distinct obligations on the part of the researcher.

18 Animals Kathryn Gillespie

Key Points ••

Ethical norms and reviews are often anthropocentric, posing unique challenges for animal geographies research.

••

Harm and care are entangled in human–animal relationships and play out differently in different research settings.

••

What constitutes good ethical practice requires constant reassessment as we learn more about non-human animals.

Introducing animal geographies Animal geographies is a fast-growing field within the discipline of human geography. Animal geographers aim to ‘de-centre the human’ in human geography to consider the lives and geographies of non-human animals and their ecosystems. This move to de-centre the human and to focus on non-human lifeworlds follows the growth of the cross-disciplinary intellectual field of animal studies. Animal studies is a broad-sweeping area of academic enquiry that encompasses fields as diverse as ethology and animal behaviour, philosophy, feminist care ethics, the use of animals in biomedical research, anthropology, ecology, and many others. A renewed interest in non-human animals in the late 1990s and 2000s has been marked by a proliferation of geographic scholarship on a range of other-than-human species, on human–animal interaction, and on questions of how to incorporate the non-human into a traditionally humanist field (Philo and Wilbert, 2000; Wolch and Emel, 1998). This ‘animal turn’ in geography has involved research that interrogates the messy boundaries between ‘human’ and ‘animal’ (acknowledging that humans

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themselves are animals). In these blurry boundaries and categorizations, animal geographers aim to understand the lives and experiences of non-human animals, which are often intimately entangled with human social and economic processes. Animal geography research has focused on all kinds of species in a variety of different contexts. This includes elephants in captivity and in the wild (Whatmore and Thorne, 2000); sea turtles in Indian contexts of conservation (Srinivasan, 2014); cougars in British Columbia (Collard, 2012); lobsters in US research labs (Johnson, 2015); slugs in the English garden (Ginn, 2014); and cows raised for dairy in India (Narayanan, 2016), the UK (Holloway et al., 2014), and the US (Gillespie, 2014, 2018). Geographic studies of non-human animals not only span the globe, but also encompass analyses at the level of both the population (Srinivasan, 2014) and the individual, or singular, animal (Bear, 2011). Geographic research on animals demands ethical consideration, and the ethics involved in this research are complex and complicated by a variety of methodological questions. These concern how it might be possible to come to know another species; the institutional processes of ethics review (or lack thereof); and questions related to the harm and anthropocentrism involved in geographic research on animals. The remainder of this chapter outlines some key ethical issues and offers two case studies that highlight some of the ethical complexities of animal geographies.

Key ethical issues Care for animals is deeply entangled with, and often involves, harm. For example, Srinivasan’s (2013) research on ‘street dogs’ in India and ‘stray dogs’ in the UK highlights how these different geographic contexts manage freeroaming dog populations and how practices framed through narratives of care (such as spay/neuter programmes, sheltering, and euthanasia) also inflict harm, pain, confinement, and even death, on dogs. In a very different context, sea turtle conservation in India also involves various degrees of harm to individual turtles in the name of conservation, thus obscuring the ethical impacts of this harm in service to broader conservation objectives (Srinivasan, 2014; see also Parreñas, 2018). These intertwined relationships of harm and care pose an ethical challenge for animal geographers who should consider the potential of their research to actively (or through complicity in ongoing violence against animals) harm the animals they are studying. Animals do not consent to research participation in the way that human participants can consent; Greenhough (2007) for a discussion of consent and alternative ways of thinking about animal participation in research. Animals in research are vulnerable in a range of ways, perhaps most evident in the possibilities for harm to which they are often exposed. Importantly, this harm may not always manifest in forms of bodily violence, confinement, physical pain, or psychological effects (e.g. boredom, fear, post-traumatic stress disorder). Rather, animal geographers

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might also consider the kinds of harm done through less obvious means: for instance, building an intimate, consistent relationship with a certain animal during field research and then leaving the field and severing that daily bond may cause emotional or psychological harm or grief for that animal. These questions of obvious and less obvious forms of harm must be central to research agendas involving other species and they must be considered in not only the subject of the research, but also in how this research is done. For animal geographers, how humans come to know the intimate lifeworlds of other species is a key methodological and theoretical concern. Methods involved in studying non-human animals in geography vary widely, from participant observation in spaces of animal life (zoos, conservation sites, farms, free-roaming animal habitats, laboratories, etc.), to GPS tracking of individual and herd behaviour, multispecies ethnography, and interviews with animal caretakers (Hodgetts and Lorimer, 2015). These methods involve varying amounts of disruption and/or harm to animals’ lives. For instance, trapping and tracking animals can involve direct contact, sedation, and sometimes injury or death (in the case of bird tracking, for example). Observing animals in situ (in their ‘wild’ habitats) involves a degree of incursion into spaces where the presence of humans may be disruptive (either through humans being present to observe animals, or through the introduction of recording devices and technologies). Participant observation sometimes involves participating in practices that actively confine, interfere with, or cause physical or emotional harm to animals in spaces of captivity (e.g. active participation in the daily practices of zoos, labs, or farms). Even with interviewing animal caretakers, there are ethical issues to consider: for instance, how the interviewee’s view of the animal is shaped by their embeddedness in norms of anthropocentrism and in their own emotional attachment to the animal in question. Modes of recording animal life also differ and include such practices as hand-written fieldnotes, photography, video, and audio. Of course, these methods of recording and documenting non-human life are fraught with complexity: from questions of efficacy to questions of ethics. In a course I teach called ‘Doing Multispecies Ethnography’, students spend half their time at a sanctuary for pigs; they are paired with a single pig for the term and write a miniethnography of the singular pig, their budding relationship, and a geography of the sanctuary. After teaching this course twice, I have become increasingly concerned with the medium of writing (a fundamentally anthropocentric form) to render multispecies ethnography. Writing is primarily a human activity, raising questions about whether there is something significantly lost in attempting to translate non-human experiences into an anthropocentric form. Concerns over the medium of writing are taken up by other animal geographers; see, for example, Brown and Dilley (2012) and Laurier et al. (2006). It can be argued that any method of collecting or disseminating knowledge about other-thanhuman species is filtered through human technologies (video, audio, the human mind), but the forms of media used and how they represent non-human life are important considerations in animal geography research. Recent responses

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to this concern have prompted a turn to video and audio documentation of non-human lifeworlds (e.g. Lorimer, 2010a). However, Collard (2016) points out the ethically problematic (and sometimes lethal) dimensions of wildlife documentary filmmaking, highlighting the harm that can emerge from making an animal encounterable. In short, the encounterable animal becomes an object of the filmmaker’s, the photographer’s, or the researcher’s gaze and study. In doing so, the encounterable animal is exposed to risks and potential harm that would not otherwise be present. From the above examples, it is clear that how research, which involves animals, is conceived of, performed, and regulated in academic institutions is a fraught ethical issue. Although there are numerous ethical questions to consider, the remainder of this chapter is organized around two case-study examples from doctoral research I conducted between 2012 and 2013 on the lives of cows in dairy production in the Pacific Northwestern United States. The first example has to do with the institutional ethics review process I underwent prior to beginning my research. The second example is focused on ethical concerns that arose while I was in the field.

CASE STUDY 1: INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES OF ETHICS REVIEW Prior to beginning my doctoral research, which was focused on trying to understand the effects of commodification processes on the lives of cows in the US dairy industry, I went through the necessary ethics review process. At the University of Washington in Seattle (where I completed my PhD), there is a human subjects review process overseen by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The aim of the IRB is to ensure that any research involving human subjects is conducted in accordance with the university’s guidelines for ethical research practice. Because my research involved interviewing farmers and other bovine caretakers, as well as participant and/or spectator observation in spaces of dairy production, I had to obtain ‘human subjects’ ethics approval. When filling out the IRB form, one of the questions asked if my research involved non-human animals. I ticked ‘yes’ in response to this question, a choice that routed my human IRB application out of the social sciences review system and into the biomedical sciences system. As a result, even my human subjects application was routed through biomedical sciences, causing a review delay lasting several months because the reviewers for biomedicine were unfamiliar with methods commonplace in the social sciences; participant observation as a method, for instance, caused much consternation and additional paperwork to explain it. The immediate rerouting of my application itself is telling: the university as (Continued)

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(Continued) an institution still predominantly conceptualizes non-human animals as research subjects narrowly in terms of those animals used in biomedical laboratory research. This was reaffirmed for me as I proceeded through obtaining ethics review approval for non-human animals as research subjects. The institutional body that oversees ethics review for non-human animals at the University of Washington is the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). One of the first tasks in securing ethics review approval was for my PhD advisor and me to complete an online IACUC training course on ethical best practices for animals in research. This training programme was focused entirely on the use of animals in laboratory settings. We learned the ‘Three Rs’ for ethical animal research (replacement, where possible, of animals in research; reduction of the number of animals used; and refinement of research practices to involve less suffering for the animals). We also learned best practices (methods and protocols) for anaesthetizing animals during a protocol and euthanizing animals at the end of a study. I also had to categorize the level of pain and invasiveness that would be involved in the study I was proposing. Cows or farmed animals were not mentioned at all in the training programme, and when I was interviewed later by an IACUC staff person as part of the approval process, it became all the more clear that the ethics review was not designed to oversee or even inform ethical practice in the kind of research I was proposing. The IACUC staff member asked what kind of contact I would have with the animals in my research; I responded that I would be observing them at farms, auction yards, and sanctuaries. I added that I might be involved with feeding them, but mostly my role was observer. She asked if I would have any other kind of contact with them – any kind of contact at all. I replied that I might pet them. She laughed and replied that that would not be a problem, ethically speaking. Concerned that I had not been provided with any relevant ethical guidelines for the research I planned to conduct, I asked if there was anything else I should be aware of to ensure that I was following ethical research practices in my encounters with the cows I would meet and study. The staff person advised me to follow all animal welfare laws that governed farmed animals in the US (and in Washington and California, the states where I would be conducting my research). I informed her that the only federal law protecting farmed animals in the US was the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act, and she encouraged me to make sure I was familiar with those guidelines and to follow that law. I replied that I would not be involved in slaughtering any animals and was informed that, given this, the necessary paperwork would be filed to get my IACUC approval moving through the system. By contrast, Rosemary-Claire Collard (2015) writes about her own experience with the ethics review process at the University of British Columbia, where she did not have to undergo an ethics review process for non-human

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animals since she was not undertaking research in a lab research setting. Whether animal geographers complete animal ethics review processes or not, institutional ethics review involving non-human animals are inadequate and anthropocentric. Collard writes, ‘it is evident that the animal ethics review relies on the human–animal dualism, as animal experimentation does. Animals are, according to this dualism, killable and confinable. This power dynamic is assumed, not questioned, in the animal care ethical review’ (2015: 134). Inadequacy and ambivalence in ethics review has been an ongoing critique of human-subjects ethics review – that it does not adequately or completely ameliorate potentially unethical practices, and that it is politically fraught and ambivalent (Martin, 2007; Valentine, 2005). Thus, I do not mean to suggest that having a more robust and inclusive ethics review for animals would radically improve actual conditions for animals in research. But it is certainly a much-needed and necessary first step for two key reasons: (1) it requires researchers working with animals to engage in more critical thought and reflection in their research design about how their proposed research will impact nonhuman animals, and (2) it institutionalizes a more widespread, formalized consideration of animals in research that signals how important it is for the university to take seriously the lives and wellbeing of animals in various kinds of research.

CASE STUDY 2: THE VIOLENCE OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN ANIMAL GEOGRAPHIES The IACUC ethics review process presumes that research on animals will likely involve harm to the animals involved. Through the pain and invasiveness rating system, the focus on euthanasia and anaesthesia, there is an implicit understanding (made explicit in these metrics and guidelines) that ethical practice should involve a consideration of this harm. And yet, how this harm is defined and where harm counts as harm (or violence as violence) are narrowly defined, and obscure a host of thoroughly normalized acts of violence that are part of routine human–animal encounters. Violence against animals in dairy production has been made so thoroughly mundane that it is not the kind of violence or harm that warrants institutional review. In the case of Collard’s (2015) research on the exotic pet trade, the successful reintroduction of a captive animal to the wild is framed as necessarily requiring tactics of aggression and the infliction of pain so as to make animals fear humans. Collard (2015) laments the total lack of institutional or disciplinary guidance when confronted with her own participation in having to enforce conditions of captivity and often engage (Continued)

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(Continued) in violence and practices that cause fear to the animals she was studying as a part of standard wildlife rehabilitation practice; she writes that it ‘felt, in no uncertain terms, unethical’ (Collard, 2015: 134). While I was not directly involved in inflicting additional physical pain on the cows I studied, my role as a researcher in places where animals were being subjected to painful procedures, confinement, separation, and physical and emotional suffering (as a result of routine dairy industry practices) raises key ethical issues related to both witnessing violence and a persistent anthropocentrism even in research aimed at critiquing animal use. Indeed, this anthropocentrism is so deeply embedded that even witnessing extreme cases of violence against animals can, in the moment, be made to feel normal or mundane. Take for example Elizabeth Johnson’s (2015) ethnographic account of watching an experiment on a live, conscious lobster in a US neuro-ethology lab: describing a scene where the researcher drills a hole in the lobster’s head, then removes portions of the shell, and fails in his attempts to measure the lobster’s neuro-electric activity, Johnson reflects on the ethical dimensions of this encounter. She explains that, in the moment, she was not especially concerned about the lobster, but in reviewing subsequent photographs of the conscious, cut-open lobster out of water, she felt much more uneasy, ethically. Rendered in photography, and reflected on outside of the laboratory setting, she writes of the photograph: ‘It seems to uncover a grotesque, almost medieval set of practices, suggesting that the experiment is more easily read as a scene of violence than as one of knowledge production. Of course, it need not be one or the other. The entanglement of violence in knowledge production has been well documented’ (Johnson, 2015: 299). Questions related to ethics and knowledge production, then, should be concerned with how to alleviate, prevent, or eliminate this violence. During my research on dairy production, one of my primary field sites was the farmed animal auction yard where, in addition to other farmed animal species, cows used for dairy are exchanged with exceptional efficiency. The auction yard highlights in a stark rendering the commodification process and its impacts. Cows, heifers, and steers in all stages of life – newborn calves with their umbilical cords still attached, young steers raised for beef, cows and heifers in prime shape for dairy production, and cows on their way to slaughter – move through the auction yard, a public display of their evaluation, pricing, and sale. These auctions are profoundly mundane, and many of the animals move through the auction ring in less than a minute, their fates determined with the barely discernible flick of a buyer’s hand in bidding. But my research highlighted that it was in these mundane situations and human–animal encounters that ethical consideration is all the more urgent. When a practice becomes routine the violence involved in that practice becomes more difficult to notice. Indeed, I caught myself thinking a number of times that the auction yard was boring, given

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the monotonous sale of animals, one after the other. In these situations, it is important for researchers to remain vigilant about resisting this kind of routinization in their research sites, because it has the potential to obscure important features of animals’ lives and experiences in these contexts. This resistance might involve asking questions to prompt critical engagement with the ways of seeing in which the researcher is involved, for instance, by asking: What am I taking for granted as a norm here? Am I focusing on each individual animal in this site and making an effort to centre their experience of this space? More specific or relevant questions may be appropriate to prompt this kind of ethical consideration and would be usefully considered at the research design phase as well as early in the fieldwork. It was a few singular animals that ruptured this boring monotony and highlighted the violence and ethical ambiguities of the auction yard as a space of animal commodification and exchange, and as a research field site. I witnessed animals collapsing in the ring; being kicked, poked, and prodded with electric prods and being separated from their calves; and also animals in the process of dying of disease and dehydration in the auction yard (Gillespie, 2016). Amidst the more mundane flow of animals moving through the pen, these animals demanded ethical reflection on the broader logics of the auction yard and dairy farming as an institution, and the impacts of these logics and institutions on the animal body, and it caused me to reflect on my role as a researcher. As I have theorized elsewhere (Gillespie, 2016), I had initially imagined being a spectator-observer in these spaces to be somewhat ethically neutral (I was not participating in the sale or contributing to the auction – financially or otherwise), but a few minutes into my first ‘cull market’ auction (where spent cows are sold for slaughter), I realized how wrong I was. An emaciated cow with wounds and abrasions and a severe limp collapsed in the ring while I watched, unable to get up. So worn out was she by dairy commodity production that no one bid on her. She finally managed to rise, and was quickly herded out the door and into the auction yard’s rear holding pens. Unable to forget her, I called the next day to ask about her condition. I was informed that she died in the auction yard that night. What was my ethical responsibility to that cow? Should I have purchased her when she did not sell for $35, and found her veterinary care and a home in an animal sanctuary? What was my ethical responsibility to all the cows who limped through the ring before and after her, subjected as they were to fear, psychological trauma, and physical pain? What are the ethical and political costs of doing nothing? I have since been reassured by colleagues and other animal geographers that this is an unfortunate, yet unavoidable, price of doing research on non-human animals in spaces of commodity production. Some have insisted that I did what I was ethically obligated to do: to observe and record this experience to contribute to knowledge-making about the effects of commodification on other species. (Continued)

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(Continued) But I remain troubled by this and other encounters with suffering animals during my fieldwork. What does my observation and inaction say about anthropocentrism and ethics in animal geography research? Put differently, I cannot imagine having sat there and watched as a human collapsed before me, later dying in the night from dehydration. Would it have been ethically acceptable for me to do nothing if my research subject was viewed as human and not a non-human animal? These questions and the others offered below are a humble step in trying to determine what ethical engagement with animals in human geography looks like. As Beth Greenhough articulates, ethics are not a ‘kind of rational, distanced, objective reflection […] ethical reflection is a relational and situated process, less about being distanced and objective, and more about recognizing how our ethical decisions are shaped by our social and material environment’ (2007: 1140). Ethics are relational, contextualized, and dynamic (Collard, 2015; Lawson, 2007; Thomas, 2015). Pinning down universalized ethical guidelines that work for all animals in all geographic and spatial contexts is not only impossible but also undesirable. In this sense, ethical guidelines and consideration cannot be static, but instead must be constantly challenged, revised, and rearticulated through different embodied lenses and geographies.

Conclusion Research ethics in animal geographies prompt important questions about the entangled relationships of harm and care in human–animal relationships and how these play out in research settings. With this in mind, animal geographies (whether it is the researchers’ intention or not) have the potential to inflict profound violence on non-human animals, whether directly or through complicity in practices that are already underway. A commitment to engaging in ethical research with animals, then, requires attending to this violence and engaging in constant vigilance to resist anthropocentric ways of viewing animals in research settings. It also requires resisting the normalization and routinization of animal use more generally in order to centre animals’ experiences of these everyday practices. As in research on human populations, researchers who study animals should attend to uneven power relations between themselves and their research subjects, and be attuned to the need for different forms of communication and observation. In this vein, animal-geographies research requires a readiness to adapt and reformulate what constitutes ethical practice as more is learned about non-human animals. Animal geographers should also consider a relational approach to ethics built from an understanding that universalized ethical norms will not be appropriate for all species and individuals in all geographic contexts.

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Recommended Reading Buller, H. (2016) ‘Animal geographies III’, Progress in Human Geography, 40 (3): 422–30. This article reports on the status of animal geographies, with a focus on ethics. It reviews the literature on ethics in animal geographies and poses some insights for ethical research practice. Collard, R.-C. (2015) ‘Ethics in research beyond the human’, in T. Perreault, G. Bridge and J. McCarthy (eds), Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 127–39. This article draws on Collard’s experience of working at a wildlife research centre as part of her fieldwork, and provides an excellent discussion of ethics in research involving non-human animals and ecologies in the context of political ecology. Gillespie, K. (2016) ‘Witnessing animal others: Bearing witness and the political function of emotion’, Hypatia, 31 (3): 572–88. This article explores the ethical ambiguities attendant in research that involves witnessing animal suffering, trauma, and death in the context of a farmed animal auction yard.

19 Children and Young People John Horton, Michelle Pyer and Faith Tucker

Key Points ••

What constitutes childhood and youth varies markedly between different geographical contexts, with considerable diversity in terms of legal ages of majority consent, capacity, and responsibility.

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Research with children and young people often requires an enhanced degree of preliminary checks, which might include safeguarding procedures and checks by national authorities.

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The enactment of consent on behalf of children and young people can make the principle of informed consent challenging, especially in contexts shaped by normative notions of ‘good behaviour’.

Introduction Over the last two decades, significant and increasing numbers of geographers have undertaken research with children and young people in diverse global contexts. This rich, expanding body of research reflects the emergence of the distinctive sub-discipline of ‘children’s geographies’ (see Holloway and Valentine, 2000a, and the journal Children’s Geographies) as part of a wider turn to consider childhood and young people in interdisciplinary social sciences (see James and Prout, 1997a, and the journal Childhood). Table 19.1 summarizes four key, related methodological/conceptual characteristics of this turn.

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Children and Young People Table 19.1  Characteristics of children’s geographies and interdisciplinary studies of childhood and youth (after Holloway and Valentine, 2000b; James and Prout, 1997b) Participatory Values participatory approaches to working ‘with […] rather than on or for’ children and young people (Matthews et al., 1998: 312); recognizing and valuing children and young people’s rights, expertise, and agency in relation to many research topics.

Critical Critical questioning of taken-for-granted normative (but geographically and historically mutable) categories like ‘childhood’, ‘youth’, and ‘adulthood’, and the socially constructed norms and power relations (‘Adults know best!’) that typically accompany them.

Diverse Reflects wider concerns in contemporary social scientific research and theory, to consider increasingly detailed, everyday, banal, embodied, personal, intimate, emotional/affective, deeply felt (and often deeply troubling, challenging, politicized, exclusionary, and marginalized) aspects of children and young people’s lives.

Inclusive Uses accessible, inclusive, age-appropriate, ‘child-friendly’ research methods and materials, particularly valuing qualitative, ethnographic, creative, and visual research methods which seek to bring adult researchers into closer, more empathetic, sensitive, and ‘symmetrical’ research encounters with children and young people.

This is an exciting research context, which has inspired many geographers to explore countless aspects of children and young people’s everyday, social, cultural, political, and economic lives in diverse settings. However, working with children and young people poses some distinctive, markedly heightened ethical complexities for researchers. And note that legal definitions of childhood and youth vary markedly between different geographical contexts: there is considerable diversity in terms of legal ages of majority, consent, capacity, and responsibility, so researchers will encounter different complexities depending on where they work. Indeed, the emergence of geographical and interdisciplinary research with children and young people was marked by a proliferation of excellent resources on ethical issues and challenges of working in this context (see Alderson, 1995; Alderson and Morrow, 2011; Christensen and Prout, 2002; Ennew et al., 2009; Matthews et al., 1998; Valentine, 1999). The following sections highlight ethical issues which are especially complex in research with children and young people, including some new and shifting ethical complexities which have become particularly pertinent in recent years. We conclude with three scenarios, and argue that researchers working with children and young people must cultivate an ongoing sensitivity to complex, emergent ethical issues, ‘providing a basis for working through the challenging situations that arise in the field, far away from textbooks, guidelines and ethics committees’ (Abebe and ­Bessell, 2014: 132).

Key Ethical Considerations As earlier chapters outline, principles of confidentiality, informed consent, and avoiding harm are fundamental ethical considerations for all geographical

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research. However, these issues are especially complex, and require particularly careful attention, in research with children and young people (Gallagher, 2009; Matthews et al., 1998; Morrow, 2008). Importantly, many researchers are committed to political-ethical principles of furthering children and young people’s rights and participation, and the related notion of working in ethical symmetry. For example, for a range of interlinked reasons, it can be challenging to ensure the principle of meaningful informed consent (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume) when working with children and young people. In many cultural, legal, and institutional contexts, it is the expected norm that adults consent on behalf of children and young people. This expectation is enacted in multiple spaces and scales – from individual parents/guardians habitually making moment-by-moment decisions on behalf of children in their care, to institutional staff acting in loco parentis, or state actors and legislators decreeing children’s rights, capacities, and best interests (Valentine, 1999). In practical terms, researchers typically have to secure the consent of organizations (e.g. a school, youth group, or institution), adult gatekeepers (e.g. teachers, activity leaders, or staff), and parents/carers before it is possible to even invite children and young people to participate in a research project. These gatekeepers and consents provide important modes of oversight, accountability, and due diligence in relation to child protection. However, they may also constitute situations in which adult consent on behalf of children and young people is strongly normalized, and taken as definitive and irreversible. After all, if an individual child’s parents, carers, teachers, and institutional guardians all consent to a research project taking place, to what extent can that child realistically opt out? This enactment of consent on behalf of children and young people has the potential to constitute inequitable power relations in research contexts: a researcher with prior backing of parents, guardians, and organizational leaders is in a relatively powerful, persuasive position. This power could conceivably be wielded purposefully and unethically (e.g. ‘You must take part in this research; your headteacher says so’). However, more frequently this kind of power imbalance creates unwitting, unanticipated ethical complexities in relation to consent (e.g. a headteacher’s body language, positive demeanour, and warm words towards a researcher might subtly and wordlessly convey endorsement of their project). In many contexts these power relations are compounded by normative notions of ‘good behaviour’ which typically reward obedience, rule-following, respect, conformity, and deference towards adults. In many spaces, it can be taken for granted that children and young people are told what to do by adults, with penalties and sanctions for disobedience. Researchers may thus find themselves in settings where there is an expectation that they will tell children and young people what to do; indeed, research participants may be so accustomed to this set-up that they seek to anticipate a researcher’s wishes and act accordingly. The notion that adult researchers will invite participation, with no obligation to consent and no penalties for refusal,

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may feel somewhat uncomfortable and alien for children and young people in many contexts. These complexities reflect the limited, thin agency (Klocker, 2007) which children and young people have in many institutional, organizational, or family settings. Against this background, researchers must therefore make special efforts to ensure that children and young people feel genuinely able to decide whether or not to participate. Similarly, ethical principles of confidentiality and anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume) require particular sensitivity when working with children and young people. Children and young people – like adults – should feel that information provided in the course of a research project is dealt with in confidence. In particular, they should feel that they can express their views and ideas ‘without prejudice and without fear of recourse to parents, guardians or significant professionals’ (Matthews et al, 1998: 315). This can be challenging to achieve, especially given the importance of good relations with gatekeepers in gaining access to participants (and thus compounded by the kinds of power relations outlined above). It is good practice at the outset of the research to provide a clear, firm explanation to gatekeepers about what information you will and will not share with them. This should also be explained to participants, with particular attention given to explaining who will (or will not) have access to data they provide, and how data will be anonymized. Guidelines around confidentiality and anonymity are significantly complicated by researchers’ responsibilities to safeguard participating children and young people. Disclosures or suggestions of significant past, present, or probable harm should compel researchers to seek advice or signpost support. In order to maintain a balance between assuring confidentiality and safeguarding children and young people, researchers must develop strategies for dealing with disclosures of harm. In the UK, for example, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC, 2017, n.p.) recommends that researchers: have clear procedures to follow if a child says anything that indicates they or another child may be at risk of harm. The researcher must include a confidentiality policy that clearly sets out the circumstances when a researcher can or should break confidentiality. The procedures should also include places where a researcher or child can access further support. It is important that this confidentiality policy – and circumstances in which confidentiality might be broken – are communicated clearly to participants and gatekeepers from the outset. In our experience, children and young people are generally happy to engage with research on this basis, as long as the researcher’s confidentiality policy is clearly and accessibly explained. However, one specific, ostensibly minor point (often unanticipated by adult researchers and which can cause concern) relates to the anonymization of names and communities. Ethics guidelines typically recommend that the names of individuals, organizations, and locations are changed to prevent recognition of participants

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(Morrow, 2008). Pseudonyms can be used and participants asked to choose these. In our experience, children and young people sometimes feel that this devalues their contribution to the research and they might prefer their own names to be used. Indeed, children and young people can be disappointed to learn that their name – or the name of their community, school, or street – will not be named in research outputs. It is therefore important that researchers’ rules around confidentiality are explained clearly and considerately. Morrow (2008) suggests that one solution to this dilemma is to allow the use of nicknames, although this of course means that participants may be able to identify each other. As we discuss in the following section, issues relating to anonymity and confidentiality are also made increasingly complex by social media, screen technologies, and communications devices. The principle of avoiding harm is central to ethical research. As children and young people are often relatively disempowered and marginalized members of society – and are typically understood as particularly vulnerable and at-risk – this principle requires heightened awareness, sensitive preparation, and additional work for researchers. In most cases, researchers will have to demonstrate that they have recently been screened by an appropriate national authority (e.g. criminal records checking via the UK Disclosure Barring Service), and undergo enhanced institutional research ethics review, before it is possible to work with children and young people. It is also vital for researchers to think carefully, seriously, and strategically about safeguarding children and young people during research. Some important considerations are outlined in Table 19.2. Researchers should also consider potential risks of harm to themselves during research encounters. Preparations for research should include strategies to mitigate harm to researchers which may occur in vulnerable, especially lone-working, situations. The potentially emotive content of research encounters should also be considered as a source of potential distress or anxiety for researchers, particularly in projects dealing with sensitive topics. Strategies should be in place for researchers to seek advisory guidance, pastoral care, or counselling support for themselves in the event that data collection or analysis becomes upsetting (see Probyn, Chapter 8 in this volume).

Shifting Ethical Complexities Although there are many excellent resources to support ethical geographical research with children and young people, it is important to note four emergent or shifting ethical complexities which have not yet figured prominently in existing guidance. First, the rapid proliferation of social media, multifunctional communications devices, and wearable technologies pose profound new ethical challenges (see Kinsley, Chapter 27 in this volume). These technologies provide exciting opportunities for research with children and young people. The use

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Children and Young People Table 19.2  Considerations relating to harm avoidance when researching with children and young people Understanding •• How can realistic expectations be set about the aims and outcomes of research? Children and young people can often be really generous, trusting, and inspirational participants who care deeply about research and want to find out what happens next (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume); researchers can cause disappointment, frustration, or distress by making unrealistic promises or – worse – extracting data and disappearing. •• What strategies should be in place to take appropriate action in the event of disclosures or concern about past, present or likely harm to children? How will these strategies be introduced and explained to children, young people, and gatekeepers?

Comfort •• What can a researcher do to avoid appearing intimidating, authoritarian, unsettling, worrying, or upsetting to children and young people? •• How will you ensure that children and young people are settled, comfortable, and happy to proceed with research? What strategies could be adopted if a participant becomes upset or anxious during research? •• How might the physical, social, organizational, or institutional setting for research create potentially awkward, annoying, troubling, or distressing moments for participants? •• How can you avoid individuals feeling dis/advantaged, favoured, excluded, or ‘othered’ through their involvement, or noninvolvement, in research? •• How will challenging or emotional research topics be communicated and handled sensitively, in an age-appropriate manner?

Safeguarding •• What additional measures are required to support and safeguard the involvement of diverse – and perhaps especially vulnerable – children and young people in research? •• How can one avoid infringing unnecessarily on children and young people’s lives? How might one mitigate negative impacts of research on children and young people’s lives, play, work, friendships or family, and social or community relations?

Impact •• If children and young people are to be involved in dissemination or other research-related activities, how can this be done in ways that are not tokenistic? How can participatory practices avoid putting children and young people uncomfortably ‘on the spot’ or ‘in the firing line’ of community controversies? •• How can tokenistic, unfair, stereotyped, or more widely corrosive representations of children and young people be avoided in presentations and dissemination of research data?

of photography and video in geographical research with children and young people is not new. However, newer technologies provide prospects for engaging and sharing such content, in ways which constitute new research possibilities, but also new ethical risks. Table 19.3 presents a range of ethical questions and strategies for using digital technologies in research with children and young people, along with some practical hints and tips.

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Table 19.3  Ethical questions and strategies for using social and digital media when researching with children and young people Theme

Key ethical questions

Strategies, hints, and tips

General questions •• Will using this tool/method help me to achieve the aims of my study? •• Why am I using this particular approach? What does it offer that other approaches do not? Children and young people’s expertise

•• What does existing literature and my experience tell me about children and young people’s use of this medium in their everyday lives?

•• Children and young people may have a range of experiences and knowledge about how social media works. Take this into account when thinking about their safety.

Researcher expertise

•• What do I know about the tool I wish to use?

•• Familiarize yourself with the tool and consider any gaps in your knowledge. Even if you use the tool on a daily basis, there may be things that you are unaware of in relation to settings and where information posted is stored. Ensure that this complies with relevant data protection legislation.

•• Am I assuming knowledge about how this tool works? Communicating with (potential) participants and the adults in their lives

•• What will I need •• to communicate to significant adults (parents, teachers, youth workers) and participants to ensure the safe use of this tool to collect data?

Consider any concerns that both adults and children and young people might have in relation to using the tool. It is likely that safety will be high on the agenda, but also consider additional concerns (e.g. ‘I have never used [insert relevant medium] – what if I get it wrong?’). Consider seeking feedback from children, young people, parents, and teachers who you are already in contact with about potential concerns and how these could be addressed.

•• Ensure that significant adults are fully informed of what taking part in the project involves so that they have the opportunity to put their own safeguards in place. Power and relationships

•• How can I enable participants to share their views while ensuring that they can do so in a positive, supportive environment?

•• For online discussion groups introduce ground rules which cover how/if the information shared as part of a study can be used by participants in future. Familiarize yourself with the literature and third sector information available on cyber-bullying. What can you put in place to ensure that you do not facilitate this? How will you respond should you witness cyber-bullying in the course of your research? •• How will you ensure that participants have equal opportunities to share their views? Do all of the children or young people have access to the technology that you wish to use?

Children and Young People

Theme

Key ethical questions

Strategies, hints, and tips

Consent

•• How will I obtain informed consent if I do not actually meet my participants or their parents/ guardians?

Researcher identity

•• How will I present my •• own identity through the medium that I intend to use?

Data storage

•• What is the life journey of the data produced? •• Who will be able to access, save, share, or even manipulate the data captured?

Allocation of •• How can I monitor researcher time to contributions to the study online discussions?

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•• Obtaining informed consent is an essential part of your study, but it does not need to be completed face to face. Build in approaches that enable people to learn about the study and what taking part involves, before agreeing to participate. Finding ways that they can communicate questions and have them answered is an important element of this process. It is likely that you have chosen to use a particular medium because you have experience of using this. It follows, then, that you will already have an account which may contain personal information about you, your family, and friends. How will you manage the level of information that you share with participants, separating the personal and the professional ‘you’?

•• Check the terms and conditions of the medium you are using with regard to how information will be stored, transferred, and used by the provider in the future. Bear this in mind when deciding what data you ask people to share. •• While you may put ground rules in place at the start of your research, make sure that you have the time available to appropriately facilitate any online discussions. This includes removing any material which may be deemed offensive to others, alongside any contributions which include identifiable information. One way to monitor contributions is to set the controls of the application so that you approve posts before they go ‘live’. However, for real-time discussions this may break up the flow of communication.

Second, a combination of heightened institutional risk mitigation strategies and contemporary societal anxieties regarding child protection and ‘stranger danger’ have made it increasingly challenging for researchers to access children and young people in many contexts. Researchers based in higher education institutions, or other organizations, have increasingly been required to complete detailed, comprehensive, auditable, multi-stage ethics reviews and risk assessments (Robson, 2018; Skelton, 2008). Research with children and young people typically requires an enhanced – and therefore extra-detailed and ­scrutinized – degree of

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preliminary approval via such regulatory processes. Likewise, many potential research settings (e.g. schools, organisations, groups, institutions) have become progressively more cautious and risk-averse when approached by researchers. Gatekeepers increasingly require auditable, detailed evidence of researchers’ suitability and credentials, and may require additional layers of ethical review and risk assessment to be completed. These processes provide important scrutiny of research, and can be very beneficial to researchers in enhancing their practice and project planning. However, for researchers and students undertaking their first research projects, these processes can be daunting, frustrating, and discouraging. In practical terms, researchers must be aware that projects involving children and young people require significantly more forward planning – and will probably be subject to more preliminary work, delays, and barriers – compared to research on less ethically sensitive topics. Even so we would strongly encourage perseverance, plus factoring in plenty of time in the initial stages of research to tackle ethical complexities, negotiate regulatory mechanisms, and engage with gatekeepers. We also recommend early discussions with supervisors and course leaders to see what is possible, or what might be possible with commitment to completion of robust ethical review. Third, ironically, some new ethical complexities have arisen because of the rapid growth in numbers of social scientists conducting research with children and young people. As we have noted, the vibrant, burgeoning multidisciplinary community of researchers working in this field has been incredibly productive in developing supportive guidance on all manner of ethical complexities. However, growing numbers of researchers have, in many areas, created pressures on some potential research settings. Researchers should be aware that many schools, organizations, groups and institutions will have previously received multiple requests to conduct research, and indeed many children and young people may have been called upon to participate in multiple research projects. In some settings, ‘research fatigue’ may have set in: gatekeepers may be disinclined to welcome more researchers into their space or timetable, and research participants may feel ‘over-researched’ or disenfranchised from research, particularly if its outcomes have not been evident to them. Fourth, geographical researchers have increasingly engaged in new forms of close, deeply-involved research encounters with children and young people. In large part, these encounters reflect aforementioned, ongoing turns towards increasingly qualitative, ethnographic, collaborative, participatory, creative, visual, digital, or online research methods, and towards thematicconceptual foci upon everyday, embodied, and emotional/affective geographies. These research directions make it inevitable that more researchers will be engaging closely with more children and young people in relation to emotive and ethically sensitive topics in diverse contexts. The fact that geographical researchers are spending more and more time collaborating closely with children and young people – carefully researching, talking, creating, working, playing, experimenting, photographing, or blogging together – is exciting. But

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these new, deep, sustained experiences pose some complex ethical questions: what are the ethical implications of working with children and young people so closely, of caring about issues together, of sharing intimate details about everyday geographies, or of coming to know or caring about one another? We suggest that these kinds of questions are also made increasingly complex by researchers’ practical responses to the risk-averse processes of ethical review and gatekeeping discussed above. Given the mounting challenges of finding viable, timely ‘ways in’ to engage with children and young people, we notice many researchers adopting tactics such as: (1) early career researchers using established connections (e.g. via workplaces, volunteering settings, or family, friend, or community contacts) to expedite access to research settings; or (2) more-established researchers building up longstanding participatory engagements with particular organizations, of which research activities are one component. These tactics are logistically sensible and frequently very helpful in developing deep and trusting links with research settings, which are then conducive to rich research activities. However, care is required to ensure that these kinds of working arrangements do not create additional powerladen ethical complexities relating to, for example, informed consent (can a participant effectively opt out if a researcher has an extant role, familiarity, or status within their setting?) or confidentiality (can a participant have faith in confidentiality if the researcher knows staff, parents/carers, and/or peers already?). Increasingly, rich research engagements and generally closer relationships with research settings come to constitute a blurring of long-assumed (and ethically reassuring) boundaries: between adults and children; between researchers and participants; between doing research and not doing research; and between research settings and everywhere else in a researcher’s life. As the emergence and shifting of these ethical complexities demonstrates, research ethics should not be thought of as static and unchanging. New ethical issues are constantly emerging, and the practicalities of doing research with children and young people throw up more ethical complexities than can ever be anticipated with a neat, prior set of ethical guidelines. In particular, as many children’s geographers have noted, the messy, diverse, emergent, site-specific ethical complexities encountered in real world research frequently make rigid, prior ethical guidance seem only partially useful in practice (Abebe, 2009; Horton, 2008; Robson, 2001). Certainly, when working with children and young people there can be no comprehensive ‘one size fits all’ ethical guidance. The considerations outlined in this chapter constitute starting points for ethical research, but it is important to understand that the ethical issues you will encounter in research will always have more flexibility and malleability, and vary depending on the specific children being researched, the context in which the research takes place and other factors such as the vulnerability and previous experiences of the children involved. (Hopkins, 2008: 46) See also Skovdal and Abebe (2012) and Valentine et al. (2001).

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It is also important to recognize that research ethics should not be thought of as a one-off event (e.g. a singular act of ‘getting ethical approval’). Rather, ethical research with children and young people must involve moment-by-moment alertness to ethical challenges, and an ongoing sensitivity to emergent or shifting situations. We agree with Abebe and Bessell (2014: 132) that: the way forward is to promote a deep personal and professional commitment to ethical research, whereby children, their human rights and the context in which they live are recognised, valued and respected. Sharing experiences is important in developing this kind of ethical sensibility. In this spirit, we invite you to consider how you would deal with the following case studies if they occurred in your research.

CASE STUDY SCENARIOS Scenario 1 You are carrying out a questionnaire survey. To gain access to participants, you have arranged to conduct the research at a school. A member of your family works at the school and has helped you get permission to carry out the research. Before carrying out the survey you explain to the young people that they do not have to take part and that it is their choice whether to participate. Most young people decide to complete the questionnaire, but one child decides not to. The class teacher approaches the child and tells them to complete the survey. What would you do? After the research has been completed the family member asks you what answers the young people have given. What would you do?

Scenario 2 You design a piece of research which includes photography. Participants use their mobile phones to take pictures and send them to you for your project. You have put safeguards in place which mean that any images taken by your participants and used for your research do not identify particular places or people (e.g. using editing software to blur faces, street names, and any other potentially identifiable information). You find out that, despite these safeguards, one of your participants has posted images taken for the research onto a publicly available forum, identifying themselves and other participants of the project. How would you respond?

Scenario 3 You are conducting ethnographic fieldwork at a community centre which hosts activities for children and young people. As a participant observer in this space for several weeks, you have got to know the children and young

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people who use the centre pretty well – enough to laugh and joke and chat with them, in addition to engaging in discussions about your research topic. You also know some of their parents and youth workers socially. Your research activities have always taken place with adult group leaders nearby. However, one evening a research participant asks if they can talk with you ‘in private’. They know a ‘private place’ you can talk together without the group leader seeing. The participant seems anxious and says there is something they really want to tell you. What would you do? If a research participant disclosed something which suggested that they were anxious or at risk from harm, how would you deal with this?

Conclusion Research with children and young people presents particular ethical challenges. This chapter has drawn attention to key issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, and avoiding harm. We have also highlighted challenges that researchers may face in relation to social media and technologies, institutional risk mitigation strategies, ‘research fatigue’, and close working relationships with participants. Research with children and young people is interesting and engaging – but we must continually be alert to ethical challenges and shifting situations. The scenarios presented at the end of this chapter provide some prompts to help you think about this, and we encourage you to reflect on how you will deal with ethical issues in your specific research setting.

Recommended Reading Alderson, P. and Morrow, V. (2011) The Ethics of Research with Children and Young People: A Practical Handbook. London: Sage. An excellent, comprehensive handbook for researchers preparing to conduct research with children and young people. Provides clear, practical guidance on key stages of research. Christensen, P. and Prout, A. (2002) ‘Working in ethical symmetry in social research with children’, Childhood, 9 (4): 477–97. A classic paper reflecting upon the ethical challenges posed by adult social scientists researching closely with children and young people. Outlines the importance of understanding children and young people as equal, active participants within social scientific research Valentine, G. (1999) ‘Being seen and heard? The ethical complexities of working with children and young people at home and at school’, Philosophy & Geography, 2 (2): 141–55. Excellent, thought-provoking reflection upon ethical challenges in geographical work with children and young people. It considers how research practices can reproduce normative institutional and societal assumptions about children and young people’s (in)capacity.

20 Historical Geographies and Archived Subjects Derek H. Alderman and Joshua Inwood

Key Points •

Geography’s ongoing archival turn is redefining the ethics of conducting research through archival collections.

•

Archival work requires an interrogation of the ideologies and social relations that legitimate knowledge and how power flows in and through archival collections.

•

Researchers play a crucial role in shaping the archive itself.

Introduction This chapter provides a review of geography’s archival turn, which is redefining how we approach the ethics of conducting research through archival collections. We direct attention to the affective capacities of the archive and how the analysis of primary sources can connect us with, and do justice to, the emotional historical geographies of marginalized social groups. Such an analysis, we argue, can engender solidarity between researcher and subject. Employing critical race theory, we advocate for the archive as a form of antiracist, counter-storytelling about African Americans and offer an important and, until recently, forgotten archival resource – The Negro Motorist Green Book – as an example through which to reflect on the ethical considerations inherent to this work. This Jim Crow-era travel guide is interpreted in terms of its place within the control and reclaiming of black emotion and

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affect that was foundational to the workings of racism and resistance to white supremacy.

Archives and the ‘Archival Turn’ Archives refer to an accumulation of historical materials or records (letters, reports, notes, maps, memos, photographs, objects, and other primary sources) as well as the place, staff, and practices responsible for housing, curating, exhibiting, and interpreting these traces from the past. Important to geographers, what constitutes an archive and how it is managed can differ by country, region, and cultural group (Withers, 2002). For geographers, archives have traditionally been valuable in gathering the evidence necessary to reconstruct the form, function, and meaning of past landscapes and to understand the experiences and ideologies of social actors and groups who created and inhabited those geographies. Archives provide an opportunity to interrogate the power of governments (which are often the archivers themselves) in collecting, classifying, and authorizing what counts as geographical knowledge and what is worth remembering and preserving historically. Archives have proven indispensable in writing the disciplinary history of geography, its theoretical and methodological changes and debates, and the role of its societies, academic departments, and practitioners within society. While archives have long been important to historical geographers, the explosion of qualitative methodologies in the 1990s and the turn towards poststructuralism have expanded archival research across the wider social sciences and within many of geography’s sub-fields (Lorimer, 2010). This ‘archival turn’, as some have termed it (Moore et al., 2017), has been inspired by theorists like Michel Foucault (2002 [1972]) and Jacques Derrida (1996), who spent their careers combing through libraries to uncover the larger power-laden social and spatial relationships of the modern world. Accompanying this growing popularity of the archive is a redefinition of how we approach the ethics of working with such primary sources. Traditionally, geographers treated the archive in extractive terms, as an ‘empiricist data source’, (Schein, 2011: 14), with discussions of ethics confined to maintaining the integrity of archival evidence through proper handling (Roche, 2010). The archive is now read more ethnographically, as a social and political text and a ‘site of subject formation’ (Schein, 2011: 14). In other words, the archive is not as much a set of documents or objects, or even a particular place, as it is a practice by which the identities of social actors and groups are constructed and valued differently through the assembling, classifying, and interpreting of historical records, traces, and memories. As Bailey et al. (2009) suggest, different subject positions can influence how a researcher selects from historical records, and this shapes how they organize and re-imagine the past. While many of the figures referenced in archives are no longer alive, as geographers we nevertheless ‘have ethical responsibilities towards the

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people whose lives we seek to interpret and reconstruct in our research’ (Mills, 2012: 362). In short, good and ethical archival work is sensitive to the positionality of both the archived subject and the researcher (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). Geographers have begun to pay close attention to how specific archival practices and collections came into being and how even the most ordinary of archivist techniques shape how we make sense of the past (Kurtz, 2001). The new ethics of archival work mandates that scholars ‘interrogate the archive itself’, to understand the broader ideologies and social relations behind the making and legitimating of this knowledge (Schein, 2011: 14). While such interrogation involves asking obvious questions about the ‘who, what, when, where, and why’ of archival document authorship, it also requires a larger deconstruction of the worldviews inscribed into documents and the myriad ways in which power flows in and through archival collections (Derrida, 1996). For example, it is important to note that as tools of data collection and calculation, archives have been employed to serve national interests – whether they be in the name of colonialism, warfare, nation building, or capitalist development (Craggs, 2008; Ogborn, 2003). As a result, Roche (2010: 183) cautions that simply ‘[s] ummarising the contents of files from the archives merely reproduces these uneven power relations rather than interpreting them.’ The archival turn in geography has also grown out of a sophisticated understanding of the role that language, representation, and discourse play within society. Archived words, objects, and other narratives are not innocent, unproblematic reflections of a unitary reality. Archives are inherently partial, not only in the sense of being an incomplete collection of historical facts, but also in existing as a selective and ‘privileged narrative’ (Kelly and Morton, 2004). Only certain people and institutions are seen within the archival record, and often at the expense of making others invisible. Roche (2010), in describing archival work in official, government papers, notes that these records ‘reflect the outlooks and understandings of the dominant groups in the national context at the time they were created’ and hence women, racial and ethnic minorities, and poor people have a minimal presence. Furthermore, when these marginalized groups do appear in conventional primary source material, their histories are presented in support of the prevailing racialized and gendered order (Kelly and Morton, 2004). In this way, archives can often be seen as supporting and maintaining a status quo. Given their production, archives beg to be interpreted through an ethical lens committed to determining what identities, inequalities, and resistances they efface or erase. De Leeuw (2012) argues for reading archives in at least two ways. First, one must read ‘against the archival grain’ to expose the systems of power and social hierarchies communicated through historical records. Reading against the grain would mean addressing the people and histories often silenced within conventional archives and their predominant focus on the privileged. Against the grain also means creating moments in these conventional archives or in alternative ones to recover the richness and resistance of

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subaltern life. Second, one must also read ‘along the archival grain’. Reading along the grain means using the archive to open up new critical understandings of the upper classes who highly populate historical records, although this is not about passively accepting the archival record or these social orderings at face value. Rather, the archival record is read in ethical and emotive ways to understand exactly how power works, as well as the complexity and fragility of powerful actors. Archives cannot be taken at face value but must be placed in wider historical and geographical contexts that actively interpret the lives included or excluded from the record. Recognizing that archives have traditionally silenced subaltern groups, geographers have re-theorized what constitutes an archive and the ethical relationship between the researcher and the archived subject. Archival analysis is shifting from a strict focus on official government and corporate records to investigating a wider array of informal, even personal, archival collections that can disrupt grand historical and geographic narratives (Hoskins, 2015). The traditional fixation on the archived written document has made room for greater engagement with other mediums – including photographs (Hoelscher, 2013), videos/films (Smith, 2012), websites (Bright and Butler, 2015), and even graffiti art (Moreau and Alderman, 2012). Some geographers are moving past the idea of the scholar as a consumer of the archive to realize their potentially important role in shaping ‘the emphasis and order of the archive itself’ (Ashmore et al, 2012: 88). Carrying out what DeLyser (2014) calls ‘archival interventions’, geographers are assembling collections on their own as well as collaborating with trained archivists and the general public to collect, catalogue, and interpret the very materials and narratives of those traditionally absent from official archives – such as indigenous groups, women, LGBTQ communities, and people of colour (e.g. Bressey, 2014; Cameron, 2014). The archival process is being re-envisaged less as an elitist project and more of a ‘joint heritage’ shared by a number of different communities, with the subject being conceptualized and treated as ‘a full partner in the record-creating process, as a co-creator of the record’ (Syrri, 2008: 222).

The Archive as Counter-Storytelling The archival turn in geography has opened up new terrains to rethink how archives work, for whom they speak, and how researchers can engage in more ethically responsible research. Archival practices are of importance to scholars and a wider public increasingly interested in advancing transitional justice and creating a collective memory and understanding of social and spatial exclusion. Just as the archive has the capacity to obfuscate people’s struggles, they are crucial for historical accountability and the truth claims-making process, especially in documenting the history of human and civil rights violations, as we will outline. The truths potentially read from archival work – particularly when dealing with racism, genocide, and other traumas – are not simply of

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historical or judicial nature. Rather, archives also contain ‘psychological truths’ made possible through the sharing of experiences and emotions in ways that allow primary sources to have an affective power upon the researcher and the public (Syrri, 2008: 235). Our emphasis on ‘psychological truths’ draws attention to how archives, rather than simply being collections of dry and disembodied historical evidence, have the capacity to be interpreted, internalized, and used in ways laden with emotional and political meaning. Truth, as invoked here, is not just about recovering a single, accurate account of the past, although historical veracity can be important in using archives to document the occurrence and consequences of atrocity. Rather, the psychological truths derived from archives, which are inherently partial and plural, are about exploring what people in the past felt, what was meaningful to them, and how these historical subjectivities emotionally affect people in the present and have contemporary political implications. Psychological truths require, in turn, recognizing the fundamental role that emotion has played in the struggle for material reproduction, dignity, and inclusion. For example, we have argued elsewhere for historical geographic scholarship that establishes an empathy for, if not solidarity with, the freedom struggles of marginalized social groups, as a reflection of this form of psychological truth (Alderman et al., 2013; Inwood, 2016). Geographers are encouraged to acknowledge and harness the emotional and affective capacities of the archive. This reflects a wider concern within the discipline to take affects and emotions seriously as means of generating knowledge and as forces within social life (see Probyn, Chapter 8 in this volume). While many archival practitioners and theorists remain preoccupied with the tangibility and assumed objectivity of primary source materials, others in the field are examining ‘the capacity of recordkeeping processes, or of records or the physical place of the archives to engender psychological and physiological responses in those who encounter them’ (Cifor and Gilliland, 2016: 2). Allowing archives to engender these responses requires that researchers take the emotions of exclusion seriously and identify archival moments for doing justice to the feelings and affective experiences of historical actors and groups resisting oppression. Doing emotional justice through archival investigation is not simply about giving fair attention to what was felt and experienced by people in the past, but realizing that emotions are critical to understanding people’s struggles for rights and legitimacy, both historically and as those struggles continue into the present day. Being black in the United States has long been (and remains) an emotionally and politically charged existence (Alexander, 2012). Yet, the African American struggle for equality is frequently absent from mainstream and normative geographic scholarship. To recover and understand the high emotional stakes of racism and racial resistance, our work is informed by critical race theory. In short, this theory; 1) recognizes that race is a social construction and argues for the eradication of racism; 2) focuses on materially grounded experiences of people of colour; and 3) presents narrative and document analysis and other

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qualitative approaches as valid methods through which to examine race and racism (Parker and Lynn, 2002; Schein, 2009). Important to our discussion of the archive, critical race theory focuses on recovering and telling the stories of survivors and participants in racialized struggles for freedom. In particular, archival research is important to ‘counter-storytelling’ – the use of narratives to highlight the neglected experiential knowledge and subjectivities of African Americans while also challenging dominant racial hierarchies of power (Solorzano and Yosso, 2001). A critical race approach necessitates the creative use of archives to place oppressed groups within a larger universe of racism as well as to document the many tools and strategies used to engage in struggles for racial equality. Monteith (2015) argues for the use of ‘imaginative and subjective’ sources that document the operation of racism and narrate counter-stories about and from African Americans. Emotion is central to this ethically responsible archival project. Moving beyond the privileging of ‘objective’ and detached approaches to civil rights history, Monteith (2015: 442) asserts that ‘[r]egistering emotions, whether subtle or seismic, contributes specifically to historical reconstruction not solely to its dramatization.’ We now focus on an imaginative source created and used by African Americans during Jim Crow, and employ it as a counterstory about the emotional work that went into the African American fight for mobility and survivability, and how the control of black emotion and affect were infused within broader systems of racial subjugation.

CASE STUDY: THE NEGRO MOTORIST GREEN BOOK The Jim Crow era of American race relations began as early as 1877 and intensified throughout the 20th century until being challenged by the Civil Rights Movement. Jim Crow represented a broad array of formal and informal practices responsible for segregated schools, transportation, and public accommodations; deprivation of political and economic rights; and frequent instances of African Americans being lynched and falsely imprisoned. While Jim Crow was characterized by white supremacy and hostility, the era also saw African Americans engaged in the work of resistance and the creation of geographies of self-determination (Alderman and Inwood, 2014). Any critical investigation into African American life during this period must engage the archive in ways that expose the dialectic between racial control and challenge, as part of an ethical commitment to the research subjects and subject matter. In our research, we have encountered and written about a resource for documenting this dialectic – The Negro Motorist (Continued)

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(Continued)

Figure 20.1 The Green Book (1956) business listings for several cities and towns in Georgia. Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue was one of the nation’s most prominent black business and entertainment districts during the Jim Crow era and the birthplace of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

Green Book (Alderman and Inwood, 2014). As a historical record, the Green Book appears at first glance to be no more than a travel guide. Indeed, African American postal employee Victor Green published the Green Book annually from 1936 to 1966 with the intent of helping middle-class African American travellers avoid discrimination by identifying accommodations that would welcome them. The Green Book was a directory of hotels, restaurants, tourist homes, beauty salons, and gas stations along with advertisements and some short stories and photographs. Listing establishments by street address, city, and state, Green carried out a counter-mapping of American travel rights. Beneath this routine business directory is a rich social text from and about the Jim Crow era and the uneven entry of blacks into American automobility and modernity (Pesses, 2017). Until recently, the Green Book had disappeared from scholarly or public notice. Researchers now have access to searchable,

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online copies of all editions of the Green Book through the New York Public Library Digital Collections. This digital resource offers students across the globe an opportunity to study the African American experience within four of the most transformative decades in US historical geography, coinciding not only with Jim Crow but also with the New Deal, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement. We have offered a variety of interpretive frameworks for critically analysing Jim Crow race relations through the pages of the Green Book (Alderman and Inwood, 2014), but our focus here is on exploring the affective capacities of this archival collection, as a reflection on the ethical opportunities and challenges that archives offer. It may seem odd to suggest that we can gain insight into deep, emotional geographies of racial control and resistance through travel service listings. Yet, Evans (2008) calls on historical geographers to move away from static, representational views of the archive to read the micro-empirical details of people in ways that ‘enliven’ archival research, allowing us to recover and interpret these details as embodied practices. Understanding how these archival materials are embedded within real peoples’ lives not only illuminates the dialectical nature of oppression and resistance, but in fact is central to critical race theory’s goal of documenting and telling counter-stories about the experience of racial minorities and their ‘cartographic struggles’ (McKittrick, 2006). ‘Cartographic struggle’ is an apt phrase since the Green Book was not only an effort for African Americans to remap and renavigate the travel landscape; the directory also played a role in re-negotiating the affective sense of place of black motorists. To understand the socio-spatial significance of the Green Book, one must reread it in a way that takes the emotion of racism seriously. Maintaining white supremacy during Jim Crow required the production of black fear and feelings of inferiority. Many segregation-era practices – from formal laws dictating where African Americans could live, work, and walk, to even the most basic social conventions about verbally addressing whites – had important affective consequences as well as political ones, serving as a point of humiliation and indignity that worked to degrade and control blacks. While the Green Book was intended to facilitate black travel, the archival resource simultaneously documents the contours of racial oppression and how racism relied upon creating a black subject who was emotionally vulnerable and subservient to the dictates of a white power structure. An ethically and emotional just approach to the Green Book recognizes that driving for African Americans was not an abstract process of moving across space; rather it held a prominent affective place in their lives. While the automobile offered freedoms from the segregated bus and train, black motorists would still face denied service at white establishments, police harassment, and intimidation and threats of violence from communities on the highway. What was the mythic ‘open road’ for whites in America was actually a road filled with apprehension and uncertainty for (Continued)

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(Continued) African Americans. The very necessity for having a Green Book speaks to the existence of this geography of fearful and subjugated travel. While an affective reading of the Green Book allows us to understand more concretely how racism employed emotion to constrain black mobility and freedom, its interpretive power also lies in documenting efforts to resist white supremacy. The efforts of Victor Green, participating Green Book establishments, and African American travellers not only sought to expand black people’s right to move: they also challenged white control over black emotion and sense of belonging. The Green Book was about making interventions in black anxieties about the dangers of travelling on racist, Jim Crow roadways. Rarely (if ever) did the words ‘racism’ and ‘discrimination’ appear in the Green Book, but the guide spoke of concern for the ‘welfare’ of black travellers, providing ‘assured protection’ to them, and helping motorists avoid the ‘humiliation’ of racialized travel. It is important to contextualize the decisions of African Americans to use the Green Book in affective terms, and to limit their exposure to the demeaning emotional qualities of Jim Crow white supremacy and the inferior construction of black subjectivity. The emotional stakes of racial resistance were especially important to African American parents who sought to minimize the extent to which their children had to observe and feel the trauma of racial discrimination. Indeed, many of the Green Book listings guided travellers to a somewhat insular world of African American neighbourhoods, businesses, and other black counter-public spaces. These spaces, while initially created out of racial exclusion, became places of African American cultural expression, creativity, political mobilization, and self-determination. They became sites of refuge from white supremacist attacks on black emotions, bodies, and rights. In this way, the Green Book facilitated a strategic navigation of racist landscapes, one that allowed African American families to claim the authority to shape the emotional health of their children and to reject the claims of white supremacy. While some might dismiss this impulse as simply a matter of shielding one’s offspring from danger, it has important political implications for people of colour and in demonstrating that being black in America could feel different. Observing and believing that racism was illegitimate on a personal and emotional level was critical to inspiring the politically charged protests of the Civil Rights Movement. The Movement’s anti-racist protests would later rely even more on forms of emotional labour – from the inspiring of black spirits and resolve through evocative speeches and music at mass meetings to the tight control of affective reactions by activists engaged in non-violent resistance.

Conclusion Through the example of the African American struggle for civil rights and The Negro Motorist Green Book, this chapter has explored the ethical implications of the archive and its capacity to recover the black emotions and affects that

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undergirded race relations in the United States. Ethical engagements with the archive – such as recognizing its capacity to be used as a form of counter-storytelling about the emotional politics of white supremacy and black resistance – can have important consequences for writing a critical historical geography of civil rights and forming a more socially just and sophisticated reconstruction of the African American subject. Yet, the affective power of the archive is not limited to the past, but flows into the present to shape the embodied experiences of the researcher and possibly provoke emotional and political responses from the wider public. For every time we venture into the archives, we don’t just learn more about the African American struggle for freedom; we also grow more convinced of our ethical responsibility to do justice to that story and use our research to inform contemporary debates about race.

Recommended Reading Alderman, D.H. and Inwood, J. (2014) ‘Toward a pedagogy of Jim Crow: A geographic reading of The Green Book’, in L. Estaville, E. Montalvo and F. Akiwumi (eds), Teaching Ethnic Geography in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. pp. 67–78. Although written for pedagogical purposes, this chapter provides a detailed introduction to the Green Book, outlines major interpretive frameworks for analysing racism and racial resistance through archival resources, and argues for greater attention to civil rights in Geography. DeLyser, D. (2014) ‘Towards a participatory historical geography: Archival interventions, volunteer service, and public outreach in research on early women pilots’, Journal of Historical Geography, 46: 93–8. This article is the lead piece in a larger forum on the idea of ‘participatory historical geography’, in which the author describes her involvement in organizing, contributing to, and creating archives focused on women and the ethical challenges that accompany this public outreach. A number of brief reactions from other authors follow the piece. Kelly, S. and Morton, S. (2004) ‘Annie Moore and the archives of displacement: Towards an immigrant history of the present’, Social & Cultural Geography, 5 (4): 633–50. This article discusses how the archival practices in the United States and Ireland efface hierarchies of race and class as they celebrate Irish immigration. The authors demonstrate the role of archives in repressing and revising histories and identities in the name of nationalism and globalization.

21 Powerful and Elite Subjects Merje Kuus

Key Points ••

Elites are not a homogenous group. Elite subjectivities, like all social subjectivities and positions, are relative and contingent.

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Research in powerful institutions necessitates thorough homework prior to any fieldwork.

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Researching high-ranking individuals in no way reduces the importance of self-reflexivity and reciprocity in fieldwork.

Introduction: Power is Relative Power is relational and situational: an individual considered powerful to one person may be considered powerless relative to another. Business executives and high-ranking civil servants may seem powerful to a visiting student but these same executives might spend substantial parts of their working days worrying about the hierarchy above them. ‘Elite’ is a similarly ambiguous and contested term. To a reader of this chapter, chief executive officers (CEOs) may seem a distant and therefore homogenous block of elite. But that same reader – a student or a researcher at a university – is a part of the elite to many other people. The conventional definition of elite as an individual ‘so placed within their structure that by their decisions they modify the milieu of many other(s)’ is too general for practical purposes in the field (definition from Mills 2000 [1956], 112; quoted in Desmond 2004). The first task, therefore, is to recognize the

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instability and ambiguity of the terminology that we use when researching elite subjects. The point of research is precisely to move beyond homogenous and monolithic binaries of powerful/powerless, establishment/critical, or conservative/radical in order to unpack the diffuse and contested ways in which subjectivity and agency actually work in our society (Rice, 2010). This is an ethical and political, as well as analytical, imperative: constructing homogenous groups of ‘elite’ or ‘powerful’ subjects oversimplifies authority and hampers our efforts to first understand, and then change, relations and hierarchies of power (see Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). This chapter draws from current geographical and social science scholarship, as well as my own research, teaching, and advising experience, to foreground some of the ethical and methodological issues that recur in the study of powerful institutions. My research focuses on diplomacy and foreign policy, but similar dynamics play out in other policy-making settings, government institutions, and large organizations. The argument proceeds in three steps. First it briefly reviews the current geographical scholarship on the methodological and ethical dilemmas involved in the study of elite-level social processes. The following section uses my research to unpack some of the ethical issues involved. The final section highlights the practical lessons gleaned from the preceding material.

Up the Geographer: Studying Policy-Making Institutions The title wording paraphrases Laura Nader’s (1972) famous challenge of ‘Up the anthropologist’ from more than four decades ago. Since that time, many scholars, including geographers, have noted the persistent tendency in social science research to leave ‘the upper reaches of the social system almost entirely in shadow’ (Gusterson, 1997; Kuus, 2013). This blind spot is especially noticeable in anthropology and geography as these disciplines have historically studied the relatively marginal and disadvantaged groups of society. In the study of policy, the effects of policies are researched thoroughly, but how these policies are conceived inside the state and business apparatus remains opaque. The procedures of the institutional review boards, and the majority of geographical scholarship around positionality and power in fieldwork, tend to involve settings outside of elite circles. In the last few decades however, a considerable body of work has emerged in political, economic, and urban geography to investigate the spatialities of power inside elite institutions and networks. Linked to the broader research around ‘studying up’ (Kuus, 2013; McDowell, 1998; Schoenberger, 1991) and ethics in geography (Proctor, 1998), this scholarship has reflected on the methodological challenges around access, positionality, and research ethics in these contexts (Billo and Mountz, 2015; Desmond, 2004; Rice, 2010). The empirical subject matter of this work varies widely, from business executives and NGO leaders to civil servants at multiple levels of the state apparatus. Analytically,

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it is therefore more useful to speak of particular groups of elite subjects, such as business executives, civil servants, or public intellectuals, rather than ‘elite’ in a generic sense. A central point in the above work is that studying elite circles involves specific difficulties both analytically and logistically. Given the power differentials between the researcher and the research subjects (often to the disadvantage of the researcher), gaining access and elucidating insight (as distinct from talking points that bypass the researcher’s analytical aims) are central to these difficulties: research subjects are protective of their time, have few incentives to talk to academics (and perhaps even less to students), and are well versed in guarding information and insight. Instead of reviewing the relevant work, as this has been done by others already (see Kuus, 2015, for a recent review), I will next use my own fieldwork to offer an empirically grounded reflection on some of the methodological and ethical dilemmas present in such research. My concern is applied and practical: ethics not as a general set of rules but as a set of dilemmas that must be kept in constant view.

CASE STUDY: METHOD AND ETHICS IN THE STUDY OF DIPLOMACY  Diplomacy is traditionally understood as the representation and negotiation of national interests abroad. It is widely considered an elite sphere par excellence – an opaque realm of quasi-aristocratic insularity. This image is outdated: today’s diplomacy has largely lost its ‘first among equals’ status and functions similarly to other branches of the civil service. The geographical assumptions and imaginaries that underpin diplomatic practice tend to be state-based, but not only that. Constantinou’s (2013) characterization of diplomacy as a sphere ‘between statecraft and humanism’ suggests that the field can offer rich examples of the contested geographical frames of global politics. Because of its history of autonomy (vis-à-vis other branches of the state), its role in representing the state abroad, and its lingering image of privilege, diplomacy can illuminate the methodological and ethical complications of ‘studying up’. Diplomacy has been the empirical anchor of my research for over nine years. The work draws primary evidence from over 100 qualitative one-toone interviews with over 70 diplomats and foreign policy professionals. The interviews are carried out in small batches, 10–15 at a time: A number of people are interviewed several times. Most of the interviewees are diplomats at national or European Union foreign services; some work at thinktanks; yet others are journalists, consultants, or academics. In rank and experience, they range from junior desk officers to the highest civil service grades in multiple foreign services. They have an average of about twenty years of professional experience (the ranks inch upward over the course

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of the research as my credibility grows, and my contacts advance in their careers). Most of them are contacted on the basis of recommendations from their colleagues – a method that is termed snowballing in social science scholarship.1 All speak in a personal capacity (i.e. not in the name of the institution), off the record, and on condition that their comments not be attributed to them. All interview material is used with these parameters in mind. The interactions are not recorded in digital form: I take hand-written notes during the interview, fill in the notes within an hour or two after the conversation (completing sentences and adding notes on context, tone, and dynamic), and transcribe the interview from memory within a few days thereafter. Although I do not label my methodology ‘ethnography’, it is a subject-centred or experience-near (Pouliot, 2008) approach designed to illuminate how my research subjects see their daily work and negotiate the nexus between power and knowledge within it. In elucidating broader methodological lessons from this work, I underscore two aspects: the vital importance of detailed background work and the equally imperative role of self-reflexivity in every aspect of the research. My goal is to clarify the twists and turns of ethical responsibility in the study of policy processes.

Homework, Homework, Homework Background research about the actual settings of the fieldwork is, of course, essential for any research. It may be more important in bureaucratic settings because these settings may seem deceptively familiar to a visiting civil servant (which is what most academics are). Although organizational charts tell us little, one still needs to know the basics to understand the flows of power. Becoming so habituated to research settings as to lose the ability to critically evaluate them is always a danger. Becoming trapped in the echo-chamber of policy talk is an ever-present risk too. Such entrapment occurs when ‘scholars, once having proven their usefulness to policy-makers and thereby earned their trust, become unwilling to offer dissenting opinions for fear of risking their access and privileges’ (Acharya, 2011: 12). Inside elite institutions, the whole social arena – the multiple interlocking fields of economic, political, and symbolic capital – is tilted towards the professionals who work there. There are no free lunches: respondents are no less focused on their gain as the academic is on theirs. One should not underestimate the ability of strong institutions and skilled individuals to subtly guide the researcher towards the ideological and intellectual parameters of the settings they study, often through the use of intricate technical language. It is easy to feel out of depth while being peppered with acronyms only insiders know. In this context, preparation becomes all the more important as ignorance about the basic set-up of an institution undermines one’s ability to effectively analyse its workings, structures, and processes. Poor preparation increases the risk of entrapment: the researcher who poorly

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grasps the multiple fields of material and symbolic power in complex institutions is less able to critically evaluate the information and insights offered by the interviewees. To stand apart from the settings one studies, the researcher needs to know what it is, in concrete daily form, they need to stand apart from. The dilemmas are about close-up qualitative work. Such work requires access beyond a 30-minute interview in which the researcher is fed scripted public-relations talking points, but that very access can jeopardize the analytical edge of the work. Bureaucracies are designed to guard information, and powerful institutions do so explicitly, with little allowance made to transparency or public engagement. In the sphere of foreign policy, many bureaucracies operate through carefully calibrated codes of secrecy that are enforced through security clearances. Information and individuals are sequestered in terms of their access to information as well as physical space, and this means separate floors with additional security guards and surveillance technology. The public relations departments of foreign policy institutions are well oiled for processing researchers and the press, and receive frequent requests for access. Even beyond these departments, the research subjects are diplomats trained to give charming interviews that feed rather than reveal information. Therefore, it pays to be careful around the term ‘ethnography’ as that word can create an illusion of access and detail that misrepresents the actual information or insight obtained (Kuus, 2013). One of the biggest dangers is that information is taken at face value. Homework thus involves more than a glimpse at the institution’s last annual report or most user-friendly webpage. It may well involve substantial research into who is who in that place, how they are positioned within the institution, and how they got there. Too often, academics deal with the difficulties of access by embellishing the data to overstate the rank of those they have interviewed. If all of the interviewees called ‘high-rank’ in academic accounts of the European Commission were in fact high-rank according to the commission’s own definition (grades AD 14–16), these officials would do nothing else but talk to academics. Formal rank should never be the goal in its own right and in many cases the opposite is true. The old adage that one learns more from the secretary than the boss is worth remembering. Academic geographers are often well-versed in the social scientific critique of power structures. This is a good thing: power in policy-making settings is disguised under technical efficiency, and a sophisticated analytical toolbox is a must. It is essential that the academic ask their own questions, as distinct from those encouraged by the institutions they study. Researchers may find that they are asked to send over questions ahead of an interview, or even told what they can or cannot talk about; they should be prepared for such requests. At the same time, critical theory is not a badge to be fetched for identification purposes. It is analytically, practically, and ethically problematic to rely on academic jargon and prefabricated critique in the actual fieldwork. The imperative that one of my interviewees underscores for diplomats – that they ‘must be open, to see new patterns’ – has much to offer to academics too.

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In hierarchical settings, which many policy-making institutions are, individuals face substantial pressures to conform to officially sanctioned storylines. It is unreasonable to expect these individuals to offer lucid criticisms of their own institutions: they might face demotion or worse if they did so. Walking in to get ‘the dirt’ on a particular initiative is not only naïve but also irresponsible. In most bureaucracies and especially above the junior ranks, officials have little incentive other than their personal curiosity to talk to a researcher, especially if the researcher is a student. Their institution may want to seem less opaque, but in most cases it is up to their personal preferences. It is worth reflecting on the gestures of hospitality that happen when research subjects choose to talk to academics. As a researcher, showing up without a solid understanding of the specific field in question may help bolster the convenient image of a monolithic elite (in part because research subjects are more likely to dismiss or patronize an unprepared researcher), but it takes us no closer to a nuanced understanding of the settings and relations studied. Thoughtful critique is one thing but the sensationalist and self-serving building up of one’s own academic credentials (or grades) at the expense of one’s interlocutors is another. Academic insularity is no better than the bureaucratic kind (the former is indeed only a form of the latter).

Positionality and Self-Reflexivity Partly because of the hierarchy above them, many individuals in policy-making institutions, especially in the more hierarchical ones, insist on anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). Substantively, this means more than omitting names from the final write-up of the study: it also requires careful consideration of how one frames the empirical account and characterizes the data sources on which it is based. The anthropologist Janine Wedel (Wedel and Kideckel, 1994) notes that one of her first lessons from studying policy elites was to learn the professional standards around anonymity and ethics in journalism. The research subjects do not know or care about university review boards or their ethical procedures: they need to know whether their comments are recorded or attributed to them and whether they can trust the researcher’s promises around anonymity. These are bread and butter issues to journalists, whose professional associations have explicit guidelines on this. In my work too, I had to brush up on terms like ‘on background’ (which means ‘comments can be paraphrased but not quoted’) early on (see also Chatham House Rule). The requirements of anonymity may require disguising some interviewees’ specific institutional location, rank, nationality, or gender. This task can be especially tricky with elite subjects, whose high positions make them easily identifiable. For instance, it might be easy to anonymize the details of an employee at a large firm, but harder for their manager. This heightens the need for a careful contextual explanation. The removal of personal attributes would be of little use if the interviewee is described as the CEO of the largest technology company in town. It would not be difficult to find out who this is.

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A carefully contextualized account of fewer quotes and demographic data is not necessarily weaker. Indeed, it may be stronger than a seemingly more detailed account that gives numeric codes to interviewees, cites the locations and dates of the interviews, and gives information on the gender, nationality, and rank of each interviewee. The operative question is not whether such information (e.g. indicators of gender, nationality, or rank) would benefit the account in some general sense – in many cases it would. The question is rather about the fundamental analytical function of the information and the ethical responsibility that the researcher has to their interviewees. If that function can be maintained without disclosing the specifics, the information as such becomes less important. If other information becomes available as a result of withholding the speaker’s identity, the trade may be worth making. If ‘diplomacy’, ‘government’, or ‘business’ were monolithic spheres of elitist arrogance, there would be no point in studying them. The entire premise of research is that things are not so simple: that subjectivity and agency (the capacity to act) are not predetermined even in hierarchical institutions. When researching elite subjects, it is therefore essential to distinguish between the attributes of the institutional context and the characteristics of the persons who work there. Even though an interviewee may assume a specific technocratic interview at first, and indeed launch into one before the researcher can even explain their approach (and this can be annoying as well as illuminating), the response tells us more about the social field than the interviewee. I have learned to never presume an interviewee’s approach to my questions from calculable social markers like rank, nationality, age, gender, educational background, or institutional affiliation. Individual personalities – that is, the interviewee’s personal curiosity, intellectual scepticism, willingness to entertain uncustomary questions, and their schedule or mood on that day – are always pivotal. Two interviews with the same person may differ greatly. As Bachmann (2011) reminds us, interactions in ‘the field’ are not that different from interactions in daily life. There are multiple ways to approach elite settings. In some cases, it is necessary to gain as much insider information as possible; in other settings, distance can bring advantages. A wrong angle of approach can, as Gusterson (2008) puts it (borrowing the analogy from his field of weapons scientists), burn up the entire mission. An approach that emphasizes the similarities between the researcher and their subjects may set up a stuffy atmosphere of entrapment; an approach that draws a sharp line between the two parties may jeopardize access. When the researcher is in a ‘supplicant’ role, asking for time and insight with little to offer in return, they may have little choice but to frame themselves as a non-threatening listener (see Desmond, 2004; McDowell, 1992; see also Cohn, 1987). In other cases, explicit intellectual equality is a more productive premise (see Gusterson, 2004; Kuus, 2014). The ethical imperative is to reflect on the choice: how one frames oneself as a researcher is first and foremost the responsibility of the researcher. That choice affects, though never determines, how research subjects frame them, and it shapes the kinds of insights that

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are offered and gleaned by either party. This is an ethical as well as analytical point. A premise of equality and reciprocity – a diplomat would say empathy – places the researcher not above or below the subjects but on par with them. To empathize is not to agree; it is rather to place the research subject in a relation of reciprocity with oneself. Michel Foucault (1984: 381) hints at such reciprocity, I think, when he writes this about interviews: In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in the discussion. […] The person asking the questions is merely exercising the right that has been given to him: to remain unconvinced, to perceive a contradiction, to require more information, to emphasize different postulates, to point out faulty reasoning, etc. As for the person answering the questions, he too exercises a right that does not go beyond the discussion itself; by the logic of his own discourse he is tied to what he has said earlier, and by the acceptance of dialogue he is tied to the questioning of the other. Questions and answers depend on a game – a game which is at once pleasant and difficult – in which each of the two partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and by the accepted form of the dialogue. Such reciprocity is always difficult, as power hierarchies are always a part of social interaction, in elite or any other settings. In the field, the task is not as much to undo as to be aware of the material and symbolic hierarchies at play. The premise of intellectual equality and reciprocity may necessitate caution around the term ‘elite’. Once the setting and the subjects are framed as elite, it becomes too easy to remove them from the realm of reciprocal responsibility. Placing the critical focus on the subjects subtly shifts it away from the researcher and thereby blunts the discomforts of self-reflexivity. In practical terms, the ethical as well as analytical imperative is to ask open-ended questions rather than closed ones. The interesting question is not whether specific elite subjects are arrogant (a closed question that I have received from other academics many times) but how these individuals see their world (a more open question). Some diplomats are arrogant, but closed blanket questions do not help us understand why and how this happens. Subject-formation processes among career diplomats are as varied as those among academic geographers.

Conclusion: Context and Contingency This chapter makes three points. First, it points to the rich literature on research methodology and ethics available in several disciplines on researching elite subjects. It is essential to engage with that work prior to any fieldwork. Many of the issues that I can only hint at here are analysed in great detail in

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that scholarship. Second, the study of ‘elite’ or ‘powerful’ subjects is not that different from any other research: one needs to know something about the topic and one needs to be aware of the agendas, interests, and positionalities of others as well as oneself. The better the background knowledge (and this includes a continuous critical evaluation of that knowledge), the better the analysis. The trap of becoming habituated to research settings must be kept in mind at all times, but so must the trap of naïve and self-serving academic insularity. Careful homework about policy-making institutions and the people who work there does not preclude, and often improves, a critical analysis of these institutions. Third, any fieldwork involves the negotiation of difference. In that negotiation, it is essential to avoid the othering of the research subjects as a generic ‘elite’ and it is vital to reflect on the open-ended and relational character of all social science fieldwork.

Note 1  Building contacts takes time. I started with two contacts in 2007 and cultivated a network of research subjects over multiple fieldtrips over several years. For a researcher early in their work, press and public relations officers may be the only access point available. The arguments in this chapter do not depend on the kind of institutions studied or the rank of the research subjects therein.

Recommended Readings Billo, E. and Mountz, A. (2015) ‘For institutional ethnography: Geographical approaches to institutions and the everyday’, Progress in Human Geography, 40 (2): 199–220. The article reviews current geographic work on the study of institutions. The authors accentuate the promise of feminist methodologies in such work. Kuus, M. (2013) ‘Foreign policy and ethnography: A skeptical intervention’, Geopolitics, 18 (1): 115–31. The article reviews the interdisciplinary body of work on ‘studying up’ in bureaucratic settings. The author cautions against glamorizing ethnographic methods in the study of complex bureaucratic institutions. McDowell, L. (1992) ‘Valid games? A Response to Erica Schoenberger’, Professional Geographer, 44 (2): 212–15. The article critically reviews a landmark article about the use of elite interviews in social science research. The author accentuates questions around interpretation and positionality in such interviews.

22 The Environment Jenny Pickerill

Key Points ••

The environment includes humans and their cultural interconnections to environmental processes and places. Humans have a responsibility towards the environment because we are intricately related to it.

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It is necessary to understand the environment spatially and temporally, and that the environment is shaped by different people, with unequal power, and for particular ends.

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Environmental research often involves dealing with conflict, uneven power dynamics, and potentially divisive findings.

Introduction: Environmental Geographies This chapter explores the ethics of doing research with people involved in environmental work and forms of ethical practice that are about care of, and for, the environment. It begins by outlining the sub-discipline of environmental geography, but then considers why approaching the environment needs ethical consideration. Six key elements to doing ethical environmental research are examined and then illustrated in two case studies: Indigenous environmental protest and eco-communities and eco-building. Environmental geography examines the relationships between the environment and people. The sub-discipline is particularly interested in the interactions, interrelations, and interdependence between the dynamics of the earth (be that weathering, erosion, hydrology, landforms, or climate) and the humans who occupy it. This includes a broad range of interconnections such as human impact on the environment, human resilience to environmental change, and

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efforts to change human–environment relations. Being geography this work operates across a variety of spatial and temporal scales and different social, economic, political, and cultural entities. Environmental geography is an interface between physical and human geography, as it requires knowledge of how the earth and environment work as well as understandings of human activities and relationships. Environmental geography can be categorized into three broad themes. First, geographers explore what ‘the environment’ is, how it is understood, and who defines its meaning (Anderson and Braun, 2017; Castree et al., 2016; Pickerill, 2009). Geographers tend to accept that what is conceived of as ‘the environment’ (or nature) is socially constructed (see Castree, 2013), and often based on human/culture distinctions that have colonial histories. As such, it is not just that humans have in some way transformed all forms of the environment (and therefore the idea that nature could exist as ‘untouched’ is a delusion), but that the perception of what is most valuable in the environment (certain species and landscapes) is socially determined (Castree and Braun, 2001). Political ecologists take this premise and examine how environmental problems are portrayed and conceived by different stakeholders, such as the state, civil society, and the market. In this way politics, and those with power, shape how the environment is understood; ‘the environment and how we acquire, disseminate, and legitimate knowledge about it is highly politicized, reflective of relations of power, and contested’ (Neuman, 2014: 1). Second, geographers examine the consequences of the changing relations between people and the environment. This includes understanding human impacts and their drivers, how environmental risks are understood, and frameworks of environmental management. Geographers tend to take an issue, such as falling agricultural productivity, and situate it within the broader dynamics of, for example, gender relations, migration patterns, changing land ownership, or shifting global markets. Geographers employ multiple scales and global perspectives to interrogate the causes and consequences of changing environmental relations. A good example of this is the issue of climate change – a change in global climate patterns leading to increased global temperatures, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events – where geographers have examined the embedded daily practices that produce carbon emissions alongside the geopolitical difficulties of dealing with uneven global vulnerabilities and political will to support mitigation and adaptation efforts. Geographers identify not just the multiple scales at which climate change needs to be considered but also the ways governments decide what and who is worth protecting, how discourses about the economy influence action, and who is invisible in these discussions. Third, geographers interrogate the possibilities of, and attempts at, progressively changing humans’ relations with the environment. This includes examining experiments to improve urban resilience (Bulkeley et al., 2014), environmental activism, attempts to transition towns away from reliance on fossil fuels to more sustainable renewable energies (North and Longhurst, 2013), and exploration of how to change individuals’ everyday practices to become more

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ecologically benign (Watson, 2012). This focus on alternatives, social change, and grassroot solutions to environmental problems is inherently hopeful. Geographers have a particular interest in the ways that people and communities are able to innovate. For example, there are numerous worldwide examples of self-build eco-homes, micro renewable technologies, and low-tech waterfiltering systems being built affordably by non-professionals (Pickerill, 2016). Geographers are also interested in how different knowledges and ontologies facilitate more ethical relations with the environment (Bawaka Country et al., 2016). Overall, geographers conceive of the environment as a social and political entity about which there is often conflict, yet there are also many positive examples of humans changing their values and practices to reduce their environmental impact.

Thinking about the Environment Ethically The particular ethical concerns that are raised by the environment as an object or key concern of study depends on the ways in which ‘the environment’ as a concept is understood. For example, there are people who have an anthropocentric approach where the environment is simply a resource for humans (a hierarchy where humans are the most important). Environmental sustainability would only be desirable if it ultimately improved human welfare. Alternatively, an ecocentric approach values the environment and non-human entities as equally important to humans. This approach values animals, trees, and plants in the same way that we value other humans. Geographers have tended to consider the environment as a social construction shaped by power, politics, and different forms of knowledge, and these in turn influence human relations, respect, and responsibilities towards the environment. In other words the environment is neither just a resource for human needs, nor of equal importance to human life. There are a number of key terms that geographers have used and critiqued which reflect this more complicated understanding of the environment. There are multiple ways that nature has been conceived: as external, first, or pristine nature which is separate and outside from humans; as second nature which has been transformed by human activity (such as agricultural and urban landscapes); and as third nature which is the landscaping of gardens (Castree, 2001; Smith, 2008). The concept of first nature, of nature as an unspoilt untouched external entity, is used by conservationists as justification for protecting nature from further (or any) detrimental human impact. But what is deemed natural is actually a social product and a mere reflection of what humans value (wilderness, an abundant and unspoilt landscape). Nature and culture are inseparable because they co-constitute each other. As Soper (1999: 56) argues, ‘much of which ecologists loosely refer to as “natural” is indeed a product of culture, both in the physical sense and in the sense that perceptions of its beauties and value are culturally shaped.’ There is no such thing as an external, abstract, idealized, untouched ‘nature’ as discrete from humans.

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This separation of nature from culture has a colonial history. Europeans expanding empire constructed nature as a resource and sought to rationalize and order nature to make it productive, viewing ‘wildness as a challenge for the rational mind to conquer’ (Adams and Mulligan, 2003: 5). Nature has been thought of as wildness to be tamed (and often feared), or tranquil and benign to be exploited. Crucially, imposing certain views of how nature ‘should be’, or seeking to control nature in particular ways, could be seen as a form of ongoing colonialism. When thinking about the environment ethically, therefore, it is important to reflect upon how you might be inadvertently reapplying notions of nature that are inappropriate. Recent use of the concept of the Anthropocene, a new geological era, signals an emerging acceptance that human activity has fundamentally and irrevocably altered the physical processes of the earth (Whitehead, 2014). It builds on the idea of planetary boundaries that determine the thresholds below which humans can safely survive on the planet. The timing of when it began is contested, but it has been linked to the 1950s and the beginning of a period of acceleration in population growth, urbanization, increased energy and water use, carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and rising surface temperatures (Castree, 2014a). Although the concept is useful in identifying the global scale and significance of human influence on the earth’s systems, and therefore could be useful to force political recognition of environmental degradation, it has a number of limitations. Debates on the Anthropocene have often been dominated by the earth sciences and have thus tended to exclude adequate consideration of the cultural and political questions that environmental change poses, while the global scale of the focus in such discussions risks obscuring spatial differences and issues of socio-spatial equity (Cook et al., 2015). While the concept of the Anthropocene could risk amplifying the separation between the environment and society, just as nature does by considering humans as powerful as a geological force or as beholden to dynamic earth systems, geographers have argued that it actually allows the interrelations between society and environment to become visible. Castree (2014b: 450) argues: ‘the Anthropocene concept […] graphically transgresses the ontological distinction that supposedly exists between humans and those globe-girdling environmental systems that have remained relatively stable for the last 12000 years.’ In other words, the Anthropocene illustrates how humans act upon the environment on which they are dependent and therefore shape that which shapes them, because while humans shape the environment the environment also shapes humans (Cook et al., 2015). The Anthropocene demonstrates the linkage between the locally specific actions of humans and their global consequences. It is this recognition – that the environment is best understood in relation to humans – that is central to how geographers understand the environment. The environment is produced, rather than being a given, through human and non-human relations. Unlike some concepts of nature, the environment does not exist as a separate entity to humans; it is inescapably social. Our

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knowledge about the environment is always situated and partial, and our ways of knowing about the environment are shaped by social power relations. How we engage with the environment is also shaped by the social, by particular configurations of economic, cultural, and technical relations and capacities. For example, what constitutes a ‘natural’ hazard is actually determined by the vulnerabilities of different groups of people in society. Finally, humans remake the environment; we shape it by living in it; and we change the climate, water, soil, etc (Castree, 2001). Therefore the environment is best understood as a lived-in peopled-landscape that is dynamic and relational. With this in mind, thinking about the environment ethically means: (a) the environment includes humans and their cultural interconnections to environmental processes and places; (b) what is thought of as the environment is shaped by different people, with unequal power and for particular ends; (c) it is necessary to understand the environment spatially (an interconnection of global systems and a locally specific unique place) and temporally (with particular pasts, presents, and anticipated futures); (d) humans have a responsibility towards the environment because we are intricately related to it; and (e) therefore the environment and all of its constituents (non-humans, nonliving nature, etc.) deserve consideration and respect. Crucially, only an ethical approach to researching the environment and an understanding of how we are intractably tied to our co-habitants on earth will enable us to find better ways to co-exist on this fragile earth.

Ethical Issues and Opportunities There are six entities to consider in the ethics of environmental research: knowledges, non-humans, access, time, consequences, and adversaries. Each is explored below.

Knowledges All research starts from a particular epistemology, that is, a type of knowledge about the world. Your epistemology is shaped by your education, religious beliefs, morals, and culture. Crucially there is no ‘correct’ epistemology. In our research we need to be open to understanding how our knowledge is shaped and constructed, and value and respect other epistemologies (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). How the environment is understood and valued is directly shaped by people’s epistemologies. Geography as a discipline has an unfortunate history of imposing colonial practices and colonial ways-of-knowing on the world that ignored other knowledges (see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). Geography has also appropriated others’ knowledges without consent (see Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume). It is vital therefore, in doing ethical environmental research, that you understand the limitations of your own knowledge (epistemology), and respect that others will have

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different knowledges. For example, for Indigenous Australians all entities in the world have equal value and are alive: ‘nature as sentient, as something that can see, hear, walk and escape’ (Carolan, 2009: 8). Non-humans are treated like kin, like family; they are listened to, respected, and looked after. Such knowledge results in valuing different aspects of the environment and different land management practices. In this epistemology, knowledge itself is only gained through doing (it is not learned from books). As Robertson (2017: 181) argues, ‘Indigenous knowledge […] arrives through action from within the world […] epistemology is a practical doing in and with the environment. Epistemology and ontology therefore involve all manner of participations with (non)humans, as well as “feelings in” (emotions) and the “feel of” place (affect and intuition) (emphases in original). It is this acting with non-human entities that distinguishes Indigenous knowledge-making from non-Indigenous epistemologies. Understanding these different knowledges requires careful collaboration with research participants. Ethically it is inappropriate to extract knowledges simply for academic benefit. Rather, research needs to benefit those you are working with through partnerships where benefits are outlined and agreed (Tuhiwai-Smith, 2012; see also Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume). Equally you cannot make any assumptions that knowledge will be shared with you or that you will have a right to use it.

Non-Humans Non-humans are rarely considered in ethical decisions in geography and yet in environmental geography non-humans are often a core element of what is being researched (Braun, 2005). Non-humans are everything in the world that is not human. This includes animals, fish, insects, plants, and bacteria, but can also include ‘inanimate’ objects where, if only at the sub-molecular level, apparently inert materials like metals ‘move’. The non-human is ethically important. For many Indigenous peoples, the non-human is just as important as humans. For the Quandamooka people that Martin and Mirraboopa belong to, for example, ‘we believe that country is not only the Land and People, but it is also the Entities of Waterways, Animals, Plants, Climate, Skies and Spirits […] People are no more or less important than the other Entities’ (Martin and Mirraboopa, 2003: 207; capitals in the original). In research this requires being as respectful of non-humans as humans (Todd, 2014). As we cannot secure consent from non-humans we have to think through any possible implications for them (see Gillespie, Chapter 18 in this volume). A couple of examples illustrate what this means. First, just because someone might describe an environment as ‘wilderness’ does not mean we should assume it is empty of meaning. As discussed above, the concept of wilderness is based on a false premise that nature is external to humans. Describing a place as wilderness says more about the person who uses the term than it does about that environment and place. Ethically there remains a responsibility to

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that place, its non-humans and non-living nature, to think through any consequences of your research, to ensure that you do not replicate others’ assumptions about places, and instead you work with an appropriate ethics of care to the environment. Second, the environment is full of cultural meaning. A place might be considered to be sacred land and spiritually important, but you might not know that. It is ethically important to think carefully about how to act on and in any environment, ensuring that you take nothing but photographs (if permitted) and limit your physical impact. Therefore, if you need to take physical samples for your research you must gain consent from those who take responsibility for that environment.

Access One of the biggest challenges in environmental research is securing access. This access can be to people you want to interview, a particular site you want to survey, records or archival materials, or an event you want to attend. Gaining access is often an ongoing, fragile, and temporary agreement. It is rarely secured through just one gatekeeper or agreed permanently. Access takes time to secure and is reliant on trust, and this can be easily lost if you act inappropriately. An information sheet about the research can help gain access as it can be easily passed onto others who will want to know what you are doing (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). Never assume you have any right to access: permission is always required from someone even if you do not at first know who that is. Some places, like eco-villages, environmental education centres, or eco-building sites have organized tours or training workshops. It is often a good idea to start by attending any organized events as you can meet the people involved, explain your research, and often gain their trust for further access. You might need to volunteer your time in exchange for people using their time to talk to you (see Fariás and Wilson, Chapter 26 in this volume).

Time Ethical research takes considerable time. It takes time to find people and places to work with, to secure access, to participate, and to ensure the ethical basics of consent and permission. While it might be tempting to take shortcuts to save time these are likely to undermine any ethical intent. You need to ensure that you have enough time to do the research ethically. This is significantly important in work on the environment, as such work has specifically temporal impacts too. Most notably, there is a significant time-lag (and spatial unevenness) between a potentially environmentally damaging practice (like burning fossil fuels) and the consequences being obvious and experienced (climate change). Therefore an ethical commitment to the environment is framed towards the future and about shaping the future ramifications of actions happening in the present, without necessarily being able to see those impacts in the present.

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Consequences A key ethical imperative is to think through the consequences of your research, both for the people involved in environmental work and for the environment. Consider how your research findings might impact your research participants and other communities. For example, if you are working on flooding and produce new flood maps, your results might devalue people’s homes or prevent them from securing insurance. Ideally, research should not be implicated in the displacement, exploitation, or oppression of peoples nor support neoliberal policies of privatization, resource theft, or corporate expansion (Autonomous Geographies Collective, 2010). It is necessary to think carefully about which people benefit from the research you conduct. It is acceptable to benefit from the research yourself, in getting a degree or maybe even a publication, but the research also has to benefit others. This might be in the form of direct payback: you might donate your time as a volunteer; you could produce a useful report; or you could share your raw data for a group or organization to use. It might also be in the form of indirect payback – that your research supports a claim made by your participants, highlights an issue, or helps an organization critically reflect on their practices. Consequences for the environment could also be significant, from identifying places with particular resources that might attract exploitation, to your research encouraging practices that cause further environmental degradation. A risk, for example, of detailing places that are remote and beautiful could be to attract more visitors, along with their pollution and waste. Similarly, research suggesting that energy smart meters do not reduce overall energy consumption might lead to companies abandoning all efforts to encourage energy use reduction, despite other approaches having potential to do this. It is therefore vital to consider the broad range of possible consequences of your research for both people and the environment.

Adversaries Environmental research is often political. Research might identify damaging environmental practices, illegal acts, government incompetence, or even fraud. Your research could identify a complicit company, politician, or community. If you are exploring social change activism you might witness illegal acts undertaken by activists or by police forces (see Ince and White, Chapter 14 in this volume). Depending on your politics you might consider some of these adversaries and not wish to share your data with them. When I have worked with protest groups I have been careful in ensuring that I do not share information that would criminally implicate any research participants. Ethically you need to consider who you think any adversaries might be, identify how they might react to your research, and plan accordingly: who might dislike your research findings? This is also about being honest with your research participants about your politics, ‘which side you are on’, and making promises that you can keep (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume; Koopman, Chapter 12 in this volume).

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CASE STUDY 1: INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST One of my research interests is in the relations between environmental campaigners and Indigenous activists (Pickerill, 2009). For a recent research project I travelled to the Kimberley, Western Australia, to interview environmental and Indigenous activists. The Kimberley has a horrible history of Indigenous dispossession and is largely financially reliant on resource extraction (mining), but is also home to significant environmental biodiversity and strong Indigenous presence – politically and culturally. I arrived in the middle of an environmental conflict: there was a state-supported proposal to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) gas processing plant at Walmadan (James Price Point). The developer had offered AUS$1.5 billion in compensation over 30 years to Indigenous people in exchange for approval. But the proposal split the traditional owners, the Jabirr Jabirr and Goolarabooloo people, and environmental groups mounted campaigns to stop the development. After a long and messy conflict the development was abandoned.

Figure 22.1 Being shown how to fish on the Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia (Continued)

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(Continued) Ethically, this research was complex. As an outsider I did not understand the subtleties of the conflict, nor who was on what side. Although I had worked with Indigenous and environmental activists in Australia before, I had not worked in this region. I also had limited time; my fieldwork needed to be completed within three months for financial and logistical reasons. There was a real danger that my work would be extractive and that it would not benefit any of the research participants (Gillan and Pickerill, 2012). I began by being clear about my politics, my support for Indigenous rights, and my respect for Indigenous knowledges (Lloyd et al., 2012). Crosscultural fieldwork requires preparation so that appropriate language is used (such as ‘country’ for environment), respect is shown for the non-human (especially the ancestors and spiritual sites), and we understand that it can be impolite, for example, to take photographs of Indigenous activists. Working cross-culturally requires respecting knowledges and approaches you cannot see and might not understand. I spent a great deal of time listening, watching, walking with, clarifying (not challenging), and waiting until people where ready to talk to me (Figure 22.1). I was also honest about my likely inability to contribute much beyond publicizing the conflict. I adopted the same approach and respect with the environmental activists I sought to interview.

CASE STUDY 2: ECO-COMMUNITIES AND ECO-BUILDING In a completely different context I have researched how people build ecohouses and environmentally sensitive lifestyles (Pickerill, 2016). I am interested in the hopeful ways that people choose to live on the edges of capitalism and create alternatives to the mainstream (Autonomous Geographies Collective, 2010). Eco-communities are good examples of collective efforts to live differently; they illustrate a concern for social, economic, and environmental needs, and they are examples of places of collaborative and communal housing and living. Key aspirations of an eco-community include: a culture of self-reliance; minimal environmental impact and minimal resource use; low-cost affordable approaches; extended relations of care for others (beyond the nuclear family); progressive values (for example, towards gender equality); and an emphasis on collectivist and communal sharing. Ethically the main challenge in this research is in getting people to use their time to talk to you. Eco-builders are busy building their homes. An ethical approach is to volunteer, participate, and help them in their work (Figure 22.2). Participating signals not just a willingness to get involved but also a political allegiance to the ideal of building eco-communities.

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Figure 22.2 Plastering an eco-house wall, Brighton, England Eco-communities do not always have planning permission for their buildings so ethically it is necessary to protect their locations from potential adversaries. In my work I have thus used pseudonyms for some places and given them false locations (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). Finally, eco-communities are far from perfect: they experience tensions and failures, and have faults. Yet because many people have invested a lifetime of work and energy into creating such eco-spaces as progressive alternatives to the capitalist mainstream, they rarely want researchers to identify their problems. There is an ethical dilemma here between reporting findings that harshly critique eco-communities and glossing over such tensions in order to support the wider political project they represent. Navigating this dilemma is easiest by talking through findings with participants and collectively identifying material which they feel is helpful and productive to share (and which enables other communities and builders to learn from their experience), and agreeing to keep private some elements which might prove divisive (see also Hopkins, Chapter 6 in this volume).

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Conclusion In this chapter I have outlined a series of ethical issues that arise when we focus on the environment as an object of study and research. A key consideration to emerge from environmental geographies is to be mindful of, and seek to displace, our assumptions of what constitutes ‘the environment’ and how this category is shaped by long-standing dualisms of nature-culture that have an exclusionary colonial history. Moving past such dualisms to consider the inherently entwined relationships of humans and non-humans poses a number of ethical challenges for geographers. For example, how can we make space for the agency and consent of non-human subjects in our research? And how can we ensure that actions taken today, even when apparently ethically sound, may not contribute to future forms of environmental damage? There are no easy answers to the questions posed by an expansive account of the environment as both an object of study and a critical actor in the process of geographical research. Rather, considering the environment requires reflection on the ways in which our research is intimately connected to diverse forms of knowledge, often highly unequal systems of valuing that knowledge (see Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume), and diverse forms of life (see Gillespie, Chapter 18 in this volume).

Recommended Readings Attfield, R. (2014) Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Wiley. This book details the ethical imperative to change how we value and relate to the environment, detailing a variety of ways in which the environment has been a subject of ethical scrutiny. Gillan, K. and Pickerill, J. (2012) ‘The difficult and hopeful ethics of research on and with social movements’, Social Movement Studies, 11 (2): 133–43. This article details the ethical opportunities and issues of researching activism and social movements, considering how protests and campaigners can be incorporated into research in ethically sensitive ways. Wright, S., Lloyd, K., Suchet-Pearson, S., Burarrwanga, L., Tofa, M., and Bawaka Country (2012) ‘Telling stories in, through and with country: Engaging with Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia’, Journal for Cultural Geography, 29 (1): 39–60. This article explores the methodology of storytelling as an ethical means of approaching cross-cultural and non-human research.

Part 4 SPACES

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23 Public Spaces Veronica Crossa

Key Points ••

Public spaces are increasingly privatized and heavily regulated, a practice that affects not just their use, but also ethical considerations of consent, access, and anonymity.

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Public spaces are sites of constant negotiation between different interest groups and demands; they are thus critical sites in the practice of democracy.

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Due to their shared nature, research in public spaces needs to consider how the limits of inclusion and exclusion within research will be negotiated.

Introduction Conducting research in and about public space is not an easy task. I wish I had the ‘expert’ knowledge, the conviction, or the self-confidence necessary to write a clear, systematic, and step-by-step recipe on how to proceed with such a task. I’m afraid I have none of these. Part of this void has to do with the fact that I am quite sceptical of cookie-cutter narratives that decontextualize and essentialize people, places, and experiences. That said, I do have some ideas based on my own experiences, stories, observations, narratives, and reflections that hopefully might prove helpful when thinking about the fundamental relationship between ethics and research on and about public space. Much of what I will say in this chapter applies to research within the social sciences in general, particularly to research concerned with micro-scale and ethnographic epistemologies. Conducting research within the social sciences, especially from

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a critical perspective, requires thinking about the role that we play as researchers within our own field, but more importantly within the complex world we encounter, describe, and analyse. So, much of what I will exemplify in this chapter is highly connected to what we do as geographers and with how we should carry ourselves in the field. But there are also specificities when conducting research in and about public space that I think illustrate some of the challenges we face when it comes to thinking about the ethical entanglements of our actions as researchers. The chapter is organized as follows. In the first section, I provide a brief overview of some of the major discussions within the field of urban geography concerned with public space. The second section of the chapter will highlight some ethical considerations of undertaking research in and on public space. As I will discuss, conducting research with people in these sorts of spaces requires a level of ethical reflection that must be taken into account both during and in advance of research, and it can highlight some of the broader concerns that are central to this book. The case study will empirically ground the ethical issues highlighted by drawing from my own research on the politics of urban public space in Mexico City.

Public Space in Geographic Research Part of the difficulty of doing research on and about public space has to do with the complexity involved in defining the concept. This complexity is related to the multiplicity of sometimes opposing meanings associated to what we understand as public. Indeed, discussions about the public (and consequently the private; see Pratt, Chapter 24 in this volume) are as deep-rooted as ancient philosophy. The public/private debate has involved an array of theoretical languages, embedded in different discursive universes, with important normative implications (Weintraub, 1997: 3). Even though discussions around public space require an engagement with political philosophy, in this section I want to focus more specifically on how urban geographers have tackled the concept, paying particular attention to work that has used public space as an analytical entry point for unravelling broader political-economic processes. Concern among urban geographers interested in public space has recently centred on the ways in which these spaces are changing in the light of neoliberal urban politics. The privatization of public space is a recurrent aspect, as city governments and urban elites collaborate on the development of commercial public spaces (Amin, 2008; Harvey, 1985; 1989; Koch and Latham, 2012; Loughran, 2014; MacLeod, 2011; Mitchell, 2001). The ‘Disneyfication’ (Zukin, 1991) of urban public space, for example, captures the salient notion that contemporary urban politics is more devoted to the celebration of consumption over any other form of social interaction (Drummond-Cole et al., 2012; Sorkin, 1992). Many authors have argued that public spaces are now controlled, privatized, and purified through the growing implementation of explicitly

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exclusionary policies that regulate ‘intruders, whose appearance, conduct and moral codes may not fit in with the imageable city’ (MacLeod, 2002: 611). City authorities govern urban space with the objective of minimizing uncertainties, creating clean spaces and facilitating predictable forms of social interactions (Carter, 2013; Darling and Wilson, 2016). In this sense, difference, diversity, and hybridity are conceived as ‘overwhelming and dangerous, to be excluded or segregated where possible – indeed, something to be afraid of’ (Bannister and Fyfe, 2001: 807). From the privatization of urban public space to the emergence of gated communities (see Lees et  al., 2016), at issue is the dismantling of local forms of social organization as well as the economic and political exclusion of large sectors of the urban population for whom public space assumes a major significance – for protest, economic exchange, leisure, survival, and so on (see Harvey, 2008). However, many of these policies have been framed in a language of inclusion, democracy, and participation. It is common to find programmes, policies, and even academic works on urban public space that begin with the underlying assumption that these spaces stand out for their inclusive character or ability to facilitate collective and participative socialization, or represent the purest form of democratic context. There is a permanent tension between two aspects. On the one hand, there is a notion of public space framed through a language of participation and inclusion. The concept is a normative object, not only in legal terms, but also in the construction of an imaginary of a utopian urban order. On the other hand, this abstraction is decontextualized from a much more complex political, social, and economic reality, particularly in settings like Mexico City, where inequality prevails, where the precariousness of work continues to deepen, and where informality penetrates multiple spheres of public and private life and serves as support for formal economies (McFarlane, 2012). Taking this contradiction seriously is key, particularly when thinking about the relationship between the study of public space and ethics. Indeed, research in and about public space is intrinsically a political issue. Regardless of the subject, no matter how apolitical it might seem, looking at public space necessarily entails an awareness of how urban public space is (re)produced and thus who is included/excluded from the possibility of being visible or represented in these spaces; what practices and interactions are deemed acceptable and celebrated, versus the sorts of activities that are deemed non-worthy of a presence. All of these issues are political and therefore require a political sensitivity in theoretical terms, but also methodologically. It is to these issues that I now turn.

The Ethics of Doing Research on and about Public Space Writing about ethics within the research process is challenging because decisions about ethical practices are made in very specific contexts. Although we as researchers are (or should be) guided by a ‘compelling sense of duty and

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commitment based on moral principles of human freedom and well-being, and a compassion for the suffering of lived beings’ (Madison, 2005: 5), these moral principles may vary depending on concrete experiences. There is a tendency to think about ethics in the research process as something that pertains primarily to fieldwork, to our direct interactions with our research participants (see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume). However, as this book shows, ethical concerns should filter through every stage of the research process. In fact, every decision we make that involves others, particularly when those others are located in differential power relations, must involve a process of self-reflection and a careful consideration of our role in the production of knowledge (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). This section will discuss some of these ethical challenges by looking briefly at two stages of the research process: (a) designing the research questions, and (b) engaging in fieldwork. Of course, these stages are not mutually exclusive or separate, but each stage involves sets of practices and reflexive exercises that require distinct ethical considerations.

Designing the Research Questions There is a tendency to define public space as a physical arena where things occur, where social relations unfold. Public space in these terms is a park, a plaza, a square, or a street. It is a space made ‘public’ by its accessibility, its visibility, and its openness (Rabotnikof, 2011). While there is an element of certainty to this, geographers have increasingly moved beyond these accounts of public space, exploring the ways in which normative understandings of the public–private are constructed and reproduced (see also Pratt, Chapter 24 in this volume). Many feminist scholars have sought to unravel the constructed boundaries between the public and private, arguing that there is a tendency to conflate the content of an action with the spaces of such an action (Drummond, 2000). That is, there is a tendency to assume that public action necessarily takes place in public space, while private actions are tied to private spaces. By focusing on women’s activism, Staeheli and Thompson (1997), for example, problematize the private–public divide and argue that constraints on women’s access to public space have encouraged the development of alternative spaces which traditionally have been denoted as ‘private’. This allows for the identification of spaces, interests, and actions that are more or less public, without implying that they necessarily fall into the remit of a physical ‘public’ space (see also Iveson, 2011). These are important points to consider when designing research questions that relate to public space. I would say then, that a first ethical consideration to bring to the fore when designing research related to public space is the recognition that concepts such as public space are moral categories that have a grounded and context-specific history (Low, 2010). Public space is a moral category, handled in cultural terms, embodied in value-systems, traditions, ideas,

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discourses, interests and, of course, politics. In this sense, public space is a contested term and is therefore highly political and politicized, as Cresswell’s (2004) work examining the transgression of normative boundaries in public illustrates. Recognizing that public space is a moral and political matter therefore means acknowledging that people are differentially positioned within power relations that place them in different circumstances with regards to their access, use, and practices in public. With this political and moral context in mind some questions that may guide our personal considerations of ethical matters when it comes to designing a research question are: In what ways are social relations of inequality made legitimate, and which groups or individuals have the power to define, negotiate, transform, or resist these relations? What sorts of practices and interactions in public space are encouraged, regulated, excluded, and struggled over? The meanings and practices associated with public spaces can thus be a fundamental source for understanding how the politics of space unfold in different contexts.

Conducting Fieldwork If you are involved in research concerned with public space, it is very likely that you will be conducting some form of fieldwork that may involve observation, interactions with people, and perhaps interviews. Participation in the field requires an ethical responsibility towards others that is translated into guiding principles of honesty and care, which should be brought to light when conducting fieldwork in and about public space. One of the first elements to consider when conducting research on and in public space is the issue of access and consent. How to gain access to particular groups or spaces in an ethical manner is crucial in all research, but in the context of work in and on public space a number of specific issues arise. First, assuming that because we are in public space, we have an automatic right to do research is problematic. If we assume that anything that is public is inherently political, and possibly a source of conflict, then we have to tread with the same sort of caution that we would if we were studying any scenario where conflict may prevail. This means, first and foremost, communicating (formally or informally) your objectives to potential or already identified participants. They are the ones who decide if, for instance, you can take photographs and walk around freely – that is, under what conditions you can access public space. In this sense, identifying research participants and engaging them in public space should follow similar considerations of informed consent as to other forms of research (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). At the same time, there is also a need to be cautious about identifying a space as ‘public’ in the first instance. As debates around the privatization of public space have highlighted, spaces of consumption, such as retail centres, are increasingly made to look like public spaces, despite being owned and controlled by private companies.

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It is thus key to research the background and ownership of any space you are working in, as the division between public and private may not be as clearly demarcated as you might expect (see Pratt, Chapter 24 in this volume). However, much research in public space goes beyond the involvement of a number of directly recruited ‘participants’. Rather, one of the complications of research in public is that it may involve precisely this group of subjects, the public. For example, many studies of public space involve forms of participant observation in which researchers spend considerable amounts of time observing interactions in public spaces to examine how such spaces are used, by whom, and for what purposes. This means that while such research may involve specific ‘participants’, it may also encompass a much wider group of people who inhabit public space and in doing so come to figure, often anonymously, in the research process. For instance, in their study of benches in urban public space in the UK, Rishbeth and Rogaly (2018) interviewed park users, and observed of how park spaces and benches were used by a range of groups, to explore the creation of convivial forms of public multiculture. In this context, interviewees were asked to give explicit consent for interviews, becoming formal ‘participants’ much research. At the same time, other park users were alerted to the presence of researchers through the use of a number of signs, such that members of the public could ask not to be observed if they wished. This practice drew on the work of Laurier and Philo (2006a), in that it negotiates the varying demands of direct, and indirect, consent in public space between different groups who may have differing expectations of research (see also Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). Unlike much research in private space (see Pratt, Chapter 24 in this volume), work in public requires a sensitivity to the fact that research is likely to incorporate, and come into contact with, people who are not directly involved in the research. For research in public space with specific participants, it is important to recognize that building relations of trust takes time. To understand the relations of public space it is often important to immerse yourself in the daily life of such spaces, and this requires a considerable degree of commitment and a sensibility that is open and honest about the intentions and expectations of your research (see Darling, Chapter 9 in this volume). Of course, it is impossible to control every aspect of the fieldwork process, and less so the ways in which you are seen and imagined in the eyes of others (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). However, this places an ethical imperative on us as researchers to consider how our own presence may shape understandings of public space, and how others interact with them (Goffman, 1959, 1971). Thinking about public space as that which is visible and open means that our presence in space will necessarily add a layer of considerations, because others observe us just as we may observe them. In part, this involves taking into account how our positionality affects our research (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), but in public spaces it may also go beyond this to demand that as researchers we consider how we are actively shaping public space as we interact with and

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research it. For instance, Rishbeth and Rogaly’s (2018) research on benches influenced how different groups used the benches in the parks they observed and fostered new conversations between members of the public over the value of public space. The question of how, as researchers, we affect the spaces we encounter is a complex one, but in approaching it we should take into account a couple of relatively mundane factors that are under our control. The first consideration is your physical appearance in public space. This means thinking about what you wear, what you carry, where you position yourself to undertake observations, and how you conduct yourself. No matter how trivial these issues might seem, they are micro-scale decisions that matter and can be decisive in terms of how your research unfolds and whether you gain access or not to specific conversations, interactions or practices. The second consideration for how, as researchers, we are located in the eyes of others is in the company we are seen to keep. For example, if you are seen entering a specific public space with authority figures (such as government officials), or people in positions of power, you should assume that this may have an effect on how you are located within an imagined social-structure. For instance, in discussing his work on the social structures of rough sleepers in New York, Duneier (1999) notes that his ability to engage this group and discuss their experiences of the street on their own terms would have been significantly affected had he been associated with the police or with municipal services. It is therefore important to think carefully about who you initially engage with and what the social codes of that interaction might be, as this will shape how you are seen by others. As such, it is critical to consider at an early stage how different actors are positioned before entering the field, and how these positions will affect your starting point and your involvement in the field. Finally, in approaching research in public space it is also important to recognize and be mindful of the multiple roles and uses of that space by different groups. It is therefore important to be sensitive to the context of other people’s engagement in public space. In very practical terms, public space can be a space of work, of leisure, of mobility, of protest, or of rest. An awareness of these multiple uses when conducting observations or interviews is important. People may not have the time to talk to you or may find it disruptive to their routines or uses of a space. Recognizing this and responding with a sensitivity to that context is part of expressing a care for others through your research. Caring, in this sense, means considering the uses, necessities, and practices of your participants in public space and finding ways to accommodate these. For instance, it may mean being aware that while you interview your participants, you may need to pause on multiple occasions to allow them to continue their activity if they are at work. An ethics of care also entails sensitivity towards encounters with difference. During fieldwork in public space, encountering difference demands an understanding of the multiple positions within which people are located and the affective intricacies involved in such differences. Some people are located in particularly vulnerable positions and may feel

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reticence in talking to anyone who is not familiar, or not an ‘insider’. Recognizing multiple axes of difference within fieldwork thus requires taking seriously not only a politics of representation, but also the ways in which modes of difference are materialized in the encounters, expectations, and desires that shape public space. Being attentive to the position of others, and how forms of social hierarchy locate individuals along axes of race, gender, class, caste, and sexuality, is critical in all research. However, in public space these concerns come to the fore precisely because public spaces are sites in which difference is encountered most readily, and forms of normative social hierarchy are both reproduced and challenged (see Amin, 2008; Darling and Wilson, 2016; Swanton, 2010).

CASE STUDY: PUBLIC SPACE IN THE MEXICAN CONTEXT In this section, I briefly draw from two research projects that explored the displacement of street vendors and artisans from some of the most emblematic public spaces of Mexico City. As urban authorities concentrated many of their efforts on beautifying the multiple public spaces of the city for purposes of attracting specific forms of leisure, investment, and tourism, exclusionary practices became widespread. In Mexico City, as in other cities across the so-called Global South, public spaces are not only spaces of leisure or transit; they are also important working spaces for large sectors of the urban population who have suffered the consequences of mounting levels of unemployment and the growing precariousness of the labour force. Street vendors have carried the double burden of, on the one hand, an economy that does not provide them with dignified working conditions, and on the other, a social anxiety translated into public morals, which stigmatize them as criminals and delinquents. During my fieldwork, I was interested in understanding how vendors dealt with displacement practices in their everyday life, exploring the sometimes disjointed, unpredictable, not necessarily strategic, and (in)formal ways in which street vendors struggled for a space in the city. My research was imbued with power relations, but they were not necessarily clear at the outset, and I had to be very careful with how I navigated these spaces – with the utmost consideration for the conditions under which many street vendors were working. Honesty and care were certainly central concerns, which shaped how I approached street vendors. This concern took many forms and was far from clear in practice. Addressing honesty and care in practice was a rather messy process, characterized by multiple mistakes and misunderstandings along the way. Yet, importantly, it was a learning process that helped inform my research. As I have discussed elsewhere (Crossa, 2012) my ethical concerns regarding honesty were far from simple. This was in part because identities are anything but univocal, and I was unsure of what aspect of my multiple identities I should emphasize. Would street vendors

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trust me more if I say I am Mexican, a student, even a foreigner? No matter how honest I was about my multiple identities, some vendors had already constructed an image of who I was. Some of my considerations about honesty were shaped by what Rose (1997) calls a ‘double reflexive gaze’: that is, a reflexivity that engages both inward – in the ways one negotiates multiple identities – and outward, to the relations between the research participants, objectives, and the researcher (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). Working in a context where race functions almost as an entry point to understanding class, the implications of my whiteness relative to the mestizo or Indigenous street vendors, in a way, reinforced dominant representations of material inequality. This was disconcerting since I was hoping street vendors would share with me important aspects of their personal lives, their ties (or conflicts) with other vendors, their histories, their different forms of organization, what they do and no longer do in the context of displacement, how their daily interactions had been reworked, and whether new forms of interactions had developed across space. I had to pay particular attention to the experiences (emotional, personal, material) of different groups of people, which required gaining a level of trust but was difficult to obtain, at least at first. Despite my numerous introductions to street vendors I was not trusted. And why should they have trusted me? Their situation during the time of my fieldwork was tense: police presence on the streets had increased: violent street confrontations with police had gained impetus; and conflicts were raised between street vending organizations over who was allowed to stay on the streets of the city. My class/ race exposed me as an outsider, as someone to be suspicious of. It was impossible to disguise my racial identity and the underlying assumptions embedded with it. A second experience, which crystalized many of the concerns I had regarding honesty, had to do with whom I was seen interacting with. As I stated earlier, your presence in public space makes you visible to others, especially to those who know the daily ins and outs of particular spaces. Any new face, new interaction, or new presence is evident. I became evident in space. Given the particular circumstances of the time, I was offered a number of walking tours from city government officials who proudly wanted to show me the ways in which their beautification policies were working in public spaces of the city. These experiences were very valuable, as I got to see the area through the eyes of government officials. However, they also exposed me as an outsider in the eyes of vendors, who saw me walk through many public spaces with their antagonistic counterparts. These tours added another boundary and layer of complexity to my interactions with street vendors. I drew extensively on some people who could offer access to leaders of street vending organizations. But many remained suspicious. Similarly, I began my fieldwork interacting with people whom I had personal connections to. A close friend’s sister was a street artisan who sold (Continued)

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(Continued) on a public plaza that was experiencing state intervention. I approached her and all the members in her organization, not knowing what my interactions with them would entail. As it turned out, she was a member of an organization of artisans who were in a long-lasting battle with other vendor organizations located a few stalls away. I never considered the internal differences that could exist within street vending organizations, since for me they were all facing a similar problem: displacement. My initial interactions with this first contact risked my potential for relationships with members of other organizations, who interpreted my interactions as a form of loyalty towards ‘others’ and not ‘them’. This is what I mean when I say that conducting fieldwork in public space can add a layer of complexity by the simple fact that you are visible, and your presence is read and interpreted in unforeseeable ways.

Conclusion Dealing with public space in its concrete form means thinking about peoples intrinsic connection to space in their everyday lives, including the ways in which daily practices can also transgress a normative order negotiated and defined by the state. Hence, studying public space entails looking at the ways in which the public is necessarily politicized, not only through the actions of the state, but also through the politics of everyday life. Engaging with research concerned with this dimension of life thus requires a level of ethical consciousness and consideration that other forms of research might not necessarily need to dwell upon. I have tried here to outline only a few of the ethical entanglements one may face when conducting research in and about public space. This chapter is by no means exhaustive rather it presents a starting point from which to proceed. Finally, it is important to recognize that being an ethical researcher is very important. This means thinking through in advance some of the ways in which you should carry out your research and present yourself. Ethical considerations are also part of the learning process, and one might make mistakes. At issue is trying to minimize the impacts that such mistakes can have both on you and on your research participants.

Recommended Readings Goffman, E. (1971) Relations in Public. New York, NY: Basic Books. This classic study probes the intricacies of interpersonal interactions in public space, and explores the socialized nature of individualized codes of conduct, through the normalization of appearances and conduct in public space. This book is a great entry point for those interested in conducting

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fieldwork in public space, with sensitivity towards micro-scale approaches in understanding the complexity of social relations. Low, S. and Smith, N. (2005) The Politics of Public Space. NewYork, NY: Routledge. A collection exploring the changing nature of public space, and which seeks to expand the definition of what we understand as public, taking into account the fundamental political nature of public space as an arena of citizenship formation and a space where political relations materialize. Weintraub, J. and Kumar, K. (1997) Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. A collection of essays from scholars working in a wide range of fields, from political philosophy and sociology, to cultural studies. The collection deals with one of the most controversial binaries in classic and contemporary philosophy – the public/private divide – and grounds such concerns in concrete problems.

24 Private and Domestic Spaces Geraldine Pratt

Key Points ••

Domestic space has a complex and historically (and geographically) specific relationship to privacy, and domestic spaces are enmeshed within economic, political, and social processes that extend across the world.

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Ethical considerations go beyond the rights of research subjects, to include concerns about responsibility, accountability, relationship, particularity, and the cultivation of ways of thinking about the world.

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Domestic space offers a window into the fullness of everyday life. It brings with it special considerations for researchers, with regards to consent and relations within the household, and obligations to learn to listen with extreme care.

Introduction I begin with two research experiences in Bagong Barrio, a community of urban poor in metro Manila. One afternoon, our research collaborator, a member of Migrante, a migrant organization based in Manila, brought us (Caleb Johnston, Vanessa Banta, and me) to Beth’s home to interview her about her experiences as a domestic worker in the Middle East (see Pratt et al., 2017 a, b, c). The Migrante organizer had arranged for us to interview one of Beth’s neighbours a few doors down, but when that person was not home he suggested that we stop by Beth’s house to interview her instead. Beth had told her story many times, he

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said, and would not mind sharing it with us. Our visit was a surprise, but Beth graciously welcomed us into her home. As five of us (two Migrante organizers and three researchers) entered her small living area (perhaps eight by ten feet, separated from a bed and cooking area by a curtain), she and her daughter quickly removed piles of brown paper printed with the words ‘National Book Store’ for us to sit. (National Book Store is a retail chain; assembling these as paper bags is one source of their household livelihood.) We left the most formal chair for Beth but she seemed reluctant to take this spot and when she finally sat down to talk, she pulled the chair back, partially behind the curtain, into the more private space of the bedroom. There were a number of small cats in the room. As the interview progressed Beth began spraying the dividing curtain with one of the household cleaning products that she sells informally as a second source of income. She repeatedly apologized for the smell. The spray visibly dampened the curtain and the curtain became more and more spotted as the interview progressed. As she narrated more of her story, Beth told us that two of the cats were unwanted street cats that urinated and shat in her house. Throughout the hour that we stayed she kept spraying and apologizing, revealing more and more of her embarrassment about the smell. The odour of the cleaning product was overpowering. As we left, Beth expressed concern about the safety of the Canadian researchers in her neighbourhood and Manila more generally. On another day, we had been interviewing May in her home about the history of labour activism and migrant issues in the neighbourhood. As we stood outside of her home chatting informally, we met the mother and three sisters of a young woman, Tala, with whom we were working on a community play. The encounter was rich and informative. Her sister sat peeling garlic in the alley outside their home, a form of informal employment we had just heard about in May’s interview. Her mother, meanwhile, instructed the youngest child to take an umbrella (with which she was playing) to my co-researcher and me, and to call us ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ – an unsettling and telling instance both of long histories of colonialism and the pervasive culture of migration in the Philippines. When we next met Tala and reported that we had visited her street and met members of her family, she asked with a worried expression, ‘Did you go inside?’ Domestic spaces are rich research sites that allow access to the sights, sounds, smells, intimacies, and complexities of everyday life, and so it is unsurprising that geographers have thought a great deal about domestic spaces, and do much of their research in and about them. But domestic and private spaces are not uncomplicated spaces in which to do research and – as the opening vignettes intimate – diverse ethical issues arise in relation to them. Was Beth’s willingness to repeatedly share her story in public forums held by Migrante really an indication of her willingness to tell it in the private space of her home? What concerns are raised about the ethics of researching in domestic space by Tala’s relief to hear that we had ventured no further than the alley outside her home? After a brief introduction to geographical thought about private and

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domestic spaces, I turn to consider several ethical considerations that arise in relation to researching both in, and about, private and domestic spaces.

What is Private Space? This is not an easy question to answer. Privacy implies a space insofar as it denotes a boundary and a territory to which individuals or groups control access. However, spaces deemed private vary historically and culturally, and some spaces that you might assume to be public (a public university or shopping mall) are typically legally private, with complicated implications for labour relations and research access (see Barnett, 2014; Flusty, 2001; Crossa, Chapter 23 in this volume). Not everyone who works or lives in a private space has rights to privacy within it; employees for example have limited rights to privacy within the private space of their workplace. We also know that spaces where privacy might have been assumed, in particular the internet, are accessible to all sorts of surveillance (see Kinsley, Chapter 27 in this volume). That is, they are not private and rights to privacy are hotly contested in relation to them. Domestic space is likely the space where privacy for individuals is most assumed. When Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appealed to Canadians to decriminalize homosexuality in 1967, for instance, he relied on this common-sense assumption when he stated: ‘There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.’ Though taken for granted as one of the least-contested zones of privacy, domestic space also has a complex relationship to the public and the private, with implications for the practice of research ethics.

The World in the Home ‘Surely the most central visualization’ of domestic space is ‘most famously expressed in the old saying that “Every man’s house is his castle”’ (Blomley, 2016: 601). The castle metaphor, first deployed in a legal case in London in 1604, defined the home as a private space, as a ‘defence against injury and violence’, for ‘repose’ and as ‘a thing precious and favoured in law’ (cited, ibid 2016: 601). This vision of domestic space remains one of the ‘oldest and most deeply rooted principles in Anglo-American jurisprudence’ (Hafetz, 2002, cited, ibid 2016: 601), now interwoven throughout the ‘web of culture’ (Gurney, 1999, cited, ibid 2016: 601). Domestic space as a place of intimacy, belonging, refuge, and comfort, and as a repository of memory that provides the grounding for identity, has been richly explored by geographers (Dovey, 1985; Duncan, 1981; Tuan, 1971). Yet much of what Blunt and Dowling (2006) identify as a critical geography of home disrupts this sense of containment and problematizes an easy mapping of privacy onto domestic space and the separation of domestic from other spaces. As Homi Bhabha has written, ‘The recesses of the domestic space become sites for history’s most intricate invasions. In that displacement, the

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borders between home and world become confused; and, uncannily, the private and public become part of each other, forcing upon us a vision that is as divided as it is disorienting’ (1994: 9). This disorientation results from the fact that much scholarly and everyday thinking about domestic space has been rooted in dualistic thinking – what feminists call a separate-spheres ideology – (e.g. domestic space is figured as private rather than public; a place of reproduction rather than production; of love rather than work; emotions as opposed to rationality). A critical geography of domestic space both explores and rejects this spatiality. It is curious both about the continuing ideological work that these binaries do and the ways that actual social relations play across them in disruptive ways. Hiving off domestic space as a separate sphere of autonomy and privacy has profound implications. Within liberal political thought and practice, domestic space has been the assumed counterpoint to the public sphere of disinterested, rational, critical debate, with women (and so-called women’s issues) traditionally relegated to the private sphere (Marston, 1990). Not only does this have repercussions for women’s presence in what is recognized as public life; it also obscures the home as a site of politics. Staeheli (1996) has argued for the need to distinguish the content of actions from the spaces in which they occur. Much of women’s leadership training and political activism goes undetected, she argues, because it is learned and occurs within domestic and community spaces (which can be both public and private). bell hooks, too, has written about the importance of the home as a site of resistance for African Americans: ‘we could not learn to love or respect ourselves in the culture of white supremacy, on the outside; it was there on the inside, in that “homeplace” most often created and kept by black women, that we had the opportunity to grow and develop to nurture our spirits’ (1991: 47). Another kind of separate-spheres ideology has been enacted in relation to work within the home. It is not only that women tend to do more work in the home, but that this work is typically rendered invisible when it is unpaid and/or it often takes the form of emotional labour or care work. In Canada in 2010, for instance, women spent on average 50 hours a week on unpaid childcare, compared to 24 hours spent by men (numbers of hours spent by women differed considerably depending on age of children and paid employment status); they also spent about twice as much time as men on unpaid non-childcare domestic work (14 compared to 8 hours per week) and were more likely to be caring for a senior outside their residence (14% compared to 9% of men) (Statistics Canada, 2015). The home is frequently a site of paid employment in the Global North, from piece work to telecommuting, and paid cleaning to childcare. Feminists have long argued that conceiving domestic space as a private space has the additional effect of obscuring and depoliticizing a range of issues that are deemed private, thereby minimizing public responses to them: the invisibility of domestic violence has been an ongoing concern. In line with feminists’ long history of disrupting binaries and reconfiguring conventions of scale, in a classic refusal of the private/public binary Rachel Pain (2014b)

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reconceives domestic violence as a form of everyday terrorism, that is, as a form of violence that controls by instilling fear. By reconfiguring domestic violence as terrorism she aims to unsettle the distinction between international and interpersonal violence, and thereby draw public attention to a trauma and violence that can be hidden within as private. It is not simply that the worlds of politics, work, and violence exist within domestic spaces: what happens in these spaces is critical for understanding broader processes, and the border between where domestic space begins and ends is increasingly blurry. Scholars focusing on the work of social reproduction have long argued for the economic significance of this work as a subsidy within processes of capitalist accumulation, and have identified the many ways that gendered domestic ideologies structure paid employment outside of domestic space (Meehan and Strauss, 2015; Nagar et  al., 2002). Hierarchies of racial classification and the violence of empire and settler colonialism have been birthed within domestic space (Smith, 2010; Stoler, 1995). And finally, new globalized technologies are respatializing domestic space and relations of intimacy. Does the mother working and living in her employers’ home in Canada share privacy with and inhabit the same domestic space as these employers? And does she share private domestic space with her child in the Philippines, with whom she texts and speaks daily through some form of telecommunications? There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Domestic space and privacy are, then, complex and contingent concepts – in the middle of all manner of processes and social relations that move between domestic and other spaces, from the local to the global. This suggests that there are many issues that can and need to be researched in and about this space, especially given the lack of visibility of some of the processes that occur there. Research in this space can take very different forms: conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups; ethnography; using archives and documentary sources such as novels, magazines, and films; and official records and statistics (see Blunt and Dowling, 2006). If the world is in the home, and domestic spaces radiate out into the world, are there nonetheless particular ethical issues to consider when doing research in private and domestic spaces?

Ethics as Practice Ethical considerations take shape within different frameworks. Institutional ethical concerns are largely based in rights: those we research have rights to privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). Other frameworks have been layered onto this rights-based understanding of ethics, especially from feminist and now Indigenous perspectives (Clark et  al., 2010; Coombes et  al., 2014), which invite and challenge researchers to expand ethical considerations to include concerns about responsibility, accountability, mutuality, relationships, and trust. Kaja Silverman’s (1996) ‘ethics in the field of vision’, conceived by an art historian as an ethics for

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looking at visual images, offers further considerations, apt for social scientists, who look, listen, and write about others. For Silverman, first, ethical looking should respect the specificity and uniqueness of those we study, and second, researchers must recognize the limits of their understanding. ‘Looking ethically should constitute a modest witness, not an all-knowing one whose subjectivity becomes more powerful for claiming to know others’ (Rose, 2012: 112; see also Gibson-Graham, 2006, on an ethic for thinking). Margrit Shildrick (2001) would label these perspectives post-conventional ethics. Her claim is not that a rights-based ethics is wrong but that these rules themselves are insufficient and that it is inadequate to fix on particular rules or principles without weighing and refining them with flexibility within particular situations. A post-conventional ethical theory thus argues that ethical decisions cannot be decided in advance and are not reducible to set rules or procedures. From this perspective, research ethics is a challenging enterprise that requires assessing a multiplicity of factors in every encounter. ‘[W]here nothing is decidable in advance, the moment of decision – how to act, what to support, which thing to affirm – is a moment of the highest ethical import’ (Shildrick, 2001: 234). The question for this chapter is this: What special circumstances arise in domestic spaces that pose especial challenges and opportunities for ethical practice and thought?

Ethical Practice in Domestic Spaces Research conducted in the home is not always about the home. When we met Tala’s mother in the alleyway outside her home, we had been interviewing May about the history of workplace activism in the neighbourhood as well as the migration that takes a large portion of the residents away on short-term contracts to work in countries throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia and North America. Not only would it have been difficult to interview workers about these matters in their workplace; doing so could put them at risk of losing their jobs. In a much fuller engagement with migrant women factory workers in an industrial region in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, Rachel Silvey lived among these workers in their dormitory, and she judges that it was ‘through living with people in these conditions that my neighbours began to feel they could expose and explain to me their approaches to migration, factory work and gender relations’ (2003: 98). Domestic space – as a place to venture from and return to – is a place where all aspects of life can be discussed, and a researcher can glean considerable information about many aspects of the lives of those who live there. Individual and family histories are often evident in photographs and other displayed objects; furnishings can be read as markers of taste and class; and the detritus of everyday life offers clues to the lives of those who live there. While the deep cultural rootedness of the home-as-castle metaphor and legal rights to privacy suggest that this should be a place where ethics are least

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contentious, the fullness of domestic space can raise ethical considerations. When an individual consents to an interview in their home, what are they consenting to? Did Beth consent to me writing about her embarrassment about what she perceived to be an unpleasant odour in her home? We routinely make all sorts of judgements from individuals’ homes. In a close reading of the police case file on one missing woman, for instance, Olivia Stevenson and colleagues (Stevenson et  al., 2017) note how the degree of cleanliness of the woman’s house was read as evidence of her state of mind and character; it was only retroactively when pressed to reconsider the evidence that the officer who wrote the file admitted that some of it – faeces found on the carpet and in the bath – were likely left by the pet cat, which had been locked within the house for a few days in the woman’s absence. An extreme situation, no doubt, that did not involve consent, it nonetheless raises the concern that too much might be read from a domestic space. Even when it is accurately read, a home might reveal too much, more than intended, that is, more than the owner wished to consent for. This is likely a classed vulnerability. For one of my first research projects – as an MA student – I interviewed elites in Vancouver about their presentation of self in the home (Pratt, 1981). Women graciously invited me into their homes but I never saw more than the sitting room and kitchen, where presentation of self was carefully managed. I was allowed to photograph these relatively public areas of their home, likely because they are so carefully staged. The capacity for controlled self-management is less possible, however, the smaller, more crowded, and busier the home. At the same time it can be a mistake to shy away from intimacy – given without coercion or manipulation – that allows a researcher to represent those who they research with the kind of complexity and specificity that Silverman identifies within her ethics of looking. Coming back to her transcripts of threehour interviews with rural women in the state of Washington, Kathryn Anderson was disappointed by how thin and uninformative they were. Reflecting on how this came to be, she reasoned first that the domestic space in which the interviews were carried out itself played a role. Anderson had grown up on an Iowa farm where her family ‘certainly did not dwell on feelings about things beyond our control’ (Anderson and Jack, 1991: 14); ‘As I interviewed rural women, the sights, sounds, and smells of a farm kitchen elicited my habits of a rural style of conversation and constrained my interview strategies’ (1991: 15). The pragmatics of the intended research outcome – to develop a travelling exhibit – also led her to focus more on activities and ‘facts’ than emotions, and finally she later recognized that she was not trained to listen closely to what she was being told. And so, when a woman she was interviewing said, ‘I practically had a nervous breakdown when I discovered my sister had cancer […] I had ill health for quite a few years […] I kept working hard. And every fall, why, I’d generally spend a month or so being sick – from overdoing, probably,’ Anderson responded with, ‘What kind of farming did you do right after you were married?’ (1991: 14). Post-conventional ethics suggests that we have an obligation to learn to listen closely to those who are generous enough to allow us

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into their homes (see Shildrick, 2001). Responsibility as a researcher involves hearing the responses of those we are interacting with and creating the conversational space to allow respondents to tell us what they want us to hear. It might also involve a commitment to return the transcript to the respondent so they can verify the accuracy of their words and reconfirm their consent to share the intimacies they expressed in the interview. The intimacy of domestic space raises another set of concerns: although the household is sometimes taken as a unified social unit, it is also a social space in which individuals can come into conflict and hold secrets from each other. It may not be a safe space for every person in it, and some confidences shared with a researcher should not be shared with other family members. When interviewing a couple about their experiences of separation, for instance (during the many years that the woman worked in Asia and then Vancouver as a live-in caregiver and her husband remained in the Philippines caring for their children there), a serious argument erupted between them. She was deeply hurt by her family’s seeming lack of appreciation of all of her years of sacrifice working in demeaning and demanding jobs and saving on their behalf, while her husband resented that she seemed unable to recognize all of his hard work, caring for their four children in the Philippines in her absence (Pratt, 2012). The argument was serious enough that we ended the interview and suggested that we continue it another time. But we could not easily repair an argument that we had unwittingly orchestrated and, while not responsible for the conflict between husband and wife, we had created a situation in which each felt able to air their grievances against each other to garner support. Without training or expertise in counselling – or an invitation to take on that role – there was little that we could do beyond ending the formal interview and staying long enough to ensure that tempers had calmed. It was reassuring that one of the interviewers was a member of the Filipino community and had enduring ties to this couple – that is, there were strong linkages connecting the privacy of this domestic space to a wider community of engaged concern. But what if these community connections were not in place? This is the kind of problem space in which the real business of ethics takes place, and it is a moment of decision that involves weighing a range of factors and feelings. It is not a simple matter of administering rules and rights. A researcher cannot assume that information that they are told by one member of a family will or should be known by others in the household. For example, when conducting an ethnography of families in Silicon Valley, Judith Stacey (1988) learned of a lesbian relationship that one of her key informants, now a married fundamentalist Christian, was involved in at the moment of religious conversion. In addition to this relationship were instances of secret paternity, affairs, and other illicit activities. None of this information could be shared. It is thus imperative when approaching a domestic or private space, to consider how research will manage personal and private information, how research can be sensitive to the dynamics of family and domestic relationships, and how consent will be gained from each individual within a household,

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rather than assuming that consent from one member of a household would equally hold for other members.

Ethics and Ambivalence With respect to silence on the matter of her informant’s lesbian relationship, Stacey asked: What feminist ethical principles can I invoke to guide me here? Principles of respect for research subjects and for a collaborative, egalitarian research relationship would suggest compliance, but this forces me to collude with the homophobic silencing of lesbian experience, as well as to consciously distort what I consider a crucial component of the ethnographic ‘truth’ in my study. (1988: 24) This and other moments of concealment and disclosure led Stacey to question whether a feminist ethics of relationality, engagement, and attachment is compatible with ethnography. Situations of inauthenticity, dissimilitude, and inevitable betrayal are, she believes, heightened in fieldwork methods and – it can be added – likely most intense when researching lives in the privacy of the home. ‘The lives, loves, and tragedies that fieldwork informants share with a researcher are ultimately data, grist for the ethnographic mill’, and it is typically the researcher who writes the final account, ‘structured primarily by a researcher’s purposes, offering a researcher’s interpretations, registered in a researcher’s voice’ (1988: 23; see also Noxolo, Chapter 29 in this volume). The ambivalence and inconclusiveness that Stacey expressed almost thirty years ago about deploying feminist ethics in actual research practice is no less relevant or easily resolved today. Researchers continue to work with these concerns in constructive ways, through innovative collaborations with communities and individuals, and a restless interrogation of ethical practice. This ambivalence and restless possibility is itself key to ethical practice. It cultivates the humility of modest witnessing, never quite certain about the ethical choices that have been made, and persistently opening them to further conversation and debate. A focus on private and domestic spaces foregrounds many of these ethical choices and debates. Private and domestic spaces often blur distinctions between formal and informal, and fully public and fully private, and thus raise restless challenges for researchers. Indeed, as this chapter and the previous discussion of public space have highlighted (see Crossa, Chapter 23 in this volume), the distinction between public and private is hard to demarcate in everyday life, as a range of spaces may appear public but be privately owned and controlled. The feminist work on ethics highlighted in this chapter has offered critical resources to negotiate some of these ethical challenges in a responsible, modest, and sensitive manner, offering key tools for exploring private and domestic spaces.

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Conclusion Private and domestic spaces pose a number of conceptual and ethical considerations for geographers. Conceptually, there is the question of how private space is distinguished from public space, and what political implications come with marking a space, a practice, or a form of behaviour as public or private. As feminist scholarship has foregrounded, the category of the ‘private’ or the ‘domestic’ has often been employed as a normative judgement that devalues the labour, politics, and practice of the private. Ethically, working within private and domestic spaces makes geographers consider how questions of consent are negotiated in private spaces where tensions between individuals, competing interests, and the complexities of personal lives come to the fore. Similarly, while accessing private spaces may require considerable care and fore thought, domestic spaces can reveal aspects of private lives and relationships that were not intended to be made visible to research. The personal and often intimate nature of private spaces demands not only research planning and consideration, but also a heightened sense of care. This might mean contemplating for example, how domestic or intimate relationships may be affected by involvement within a research project, or how private and domestic spaces are sites of emotional investment that may be disrupted by research in often unpredictable ways (see Probyn, Chapter 8 this volume).

Recommended Reading Blunt, A. and Dowling, R. (2006) Home. London: Routledge. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the geographical literature on the home, and outlines a critical geography of home that attends to the home as both material and imaginative, as bound up with identity and power, and as multi-scalar and open. The authors present a range of methodologies that can be used to study domestic spaces. Rose, G. (2012) ‘Looking again, ethically, at family snaps in the mass media’, Chapter 8 of Doing Family Photography: The Domestic, the Public and the Politics of Sentiment. London: Routledge. This chapter provides an excellent introduction to post-conventional ethics and how these might be applied in domestic and private spaces, focusing on the example of family photographs as markers of identity and relationships. Stacey, J. (1988) ‘Can there be a feminist ethnography?’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 11 (1): 2127. This short, engaging discussion of the challenges of deploying post-conventional ethical ideals draws on feminist thought to consider a series of ethical issues in research practice. Its central question, of how to perform a feminist ethnography, remains highly relevant today.

25 Spaces of Development Jonathan Rigg

Key Points ••

Ethical dilemmas in spaces of development are often different in degree and sometimes in kind from those facing geographers working in other places.

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The question of who has the ‘right’ to speak on behalf of (or ‘represent’) people in the Global South challenges us to think critically about the presence of Northern researchers in the South.

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Ethical dilemmas in spaces of development need to be navigated and worked through (ethics-as-process), as well as contextualized (ethics-as-situated).

Introduction: Researching the Global South – Matters of Degree, Questions of Kind Ethical issues abound in the area of development studies fieldwork. (Scheyvens and Leslie, 2000: 119) What is different about working in Madagascar or Manila, as opposed to Missouri or Manchester? Why are the ethics of doing research in the Global South, broadly drawn, treated as distinct and different from the Global North, so much so that a book such as this requires a separate chapter on ethics and spaces of development? Furthermore, is the concern here about the ethics of undertaking geographical research in the Global South (i.e. in the poorer world), in the non-Western world, or on a development theme? The first possibility asks us to consider global inequality – economic and political – and

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its ramifications; the second, matters of cultural difference; and the third, the particular challenges and ethics of working on matters of ‘development’ and the poor (who are normally the subjects of, and subjected to, such studies). At its most general level, ‘development spaces’ are those countries of the world defined as low income or ‘developing’. This, though, is not only a problematically broad category – including upper-middle-income countries like Thailand and ‘least-developed countries’ such as the Central African Republic – but the countries themselves are often internally highly differentiated. Furthermore, it is possible to work on a research topic in Thailand, say on global production networks involving interviews with managers at multinational firms in Bangkok, which might be little different from undertaking such work in London or New York. At the same time, a comparative study of informal working practices in London might have more in common in terms of ethics with a parallel project in Bangkok. So while research in ‘development spaces’ – and the ethical questions that arise – are normally to be found in countries of the Global South, this is not always the case. Some research in the Global South does not ‘fit’ with such a designation; at the same time, some research in the Global North will. At a very general level, the need for a particular consideration of the ethics of undertaking geographical research in spaces of development centres on the issue of distance. Not geographical distance, but distance in a range of other and more important ways that encompass culture, language, wealth, knowledge, and, most important of all, power. These more-than-geographical separations are at times a matter of degree; sometimes, however, they become profound differences of kind. The particular ethical challenges of working in the Global South arise from these differences and while they are not unique to spaces of development, they are more frequently found there. Furthermore, many of the more intractable ethical issues to confront the researcher are not adequately addressed by institutional review board (IRB) systems. These are as much about protecting a student’s institution, often in quite a mechanical and legalistic manner, as they are about the muddy, contested, and usually none-too-clear ethical questions that will confront a researcher in the field (see Turner, 2013: 399). Moreover, the ethics of IRBs are – and necessarily so – generalized while every research context will present its own quite nuanced and specific ethical dilemmas and challenges (Clark, 2012: 825). As Guillemin and Gillam (2004) state, there is a world of difference between the procedural ethics of the IRB and ‘ethics in practice’, or what they term ‘microethics’.

Getting Permission, Doing Permission To undertake research in most countries of the Global South, usually whatever the topic, requires official permission. Most countries will have government agencies or departments that handle applications although the difficulty

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and time involved varies enormously. In some countries it is quite straightforward – in Thailand, the National Research Council processes most applications in 90 days and the procedure is quite transparent – but in others it is long, drawn out, opaque, and labyrinthine, and a ‘successful’ outcome is far from assured (see Jessee, 2012: 270/1 on obtaining a research permit in Rwanda). In almost all cases, however, permission is contingent on having a collaborator in an institution in the country concerned, and so a first step is usually to establish such a link. The advantages of having official permission are significant. It may provide access to archives and government offices; it will ease any problems when government officials or ward or village heads question your presence or activities; and it means that your work is above board, at least in the sense of being officially sanctioned. But it can also create its own problems. It associates you with the state concerned and, in some countries – such as the Lao PDR, for example – you are required to be accompanied into the field by an official. This can impede, even stymie your engagement with local people. It also often means additional costs and bureaucracy. For these reasons, some scholars, often with decades of field experience in a particular country, will advise against getting official permission, suggesting that even graduate students work under the radar, with a tourist or visitors’ visa. Whether this is ethical is questionable. It challenges the sovereignty of the state and may expose the researcher – and any research assistants (see below) – to harm. But in some countries such are the limits placed on foreign researchers that it may be the only option. More common than deciding to forgo obtaining official permission, however, is being economical with the truth regarding the project itself. In many countries in the Global South, studies that address issues such as land grabbing, the informal sector, local politics, poverty, and race relations are regarded as sensitive and out of bounds (see Hopkins, Chapter 6 in this volume). Rather than having their applications rejected, applicants remove anything that might be construed as politically sensitive and therefore problematic, and thus self-censor their plans. While this might not be lying, it is a deception and therefore, again, ethically awkward. Even having received permission, there then arises the ethical question of how far stipulations should be followed. Fiona Miller writes the following about her fieldwork in Vietnam: Provincial authorities strictly determined the number of weeks I could spend in the commune conducting household interviews. They refused to grant me permission to stay in the village overnight […] They also required that I submit a list of all the questions I planned to ask prior to permission being granted and required me not to deviate from this list. The agricultural cadre who accompanied me to most household interviews also kept a record of who I met with and presumably reported back to authorities on what I discussed. (Scott et al., 2006: 31)

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How to deal with a situation such as this? Does the researcher try to subvert these controls or work around them? In this instance, Miller abandoned her plans for an ethnographic approach and ‘adopted a more structured approach, devising strategic encounters and maximizing the limited time available’. As she admits, this ‘compromised the quality and quantity of information I received and the nature of relationships with research participants’ (Scott et al., 2006: 31/2). Turner, who also works in Vietnam but in sensitive borderland regions, took a different approach to that of Miller, ‘blurring [...] the boundaries between formally monitored research and fieldwork away from the official gaze’ (2013: 399). She reflects on the ethics of ‘actions like rewording official proposals to downplay sensitive issues and negotiating access without official research assistants’. Turner justifies this by saying that her ethics-in-practice are reflexive and self-critical, stating that ‘my moral stance is that accessing informants’ voices by blurring the boundaries of official state compliance is valid when first, respected local state gatekeepers have sanctioned my approach, and second, these voices would otherwise not be heard outside their communities’ (Turner, 2013: 399). The ethical contortions that some researchers find themselves getting into are also reflected in Lertchavalitsakul’s justification for working, as a PhD student, in a restricted area of southern Shan State, Burma (Myanmar). She writes: I believe that what I did was unethical in the sense that I broke the laws prohibiting non-Burmese citizens from entering the country’s restricted zones. However, I also believe that my actions reflected the complexities of carrying out fieldwork in Burma. At first, I tried to maintain a traditional ethical code of conduct in relation to fieldwork, and several times thereafter felt guilty about the decisions I had made. However, after I had been in the field long enough to become more acquainted with the situation there, I began thinking about how I could visit southern Shan State by taking advantage of the influence of powerful people in the area. By that time, doing so seemed ethically acceptable. (2014: 84) These examples from Burma/Myanmar and Vietnam reveal four important aspects of the permissions challenge. First, there is slippage during the research process as researchers struggle with the evident tension between the demands of the research and the stipulations of the authorities. Second, there is a degree of after-the-event justification. Third, it is possible to be ethical and unethical at the same time, reflecting the multiple different accounts of ethical conduct that often co-exist in any research environment. And fourth, each situation presents its own particular ethical dilemmas that need to be navigated.

Power, Hierarchy, and Representation The core reason why spaces of development hold particular ethical challenges for the fieldworker is because of power (see Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume).

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The (foreign) researcher is not infrequently in a privileged and powerful position. Being aware of this position and reflexive regarding how we negotiate it – in all respects – is perhaps the single most important aspect of sensitive and appropriate research behaviour in the Global South. Questions of power infuse relationships with officials, research collaborators and assistants, and of course those who we research on, about, and with (be they research ‘participants’, ‘interlocutors’, or ‘subjects’). There are many important but limited (at least in terms of their scope) issues of power that the researcher needs sensitivity to navigate. There is one particular over arching matter, however, that questions the entire enterprise of undertaking geographical research in the Global South. This came to the fore in the 1980s and is set out in a question that England posed in an influential 1994 paper: ‘can we incorporate the voices of “others” without colonizing them in a manner that reinforces patterns of domination?’ (England, 1994: 81). Feminist (Kobayashi, 1994; Nagar, 2002) and postcolonial scholars (Raghuram and Madge, 2006) have been particularly prominent in addressing what is known as the politics of representation, and for which there are few simple answers: who has the right to speak for and on behalf of others? Scholars have answered this question in a range of ways, from arguing (at one end of the spectrum) that First World scholars simply withdraw from such work, to suggesting (towards the other end) that knowledge is co-produced and authorship is shared with research collaborators in the countries concerned (Scheyvens and Leslie, 2000: 121/2; Sidaway, 1992). Sultana summarizes the debate – and the dilemma – quite neatly: A key concern in pursuing international fieldwork that has plagued critical/feminist scholars is the issue of representation, where overconcern about positionality and reflexivity appear to have paralyzed some scholars into avoiding fieldwork and engaging more in textual analysis; in other instances, criticism of research for perpetuating neocolonial representations, having Western biases, and purporting to speak ‘for’ women has generated resistance to engage with fieldwork. (Sultana, 2007: 375) Power operates in the Global South in many other ways that are less high order than some of the moral and ethical dilemmas alluded to above, and yet which, in a day-to-day sense, often put the field researcher in a more invidious and uncomfortable position. Foreign researchers are often privileged, gaining quicker access to government officials than nationals, being feted by local dignitaries, and rarely having requests for interviews by local respondents turned down. This may be the case for researchers with existing connections to a community as much as it is for those who are new to a particular research environment, and for a sensitive and reflexive fieldworker, these can be uncomfortable encounters. And occasionally the ‘right’ decision may prove to be the ‘wrong’ one when personal ethics collide with local norms. For example, Clare Madge

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insisted on doing her own laundry when she was staying with a local family in the Gambia; this ‘insistence was insulting to the family with whom I was living, as I only understood at a later date’. She also argues that, on reflection, this ‘insistence was itself based on a privileged positioning’ (Madge, 1997: 119).

The Research ‘Assistant’ and Research ‘Collaborator’ Many students undertaking fieldwork in the Global South will be working in a second language and will not be fluent. Even when they are fluent, they may well require the support of a field or research assistant to gain social (and sometimes political) entry to the field site. Such assistants can act as a cultural informant, local guide, or simply provide companionship. This raises a series of ethical concerns that accompany the power imbalances inherent in the relationship between a researcher and their assistant. Research ‘assistant’ is resonant, if not of subservience, then at least of a degree of servility, and some prefer other terms, such as field guide or research collaborator. Such naming gymnastics, however, cannot escape the fact that, more often than not, the research assistant – or RA – is an employee, recruited by the researcher to help them in their work. At the same time, the working relationship between the researcher and their ‘assistant’ is probably the single most important ingredient in creating a successful research project. The researcher has a duty of care, and issues of health and safety apply as much to the research assistant as to the researcher. It is worth remembering that while the foreign researcher can return ‘home’ their assistant usually cannot. Not exposing them to political and social risk is as important as protecting them from physical harm. There is also the question of whether RAs should be named authors on publications arising from a project. Usually they are acknowledged in preliminaries to PhDs or in the footnotes of papers. Yet often RAs play a critical role in the research. If they wish to build their own academic careers, they may have a professional interest in being recognized beyond a footnote buried deep in a paper. Critical development scholars have written of foreign researchers ‘mining’ poor countries for data which is then used to further their own careers, with little consideration for what is being given back in return (see below). This also applies to the relationship between the researcher and their field assistant. Equally important as these ethical questions relating to the role of the RA are a host of methodological issues, and potential ‘traps’ for the unwary researcher. The researcher is often highly reliant on their assistant. They not only act as a translator – a challenging task in itself – but often become an interpreter for all manner of local customs and practices: what can and can’t be done, and what should and shouldn’t be done. The RA is a bridge across the problematic insider/outside binary, and a critical gatekeeper. In short, researchers (and their work) are frequently in the hands of their assistants. The fact

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that an RA can make or break a project makes training particularly important (see Skelton, 2009). It is incumbent on RAs to understand the aims of the project and their role as a research assistant. When they take on the role not just of translating but also of interpreting conversations with interviewees, for instance, an important line may be crossed, potentially undermining a project. But even the best of training does not make (nor should it) an RA a passive field ‘instrument’, a human version of Google Translate. For researchers at later stages in their careers, the research ‘collaborator’ may enter the frame. More than an assistant, they are a co-researcher, ostensibly a partner in the research. Like field assistants, collaborators often take on the task of smoothing out the wrinkles in fieldwork, be they political, institutional, social, or cultural. Whether the relationship is truly one of equals, given deep-seated inequalities that are hard to navigate (even with the best of intentions) is doubtful. Often the most sensitive issue to negotiate is authorship, because so much hangs, in a university context, on publication. This now applies as much to universities in the Global South, as the North. Both field assistants and collaborators are often made invisible and silenced in – and by – the research process (Turner, 2010). What is also hidden or overlooked is that research assistants and collaborators inject another layer of reflexivity into the research process. As Anwar and Viqar (2017: 120) write in their paper on RAs, reflexivity, and the politics of fieldwork in urban Pakistan, the ‘RAs’ value to the research process in terms of [their] contributions […] were not only transformative of research, but also uniquely their own, a product of their particular subjectivities and rootedness in the social and political world’. Issues of positionality and reflexivity, then, extend from the researcher to those around them: ‘We need to stop ignoring the positionality and subjectivity of research assistants/interpreters, (Turner, 2010: 216).

Danger and Risk In addition to minimizing risk to the research assistant, researchers have an ethical responsibility to pay attention to the safety of their research subjects. Are your actions and research putting your subjects at risk, if not yourself? While this is not peculiar to countries of the Global South, it is often more germane in such locations. Tendentious topics may expose your collaborators to censure by their local communities, to surveillance by local officials, or even to threats by state security personnel. As McDonald-Wilmsen (2009) says about his work on China’s contentious Three Gorges Dam, as a foreigner he was highly visible and his presence could have been misconstrued by the authorities. He writes: ‘I was faced with an ethical dilemma: should I be present in the field and risk drawing attention to my research partner and the participants or should I remove myself from the data collection process […]?’ (2009: 289).

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One of the aspects of researcher privilege in the Global South is that they can normally ‘escape’. Their embassies and universities will represent them and their relative wealth will normally rescue them from situations of danger. Others – research assistants and research subjects – may not be so fortunate. This makes ensuring that they are not exposed to such risks all the more important. For the researcher, crises are often key events when the everyday is unsettled and a research ‘opportunity’ emerges. Whether they are economic crises, situations of political or social unrest, or ‘natural’ disasters, they provide the researcher with a research ‘moment’. Bachmann, for example, was based in Nairobi during Kenya’s post-election crisis of December 2007, a crisis which raised, for him, a number of ethical issues: ‘Being aware of the ethical questions raised by conducting research in an environment of human tragedy, I tried to adapt to the new circumstances, engage with the complexities and entanglements, continue with my research and do what researchers do: Write about their research’ (Bachmann, 2011: 366). There is an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism when it comes to such research, which often involves extracting knowledge in a context of trauma, as I found when researching coastal communities in Thailand following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Rigg et  al., 2008; see also Buranakul et al., 2005; Greenhough et al., 2005).

Taking and Giving In the best of all worlds, research is reciprocal, participatory, and mutually empowering. But often it is not. Normally it is asymmetrical, sometimes it is expropriating, and occasionally it is exploitative (see England, 1994; Schenk, 2013). Even the most reflexive researcher cannot escape from the unevenness of the world. Notwithstanding very significant changes in how the ethics of fieldwork are taught, giving back as much as we take is difficult. Having collectively spent many scores of hours surveying and interviewing, say, villagers in Nepal, what do we offer in return? Our thanks; an acknowledgement in a thesis or paper that the villagers will not and cannot read; or perhaps the rather feeble claim that the research might help other people ‘like them’, should the government listen (which is increasingly unlikely). A participatory ethos might help. Funded projects may organize participatory workshops to ‘return’ research results to local communities (see Lobo et al., Chapter 15 in this volume), but for graduate students this is far more difficult to arrange (for an exception though, see Oven et al., Chapter 28 in this volume). In some cases, students maintain long-term engagement with ‘their’ research sites, returning regularly for years to come (e.g. Hirsch, 2012). But such opportunities do not always arise. Lives move on, careers progress in ways that are impossible to second guess, and research sites and participants remain anonymized names in underread theses or papers. Perhaps the best we can do in such circumstances is hold by the adage, ‘Do no harm’.

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Celebrity humanitarians have more power and influence than most of us to effect positive change. Trailing the media, they can highlight otherwise hidden, egregious conditions and events, from child labour in clothing factories to oil spills in far-away places. But they can also channel attention to certain people and places, keeping other concerns in the dark. Their efforts can over-simplify complex problems and their fame is problematically post-democratic as they go around and over the institutions of government and the international order (Richey, 2016). Sometimes researchers give gifts, whether small tokens (pens, for example) to local interviewees, more substantial offerings to official informants (such as university-branded gifts), or small payments (per diems) which in some countries are regarded as normal. Whether such gifts compromise the research itself is debated (Scott et al., 2006: 33/4), and different countries have different norms and expectations (Gillen, 2012). It is easy to loftily eschew gift-giving when it is not expected; rather harder when no one will agree to be interviewed without some small token. Increasingly in the Global South, time is money and so people expect money for time. Bachmann, who was intent on critically researching the development industry in Kenya, found himself paying a Daily Service Allowance (DSA) to workshop attendees on behalf of the organizations he was seeking to research, something he found ethically problematic: Generally, I disagree with the practice of paying financial incentives in such circumstances, yet I ended up being the one doing so on behalf of the donor organisations. […] Without even noticing, I had become a part of the development industry that I set out to critically research for the sake of maintaining the very beneficial working relationship with the agency and in order to put myself in a favourable position for accessing possible informants. […] At the time, these ethical concerns did not appear to me; it was only after I had noticed how paying out the DSA facilitated my access to informants that I realised that this possibly came at ethical costs. Did this price compromise my research project as such? Probably not […] Did it compromise my ethical integrity as researcher? Possibly […]. (Bachmann, 2011: 366/7, emphasis in original) Perhaps even more problematically, should we interview vulnerable people at all if we are not in a position to give anything of significance in return? This is a question that Clark (2012) asked herself in the context of post-conflict Bosnia. She answers in the affirmative because otherwise, she rhetorically asks, how else will their voices be heard?

Conclusion: Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in Development Spaces None of the debates and issues presented in this chapter are unique to countries in the Global South. Researchers working in socially and economically

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disadvantaged environments across the Global North would need to negotiate many of the same dilemmas. But they are far more likely to be confronted in research in the development spaces of the Global South, and they are also likely to be more relevant. The challenge for the researcher, time and again, is that few of these ethical questions are black and white; they are dilemmas in the sense that they have to be carefully thought through, and even then there are often no clear answers. Some of the quotations here – from Bachmann, Lertchavalitsakul, Madge, Miller, and Turner – reflect this navigation of the ethical. Scholars ‘rationalize’ their decisions and actions (for example, see Lertchavalitsakul, 2014: 84), not infrequently after the event. Occasionally we don’t even appreciate the ethical questions and quandaries which confront us until long after we have taken our decisions and left the field. What is evident is that we need to see ethical dilemmas as stretched over time and set in the context of particular places; or ethics-as-process (see Clark, 2012) and ethics-as-situated. What seems reasonable in one context is not in another; and what seems acceptable at a particular moment in the research process may be viewed rather differently at another, later stage.

Recommended Reading Bachmann, V. (2011) ‘Participating and observing: Positionality and fieldwork relations during Kenya’s post-election crisis’, Area, 43 (3): 362–8. This paper reflects on ‘ethics-in-process’ in the wake of Kenya’s post-election political crisis of 2008, providing an insight into how one researcher navigated through the events of the time. Scott, S., Miller, F. and Lloyd, K. (2006) ‘Doing fieldwork in development geography: Research culture and research spaces in Vietnam’, Geographical Research, 44 (1): 28–40. Three doctoral students set out the practical and ethical questions that confronted them in their fieldwork in the (at the time) tightly controlled context of Vietnam. Sultana, F. (2007) ‘Reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in international research’, ACME, 6: 374–85. In this paper, the author highlights the differences between the strictures and structures of formal institutional ethics processes located in Northern institutions and everyday ethical behaviours in the Global South.

26 Voluntary Spaces Mónica Farías and Helen F. Wilson

Key Points ••

Voluntary spaces and practices come in a multitude of forms, which demand markedly different ethical considerations.

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The assumption that voluntarism is inherently good can prohibit critical and reflexive analyses.

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The blurring of boundaries between volunteer and researcher can create ethical dilemmas and prompt consideration of how researchers become implicated through voluntary practice.

Introduction To volunteer is to offer to do or give something freely, whether giving information, donating goods, or offering labour or time. Voluntary spaces and practices can appear in academic research in a variety of ways. Geographers have examined volunteering and the workings of voluntary spaces in order to understand a range of different social and environmental issues. Researchers may also encounter voluntary spaces as they move through their research, perhaps in the quest for information, or through their interactions with individuals. In these instances, voluntary spaces and practices are not the direct focus of study, but become a part of the research project, nonetheless. As this chapter will outline, researchers can also volunteer as part of their research approach, to provide a means of gaining access to settings or ‘giving something back’, or as part of own political commitment to a cause.

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Voluntary spaces and practice are shaped by complex motivations, politics, and beliefs that pose a variety of ethical questions and challenges. As a way into some of these questions we begin with an overview of different debates on the status of voluntary spaces and practice, beginning with the links to social justice and charity before examining critical work on the relationship between volunteering, neoliberalism, and the reworking of state–citizen relations. We then outline a set of practical issues that are worth considering when working with or in voluntary spaces, including an extended reflection on the dilemmas posed when the roles of researcher and volunteer become blurred. The chapter concludes with a case study from the soup kitchen at the Asamblea Plaza Dorrego-San Telmo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Social Justice and ‘Doing Good’ There are strong links between voluntary practice, welfare, and charity (May et al., 2019), so research that engages with voluntary spaces is often shaped by a concern for social and environmental justice issues. This can be seen in a range of geographical work, whether it concerns services for the homeless or destitute (Cloke et  al., 2007; Elull-Knight, 2019; Farías, 2016), community organizing and education (Mills, 2015; Rosol, 2012; Wilson, 2017c), conservation and animal welfare (Lorimer, 2010b), emergency services and disaster relief (Yarwood, 2011), development (Laurie and Baillie Smith, 2018), or health provision and social care (Conradson, 2003). A catch-all definition of the voluntary sector is hard to find, but it is generally understood to refer to a sector of society that is not for profit, independent of the state, and acting for the good of the public, which often endows voluntarism with a sense of progressiveness (Milligan, 2007). Indeed, it has been argued – and sometimes assumed – that the voluntary sector should provide a space where state policies can be actively challenged and communities can be empowered (Yarwood, 2014). Of course, not all voluntary spaces and practices operate within the more formal spaces of the voluntary sector. Furthermore, the assumed progressive qualities of voluntarism have also been challenged by geographers who have explored the complexities of state–voluntary interdependence and convergence (May et al., 2019), the varied motives and beliefs that shape voluntary provision (Cloke et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2016), and connectedly, the different ideas around what constitutes ‘[for] the good of the public’. The assumption that volunteering and voluntary spaces are inherently good can prohibit a more critical, reflexive engagement with voluntary practice that is attentive to uneven power structures, complex motivations, and ethical dilemmas. As Holdsworth and Quinn (2012) have argued, volunteering is too often promoted uncritically as an activity that automatically benefits all those involved. In making these arguments, they were focused on the promotion of

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volunteering within higher education in England – whether for improving student employability through the acquisition of new skills, improving relationships between institutions and local communities, or promoting social justice. They raise a number of concerns: that students were taking on the responsibility of improving the status of institutions in the community as part of their studies; that false and unhelpful distinctions were often created between ‘local communities’ and ‘student communities’; that self-promotion and a concern with economic goals prohibited a genuine interest in understanding inequalities; and that there was not enough support to develop the tools to deal with or analyse social justice issues. While these volunteering activities are not necessarily connected to research, the concerns that are raised about the uncritical promotion of volunteering are a useful starting point for questioning the ethics of volunteering and voluntary practice more widely. The notion of ‘doing good’ through volunteering is critically examined elsewhere, perhaps most notably in relation to international volunteering and voluntourism (Koleth, 2014; Sin, 2010). Framed as capable of enabling understanding and cooperation, overseas volunteering has become a feature of US foreign policy, while in the UK volunteer placements for 18–25-year-olds are provided through the government funded International Citizen Service (ICS), among other organizations. Described as ‘a great opportunity for personal development, a stepping stone to future careers and a chance to make the world a better place’ (ICS, 2019), such international volunteering has been described as playing ‘a key role in state efforts to construct new forms of citizenship premised on active engagement in civil society organisations and spaces’ (Laurie and Baillie Smith, 2018: 100). In addition to these complex entanglements with state practice and citizenship, scholars have attended to the neoliberalization of volunteering, as further indication that not all volunteering can be straightforwardly associated with social justice but instead with the marketization of experience and the production of employability. One of the most prominent critiques of international volunteering concerns the reproduction of unjust systems and the limited benefits that are observed for the communities that host volunteers (Sin, 2010). While volunteering activities can challenge neoliberal imaginaries of inequality, power, and agency, scholars have documented the mobilization of uncritical and apolitical narratives of ‘social justice’ that replicate power inequalities, arguing that the emphasis on ‘making a difference’ and securing transformative experiences often establishes hierarchies between volunteers and the communities they work with (Griffiths, 2015). Whether working on conservation projects, building projects, or teaching programmes, this can lead to patronizing interactions, a desire to replicate normative values, and the circulation of ‘saviour narratives’. However, Laurie and Baillie Smith (2018: 99) add complexity by noting that such critiques are often preoccupied with formal forms of volunteering. As they argue, this preoccupation overlooks less-formal activity such as that done through faith-based organizations, or personal or diasporic ties, and produces a geography of volunteering that privileges Northern agencies and fixes geographical imaginaries as a consequence.

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A final area of work that becomes important to understanding the complex position that voluntary spaces occupy concerns the ways in which volunteering has become integral to the reworking of state–citizen relations (May et al., 2019). Rather than approaching volunteering as a necessarily emancipatory practice, scholars have demonstrated the importance of understanding how volunteering is caught up in ‘a distinct political rationality which aims at passing on state responsibilities to civil society’ (Rosol, 2012: 240; DeVerteuil, 2015). This can be seen in recent work on faith-based organizations across Europe, which has highlighted how religious communities are increasingly filling the gaps that have been left behind by the removal of a variety of welfare systems and mechanisms of support (Beaumont and Cloke, 2012). In another example concerning austerity politics and libraries in North East England, Hitchen (2019) documented the cuts to services that saw paid positions replaced with voluntary roles. While volunteers committed their time with good intentions in order to secure important services for the community, they were simultaneously accused of facilitating the redundancy of paid library staff and seen by some as aiding the very process of state withdrawal that was putting library services at risk. The above debates highlight the importance of interrogating any assumptions that might be made about the relationship between volunteering and social justice, and any assumption that voluntary spaces and practices are inherently ‘good’. Specifically, they raise important questions regarding motivations, power dynamics, benefits, and the wider political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts in which voluntary spaces and volunteering are placed. As the next section outlines, regardless of how voluntary spaces enter into a research project, careful thought must be given to a range of practical considerations.

Practical Considerations A range of practical and ethical issues emerge when starting to consider how to do research with, or on, voluntary spaces and practices. First, there is the question of how to approach and begin working with a voluntary organization. Depending on the form of volunteering involved, organizations may require significant levels of background checks to be conducted before agreeing to allow a researcher to volunteer, and they may require mandatory forms of training to be undertaken on issues such as health and safety or safeguarding. In this sense, research in a voluntary setting can require a substantial investment of time and a commitment to work with an organization to fulfil their requirements, especially in the context of particularly sensitive research topics (see Hopkins, Chapter 6 in this volume) or where vulnerabilities might be present (see Darling, Chapter 17 in this volume). Voluntary organizations may also want to know how the planned research will affect them, and what they may gain from being involved. It may be that a researcher’s ability to volunteer is enough, but when approaching organizations

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it is important to consider what specific skills you can offer to support their work. This is especially important in a context of increasingly stretched voluntary organizations that are affected by cuts in funding and growing demands on their time (Darling, 2016; Williams et al., 2016). Second, in working with volunteers it can be important to consider the varied motivations behind volunteering, and the different positions individuals occupy in relation to it. For instance, it has been argued that the ability to volunteer, especially when framed around ‘civic engagement’, is a privilege of those with time to spare or the resources to secure volunteering ‘experience’. Volunteers may view their work as ‘giving something back’ to society or may be motivated by their faith, or because they enjoy the experience. It is important to recognize, however, that motivations are complex, and some of these positions may be quite distinct from others who may volunteer out of necessity (Cloke et al., 2007). Students may choose to volunteer in order to develop experience for a CV; individuals out of work may do so in order to gain skills; and in some cases volunteering can be a part of community service sentences that serve as a punishment for criminal offenses. In other instances, volunteering is done out of necessity by people who may themselves be politically marginalized. Take the example of supplementary schools in the UK, which provide out-of-hours tuition for Black and Minority Ethnic children, including refugees and asylum seekers. For many, a lack of funds leaves them reliant on voluntary staff who give up their evenings and weekends to teach, often in addition to full-time jobs elsewhere, making schools vulnerable to shortage and inconsistent delivery. Volunteers are often parents from the local community who have to work with limited resources in challenging conditions. While this is not a concern that is consistent across all supplementary schools, ‘volunteer fatigue’ can be a problem for many, while a frequent turnover of staff makes for an unstable learning environment and a constant sense of precarity (Wilson et al., 2019; Wilson and Warren, 2020). For his ethnographic study of the Black Supplementary School movement, this led Andrews (2013) to volunteer with a school across a 7-month period in order to support and gain access to a context where the people he wanted to speak to were overstretched and had no time to give. As a consequence of precarity and limited resources, volunteering has become a common feature of research with supplementary schools. In some cases, volunteering might be actively welcomed or encouraged by an organization, and a researcher might be asked to volunteer in return for data or access. This request might come out of a need for more capacity or labour. However, an organization might also promote volunteering as a mode of political work and see an approach by a researcher as an opportunity for fostering an ethical commitment to a political education and to facilitating a change in the way that social justice issues are approached. In each of these instances, the role of volunteering is subtly but importantly different, and the role of the researcher-volunteer is one further iteration of these different motivations. As these distinctions highlight, it is not just

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the motivations behind volunteering that may vary, but also the capacity of individuals to have the time, resources, and aptitude to volunteer in the first place. This necessarily requires a reflection on power (Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). Requesting time and resources from overstretched organizations that provide essential services for vulnerable people might be very different to requesting the time of a multinational organization that is well-resourced (although see May et al., 2019, on problematizing these distinctions), just as the power relations involved in a drop-in centre for asylum seekers are very different to those that shape the voluntary spaces of the Girl Scouts movement. If an organization is approached with a much-needed offer of voluntary support in exchange for access, it is important to reflect on what this does to understandings of consent and obligation (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). Can volunteering be understood as something given freely if it is done in return for data or some other form of contribution? While there are many instances where the researcher might occupy a position of power, it is also important to recognize that this might not always be the case and that power relations can shift over the course of a project. Finally, there is the challenge of how to finish research in a voluntary setting. As already noted, much research in voluntary spaces involves some level of direct participation from researchers occupying the dual role of researcher and volunteer. One consequence of this is that leaving a voluntary setting at the end of a period of research can be difficult: friendships have developed over time; a sense of commitment to a set of issues and people may have emerged; and the presumption of volunteering as a ‘good thing’ to do can intensify the challenges of leaving such spaces, especially if the researcher has offered useful support or plugged a gap in capacity. In such contexts it is important to be clear, from the outset of any research, how long a period of volunteering will last for, and to communicate this clearly to the organizations and individuals affected. This can be one means of managing expectations within research (see Darling, Chapter 9 this volume), although expectations, and our own perspectives on volunteering, are likely to shift through the development of research relationships. Being attentive to the difficulties of concluding such research, and being realistic about what one may achieve, are a valuable starting point for working in voluntary spaces. It might even be the case that the researcher stays on long after the research is over.

Volunteering as Endorsement and Implication Volunteering has been central to a variety of participatory and critical projects, but it is not free from critique. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges is the blurring of research/researched boundaries. While in some instances, researchers might volunteer with organizations or movements to which they are already aligned (see Ince and White, Chapter 14 in this volume; Lobo et al., Chapter 15 in this volume; see also Farías, 2016), in some instances, researchers might find

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themselves in contexts that do not necessarily sit with their own politics or values. In both cases, how researchers might be implicated through volunteering raises further ethical questions. A concern with endorsement or implication can be seen in two examples. First is Collard’s (2014) ethnographic study of an animal rehabilitation centre as part of a project on the exotic wildlife trade. In reflecting on her day-today work and ‘implicated labour’ as a volunteer at the rehabilitation centre, Collard noted the discomfort that she felt when undertaking actions and participating in routines that were ‘designed to instil in animals fear and even hatred of humans’ (2014: 151). ‘Misanthropic practices’ such as spraying an animal with water so as to maintain distance were carried out in the hope that, once released, animals would be more likely to avoid contact with humans that would put them ‘at high risk of death, suffering, and recommodification’ (2014: 155). Volunteers and workers at the centre, including Collard, were thus tasked with making animals ‘unencounterable to humans’ (2014: 152) so as to prepare them for their return to the wild, while providing them with food and water, care, entertainment, and shelter. Collard’s (2014) discomfort related to three concerns. First, that her labour was ‘complicit’ in the very power dynamics that she was seeking to contest as a researcher. Her labour retained and secured the dominant position of humans and mobilized assumptions about ‘natural’ or ‘wild’ behaviour. Second, while rehabilitation centres are often non-profit, they are frequently connected to the volunteer tourism industry and thus a different form of commodification. Third, there is no substantive empirical evidence to support the efficacy of the rehabilitation processes that Collard was involved in, with a number of studies indicating a relatively low rate of release success (2014: 155). While Collard’s voluntary work at the centre granted her a greater understanding of the organization’s work and its relationship to the circulation of lively capital, it was not without its ethical challenges. In a second example, Goerisch (2017) documented her own dilemmas of volunteering during her research on the gendered spaces of giving in the Girl Scouts of the United States. Goerisch had wanted to ‘give back’ to an organization that had helped define her own childhood (2017: 307) but noted how her commitment to being a ‘good volunteer’ often put her at odds with being a ‘good researcher’. As a volunteer with two older scout groups over a twoyear period she engaged in practices and valorized policies and politics that, ordinarily, she would have critiqued or directly opposed. This included activities related to cookie sales, attendance at troop meetings, and participation in troop-led events, all of which allowed her to ‘gain access’ to research participants, ‘sustain relationships with the scouts and local council, as well as gain insight into what it is to be a volunteer’ (2017: 309). However, her roles as an insider and outsider, volunteer and researcher, were sometimes conflictual and demanded constant self-questioning (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume), taking account of the need for reciprocity but also considering how reciprocity can simultaneously counter her feminist aims.

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What concerns the above examples is the blurring of boundaries between roles – researcher and volunteer. In addition to unwittingly endorsing practices and policies, there are additional concerns that a researcher might become so immersed in an organization that it becomes hard to maintain a critical stance. A researcher might even shape the organization that they are trying to study in ways that become difficult to discern. For Goerisch, it is important not to try to resolve the tensions between the two roles, but instead ‘dwell’ in the liminal spaces between them so as to remain attentive to the implications of including volunteering in research design (2017: 310). At the same time, it is also important to consider how the liminal positioning between roles is understood by others, and how our positioning as researchers and volunteers can produce a range of expectations about what we do, and what effects we may have.

Beyond Research To this point, we have largely focused on the voluntary spaces and practices that might become a part of empirical research and analysis, but it is also worth considering how voluntary practice might appear in research dissemination. Many of the chapters in this collection highlight the importance of dissemination beyond the academy and showcase the range of creative ways in which this might be done. This may require working with graphic designers, filmmakers, storywriters, theatre producers, or community organizers to name just some of the people who might become important to the production of materials and outputs. When developing these materials and outputs, researchers may be encouraged by a university or funder to find organizations or companies that would do the work pro bono. While pro bono is often used as a general phrase to describe work that is undertaken voluntarily and without payment, it is short for pro bono publico and translates as ‘for the public good’. Pro bono professional work can provide important services for those who cannot ordinarily afford them, such as legal services for people on low income. However, in the context of academic research, where you can often be expected to produce a lot with very little, careful consideration needs to be given as to the ethics of so-called pro bono work. As Warren (2014) has argued in relation to her research on volunteering and creative labour, too often creative professionals are encouraged to provide their labour voluntarily, frequently on the assumption that it might bring them recognition, personal satisfaction, or an excellent opportunity to further develop a portfolio or CV. It is important to consider how the work of such individuals – artists, photographers, filmmakers, and so on – is valued by universities. For instance, when drawing together contracts for payment as part of an impact acceleration grant, Helen’s collaborators noted how frequently they were ordinarily approached by institutions for free labour or the free use of their work. The time and labour of creative professionals is repeatedly undercosted, often in situations where pro bono work is not a genuine necessity. Having outlined some of the dilemmas and opportunities that are presented by research in voluntary spaces we now turn to a case study in Buenos Aires.

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CASE STUDY: WORKING AT THE SOUP KITCHEN, ASAMBLEA PLAZA DORREGO-SAN TELMO In Mónica Farías’ research on poverty, homelessness, and neighbourhood alliance-building, volunteering was central to the project’s commitment to relational ethics. The research sought to understand how asambleas populares in Buenos Aires, Argentina, challenge exclusionary forms of citizenship, community, and belonging. It asked whether participation in an asamblea, where alliances could be built across differences of class, race, and gender, shifted how people thought about poverty and the poor (Farías, 2016, 2018). Asambleas present opportunities for politically radical interactions and are highly diverse in composition in terms of socio-economic position, race, gender, and age. They emerged in Argentina as autonomous political spaces at a time of significant political upheaval and economic crisis (2001–02) following a period of increasing poverty and inequality. Motivated by issues of social justice, they were to be spaces where systemic problems could be recognized, debated, and addressed – unemployment, corruption, poorly maintained public spaces, and so on – and where poverty and regressive politics could be made visible. They therefore played, and some continue to play, an important role in fostering hope and solidarity for those most effected by economic collapse, and in supporting the immediate needs of different neighbourhoods. As a woman from the Southern Hemisphere studying in the US and conducting research in her hometown, a feeling of ‘in-betweenness’ shaped Mónica’s relationships and research practices in Argentina (see Sanyal, Chapter 3 in this volume). Mónica knew the language and was familiar with the cultural codes and histories of the place but her enrolment in a US academic institution frequently put her at a distance. Grassroots organizations like those that she worked with frequently take an oppositional stance towards US international and economic politics, reflecting a long tradition of opposing and critiquing US imperialism. Mónica’s research was thus shaped by complex questions concerning the politics of knowledge production and academic responsibility but was ultimately orientated around a feminist concern for analysing the politics of academic involvement and using positions of privilege to social ends (Kobayashi, 1994; see Pande, Chapter 13 in this volume). Mónica worked with two popular asambleas between 2013 and 2014 – Flores and Plaza Dorrego-San Telmo. At the latter, her participant observation quickly transitioned into a form of ‘scholar activism’ (Autonomous Geographies Collective, 2010; see Ince and White, Chapter 14 in this volume), which involved working at the Asamblea and joining one of the teams that ran the soup kitchen for the homeless and those in precarious housing. The Asamblea de Plaza Dorrego-San Telmo is located in an up-scaled and gentrified traditional working-class neighbourhood in the south-east of the

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city. After a couple of years of meeting in a park, it built its current premises with the help of donations on an empty plot that had been temporarily ceded by the city’s government. The Asamblea used to run microenterprise projects that involved making bread and clothes but none of them continue today. It does, however, host a variety of cultural and artistic projects and activities that support and assist homeless people, including a weekly Sunday soup-kitchen that people fondly call ‘la Olla’ (the pot). The Asamblea also provides a space for the activities of different cultural collectives and for a literacy and work training programme for adults, while taking part in struggles to defend social rights and the neighbourhood’s public space. As part of its commitment to the recuperation and preservation of collective memory, particularly in relation to the crimes committed during the last dictatorship (1976–83), the Asamblea has been involved in the Work and Consensus Committee of the former clandestine detention centre located in the neighbourhood. It thus provides a range of services, advice, and support for the neighbourhood (Farías, 2016). It was important to be aware of the demands and time pressures that members of the Asamblea were under. It was not uncommon for members to describe burnout and feelings of exhaustion as a result of their commitment to the organization and the myriad activities that it sustained. Working at the Asamblea, and particularly the Olla, was not only physically demanding but often emotionally challenging. When Mónica first arrived, members were additionally busy lobbying to get a law passed in the city’s legislature that would grant them the right to the site where they had built their premises. As well as feeling overstretched, members were used to large numbers of researchers and were fatigued by over-research; they spoke of researchers that were ‘here one day and gone the next’. Mónica’s involvement in the voluntary activities of the Asamblea, her taking-on of responsibilities, and her participation in meetings, decision-making, and the organization of events were thus part of her commitment to the development of reciprocal relations and a relational ethics (Routledge, 2003). Working at the Asamblea allowed her to better understand the day-to-day workings of the organization and its members, while also giving something back and supporting their political project. The Asamblea does not accept subsidies from the government but instead relies on donations from the local neighbourhood or money raised through the organization of events. At the time of the research, the Sunday Olla served approximately 100–120 people every week (a number that steadily increased from 2016 onwards to reach a peak of 250 people in 2019). Most people would arrive, eat, and then leave, but others would stay to find support or ask for advice on services such as shelters, food stamps, and cash transfers. The people who attend the Olla are often vulnerable and in very precarious housing conditions, most of them being homeless, with high occurrences of substance abuse and subjection to institutional violence and police harassment (see Darling, Chapter 17 in (Continued)

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(Continued) this volume). Sustaining the Olla required not only physical labour but also a form of emotional work, empathy, and an attentiveness to small gestures and tensions to ensure that the space remained supportive and free of conflict. The lunch was prepared collaboratively, with members of the Asamblea working alongside the homeless and precariously housed who would turn up to help with the cooking and setting up of the dining room. This meant that the numbers working on any Sunday were unpredictable, making some

Figures 26.1/2 Preparing the food for the Sunday Olla

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Ollas more difficult to run than others. Helping to sustain the Olla meant cooking from 9am and not finishing until around 4pm. Mónica sliced potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, and onions, set up tables, cleaned, served, made grocery lists, and cleaned the toilets, all the while talking with fellow members of the Asamblea and those who used it. People did not always agree and the Asamblea was regularly shaped by tensions, differences of opinion, and the strains that come with working in precarious conditions, but it was noted that what kept people together was a sense of comradery that emerged from a shared commitment to social justice (see Wilson, 2017c, on friendships). However, like many of the examples that we have discussed in this chapter, some members offered critical accounts of ‘middle-class good-will’. In some cases, the ‘good will’ of members and volunteers could become a significant impediment to the building of shared space when middle-class values and normativities shaped interactions and became the ideal. Too often, gestures of care, shaped by unequal power relations, would become patronizing and thus disempowering (see Swerts, Chapter 7 in this volume). Furthermore, some people noted that the good feeling that came from ‘helping others’ did not necessarily amount to any change in the structural conditions that produce and sustain homelessness. Often, ‘doing good’ failed to have any political grip and was easily disconnected from a wider praxis of enacting change. As a researcher at an elite institution in the US, a volunteer, and a member of the Asamblea, Mónica’s occupation of an in-between status made these questions pertinent to her own practice. Seven years after she began her research in Buenos Aires, Mónica continues to work at the Asamblea. After years of activism and volunteering at the Olla, research at the Asamblea has become unthinkable. Her relationship with what started out as a research site for understanding poverty, homelessness, and neighbourhood alliance-building has fundamentally changed. The people that Mónica works with are now her compañeros. Her commitment to her fellow activists/friends, and participation in the Asamblea, have thus blurred the boundaries between volunteer, activist, and researcher, in such a way as to prohibit the ability, and even desire, to approach it as an object of study. Instead, Mónica’s new research ripples out from the Asamblea to focus on the projects and organizations that connect or cross paths with its political struggles and efforts to challenge exclusionary forms of urban citizenship.

Conclusion Voluntary spaces and practices come in a variety of forms that each require markedly different practical and ethical considerations. Given the close link between volunteering, welfare, and social justice issues, there are a number of cross-overs with other chapters in this volume, including activist geographies, sensitive topics, and vulnerable subjects. Importantly, we have demonstrated the

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need to question the assumption that voluntarism is always ‘good,’ so as to consider the different motivations, power relations, politics, and beliefs that shape it. As a number of our examples indicate, ‘doing good’ can inadvertently reproduce or conceal inequality, and there are also different understandings of what ‘doing good’ constitutes. For researchers, volunteering can be a valuable way of gaining understanding and access to research sites. It might also be an important means of ‘giving something back’ to overstretched organizations and people, and/or taking part in something that aligns with one’s own political and ethical principles. The challenges posed by the entanglement of volunteer-researcher roles should be considered contextually and are not static. As Mónica’s work at the Asamblea demonstrates, volunteering for research might be the start of a set of commitments, friendships, and responsibilities that go far beyond a research project.

Recommended Reading Cloke, P., Johnsen, S. and May, J. (2007) ‘Ethical citizenship? Volunteers and the ethics of providing services for homeless people’, Geoforum, 38 (6): 1089–1101. Through the example of emergency services for homeless people, the paper examines how volunteers are implicated in the co-construction of spaces of care. It explores what motivates volunteers and argues for more attention to be paid to the complexity of motivation and the presence of an ‘ordinary ethics’. Holdsworth, C. and Quinn, J. (2012) ‘The epistemological challenge of higher education student volunteering: “Reproductive” or “deconstructive” volunteering?’, Antipode, 44 (2): 386–405. An excellent overview of the tensions that are inherent in the practice of student volunteering, whether undertaken for a research project or for the acquisition of new skills as part of a programme of higher education. Sin, H.L. (2010) ‘Who are we responsible to? Locals’ tales of volunteer tourism’, Geoforum, 41 (6): 983–92. This article connects discussions on the geographies of care and responsibility with debates on volunteer tourism. It foregrounds the perspectives of host communities in Cambodia to detail both the positive and negative views of volunteer tourism and its impacts.

27 Virtual Spaces and Social Media Sam Kinsley

Key Points ••

Research with and on virtual spaces and social media poses a peculiarly spatial set of ethical issues.

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What constitutes consent and privacy is a key concern for research with and on virtual spaces and social media.

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All research ethics are in some way negotiated in contexts of institutions, place, and social norms – which are brought into different registers with digital media.

Introduction This chapter addresses the kinds of negotiations we undertake, with both ourselves and others, to conduct ethical research about and with digital media.1 I begin with the central contention that to think about digital and social media inescapably involves asking questions about how we understand space.2 Many people can recall their first contact with the internet. I can clearly remember standing in the only computer room in my secondary school, in 1995, huddled around the only computer with modem internet access with other pupils and a teacher. As each person suggested information for which to search, and pages were slowly downloaded, the teacher remarked in a mix of awe and delight that the information being retrieved was coming from machines on the other side of the planet. Everyday life for an increasing number of people

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directly involves some form of mediation using a networked digital technology. An even greater number of people are also subject to such mediation from afar, inasmuch as aspects of their lives are reflected in databases that are then used (sometimes with a degree of automation) by governments and companies to act in ways that affect their everyday lives. These forms of mediation, the growth of digital devices for interpersonal communication, and our knowing and unknowing contribution to the ever-growing repositories of data (which are used to make decisions that affect our lives): these have prompted questions about the use of digital media in research. At the heart of many of the ethical questions raised about digital media is an inherently geographical concern: that of how we negotiate mediated spatial experiences. A number of geographical researchers have explored the ways in which the internet and digital media are discussed, used, and imagined to invoke some kind of contiguous or somehow-extra ‘space’ (for example: M. Graham, 2013; S. Graham, 1998; Kitchin, 1998; Shields, 2003; Thrift, 1996). I argue elsewhere (Kinsley, 2013) that how we address ‘the field’ of research in relation to digital media directly influences our methods. The social and spatial conventions we assume, and by which we judge what is acceptable behaviour (or not), are precisely conditioned by how this idea of space gets discussed and imagined – as cyber – digital, virtual, and so on. However, as we conduct research with and about digital media we are intimately concerned with understandings of space. The central point I would like you to consider is that thinking ‘space’ underpins how we take ethical positions about researching digital media, not least what counts as informed consent and what is private/privacy. A second, crucial, point is that digital methods change – sometimes quickly – and so the ethos of this chapter is to recommend ways of thinking about digital media ethics rather than specific techniques for addressing them. Two ethical issues are prevalent throughout this discussion: if and how we can gain informed consent, and how we respect expectations of privacy. My aim here is not to assert a theory of ethics by defining ‘consent’ and ‘privacy’; for one thing there is not the space to do so. Rather, it is to highlight that regardless of how you theoretically ground your ethics – whether you take an absolutist, deontological, relativist, or other ethical stance (for further discussion see Ess, 2014: 197–252; see also Barnett, 2011) – you will almost certainly have to face two particular issues: (a) gaining informed consent in ambiguous, digitally mediated, spatial contexts; and (b) varying understandings or expectations of privacy. Therefore, these two issues prominently feature throughout this chapter and I encourage you to further explore them through the recommended readings. To examine the ways contemporary geographical research about and with digital media prompts ethical questions, this chapter is organized in four proceeding parts. First, I explore issues specific to ethnographic research about and with digital media, drawing upon a case study of researching the social networking site Myspace.com. Second, and in contrast to the previous section,

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I consider ethical issues specific to data-driven research, drawing upon a case study of researching a public controversy on Twitter. Third, concluding suggestions are made for undertaking digital geographical research. Finally, the chapter ends with several recommendations for further reading.

Ethical Issues for ‘Digital’ Ethnography – Revisiting Myspace.com In this section I explore some of the key concerns faced when undertaking ethnographic research online. The discussion of the ethical issues is illustrated through a particular example: a study of users’ spatial experiences of the social media platform Myspace in the mid-2000s. Myspace, like many early (pre-smartphone) social networking sites, was only web-based (no apps), focused on interrelations made between users, and known for its association with music, both amateur and professional. Between 2005 and 2006, I researched Myspace through participant observation. In doing so, I used the system, communicated with other users (sometimes interviewing them) recorded my ‘data’ in a field diary, and stored text-based conversations as separate documents. Noteworthy here, of course, is that Myspace is more or less defunct, illustrating how quickly technology trends can move relative to other aspects of everyday life. However, as I will demonstrate, the example aptly illustrates a number of enduring ethical issues. I focus on three such concerns: the nebulous nature of the mediated research ‘setting’; the negotiation of informed consent; and the perceived ambiguity of public and private communication. First, from early online research until the present, much of the literature has grappled with the settings for interaction between researcher and research participant (see Allen, 1996; Hine, 2000, 2005, 2012). Online ethnography is inherently multi-sited: there is the online setting (in an app, a text-based ‘chatroom’ or forum, using audio or video messaging) and then there are the physical settings of the research participant and the researcher. In much of my own research with Myspace, conversations took place through the internal messaging system and through email, while I was physically located in a variety of settings, including a café, a university library, and at my kitchen table at home. Interestingly, most of my research participants declined to comment on their physical setting. Where they did, it was frequently in bedrooms. The physical location of the research participant can significantly contribute to their attitude towards disclosure, which is further complicated by the now normalized, convention of revealing apparently intimate details of our lives over social media (Waters and Ackerman, 2011). In some cases the research participant is empowered by this ambiguity – they have a sense of control over how they present themselves. Nevertheless, we must remain aware of the possibility that participants may disclose more than they might otherwise because they are located in a ‘nebulous setting’ (Rutter and Smith, 2005), such as a physical context

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of perceived comfort (at home, for example) or a familiar digital setting (such as a favourite social media app) (see also Eynon et  al., 2009: 188/9). We researchers should plan in advance how to deal with, and be mindful of, the ways in which particular apps, networks, or modes of online interaction carry different expectations, which can shape the tone of the conversation and the levels of interactional intimacy. Second, ‘informed consent’ lies at the heart of the ethical design and practice of ethnographic research in human geography (see Philo and Laurier, Chapter 4 in this volume). Following Madge (2007: 657) it involves ‘treating participants with respect, using easily understood language to inform them of the nature of the research, the time needed to be involved, the methods to be used and the way in which findings might be used’ before gaining consent to take part (see also Ess, 2014: 22–5; Mann and Stewart, 2000: 48–57). Formally3, this requires some way of the participant vouching for their understanding of the above criteria and their consent to continue to participate in the research. In this vein, deception has also been a significant aspect of this discussion. Participants cannot confirm informed consent if they are unaware of both the research activity and of which users are also researchers and in many ethical frameworks this is deception. For example, while posting on public forums is by definition ‘public’, it has been asserted that disclosing research activity in such forums remains necessary, because the researcher is likely to be using the posted information for unanticipated purposes. However, some researchers suggest that ‘lurking’, or covert observation, is an important research technique utilized prior to formalizing informed consent (Chen et  al., 2004). This has been contested, though, with suggestions that ‘lurking’ in online communities may be harmful and can actually damage communities (Eysenbach and Till, 2001). For example, when studying the uses of the location-based dating app Grindr, Blackwell et al. (2015) purposefully recruited participants through the app but were careful to make a distinct profile explicitly labelled with a university logo, with a further informed consent process for interviews (see Blackwell et al., 2015: 1123–5). As Philo and Laurier (Chapter 4 in this volume) outline, when informed consent is sought, researchers are often required to keep an auditable trail of consent. Where possible, this means some kind of signature; this may be physical (often a signed and scanned form in digital research), or electronic (such as a registration form or similar). However, if identity is considered a flexible category, then the identity the participant is being asked to confirm should be considered. For example, if we are conducting research on online gaming, who is it that signs the consent form? Is it the game character or alter ego that we interact with online? Extrapolating to other media: how should we understand user identities, which may be more or less related to the game player, that are specific to particular social media platforms? These are pertinent questions given that online spaces can be used as a means of expressing or performing different identities. Furthermore, in the case of Myspace, some of my research participants had group accounts, for their musical bands, and the performance

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of that identity was the crux of their use of the system and thus my research. As such, we have to negotiate who is granting consent and in what context. This involves respecting the boundaries of your participants (and how they themselves see those contexts) and therefore not over-reaching in our analysis when writing up our research. Third, the ambiguity of what is private remains a contentious point and one of the most prevalent concerns for students undertaking research online. Madge (2007: 661) argues that the lack of a clear consensus on what is private has led to a ‘vibrant debate surrounding privacy issues’. Some argue that data made deliberately and voluntarily ‘public’ should be utilizable by researchers, providing that anonymity is assured (Hewson et al., 2003). However, whether individual participants consider their correspondence to be public or private is a key issue (Madge, 2007: 661). Barnes (2004) observes that for social networking sites there can be an illusion of privacy. For instance, we might think that our Facebook profiles are private, but if we have failed to select the right settings, they might instead be very public. In systems like Myspace or Facebook, which we habitually use, we can therefore make assumptions as users about whom we think can see our posts, but those assumptions may be untrue. The negotiation we must undertake as researchers is an interpretation of where there may, or may not, be an implied consent – a knowing form of ‘public’ behaviour – and, even so, to what extent the use of apparently ‘public’ information for research may still cause some form of harm. For example, in the analysis of social media posts during the attacks on young people perpetrated in Oslo and on the island of Utøya (Norway), Perng et al. (2013) anonymized all of the posts they used, including changing names and some textual content to protect the anonymity of those involved in a traumatic event, even while the posts were apparently ‘public’. When conducting ethnographic research with and about digital media we are often dealing with intimate data sets, where our data raises further ethical issues around the intimacy involved in the generation of that data. The specificity of the social and spatial contexts of research participants and how we, as researchers, access them are highly bound up with that intimacy. With the growth in interconnected digital media, there has arisen the opportunity to gather and analyse data (which may still be intimate) rapidly and in large volumes. It is to the ethical issues associated with such research that we turn next.

Ethical Issues for Data-Driven Social Network Studies In this section I will consider the ethical issues of undertaking (quantitative) digital data-driven research with social media platforms. As with the previous section, this discussion is worked through a particular example: studying the public controversy of a government-sponsored cull of badgers in the South West of the UK through the social media platform Twitter. This form of research

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is no stranger to ethical controversy; with a Facebook and Cornell University research project (see Kramer et al., 2014) generating heated debate about informed consent (see the Case Study 1 below). Twitter and Facebook, as social media platforms, enable others to access the data their users post in a variety of ways through application program interfaces (APIs). Often at a cost, these APIs allow third parties to search and analyse social media databases, and while principally targeted at other businesses, there has been a growth in social sciences research that makes use of these forms of data. Between 2013 and 2015 as part of a wider project on the idea of ‘contagion’, some colleagues and I researched how the UK government-licensed cull of badgers was being discussed through Twitter. For us, this raised a number of ethical issues concerning anonymity of research participants, the expectations of Twitter users concerning the uses of their data, and what kinds of claims we could make about our data sample. These are issues echoed in other studies and data-driven research, and ethical issues concerning ‘big data’ social science remain an ongoing problem (see Cunningham, Chapter 10 in this volume). In this section we will focus on three key points of ethical contention: whether there is any form of consent; user expectations and the realities of what is public or private; and the (im) possibility of anonymization.

CASE STUDY 1: LARGE FACEBOOK STUDY AND INFORMED CONSENT In 2014 a group of researchers from Cornell University and Facebook published a journal article (Kramer et al., 2014) describing a large-scale direct intervention into Facebook users’ news feeds to display differing amounts of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ posts from people they follow without their knowledge. The Facebook and Cornell researchers amassed huge amounts of data produced by manipulating what Facebook users saw according to a calculated scoring of levels of positivity and negativity. The researchers did not seek explicit informed consent. The study passed through a university ethics panel and was deemed to have ‘not directly engaged in human research and that no review […] was required’ because the data collection was ‘conducted independently by Facebook’ prior to the involvement of its researchers (Carberry, 2014). Facebook had no internal ethical review process but has apparently since put in place measures to address such issues. While it is true that Facebook users agree to their Terms of Service and a Data Use Policy by virtue of their use of the system, Flick (2015: 19–21) argues that this does not constitute a waiver of normative expectations. Kramer et al. (2014) faced significant questions about the ethics of a study that involved the large-scale deception of Facebook users that centred on informed consent. As Flick (2015) observes, several commentaries by academics and journalists alike have identified four key issues:

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a

Users were not asked to participate in the experiment, and didn’t know they were participating in research.

b

Users did not know their news feeds were being manipulated by Facebook (although they were not surprised upon finding out).

c Users were not made aware on signing up for the service that they could be potentially involved in any experiments while using Facebook. d Facebook did not see fit to seek ethical oversight despite ostensibly manipulating peoples’ emotions. (Flick, 2015: 22) We might therefore assume that Facebook users have three normative expectations of their use: that their news feeds are not manipulated; that they will be asked to participate in experiments such as this; and that any research in which their data may be involved will be reviewed by an independent ethics committee (Flick, 2015: 23). Accordingly we can see that the Cornell–Facebook study violated the normative expectations of the users it sought to study. These are ongoing issues for which there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. It is likely that digital research in this vein will continue to require a tailoring of ethical frameworks for specific sectors and for differently sized organizations and platforms (see Søraker and Brey, 2014).

First, as with qualitative digital research, we may ask whether the research participants have granted consent in their participation and whether or not they understood for what they are granting consent. Whereas the direct encounter of research participants through ethnography prompts us to consider our relationships with them, the mediated access to research participants’ data through social media platforms puts us, as researchers, at a step removed. This, of course, has consequences for research behaviour. On conducting a systematic inter-disciplinary review of Twitter-focused research, Zimmer and Proferes found that only ‘4 percent of the corpus made any mention of ethical issues or considerations in relation to the research design and data collection methods’ (Zimmer and Proferes, 2014: 256). There are unclear ethical norms associated with the use of social media data, as boyd and Crawford (2012: 671–3) argue: just because the data is accessible doesn’t make its use(s) ethical. Consent (informed or otherwise) often cannot be clearly judged. Even if users have ‘agreed’ to terms of service that grant permission for further uses of their data or for it to be archived by third parties, this has been suggested to not constitute a waiver of normative expectations of privacy (see Association of Internet Researchers, 2012; Nissenbaum, 2010). Returning to the example of Perng et al.’s (2013) research about crisis response in the Oslo and Utøya attacks in 2011, we can see that strategies to ethically negotiate sensitive topics and the expectations of users involved in them may involve significant levels of intervention in the representation of data, which in other contexts might

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itself be seen as ethically questionable. Such negotiations are contextually situated, and there remains very little consensus about what should be the right approach (for further discussion see Harng, 2015; Kitchin, 2014b: 165–83; Sparks et al., 2016). Second, and following on from the example of Perng et  al. (2013), even if we have satisfied ourselves that consent may be technically assumed, which is a contested assumption (see Flick, 2015), there remains an issue of whether we may be transgressing the social media users’ expectations of what will happen with their data and whether that is ethical. Researchers are rarely, if ever, expected to be potential audiences for users who ‘are not necessarily aware of all the multiple uses, profits, and other gains that come from information they have posted’ (boyd and Crawford, 2012: 673). Social media data may appear to be ‘public’ because of the ways we encounter platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, or semi-public (with many aspects of access and privacy left implicit), but that is not the same as consent being granted for all possible uses. Indeed, this might be seen as symptomatic of the kind of ‘control creep’ (Innes, 2001) of data capture that undermines rationales for data minimization (and thus privacy) and makes different forms of surveillance possible (see Kitchin, 2014b: 178/9). Our expectations of the uses of social media data can be spatially contextualized. We, users of digital media, make assumptions about how data will be seen and used by others according to our own circumstances, prompting decisions about making geo-location data available and so on. For example, while our posts to a social media platform may be ‘public’ we may, on an everyday basis, assume that only those people or accounts with whom we have an explicit relation (such as ‘friends’ on Facebook, or ‘followers’ on Twitter) are actually seeing our posts. Hence we assume a level of public-ness and adjust our settings or adopt a tone of posting accordingly. However, as researchers accessing such data we can be totally divorced from such contexts and thus at odds with user expectations. This concern was raised by Ravn et al. (2019) when carrying out their research into the representation of families on Instagram. They noted that some Instagram users in their sample survey of ‘publicly’ available accounts set their account to ‘private’ immediately after they were contacted about the research, prompting them to question whether it is possible to determine users’ understandings of what constitutes ‘public’, and thus whether ‘publicly available’ should necessarily mean ‘available for academic scrutiny’ (2019: 4). Even if a definition of ‘publicly available’ can be agreed, users might be revealing more information than they realize. In my research during the 2013 badger cull in South West England, it became clear that as part of the Twitter data we were collecting we were capturing metadata that potentially revealed sensitive contextual information. Individual posts about activities intended to sabotage culling practices were included within tweets that matched our search criteria. Some of those tweets had geo-location data and other contextual metadata that, intentionally or not, revealed details about when and

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where activists were situated. These did not feature in any subsequent writing. However, because the research was publicly funded we were obliged to deposit the data with the UK Data Service. Such occurrences not only present researchers with difficulties about those users’ expectations of the use of their data, but also present challenges for ethical conventions of anonymity. Finally, following from the example above, given the level of visibility of many forms of social media and the widespread capability to search for content posted to them, the issue of anonymization is complicated. Foremost are our legal responsibilities to protect personal data, enshrined in laws such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (see Wilson, Chapter 11 in this volume). There are perhaps two peculiar and interlinked ethical concerns relating to digital media research. First, as Eynon et al. (2009) highlight, it is possible to use minimal information to search for the originating posts and associated data. Many of the details that enable such actions concern geographical contexts. Thus, even if we, researchers, change names and other details when representing data in our writing, there remains the possibility that such anonymization can be undone, as demonstrated by the release of a corpus of Facebook data concerning a cohort of US college students revealed in 2008 (see Zimmer, 2010). Second, if we attempt further steps to anonymize participants, beyond changing names, dates, and other data deemed ‘personal details’, we may feel it necessary to alter details in the data we represent in our research writing. Thus, we find ourselves with another ethical issue: in the process of anonymization we may risk misrepresenting our research participants (see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume). In negotiating the level of detail to present concerning the Twitter debates around the UK badger cull my colleagues and I erred on the side of retaining most of the textual data, removing usernames and other obvious identifiers. It remains possible, although non-trivial, to trace this text back to individual Twitter accounts. But in this case many of the tweets we captured originated from accounts that had no clearly identifiable personal characteristics and did not pertain to information that might be deemed particularly sensitive (see Sandover et  al., 2018). In Ravn et al.’s (2019) research on Instagram however the distinct visual premise of the platform raised a set of unique challenges, especially given the context of their research, which focused on the representation of family life. While the exclusion of visuals from publications or the censoring of identifiable features such as eyes can be a useful strategy for protecting user identities, in situations where visual materials are central to the research analysis these strategies can have limitations. This prompted Ravn et  al. (2019: 4) to explore more creative ways of representing posts, including ‘cartoonifying’ the images using simple generators as one potential, although imperfect, strategy. Ultimately, the forms of anonymization we undertake in our research require negotiations specific to our research contexts and we may face difficult ethical decisions regarding how particular projects should be undertaken.

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CASE STUDY 2: THE PROBLEM OF PUBLIC RELEASES OF ‘ANONYMIZED’ DATA In 2008 a group of researchers from Harvard and UCLA publicly released data collected from the Facebook profiles of an entire cohort of 1620 university students spanning their three years at university, in a project entitled ‘Taste, Ties and Time’ (Lewis et al., 2008). The data was purported to be anonymized, or that the research subjects were ‘non-identifiable’ (Kaufman, 2008), yet the identity of the university concerned was discerned through the contextual data in the associated codebook within a matter of days of the release of the data (Zimmer, 2010). In a robust critique of the Taste, Ties and Time data release, Zimmer (2010: 321–3) identifies a number of ethical missteps that centre on the alleged privacy violations of the project: ‘the amount of personal information collected, improper access to personal information, unauthorized secondary use of personal information, and errors in personal information’. This example highlights the challenges to conventions of informed consent (as with the contagion project discussed above), the challenge of identifying and respecting expectations of privacy for digital media, and the need to develop robust strategies for anonymization if there is to be any public release of personal data (Zimmer, 2010). Such examples also highlight the potential disparity between the specialist expertise of researchers and that of ethics review boards, and prompts a call for researchers and ethics board members alike to recognize their own gaps in understanding the changing nature of privacy.

Conclusion In this chapter we have explored how particular ethical issues, especially gaining consent and what constitutes privacy, are integral to geographical research with and about digital media. At the heart of the ethical questions I have raised about digital media is the negotiation of mediated spatial experience. To address this I have considered how ethical issues may require different forms of consideration depending on the methodological approaches we take (broadly: qualitative or quantitative). Digital media is beguiling as a research context – with the appeal of apparently ‘easy’ access to research participants and data – yet it is also a context in which we, as researchers, are frequently challenged to consider our assumptions about social conventions and how and what we value. As researchers of digital media we are never very far away from interesting, if sometimes fraught, ethical debates concerning anonymity, expectations about uses of data, the nebulous nature of mediated research settings, and what counts as public or private. It is unlikely that digital/social media or ‘virtual spaces’, or whatever we call them, will feature as some kind of separate or ‘special’ case in research for much longer. Nevertheless, the ethical issues I have briefly discussed here are likely to remain.

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Notes 1  This chapter significantly draws on the digital methods work of the ESRC-funded research project ‘Contagion: Transforming social analysis and method’, reference: ES/L003112/1. 2  I have discussed elsewhere, in some detail, the issues of characterizing processes and practices of digital mediation as ‘virtual’ and the resulting theoretical implications (see Kinsley, 2013, 2014, 2016). 3  There are formal conventions laid out by the UK’s Economics and Social Research Council, and every UK university has a form of ethical review board which will implement regulations that agree with those conventions (see Darling and Wilson, Chapter 2 in this volume); see www.esrc.ac.uk/funding/guidance-for-applicants/research-ethics/. Further to this, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679) specifies that to process data deemed to be ‘personal’: ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person’ (Article 4.1), ‘consent’ – specified as ‘any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action’ (Article 4.11) – must be obtained (pursuant with Article 7).

Recommended Reading Ess, C. (2014) Digital Media Ethics. Cambridge: Polity. An excellent, in-depth discussion of the ethics of researching about and with digital media, with lots of resources for thinking about how to construct an ethical framework. Madge, C. (2007) ‘Developing a geographer’s agenda for online research ethics’, Progress in Human Geography, 31 (5): 654–74. A very helpful and nuanced discussion of some of the key ethical issues in conducting research on and through the internet, written by a geographer with significant experience in the field. Sin, H.L. (2015) ‘You’re not doing work, you’re on Facebook! Ethics of encountering the field through social media’, The Professional Geographer, 67 (4): 676–85. A helpful and entertaining discussion of practical and conceptual ethical issues around researching with and about Facebook and the challenges such work can present.

28 Spaces of Disaster Katie Oven, Hanna Ruszczyk and Jonathan Rigg

Key Points ••

To critically consider the role and responsibilities of human geographers in disaster research.

••

To explore the ethical challenges faced when conducting research in both pre- and post-disaster spaces.

••

To consider the compounding ethical challenges faced when conducting disaster research in spaces of development.

Introduction: Researching Disaster Spaces On 25th April 2015, a Mw 7.8 earthquake struck the Himalayan nation of Nepal, north-west of the capital city Kathmandu. This was followed, less than three weeks later, by a Mw 7.3 event. More than 8,700 people were killed, 20,000 people were injured, and over 500,000 homes were destroyed (UNOCHA, 2015). As geographers engaged in research on disasters and development in Nepal, we had a very personal connection to these events. We had been there just before the earthquakes, participating in a project workshop on earthquake risk reduction and undertaking fieldwork with communities in Eastern Nepal. Katie had left two days before the first quake, while Hanna remained, conducting her doctoral research on community resilience to earthquakes in the city of Bharatpur. As the disaster began to unravel, it became apparent that the communities that we knew well in Central Nepal had been severely affected by the earthquakes and subsequent landslides, with many people killed and injured, and houses, farmland, and roads destroyed.

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In the days, weeks, and months that followed, we grappled with a number of ethical questions and challenges, individually and as a research team: Did our research on social vulnerability and resilience before the earthquake help the communities that had been affected? What is our role as academic researchers based at privileged institutions in a high-income country in the post-earthquake space? What contribution could – and should – we make that would be most useful? In this chapter we reflect on the particular ethical challenges associated with undertaking human geography research in disaster spaces – both ex ante and ex post – with individuals, households, and communities. We focus on ‘natural’ disasters (earthquakes, landslides, and floods) rather than political and economic crises, although some of the same ethical issues apply and such events may also be linked (Gaillard et al., 2008). We draw on examples from both the Global North and Global South including extreme weather events in the UK, Hurricane Katrina in the USA, landslides and earthquakes in Nepal, and the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Geographical Research in Disaster Spaces Geographical research in disaster spaces has a long history and can be traced back to the pioneering work of White (1945) on the social dimensions of flood risk, and O’Keefe et al.’s (1976) landmark piece in the journal Nature, ‘Taking the Naturalness out of Natural Disasters’. O’Keefe et al. challenged the idea that disasters can ever be natural (even if the hazard itself is a result of natural processes), highlighting the social, political and economic processes that render people susceptible to their effects. Blaikie et al. (1994) and later Wisner et al. (2004) developed these ideas further with the aim of explaining the root causes and dynamic pressures that give rise to the unsafe conditions and fragile livelihoods experienced by vulnerable groups. The vulnerability discourse of Wisner et  al. (2004) continues to inform geographical research undertaken in disaster spaces today, with human geographers seeking to highlight and explain individual, household, and community vulnerability – and more recently resilience – to disasters. This includes studies that seek to understand and explain the processes and practices of disaster risk governance (e.g. Jones et al., 2014), the vulnerability of particular social groups to disasters (e.g. Gaillard et al., 2017), human behaviour in the face of hazard and risk (e.g. Oven and Rigg, 2015), and participatory studies designed to give a voice to households and communities living with risk (e.g. Rampengan et al., 2016). In post-disaster spaces, human geographers have undertaken research exploring the factors that give rise to disasters (for example, Wisner’s 2001 study on El Salvador’s hurricane and earthquake losses), and the impacts and effects of disaster events (such as Rigg et  al.’s 2008 study of the socio-economic impacts of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand). Researchers have

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also examined how people cope with and respond to crises and their capacity for recovery and resilience (e.g. Lambert’s 2014 study on the resilience of Indigenous Ma-ori and the Christchurch earthquakes, and Morrice’s (2013) examination of decisions to return home following Hurricane Katrina), and the nature of post-disaster political change (Pelling and Dill, 2010). While not all populations exposed to, and impacted by, disasters should be considered vulnerable, disasters are known to affect some groups more than others. Notably, women, older people, the poor, and the socially marginalized are often argued to be particularly vulnerable. As a result, research is often undertaken on and among these groups in both pre- and post-disaster contexts. These contexts raise very different ethical challenges as outlined below. The former involves researchers engaging participants in discussions about possible future disasters, while the latter sees researchers working directly with people who have been affected by disaster events. These core ethical issues are faced by human geographers undertaking disaster research in both the Global North and the Global South but they are exacerbated when disaster and development spaces overlap. These differences are largely concerned with the ethics and politics of ‘Northern’ researchers doing research in the ‘South’, and the implications in terms of power relations and the politics of representation that come with this (Sultana, 2007; see also Rigg, Chapter 25 in this volume).

Ethical Challenges Faced when Conducting Research in Pre-Disaster Spaces The ethical challenges faced by human geographers when undertaking disaster research ex ante are mainly concerned with causing stress, anxiety, fear, or panic as research participants are asked to consider future, potentially catastrophic, events. Participants may be unaware of the extent of the risks they face; they may be aware but prioritize other risks; or they may be aware but unable to take meaningful actions. As a result, such research can leave participants feeling disempowered, even powerless. For example, a research team involved in a study exploring the impacts of extreme weather events on older people’s health and social care delivery in the UK considered how best to approach the topic of extreme weather with potentially vulnerable older people: We considered that participants might become distressed during the interviews when discussing sensitive issues about their care or events relating to extreme weather. Consequently, ‘alarmist’ presentation of future scenarios was purposively avoided to reduce unnecessary concerns about the effects of future events such as floods or bad weather. (Wistow et al., 2015: 124)

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Instead, the team focused on participants’ experiences of past weather events, how they managed, and what they would do if similar events happened again. Information on how to prepare for, and what to do in the event of, a heatwave, cold wave, or flood was also shared with participants in the form of leaflets from Age UK and the British Red Cross. This approach was designed to minimize worry while at the same time providing participants with information that they could act upon in the event of extreme weather. Similar challenges were faced by Katie during her doctoral research which examined the vulnerability and resilience of communities to small-scale, seasonal landslides in Central Nepal (Oven and Rigg, 2015). Householders were often aware of the potential for larger landslides but often chose to occupy landslideprone locations (albeit under limited or constrained choice) because the benefits (including access to schools, health facilities, and employment opportunities) outweighed the perceived risk of landslides. Katie’s research highlighted the need to acknowledge people’s agency and decision-making in the context of landslide risk management, with any outside intervention recognizing the importance of livelihood security. Participants involved in Katie’s research were made aware that this was a research study, and that while the findings would be shared with relevant stakeholders, the research was unlikely to have any direct benefits for the households and communities themselves (e.g. landslide mitigation or relocation). This sat uncomfortably with Katie at the time and continues to sit uncomfortably with her today – especially when the 2015 earthquakes struck Nepal. The epicentre of the second quake was very close to the valley where the research was undertaken, triggering multiple landslides that damaged and destroyed many households and communities. This example raises important questions about the role of the social science researcher and where their responsibilities lie in terms of raising awareness, providing information on how to prepare and respond to disaster events, and even lobbying for government support for relocation. For Pittaway et al. ‘the ethical challenge is for researchers to add value to the lives of the people they are researching, recognising them as subjects in the process not simply as sources of data’ (2010: 231). For Katie, reflecting on her doctoral research, being able to provide useful information on the hazards and risks being studied, and the actions that could be taken to reduce these risks, is important in order to empower individuals, households, and communities to take action, if they wish to do so. However, this is not always straightforward. As human geographers, we may not be confident or comfortable taking on this role. We do, however, have access to physical geographers with expertise in hazards research, which is the unique strength of our discipline. In addition, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with expertise in disaster risk can provide practical information. Even so, deep-seated inequalities and local politics can prevent action. For Hanna, who undertook her master’s research on urban resilience to earthquakes in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, even with this information to hand she was uncomfortable talking to communities

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about earthquake preparedness when participants had other urgent livelihood concerns and needs (Ruszczyk, 2014). The ethical issues faced by researchers working in hazard- or disaster-prone locations are certainly significant, but they pale in comparison with those working in post-disaster contexts.

Ethical Challenges Faced when Conducting Research in Post-Disaster Spaces Conducting time-limited research as ‘outside academics’ with potentially vulnerable groups, following a disaster, is undoubtedly problematic (Gaillard and Peek, 2019). Gomez and Hart, in the context of the Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand in 2011, warn against what they called ‘disaster gold rushes, sophisms and academic neo-colonialism’ (2013: 272). However, as noted by Crowley and Elliot, without ‘forensic exploration’ and ‘learning from past disaster events there would be no progress in reducing vulnerability and building resilience’ to future hazards (2013: 278). Many of the ethical questions that emerge in the disaster space are not uncommon during ‘normal’ times: Should we be here? How does the research benefit the communities we are researching? How can we be sure that we are not doing harm? They are greatly magnified, however, by the disaster event. Is it appropriate to undertake research in places where householders are struggling to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, and where people have other priorities than answering research questions about the event? Are affected individuals, households, and communities appropriate research subjects? Is it possible to conduct research with vulnerable groups without exploiting people or making their condition worse? Are we in danger of getting in the way, potentially diverting scarce resources from those in need? Who are we, as researchers, accountable to? As highlighted by Rigg (Chapter 25 in this volume), ‘[i]n the best of all worlds, research is reciprocal, participatory and mutually empowering. But often it is not.’ Participants share their experiences of the disaster, the response, and recovery effort and these are documented by the research team. The findings may be shared with NGOs, UN representatives, and government, in an attempt to communicate the reality on the ground, but the difference this makes is questionable, whether to those immediately affected or those who might be affected sometime in the future. We can console ourselves with ‘How else will their voice be heard?’ but ultimately Crowley and Elliot’s (2013) goal of ‘reducing vulnerability and building resilience’ can feel some way off. For Wong, fieldwork is important even if it is plagued with challenges: ‘To be relevant in research on the [2004 Indian Ocean] tsunami and its aftermath, human geographers must get to the location of the event, to the people affected, their homes, their economic activities and their communities in real – not in “deconstructed” or “reconstructed” – geographical space’ (2005: 259).

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However, this enjoinder – to be relevant by being engaged – immediately raises the question of how to be engaged as a research student in an ethical fashion, avoiding the pitfalls noted in this chapter. The issue of research fatigue is an important consideration when designing research projects. Missbach recalls how, during fieldwork in Banda Aceh following the tsunami, ‘some Acehnese spoke cynically about a “third tsunami”: after the water and the money had “inundated” Aceh, researchers from all over the world “flooded” the province’ (2011: 374). Following the earthquakes in Canterbury, New Zealand in 2010/11, a social science moratorium was introduced during the declared state of national emergency in an attempt to manage and coordinate the social science research being undertaken in collaboration with the response effort (Beaven et al., 2016). Many countries do not, however, have the mechanisms in place or the capacity to coordinate the research activities of local or ‘outside’ scientists. In order to prevent participants from feeling burdened by multiple, often repetitive surveys, it is important that researchers engage with local experts (academics, local government officials, NGO representatives, village leaders, and heads of community groups) to understand what research has already been undertaken and where, along with the research gaps and needs that remain. There are practical issues requiring consideration too. It can be logistically difficult to access the field following a disaster event. For example, roads, bridges, and trails may be damaged, and there may be ongoing risks of aftershocks and landslides. Researchers have an ethical responsibility to minimize the risks faced by the research team and their participants and therefore need to consider the logistical, safety, and security issues that may arise and how these issues will be managed. Insurance is a further consideration as universities often cover their staff and students, but not local team members. As with any social science research, it is first necessary to obtain voluntary informed consent from research participants. However, as highlighted by Brun (2009), consideration needs to be given to the context in which consent is being sought. People are being asked to participate during a very difficult, uncertain, and emotional time. This is exemplified by Pittaway et al. in the context of undertaking research with refugees: ‘[t]he desire of the refugees themselves to have their “stories” told to the international community [often in the hope of help] can outweigh consideration of the potential danger to themselves and their communities’ (2010: 233). Privacy and confidentiality are therefore important because of the potentially vulnerable position of the survivors, who may be susceptible to persecution for sharing their experiences, particularly if they are critical of others, whether village leaders or government officials. How can we be sure not to cause further distress or harm given that the conversations we have are likely to induce significant emotion, and that most geographers are not trained in psychosocial response or trauma counselling? Rigg, as part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers, explored the socio-economic impacts of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 on southern Thailand (Rigg et al., 2008). He reflects on the uncomfortable sense of voyeurism, which

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involved gathering information in a context of considerable suffering where participants were, in effect, being asked to re-live recent, traumatic events. Peek et  al. (2016), in their creative project with young people affected by major disasters in the USA, involved individuals with counselling expertise in the research team. While this may be difficult for student researchers, they may wish to discuss these challenges and seek advice from local charities or NGOs working in the area so they are aware of the vulnerabilities, the issues that may arise during the research process, and the most useful ways to respond. Having information to hand, including contact numbers of professionals who are able to offer support to research participants in the longer term, is also an important consideration. Research in disaster spaces may also involve interviews with professionals or ‘elites’, for example representatives from government, UN organizations, or NGOs, and local academics and activists who may also be ‘strained by the aftermath’ (Ausbrooks et al., 2008: 94) and overwhelmed dealing with immediate needs. Missbach cites the example of an Acehnese activist who ‘due to all the requests from Western researchers […] hardly had any time to do her proper work’ (2011: 374). Depending on the focus of the research, the involvement of local agencies can be very important and it may be necessary to gain formal permissions. However, even if it is not, there can be benefits to engaging with local authorities and other organizations. For example, they may be able to provide input in selecting locations for fieldwork drawing on local knowledge and intelligence, which may help to avoid the negative impacts of research ‘gold rushes’ (Gomez and Hart, 2013). Nonetheless, when human resources are scarce and under strain, dealing even with well-intentioned and ethically sensitive researchers may be problematic. It is also necessary to consider the issue of responsibility and the role that we can and should play as researchers in post-disaster response and recovery. It is human nature to want to support the individuals, households, communities, and organizations that play a role in our research, from providing basic food stuffs and fundraising, to building a new school or community centre. However, it is also important to remember the unique contribution that academics can make that others – such as NGOs and government agencies that are dealing with the humanitarian emergency – cannot. This was explored by Buranakul et al. (2005) following the Indian Ocean tsunami. They highlighted the important role that academics can play in understanding the dynamics of response, rehabilitation, and recovery, in linking and comparing the impact and response between sites, and in shaping conceptual understandings.

Conclusion: The Importance of Ethically Reflexive Fieldwork in Disaster Spaces We have highlighted some of the many ethical tensions associated with undertaking research with potentially vulnerable groups in both pre- and post-disaster

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spaces, which raise different ethical challenges. As we have demonstrated, these tensions are not unique to countries in the Global South, but they are exacerbated to some extent in developing-country contexts, where disaster impacts in terms of loss of life and livelihood are greatest, and where the scope is that much greater for researchers from the Global North to crassly and unthinkingly stumble into a disaster context to do little good and perhaps even more harm. Our research as human geographers is subject to ethical review within our own institutions which is designed to ‘protect the basic rights and safety of research participants […] [but] this still leaves quite a gulf between procedural ethics and “ethics in practice”’, the ethics that we encounter day to day when conducting research (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004: 268/9). The development of an international code of ethics in post-disaster research is essential here, particularly in the absence of ethical guidelines in many of the countries in which we work (Gaillard and Peek, 2019). Ultimately, however, the responsibility for conducting ethical research lies with the researcher.1 But while it is essential that research ethics is taken seriously, over-concern can paralyse researchers, resulting in fieldwork being avoided altogether (Sultana, 2007). There is, we argue, significant value in fieldwork in disaster spaces which can make an important contribution to current understanding of disaster vulnerability, response, and recovery. However, it is essential that researchers are sensitive, reflexive, and empowering in their approach.

Note 1  The recently developed disaster-studies manifesto on ‘Power, Politics and Forgotten Values’, which calls for a rethink of ‘our research agendas, our methods and our allocation of resources’ in disaster research, is an important step here. See www.ipetitions.com/petition/power-prestigeforgotten-values-a-disaster (accessed April 10, 2020).

Recommended Reading Ausbrooks, C.Y.B., Barret, E.J. and Martinez-Cosio, M. (2008) ‘Ethical issues in disaster research: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina’, Population Research and Policy Review, 28 (1): 93–106. This paper discusses a number of ethical issues that arise when conducting research following a disaster event, including access, informed consent, confidentiality, compensation, as well as the involvement of public institutions that are already stretched. It is focused on the USA but the ethical issues raised are relevant to other post-disaster contexts. Brun, C. (2009) ‘A geographers’ imperative? Research and action in the aftermath of disaster’, The Geographical Journal, 175 (3): 196–207. This paper explores the role of academic researchers in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka, and the principles of, and tools for, responsible research.

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Gaillard, JC. and Peek, L. (2019) ‘Disaster-zone research needs a code of conduct’, Nature, 575: 440–2. This paper calls for a researcher-driven ethical code of conduct to guide disaster research. The paper highlights three key principles: (1) having a clear purpose through the collective identification of knowledge gaps with affected people; (2) respecting local voices, including the voices of local researchers; and (3) effective coordination of local and outside researchers.

Part 5 WRITING

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29 Writing Research Pat Noxolo

Key Points •

The ethical demands that come with writing arise not just at the end of a research project but at all stages, from how you represent your work to others, to how you use materials and resources.

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The ethics of writing encompass issues of accessibility, representation, and reflexivity.

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Writing can be a powerful and transformative process – Through writing we can experiment with ideas, change perceptions, and influence others. The demands of writing and its effects, for others and for ourselves, therefore require careful and constant consideration.

Introduction My research has taken a number of different turns during a research career that has occupied both academic and non-academic spaces, over more than twenty-five years. When I worked as a freelance researcher, before gaining my PhD, much of my research involved interviews and focus groups with a range of community groups, exploring issues around equality and diversity in public sector services. Now that I work as an academic, I still use interviews and focus groups, but I’m more likely to conduct textual analysis and to experiment methodologically, working with dancers for example to make a focus group methodology that works through movement as well as words (see for example the Flat Out project1). In each of these arenas, much of my research has happened through writing: often it is in the moment of writing, through the act of writing, that my research is actually produced.

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For example, I usually begin to write while the focus group is running, and this is important ethically: I make notes on large pieces of paper, during the discussion, so that everyone in the group can see whether, and crucially how, I am recording what they say, and can contest their (mis)representation in that record. Alternatively, I give the respondents small sticky notes, so that they can make their own record of their responses; this part of the research writing therefore becomes much less my writing. In my textual analysis, I begin by understanding the context of production, consumption, and circulation of the texts that I am studying, usually by reading other academic texts. My research writing therefore often begins in bringing together these elements of context (how the text has been produced, consumed, and distributed) in an early draft framework for analysis. Such a framework allows me to ask questions that inform my reading of the text; for example: Is this text trying to speak to more than one audience at once, and what vocabulary or grammar or textual features (paragraphing, footnotes, images, etc.) show me that this might be the case? My ensuing in-depth analysis of the texts I am researching begins with this framework but soon departs from it, testing and overthrowing some of my early discursive expectations, to arrive at an analysis that is informed much more by the text I’m analysing than by its context. (For example, although a text might have circulated to many different audiences, there may be features in its writing (for example, a very formal or specialist vocabulary, or dense page-setting without the use of images) which might indicate that it was written for a very specific, perhaps scholarly audience, and its wider circulation may therefore be intriguingly accidental). So my writing for research (or research writing) often begins with writing that is designed to be contested by and within the research process. For me then, research writing is not an isolated or concluding event through which I transmit a pre-existing reality taken from a separate place called ‘the field’ to an audience that is in another separate place. Writing is, first and foremost, a recurring moment during research, where I produce findings in dialogue with others, both my research respondents and other academics. Later, when other people (my assessors, my respondents, or my peers) read my finished research writing they will actively, and somewhat unpredictably, reinterpret what I write and, if they draw on it in their own research writing, they will contest and transform its meaning. This community in writing – the dialogue and contestation that is inherent in research writing (from before the research starts to after it finishes) – is where ethics can be seen as integral to the process of writing. For me, the overall question of ethics in research begins by pushing all those practical ‘what, how, who, when’ questions of research design just to arm’s length, so that I can focus on them through the lens of one clear ‘should’ question – namely, should I do my research at all or in this way? This ‘should’ question has both moral and political elements, and the two cannot be separated: where the moral element can sometimes seem to be emanating from a place of principle that is ­elevated above the everyday reality of the messy social and cultural relationships

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we might be researching, the political element brings the question of power in everyday relationships sharply back into focus. The question ‘Should I do my research at all or in this way?’ becomes, for research writing, the moral question, ‘Should I write about my research at all or in this way?’ But beyond this, the political element of ‘Should I do my research at all or in this way?’ becomes, in relation to writing, ‘Will my research writing have positive effects for those who have least power?’ In other words, the political element of ethics in research writing has a transformative vision of what positive effects of research writing might look like and, crucially, of who such effects should be positive for. It potentially goes a long way beyond just trying not to cause harm to an institutionalized list of vulnerable groups. The rest of this chapter is going to proceed by thinking about three areas of research writing that relate to these two ethical questions. The first area is around accessibility: Who should be able to read your research writing and what can you do to ensure that its intended audiences get to read it? The second is around representation: Who or what are you writing about and how can you ensure that your writing stays true to its subjects? The third is around reflexivity: Who is doing the writing and how can you ensure that you maintain a selfcritical presence in your research writing? Each section will be introduced by a semi-fictional conversation, giving a flavour of the kinds of conversations about writing that I have with my research students: undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation writers as well as PhD thesis writers. (If you’re one of my former students and you think you recognize yourself, it’s genuinely not you: I’ve had a lot of students.) I hope that the conversations will assist you in thinking through the specific relevance of these ethical questions for your own research writing.

Accessibility CONVERSATION 1 Supervisor: You mentioned last time that you’ve started a research blog – how’s that going? Student: It’s BRILLIANT! I’ve been contacted by so many researchers and activists about the themes of my research, in lots of different countries, and a tweet that I put out trended for a little while, so I’m really happy about it. I find that the kind of writing I can do online is so different to what I can do within my thesis: It makes me feel really free. Supervisor: Why’s that, do you think? Student: I don’t know; it’s weird. Partly it’s because I know that lots of people might read it, and it’s great when they do; but then again partly it’s because I also know that lots of people might not read it, because there’s so much stuff out there, so I can just express my thoughts as they develop. Do you know what I mean?

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The question of accessibility might seem a strange place to start: in a conventional transmission model of research writing, once the research is designed, there is the field, then the analysis, and the reader accesses the writing at the end. However, questions of accessibility structure all elements of writing within the research process. (Such questions concern issues that range from the style in which you write, to the various ways in which your writing is physically packaged and distributed to readers who might access it in many different ways.) For example, if you believe that the only person who is going to access a piece of your writing will be yourself – as is often the case with what Johnson et al. (2004: 79) call ‘reflective, developmental or productive’ notes in your research diary – you might not worry about whether your writing can easily be understood. Indeed your handwritten notes might even be illegible at this stage (this is often the case in my own research diary). However, an increasing number of researchers have chosen to make their developmental writings more public, putting them in process-oriented blogs for example, and inviting comments and conversation. So the dividing line between research writing for the self and for others is becoming much less sharp for some; see for example Ahlqvist et al., (2013), who describe how the conversational aspects of those early blogs can even continue into the finished research article. Accordingly, the ethical questions around accessibility start increasingly early in the research process: Who should have access to your early research writings and how can you ensure that they have it? The sense of freedom felt by the student in Conversation 1 comes, I think, from the sense that they have developed something similar to what Immanuel Kant (see Lovibond 1994) called a ‘community of enquirers’: a group of people, of similar status and education, who by voluntarily reading these early writings, commenting on them, and sharing them, are answering the moral question (‘Should I write about my research at all or in this way?’) with a resounding ‘yes!’ The very fact of voluntary engagement with your research writing, at an early stage, by a community of researchers and activists who seem to be involved in work that has moral value, can be an affirmation of its moral value. Of course the engagement of online communities with research writing is not always purely affirmative: there can be so-called ‘trolls’ who make gratuitously nasty comments that generally one can ignore, but more importantly sometimes someone will bring up an issue that makes the researcher choose not to develop this research at all, or to fundamentally change the way in which it is going to happen. That person could be someone who has relevant experience of the theoretical or methodological approach you want to take, but equally it could be someone whose work or viewpoint is not morally valuable – it is violent or sinister or insidious – and if they affirm your research in terms of its implications for their agendas, this might be a good sign that your research should go in a different direction. This feedback can be hard for a researcher to hear but, fed in at this early stage, it can make the research design much more ethically robust in the long run.

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Conversation 1 also raises the issue of inaccessibility, or at least the possibility that some people may not read your research writing. The student recognizes that there is a perceived anonymity in online spaces, simply because there are so many blogs and websites and tweets out there. There is a global clamour in online spaces that can drown your writing out, leaving you free to write publicly but for yourself. Many of us who grew up in big cities can recognize the kind of freedom in anonymity that a busy public space can give you: you are actually relatively free to think and to express yourself, because nobody else will pay any attention to you until you directly impinge on their own freedom. At times though, such perceived anonymity can be illusory, as the reputational capital of an author or the institutional prestige that accompanies their position may mean that their words attract attention in ways that the work of others does not. However, although they reach a wider range of publics than academic journals do (see Noxolo, 2009), online spaces are not in fact accessible to all. Much like the creeping privatization of urban public space that many geographers have observed in recent years (see Crossa, Chapter 23 in this volume), the public accessibility of online spaces can be an illusion. In fact, there is a considerable entry fee for electronic communication, and by no means is everyone able to pay it. So-called ‘digital divides’ are not disappearing, but are instead diversifying: not only are there still many people in the world who do not have the disposable income or the public infrastructure to access the internet; there are also many who still do not have sufficient access to education to read what is posted there, and that is even before we begin to think about the dominance of European languages online, and forms of political oppression that deny access to the internet. In addition, while more and more content is designed for fast broadband, the rise of handheld devices (which for some years has outstripped the rise of PC use in many of the poorest countries) is reconfiguring the spatial patterning of internet usage, privileging urban environments with the density of infrastructure to cope with distribution (Adams, 2009). So features of Kant’s ‘community of enquirers’ that have been criticized (Lovibond 1994) – its exclusive assumptions that those who make moral validations will be overwhelmingly rich people in the Global North – are reproduced on the internet, albeit with some unpredictable and dynamic reconfigurations. What this means for the ethics of research writing is that a research blog can sometimes be very helpful in working towards an answer to the moral question ‘Should I write about my research at all or in this way?’, but can be less helpful in answering the political question ‘Will my research have positive effects for the least powerful?’ One way to more directly address this question is to target publics, at an early stage in your research, who might be able to bring about positive effects for the least powerful, and see whether your research writing is helpful in that endeavour. In that sense you can see how the student in Conversation 1, in beginning a conversation with activists and researchers, might be working towards an answer: The people who they say are responding to the blog are people who might be able to use the research in

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ethical work. Research organizations are increasingly advising researchers to contact political actors and policy-makers at an early stage in their research, and researchers are sharing discussion documents and preliminary research findings in order to shape their research into something that can more easily feed into policy agendas. When they do this they are careful to write their research in a style that is suitable for these powerful non-academic audiences (see Martin, 2001). However, it is also true to say that some researchers are becoming wary about writing and redesigning research in consultation with powerful actors: it is not always clear that such actors have the political will (even if they have the capacity) to use their power to bring about positive effects for the least powerful (Massey, 2002). So the publics that you target, to ensure that they can access your research writing, might be some of the least-powerful people themselves. This does not of course ensure that your research writing will have positive effects for them, but it’s at least a step in the right direction. This can involve a mixture of online and offline distribution of your early writing. For example, I have been developing a project called ‘Dancing Maps’1 for a while now, and I began with a website, a blog, and a set of public events (see www. birmingham.ac.uk/dancingmaps). The main public event was at the university; I wrote a paper for it and invited dancers and other commentators, as well as members of the public, to participate. However, the research writing that really circulated among the publics that I wanted to draw in at that time (members of the African-Caribbean diaspora in Birmingham) was an advertising pamphlet that I distributed by hand in a number of African-Caribbean community-focused venues in the city centre: hairdressers, food shops, etc. It was the conversations I had with people over those pamphlets that I found the most stimulating for my research design. I am not saying of course that the least-powerful people in any situation must always engage with offline writing and face-to-face encounters: I am suggesting that the ethics of research writing demands that we consider the ethics of accessibility carefully, right from the moment we begin to write, and in terms of not only the moral but also the political questions it entails.

Representation CONVERSATION 2 Student: I’m happy with my mark, but now I don’t know what to do for the best. The manager has asked me to send her a copy of my dissertation now that it’s finished, but even though I’ve anonymized my respondents I think she’ll still recognize who said what, because it’s quite a small organization. Supervisor: What do you think might happen if she does?

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Student: That’s just it – I don’t know … Obviously I got people’s permission to include their interview material, and of course they must have known their manager might see the dissertation, but I think that during the interviews they relaxed with me; and afterwards I chose the quotes that came from those relaxed times, because when they had their defences down they were more interesting; but now that I’m reading it back it sounds … I don’t know … I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t say those things!

The first thing to notice about Conversation 2 is that it continues some of the points about accessibility raised in the previous section, but focuses around a piece of writing from later in the research process, in this case the finished dissertation. It re-stages questions around who should be able to access your research writing, and casts an interesting slant on whether greater openness always equates with better ethics in research writing. This case pits the most powerful against the least powerful within this organization: the student worries about whether, in the hands of a powerful manager, their dissertation could be used to worsen the conditions, or perhaps even jeopardise the employment, of some of their research respondents. In this section I want to ask questions about another aspect of the ethics of research writing: representation. We can think about representation in two ways: first as presenting an image or imitation of a reality that exists elsewhere (as when we speak about a photograph or portrait as a representation); and second as standing in the place of or standing in for someone or something else (as when we talk about a representative democracy) (see Spivak, 1988). Having made that careful distinction, I have to say that a piece of research writing based on interview material often does both: there are quotations and extracts selected from interview transcripts, as well as descriptions and analyses of respondents and organizations, and it is the combination of all these elements that gives an image or a kind of imitation of the ‘field’. At the same time, a piece of research writing (a report or dissertation) can sometimes be ascribed an authority to speak for or instead of the people within a situation, with the assumption that it is a realistic and well-considered summary analysis of a complex situation. In thinking about representation we can go back to our two ethical questions: the moral one (‘Should I write about my research at all or in this way?’) and the political one (‘Will my writing have positive effects for the least powerful?’) because representation cuts across both of these questions. When people who we know have little power in a situation tell us things in our capacity as researchers – potent things that we know might affect them in a range of ways if they are published – we hold in our hands the power to select, or not to select, particular extracts and quotations from what they say to include in our writing. This is the power of representation (in the first sense). In general, the respondent is not present when we make that selection: Even if you don’t feel powerful, the capacity for representation is a powerful capacity. Informed consent should mean that the respondent is made aware of the power

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the researcher holds, but their knowledge and consent do not diminish that power. That is to say, the respondent could and probably should mitigate that power during the interview, by only revealing what they want the researcher to reveal, but the researcher’s responsibility towards the respondent is not diminished by whether or not the respondent has the responsibility (or indeed the capacity) to self-censor. So am I suggesting that the researcher should self-censor? Does the researcher not have a responsibility to tell the truth, to publish and be damned? It’s possible to hear echoes of that self-justification in Conversation 2 – ‘I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t say those things!’ – and I do have sympathy with this: there is no right answer here. For example, if a respondent has told you things, even if they had not gone into the interview expecting to be so open, it may well be because they want you to say things in public that they don’t feel they have the channels or courage to say, to represent their views (in the second sense) in a form to which powerful people will listen. If we know for sure that this is the case, then the ethical outcome becomes much clearer. I have two suggestions here to address the issues of representation that this conversation raises. The first is that the researcher has a responsibility to think carefully about representation while still writing, and to work with all the choices available. Those choices are not simply to leave in or take out an extract: it is possible to make a challenging point in several different ways, for example building the point out of a mosaic of less contentious interview extracts, supporting the point based on other academic writing, and ultimately making the point as a recommendation or analysis for which the researcher takes responsibility. It will be appreciated that I am challenging you here to develop an advanced level of skill in your writing, not simply to cherry-pick the juiciest or most striking interview quote to stand in for (to represent) your own analysis. The second suggestion is to share the dissertation with your respondents before sharing it with their manager, to see whether they are happy with the way they are represented (a practice often known as member-checking). Ethically, you should do this before handing in the dissertation, or at least before publicizing it in any form. In the worst-case scenario some respondents may withdraw their permission for you to use their interview: informed consent should mean that they know they have the right to withdraw, even at this late stage. In that case you may have to follow my first suggestion and find other ways to make the point, or live without that point (for example, see Wilson, Chapter 5 in this volume on ‘composite characters’ and anonymity). If you find yourself in the position of the student in Conversation 2, and you have, as suggested in the accessibility section of this chapter, been inviting participation throughout, you may well have been able to show your respondents a draft of your research, or been able to give the organization a brief document summarizing your findings. In any case, many people might find an 8–10,000 word dissertation hard to digest. Respondents might therefore be happy that the representation of their contribution that circulates in the organization is less

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directly provocative or is more heavily anonymized than the one tucked away in a university library, and you might feel in a better position to simply direct the manager to the summary and to the library. I have described these as suggestions rather than recommendations, because I do not think that there are easy ethical solutions here: writing can be revelatory and that can entail risks for all concerned, including the writer, as I explore in the concluding section. The ethical researcher can only do their best to fully consider the implications of their research writing, both during and after the research process. What I particularly like about the student in Conversation 2 (a distillation of the affective qualities of some of the students I have felt most privileged to work with over the years) is that they genuinely care about their respondents, and really want their research writing to have positive effects for them.

Reflexivity CONVERSATION 3 Supervisor: I think this latest draft is great – really well-written! Student: Yeah? I don’t know – it’s not quite what I expected it to be like when I started. Supervisor: What were you expecting? Student: I don’t know – something more me?

This final section looks at the ‘I’ and the ‘my’ in the ethical questions, ‘Should I write at all or in this way?’, and ‘Will my writing have positive effects for the least powerful?’ This is the question of reflexivity, and it is often addressed in student research writing as a paragraph or two at the end of the methodology section, reflecting on who you are and how the differences and similarities between your identity and those of your respondents might have affected the research encounters. Brief and cursory as it sometimes can be, there is now a hard-won expectation that the researcher will recognize that they are not a neutral ingredient in the research process, but have been active within it. That this expectation appears at the moment of writing makes it doubly potent: it is in writing that the researcher risks returning to a transmission fantasy, believing that they are a transparent piece of glass through which the reader sees the ‘field’. As a minimum, the reflexive moment admits that research writing only offers a very partial representation of the ‘field’, and at most, reflexivity admits that research writing is as much a mirror back to the researcher as it is a glass through to the ‘field’. Despite this mirror analogy, to be reflexive in your writing is rather more than simply to reflect on your writing. Thinking about your writing is (as I hope

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I’ve shown in the sections on accessibility and representation) necessary for ethical research, but it is not sufficient. The ethical imperatives, the moral and political questions, must motivate that reflection. Otherwise you run the risk of inadvertently replacing ethical questions with an optimization question – ‘How can I represent the maximum information about the field and use my writing to get the best advantage for myself?’ It is the damage wrought by this optimization question that has necessitated a focus on research ethics (see for example, Louis and Grossman, Chapter 16 in this volume, on the damage done to Indigenous communities). Reflexivity requires a self-critical appraisal of the ways in which the researcher is always present in their own research and writing. At its extreme, the reflexive writer may present reasons why they are not the right person to write the research they originally designed; they may present an account of how they came to the decision, for example, that it was more ethical to work with their respondents to present their own account of their own situations; or (as in my focus group example at the beginning of this chapter), the researcher may hand over the pen and let the respondents record their own thoughts. More usually the reflexive writer will maintain an explicit awareness of the agendas with which they came to the research, and will recognize where the research has genuinely changed those agendas, or where there have been conflicts or negotiations with the worldviews or perspectives of respondents. This can be a difficult process – the following extract shows the torturous difficulties faced by one feminist researcher (Armstead, 1995: 633) whose respondents challenged her political views: I find it very difficult to write a coherent narrative that adequately captures the contradictory interpretations and consciousness revealed in the interviews and conversations that I had with these women. Politically speaking, it is virtually impossible to write such an article without privileging either my feminist analysis or their individualized experiential knowledge. Sociological categories and theorizing can be incompatible with letting the women’s words speak for themselves. In my research it was extremely painful to wrest the contradictory consciousness of these women into social categories, a process made more difficult because they resisted both feminist categories and sociological analysis. What I particularly like about this extract is that I can still feel the frustration in her writing, as she wrestles with the moral imperative to find a way to engage with the respondents’ challenging voices, while ensuring that she also maintains the political imperative to work towards a positive effect for the least powerful, including her respondents. It is this explicit attention to the struggle (the complex praxis of trying to write ethically) that makes this an accomplished piece of reflexive writing.

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In contrast to the embattled but engaged voice in this extract, what can we make of the rather resigned or despairing voice in Conversation 3? I recognize this voice: it’s a voice that has echoed back to me in many students, particularly mature students or those from so-called ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds (working class or black and ethnic minority backgrounds for example), and it was my own voice when I was near to finishing my PhD. The resignation or despair comes from the recognition that, although you might have set out to change the world through your writing, ultimately academic research and writing have changed you. You’ve been trained to express yourself differently, to ask different questions, to notice new aspects of the world, and indeed to no longer see other aspects. So sometimes when the researcher sees themselves reflected back in writing, they realize that they are no longer the person they had been. That can be painful, even when it is also developmental. In this way, being reflexive in your research writing is not necessarily about being true to yourself: that self may well have changed in the process of writing. But being a reflexive writer – indeed being an ethical writer – can be a self-critical struggle to stay true to the moral or political motivations that were the catalyst for your research. That can mean being carefully self-critical about not only who you were but also who you have become, and ensuring that valuable aspects of both of these writers survive in your finished research writing.

Conclusion It is a rather strange position to be in, writing a stand-alone chapter about writing at the end of a textbook about ethics in research, particularly given my view that writing is not just an end event. I can only offer my version of research ethics, based on my experience of research – I don’t expect it to clash with what you have read in the rest of this textbook, but if there are tensions and differences I hope that you will read them as part of a productive dialogue. In considering examples from my own experience as a supervisor, this chapter has foregrounded how the process of writing encompasses a wide range of ethical issues and considerations, from the start of a project through to its conclusion. These include: questions of accessibility, such as who should be able to read your research and how they can access it; questions of representation, such as how you can ensure that your writing stays true to who or what you are writing about; and the need for reflexivity, such as how you maintain a selfcritical presence in your writing.

Note 1  The Flat Out project was a collaboration between myself, The Drum multicultural arts centre, and Birmingham Royal Ballet. See www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/gees/research/projects/flatout/index.aspx

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Recommended Readings Noxolo, P. (2009) ‘My paper, my paper: Reflections on the embodied production of postcolonial geographical responsibility in academic writing’, Geoforum, 40 (1): 55–65. This paper critically considers how responsibilities are understood as part of the process of postcolonial writing. Focusing on a series of extracts from texts, the paper examines how writing is an embodied practice that draws in relations of responsibility and connectivity, and poses critical questions for the postcolonial politics of knowledge production. Peters, K. (2017) Your Human Geography Dissertation: Designing, Doing, Delivering. London. Sage. The book provides a helpful overview of how to prepare, research, and write a geography dissertation. It is one of a number of recent books concerned with improving student understanding of research processes from design through to delivery, including ethics. Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (2012) Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. This book offers a critical examination of the intersections between imperialism and research, highlighting how colonial thought is embedded within traditions of knowledge production and validity. Proposing a decolonial approach to research, the book argues that diverse ways of knowing and writing in research are required to address the inequities of global knowledge production.

Glossary Activism: A proactive commitment to act on a certain issue in order to achieve political or other goals. Affect: The ability of individuals to affect and be affected by individuals, objects, and atmospheres. The study of affect is associated with a concern to examine the experience of life as it is lived, and draws on scholarship that considers how embodiment shapes our engagement with the world. Affect in this context refers to both a change in a bodily state such that one’s ability to act is increased or diminished, and the range of forces that may affect an individual body. Anarchism: The libertarian branch of socialism, promoting liberty and equality while critiquing all systems of domination and hierarchy. Anthropocentrism: A human-centered view of the world, wherein human beings are seen as the centre or the apex of ethical consideration. Other ways to describe anthropocentrism include human exceptionalism (the notion that humans are exceptional in capabilities and in moral hierarchies) and human supremacy (the belief that humans are superior to all other species). Auto-photography: An ethnographic research method in which participants take photographs, and select images and representations of themselves and aspects of their social world. Participants are often then interviewed about their choice of images, what these show, and their motivations in taking different photographs. Auto-photography can be a useful means to gain insight into understanding what places, environments, and subjects are important in research participants’ daily lives. Bowman Expeditions: A programme of expeditions run by the American Geographical Society with the aim of advancing an understanding of different people and places across the world through fieldwork and data gathering. Expeditions also focus on offering practical assistance in GIS, mapping, and data collection to host countries and communities (see https://americangeo.org/bowmanexpeditions/). The programme became controversial when it was revealed that one expedition involved working with the US military and private weapons company contractors. A compilation of documents on the controversy can be found at https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/bowman/

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Chatham House Rule: Originally created in 1927 at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, UK, this rule is designed to facilitate open discussion of potentially sensitive or controversial issues, such as public policy or current affairs. When debates or discussions are held under this rule, participants may use or report on the information received, but the identity and affiliation of participants and speakers cannot be divulged. Such protection enables participants to voice opinions that might otherwise jeopardise their personal or professional reputations or official duties and affiliations. While British, the rule if often used internationally in diplomatic negotiations and discussions. Civil society: The range of non-government organizations, institutions, and individuals within a society that are independent of government and business. Often also referred to as the ‘third sector’, civil society is associated with organizations that support the interests and rights of citizens within a society. Coercion: An overt or implicit threat of harm that is presented in order to gain compliance, such that an individual is persuaded to do something they would not normally choose to do. In research, avoiding coercion means avoiding placing any undue influence on potential research participants to take part in a piece of research. Coercion may be direct or indirect. For instance, approaching potential partiticiptants through an organization (such as a charity or support group that provides essential services) may give the impression that individuals should participate in the research in order to maintain the support of that organization or group. Counter-storytelling: The telling of stories that give voice to marginalized groups and challenge dominant narratives and structures of power. Counterstorytelling is often associated with the opening up of new terrains for resistance. Critical race theory: An anti-racist framework originating from legal studies that critically examines race and racism in economic, political, and cultural dimensions of society. Data: Derived from Latin for ‘what is given’: the raw materials produced by abstracting what we measure and sense into categories and other forms of representation that form the basis of knowledge claims. Data are bound to research methods and thereby intimately tied to ethical positions. Decolonizing: The process of drawing attention to the colonial power structures that define how knowledge is created, reproduced, and valued in order to challenge and dismantle universal ways of knowing and their material and political inequalities. The call to decolonize the discipline requires not only a critical examination of geography’s historical role in colonialism but an examination of how the discipline’s colonial past is still active in the present – in

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geographical theory, practice, and institutions. This includes challenging EuroAmerican hegemonies, recognising multiple and diverse knowledge practices and epistemologies, and dismantling the discipline’s whiteness and racist institutional arrangements. Decolonial scholarship has a range of critical roots including critical Black scholarship, Indigenous theory, and `southern’ knowledges. DREAMers: A movement centred on a group of undocumented migrant youth who campaign for migrants’ rights to citizenship, status, and education in the USA. Their name derives from the DREAM Act, a legislative proposal for granting residency status and rights to undocumented migrants who entered the USA as minors. Elite: A group of people considered to be superior in a particular society or organization. All aspects of this definition are fluid. It is important to ask by what criteria these people are grouped together and by whom they are considered superior, in what sense, and in what organization. Elite status is highly contextual and contested. Empowerment: Efforts aimed at strengthening the agency of relatively underprivileged actors. Agency, in this context, refers to the capacity of people to act upon their social environment. Environment: A social construction shaped by power, politics, and different forms of knowledge. As such, there is no such thing as wilderness or untouched nature; rather the environment is a peopled landscape that is dynamic and relational. Epistemology: The study of the origin, methods, and nature of knowledge. It asks how knowledge is produced, which actors are involved in its production, and what the potential limits of produced knowledges are. Ethical symmetry: An approach to research where ‘the researcher takes as his or her starting point the view that the ethical relationship between researcher and informant is the same whether he or she conducts research with adults or with children’ (Christensen and Prout, 2002: 482, emphasis in original). This commitment reflects a wider turn to view children and young people as equals and active participants within social scientific research (James and Prout, 1997b). Ideology: A set of ideas or values that are attributed to an individual or group, often forming the basis for political and economic views and policies. For example, Marxism and neoliberalism might be seen as opposing ideologies, each giving rise to radically different interpretations of how political and economic structures should be organized and for what purposes.

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In loco parentis: Legal term (literally ‘in place of the parent’) denoting an individual, institution, or organization with the right to make decisions and offer consent on behalf of a child in the absence of that child’s parents. For example, in many countries, schools have the right to make decisions ‘in loco parentis’ about pupils’ care, wellbeing, and activities while on school premises. Indigenous: A term that is increasingly used on the international scale to represent peoples (such as Native Americans, First Nations, M¯aori, and Sámi) with historical continuity to precolonial and/or presettler societies, strong connections to their land base and the natural world, distinct socio-economic and political systems, and place-based languages, cultures, and spiritualities. The term is capitalized to avoid confusion between indigenous plant and animal species and Indigenous human beings, and to identify it as a political category. The Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group: A group of the Association of American Geographers that has five specific goals: (1) service to Indigenous communities; (2) service to the field of geography; (3) service to Indigenous geographers; (4) bridging the gap between Indigenous communities and geography/ geographers; and (5) investigating what ethical research means in relationship to Indigenous communities, and helping to guide researchers in conducting such research. Institutional review board (IRB): The form of ethics committee usually employed in North American centres of higher education and research to approve and monitor all research involving human subjects. Such ethics committees are normally constituted by a mixture of academics and researchers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. International Citizen Service (ICS): A global volunteering programme funded by the UK government aimed at young people. Through the ICS young volunteers from the UK are offered placements working alongside volunteers from other parts of the world on projects in the Global South that have specifically requested the help of ICS volunteers. Intersectionality: A focus on the mutually constitutive nature of different forms of social oppression, such as racism, sexism, and classism. Intersectional thinking rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s when Black and anti-racist scholars argued that the experiences of Black women had been erased by prevailing approaches to understanding discrimination. By advocating for an understanding of how racism and sexism intersect and overlap, structurally and politically, intersectional thinking challenged the focus on single axes of difference and argued that simply adding race and sex together was not enough to address the production and experience of discrimination.

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Jim Crow: A term, originally referring to a caricature of African Americans in an early 1800s blackface minstrel show, that came to refer to an especially oppressive system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement practised in the United States, especially the South. Knowledge: An awareness, familiarity, or understanding gained through experience, education, and reflection on a subject or situation. Knowledge can be both theoretical and practical. All research starts from a particular epistemology, that is, a type of knowledge about the world. Your epistemology is shaped by your education, religious beliefs, morals, and both culture. Crucially, there is no ‘correct’ epistemology. Researchers should be open to understanding how their own knowledge is shaped and constructed, and to value and respect other epistemologies. Knowledge is not neutral or ‘objective’, but rather shaped by different perspectives and viewpoints. Member-checking: A form of feedback used to improve the accuracy and validity of research findings. Also known as ‘informant feedback’, a member-check involves researchers providing a copy of an interview transcript, a dissertation, or a research report to research participants in order to check the accuracy of their work and the validity of their interpretations. Non-human animal: The categories of human and animal are socially constructed and operate to keep power imbalances between humans and other species intact. The use of the term ‘non-human animal’ signals the biological reality that humans themselves are animals and that constructing a binary with humans on one side and all other animals on the other can be problematic. At the same time, these categories are useful for understanding and marking out the ethical and political consequences of potentially harmful research involving other species. Objectivity: The principle that, as far as possible, researchers should remain distanced from the issue or subjects they study in order to ensure that findings are not shaped by their own beliefs, background, or values. Claims to objectivity are often considered to be problematic due to the unavoidable nature of positionality within social science research. Piece work: A form of employment where a worker is paid on the basis of each unit produced or action performed. Piece work may be frequently performed at home, for example in cases of crafting and data entry. Politics of representation: How researchers speak about, speak for, stand in for, and represent the views of others and whether they have both the right to do so and the means accurately to reflect the interests and views of those others. Sometimes this is said to be a ‘crisis of representation’, and is particularly acute in discussions of how researchers negotiating the relationship between the Global North and the Global South in their research.

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Post-conventional theory: This proposes that ethical decisions are not decidable in advance and fixed through particular rules or principles; rather, ethical decisions are risky, contextual, and rely upon momentary judgements. Power: The ability to achieve certain ends, often referring to acts that aim to influence or exercise control over the behaviour of others. Power can take on many forms, and exploring its nature and expression is a key aspect of many areas of critical human geography. Power relations refer to the often unevenly structured relations that are established between people when power is exercised. Privacy: The normative sense of what is not, or should not be, part of open public discourse, or that which is withdrawn from what we consider to be ‘public’. This sense of privacy is often forged through negotiated expectations about what are acceptable practices for access to particular forms of information, its disclosure, and both the content of that information as well as the medium through which it is released (see: Elwood and Leszczynski, 2011; Kitchin, 2014b: 168–74). Privacy can thus be any and all of a social norm, a legal contract, and a perceived inalienable right (as per the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights). Understandings of privacy can be normatively and spatially fixed, in terms of the delineation of public and private space, but as discussed by Kinsley in Chapter 27, uses of digital media involve the ongoing renegotiation of expectations of what counts as public or private. Private: Typically defined in relation to public, this refers to those aspects of life for which a person has a right to exclude others. What is deemed private is historically and geographically specific; for instance, feminist geographers have highlighted how forms of intimate life, such as personal morality, reproduction, and sexuality, have become sites of dispute over what constitutes a private concern or a matter of public interest. Pro bono: A term often used to describe work that is undertaken on a voluntary basis. It normally refers to the provision of professional work and services for free and literally translates as ‘for good’. A lawyer might offer to do work free of charge in order to support somebody on a low income for instance. ‘Pro bono’ is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘pro gratis’, which is a more general term for work that is done for free. Protective accompaniment: An alternative security tactic where unarmed volunteers from a range of international backgrounds live and walk alongside peace and justice activists who are under threat. In such contexts, the citizenship status and position of international volunteers offers protection to those under threat. Pseudonym: An alias or fictitious name that is used to protect the identity of a research participant.

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Reflexivity: The process by which a researcher reflects upon the research process, from the design of research questions to the interpretation of data. Reflexivity involves reflecting on how the researcher’s presence, decisions, epistemological assumptions, and methodological choices may affect the process and outcomes of research. Reflexivity has been associated with postcolonial and feminist critiques of the production of knowledge across the social sciences, challenging assumptions of universal or ‘objective’ knowledge claims. Safeguarding: Measures taken to protect the health, wellbeing, and human rights of individuals, particularly vulnerable adults and children. In the UK, safeguarding encompasses a series of legal duties to protect children from harm, including protecting children from abuse and maltreatment, preventing harm to children’s health, and ensuring that children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care. Sans-papiers: An undocumented migrant who lacks official status and documentation, thus being ‘without papers’ as the name implies. In France and Belgium, the term became the name for a collective political movement throughout the 1990s and 2000s, mobilizing around opposing immigration enforcement, deportations, and the removal of residency rights. ‘Shout it out’ circles: A form of intercultural dialogue and discussion in which neighbours are brought together to share their experiences of a particular place or topic, and to listen to the views and perspectives of others. They have formed a key part of diversity training at a number of US universities. Snowballing: A non-probability form of sampling that relies on research participants to suggest, and potentially recruit, future participants from among their professional and social networks. Snowballing can be particularly useful in gaining research access to hard-to-reach populations and groups, and in focusing on specific topics in small sample groups or communities. Solidarity: An active recognition that one group or individual’s concerns are the concerns of others, thereby denoting forms of mutual interest, connection, and unity of feeling. Solidarity involves a conscious support of others but can also include constructive critique and debate. Subjectivity: An individual’s values, social experiences, and perspectives. A concern with subjectivity in research focuses on considering how the views and values of the researcher may influence the research process and research findings. Subjectivity has traditionally been seen as the opposite of objectivity, and much qualitative social science has argued that the subjectivity of the researcher is an unavoidable influence in research, leading to its critical consideration in discussions of positionality.

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Thin/thick agency: A conceptualization of children and young people’s varied (and often constrained) capacity to make decisions and demonstrate agency in different contexts. Klocker (2007: 85) explains that: ‘thin’ agency refers to decisions and everyday actions that are carried out within highly restrictive contexts, characterized by few viable alternatives. ‘Thick’ agency is having the latitude to act within a broad range of options. It is possible for a person’s agency to be ‘thickened’ or ‘thinned’ over time and space, and across their various relationships. Structures, contexts, and relationships can act as ‘thinners’ or ‘thickeners’ of [an] individual’s agency, by constraining or expanding their range of viable choices.

UK Data Service: This service provides access to a wide range of secondary data and is the largest of its kind in the UK. It provides social, economic and population data in the form of longitudinal studies, macrodata sets, qualitative material, and survey findings. It sets out clear guidelines on how to manage data and offers a list of useful resources on ethics. Voluntourism: The practice of individuals or groups travelling to the Global South to carry out voluntary work. Often voluntourists will originate in the Global North and may be volunteering as part of a ‘gap year’ or break in their education or career development. The practice of voluntourism has been criticized as an often-superficial engagement with complex challenges of poverty that may benefit voluntourists more than the communities they work with. Weaponize: To adapt something for use as a weapon that was not intended to be used as such.

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Index Pages in bold denote Glossary terms academia, neoliberalization of 19–20, 109, 136 access, site 217, 229 activism 74, 101, 118–129, 153, 219–20, 228, 303 critique of 120 definition of 118, 120–21, 303 labour activism 127, 237, 241 and risk 125–26 scholar activism 107, 110–11, 141, 264–7 undocumented migrant activism 62–5 activist geographies history of 119–20 advisory groups 150 affect 69, 72, 114, 137–8, 188, 192–3, 196–7, 199–201, 216, 303 age-friendly cities xxiv agency 27, 116, 208, 305 of children and young people 181, 183, 310 of non-humans 17–18, 48–9, 139, 222 of research participants 14, 47, 80, 134–5, 160, 161, 283 Ahlqvist, O. 294 algorithms 86–7 alliance-building 264–5 anarchism 119, 303 Anderson, K. 242 Andrews, K. 260 animals see non-human animals animal geographies 17–18, 48–9, 170–1 methods 172–3 Animal Studies 170 animal lifeworlds 49 anonymity xxv, 34, 38, 43–50, 52, 57, 100, 125, 152, 183, 207–8, 221 definition of 43–4 limits of 134, 145 and non-humans 48–9 and quantitative data 84, 86

and social media 273, 277–8 and visual methods 47–8, 167, 277 anorexia, study of 69–71 Anthropocene 10, 214 anthropocentricism 171, 172, 176–8, 213, 303 anti-racist approaches 9, 107, 109, 120, 304, 306 anti-racist struggle 108, 197–200 anti-capitalist movement 120 appropriation 98, 215 archival interventions 195 archival turn 193–5 archives 192–201 alternative archives 195 co-creation of 195 affective capacity of 196 introduction to 193 reading 194–5 arranged marriage, research on 115–16 Asamblea Plaza Dorrego-San Telmo 264–7 Askins, K. 133 Association of American Geographers 99, 306 asylum seekers, research on/with 37, 53, 74–7, 79, 162 children 56–7 and detention 78–9 see also refugees Australian Code for Responsible Conduct of Research 90 auto-photography 47–8, 132, 303 background checks see criminal records check Barnett, C. 12 Bear, C. 49 Bhabha, H. 238–9 big data 86, 274 definition of 83 bioethics 160

Index biomedical sciences 13–15, 173 biometric identification 87 Birmingham, UK 44, 296 blog, research 293–4 body size, research on 55 Bowman Expeditions 98, 144, 303 Brussels 62, 64–5 Buenos Aires 264–7 Buller, H. 18 Bunge, W. 119 Cahill, C. 111 Canterbury earthquakes 284–5 capacity-building 131 care 10–11, 15, 17–18, 115, 138–9, 171, 231–2, 239 see also feminist approaches cartographic struggle 199 cartoonification 277, 304 caste 30 Castree, N. 19, 214–15 celebrity humanitarianism 254 census data 84 charity 257 Chatham House Rules 207, 304 Chatterton, P. 141 Chesapeake Bay 46 Chicago 62 children’s geographies 132, 180–1 children and young people 35, 53, 56–7, 161, 163, 180–91, 308, 309, 310 legal definition of 181 Civil Rights Movement 197, 199–200 civil society 65, 258, 304 class 84–5, 233 relations 108 climate change 212 Cloke, P. 164–5, 168 co-authorship 113, 125, 135–6, 251–2 coercion 36, 164–5, 304 collaborative research paradigm 146 collaborators 251–2 Collard, R. 173, 174–6, 262 CollectActif 64–5 collective memory, creation of 195, 265 Colombia 100–1 colonialism 115, 119, 237, 240, 284, 304 and knowledge 18, 145–6, 194, 212, 214, 215, 304 and geography 6–8, 20, 145, 304 Communist Manifesto, The 108 composite characters 45–6

349

confidentiality 44, 45, 91, 122, 183 breach of 88–9, 91–92 conflict zones, research in 99–101 consent xxvii, 33–42, 47, 54, 75, 100, 122, 261, 274, 276, 285, 297–8 and alter-egos 272 and children and young people 182, 190 collective 123–4, 148, 243 in domestic spaces 242 forms 34, 56, 90, 134 and non-humans 171 non-consent 39–40, 152 online 272, 278 oral 148 as process 34–35 from proxy 35 in public space 37–40, 229–30 and vulnerable groups 164–5 see also in loco parentis contentious issues 52, 218, 304 control creep 276 Corbridge, S. 11 counselling 285–6 counter-mapping 198 counter-storytelling 195–7, 304 Couper, P. 15 creative professionals 263 criminal records check 163, 184, 259 see also Disclosure and Barring Service critical race theory 196–97, 304 cultural turn 8–10 Dancing Maps 296 Darwin see Larrakia Country data 304 contextualization 84–5 disposal of 92 legal protection of 89–90 misuse 85–6 see also weaponization security and storage of 91–2 sharing 94–5, 277 data management 45, 88–96 check list 95 definition of 89 dataveillance 83 decolonization of academia 20, 29–30, 304 geography 8, 145, 304 research 27, 139 De Leeuw, S. 194

350

Index

DeLyser, D. 195 Derrida, J. 193 Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute 119–20 development spaces, definition of 247 digital archive 127 digital divides 295 digital media and space 270 diplomacy, study of 204–5 disaster spaces 280–288 and geography 281–2 post-disaster spaces 281, 284–6 pre-disaster spaces 282–4 Disclosure and Barring Service 163, 184 see criminal records check disempowerment 60, 62, 282 displacement 234 dissemination 126–7, 151, 253, 262 dissertation 79, 162, 296–8 domestic space 238–40 critical geographies of 239–40 interviews in 236–7 methods 240 domestic violence 239–40 domestic workers 236–7 DREAMers 62, 305 Duneier, M. 80, 231 Dutch Geographical Society 7

environmental protest 219–20 epistemology 215–16, 305, 307 privileged 59–61 Esson, J. 20 ethics of looking 242 ethical review procedures, formal 13–15, 34, 36, 112, 138, 160–1, 187–8, 240, 247, 274 limits of xxv, 14–15, 75, 133–36, 144–5, 148, 173–6, 287 ethical symmetry 182, 305 ethnography 67 digital 271 multispecies 172–3 Eurocentricism 109, 134 European Enlightenment 7 European Union General Data Protection Regulation 89, 122, 277 exit strategies 135, 261 expectations 73–4 and disappointment 80 research participant 37, 76–7, 165 researcher 79–80 social 77–9 social media user 275 expert status xxx, 76, 80, 111, 130, 131, 132 extreme weather 282–3

East Lindsey Oil Refinery 127 eco-building 220–21 eco-communities 220–21 Economic and Social Research Council 14, 77–8, 95 Framework for Research Ethics 161 elite, definition of 202–3, 305 elites, research on/with 45–6, 202–10, 242, 286 Ellis, C. 46 embargos 94–5 emotional geographies, 69 emotional justice 196 emotions xxvi–vii, 67–72, 137, 242, 266 and archives 196–7 distress 54–5, 89, 184 empowerment 47, 59–60, 63–5, 305 and participatory approaches 132 encryption 91, 102 England, K. 250 entrapment 205–6 environmental determinism 7 environmental geographies 211–13

Facebook 273, 274–8 failure in research 115 faith-based organizations 259 Fellowship of Reconciliation Peace Presence 100–1 feminist approaches 8–10, 47, 68, 109, 115–6, 120, 228, 239–40, 240, 244–5, 250, 300, 308 and care 16–17, 139, 170 and knowledge production 9, 26, 264, 309 field, the 139 filmmaking 138 Flat Out project, The 291 focus groups 53 Foucault, M. 59, 193, 209 friendship 16–17, 75, 122, 134, 141, 261, 267 function creep 85 funding 149 Gallagher, M. 132 gatekeepers 36–7, 182, 188, 249, 251

Index geolocation, see location data Gibson-Graham, J.K. 27–8 gift-giving 153 Gillespie, K. 49 Girl Scouts 262–3 Godlewska, A.M.C 8 Goerisch 262–3 Great British Class Survey 84 Green, V. 198–200 Greenhough, B. 178 Grindr 272 Hacking Team Software 98 Hall, M. 18 hanging out 137–8 Haraway, D. 27 harm do no harm principle 13–14, 60, 61, 112, 133, 185, 253 and non-humans 48, 171–3, 175–8 potential for 86, 122, 151, 273, 285 reporting 149, 191 Harvey, D. 108, 119 Head, L. 18–19 Heffernan, M. 7 heteronormativity 10 historical accountability 195 Hitchen, E. 259 Holdsworth, C. 257–8 homeless, research on/with 47–8, 164–7, 165–7, 231, 264–7 honesty 232–3 hooks, b 239 Hopkins, P. 189 Hovorka, A. 48 hybridity 18 illegal activities 121–22, 218 imperialism 7, 264 in loco parentis 182, 306 incentives, financial 36, 254 Indian Ocean tsunami 284–5, 286 Indigenous approaches 146, 240, 305 Indigenous communities, research with 136–41, 143–55, 219–20 Indigenous methods 146, 149 Indigenous knowledge 146, 152, 216–17, 220 Indigenous Peoples Speciality Group of the Association of American Geographers 144, 147–54, 306 Information Commissioner’s Office 88

351

insider-outsider 28, 29, 220, 232, 251, 262–3, 284–5 insurance, university 285 International Citizen Service 258, 306 intersectionality 109, 306 Instagram 276–7 intimacy 134, 238, 242–3, 245, 273, 308 non-human 172 interview transcripts 297–8 Institutional Review Board 13, 144, 148, 173, 203, 247, 306 see also ethics review procedures, formal Jim Crow 197–200, 307 Johnson, J. 47–8 Johnson, E. 176 Kant, I. 294, 295 Katz, C. 139 Kimberley, Australia 219–20 Kropotkin, P. 119 Kumar, T. 111 laboratory work 176 landslides 283 language 150 Larrakia Country 136–39 Laurier, E. 230 Lertchavalitsakul, B. 249 listening xxviii–ix, 113, 242–3 living wage campaign 110 location data, sensitivity of 48, 152, 221, 276 London 11–12, 45–6, 110 London Citizens 110 Louis, R.P 146 McDowell, L. 45–6 Madge, C. 250–1 Mandel J.L. 74 Manila 236–7 marginalized groups 9–10, 160, 194, 304 Marxism 9, 107, 108–9, 119, 305 critiques of 109 Massey, D. 11–12, 108 May, J. 165–7 Medina, R.M. 98 member-checking 298, 307 Mestizo Arts and Activism Collective, The 111 metadata 93–4, 276 Mexico City 232–4

352

Index

México Indígena see Bowman Expeditions Migrante 236–7 military, and geography 7, 98–9, 303 Miller, F. 248–9 misanthropic practices 262 misrepresentation 93, 152, 277, 292 Mohanty, C. 27 moral extensionism 19 moral turn 10 Morin, K.M. 99 Mullings, B. 27–8 Myanmar 249 Myspace 271–3 Nadar, L. 203 Nagar, R. 110–11 National Health Service 36 The National Research Council of Thailand 248 National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children 183 nature 213–14 The Negro Motorist Green Book 197–201 No Sweat 12 non-disclosure agreements 89, 93 non-human animals 17–18, 48–9, 262, 307 commodification of 177, 262 non-humans 17–19, 216–17 non-representational theory 16 Nepal earthquake 280–1, 283 O’Keefe, P. 281 objectivity 60, 118, 196, 307 critique of 9, 27, 309 on background 207 online ethnography see ethnography ordinary ethics 111–13 over-research see research fatigue ownership of data 43, 47, 83, 134–5, 152 of research process 55 Pain, R. 239–40 Paris Commune 119 participant information sheet xxv, 56, 77, 150, 217 participant observation and consent 37–40, 229–30 participatory approaches 111, 130–42 definition of 130–31 critiques of 132 methods 132

Participatory Action Research 62, 65, 109, 111, 131–32 Peet, R. 119 photographs 167, 184–5, 220 and anonymity 45, 47, 125, 190 photowalks xxv–ix Pile, S. 67 Philo, C 230 physical geography 8 piece work 239, 307 political ecology 212 Popke, J. 9, 16 post-conventional ethics 241, 242–3, 308 postcolonial approaches 12, 17, 120, 309 and knowledge production 9, 26, 31, 109, 250 and responsibility 114 posthumanism 17–19 postructuralism 8–10, 109, 116, 193 positionality xxv, xxx, 8, 25–32, 60, 63, 121, 124, 194, 230–3, 309 definition 26–9 and expectations 79 and quantitative data 84 research assistants 252 power 8–9, 59–66, 202–3, 308 spatialities of 203 power relations 206 in academia 20 in research xxv, xxviii, 28, 55, 74, 113, 114, 133, 175, 182, 189, 204, 231, 232, 247 in activism 121, 267 and archives 194–5 and global south 249–51, 282 powerful subjects 60 see also elites plants, research on/with 18–19, 48 privilege 9, 30, 60, 74, 76, 122, 139, 151, 250–1, 253, 260, 281 unlearning of 61, 63 privacy 83, 86, 89, 238, 285, 308 group privacy 86 social media 273, 278 private space 238 pro bono 262, 308 protective accompaniment 99–10, 308 pseudonyms xxv, 44, 184, 308 psychological truths 196 public space 225–35 definition of 228

Index Disneyfication of 226 exclusion from 226 and geography 226–7 as moral category 228–9 publishing 19, 48, 99, 133, 135–6 see also writing Purdah 94 quantitative data 82–7, 152, 273–8 and objectivity 86 quantitative revolution, critique of 108 Quinn, J. 257–8 race 87, 109, 196–7, 233 see also critical race theory racism 20, 108, 109, 111, 115, 127, 130–1, 137–8, 193, 195, 196, 197–200, 304, 305, 306 scientific 7 radical geographies 9 and critical geography 109 history of 107–10 Ravn, S. 277 Raynor, R. 132 reciprocity 149, 209, 265 Reclus, E. 119 reflexivity xxv, 31, 68, 112, 113, 124, 137, 167, 209, 233, 249 definition of 27–8, 309 and writing 299–301 refugees European Refugee Crisis 64 research on/with 29, 160, 285 see also asylum seekers relational space 11–12 representation xxix alternative forms of 114 cultural 113–14 and diverse voices 126–7 of nonhuman life 172–3 politics of 61, 63, 249–50, 307 and writing 296–9 research assistants 251–2 research fatigue 188, 265, 285, 286 research proposals 78 resilience 283–4 resistance, African American 197–200, 239 respect, cultural 149 responsibility 114–15, 139, 177, 243, 283, 286, 298 geographies of 10–13

353

responsible anthropomorphism 49 Rishbeth, C. 230–1 Robertson, S. 216 Rogaly, B. 230–1 Rose, G. 27–8, 233 Routledge, P. 73–4 Royal College of Psychiatrists 36 Royal Geographical Society, London 7 royalties, 151 Said, E. 30 safeguarding 183, 184, 259, 309 sans-papiers 62, 309 see also undocumented migrants schools 62, 197, 306 research in 44, 188 supplementary 260 secondary data 84–5, 310 security clearance 206 self-determination 13, 143, 145, 146, 149, 154, 197 sensitive information 89 definition of 90 sensitive topics 51–8, 79, 100, 162, 188, 221, 243, 248, 259, 282 definition of 51–3 Sheffield, UK 79 Shildrik, M. 241 ‘shout it out’ circles 62–3, 309 Silverman, K. 240–1, 242 situated ethics 15–17, 115 smartphones, use in research 101–2 Smith, D.M. 10–11 Smith, L.T. 146, 154 Smith, N. 108 snowballing 205, 309 social media 184 research on 269–79 use in research 186–7 user agreements 86, 274–5 see also Facebook, Instagram, Myspace, Twitter social justice 9–10, 20, 72, 111, 159, 257, 260, 264–7 solidarity 76, 122, 141, 264, 309 Spivak, G. 30, 115 Srinivasan, K. 171 Stacey, J. 243–4 Staeheli, L. 239 Stevenson, O. 242 stigma 53, 55, 71 street vendors 232–4

354

storytelling 63, 111 see also counter-storytelling structural inequality 110 subjectivity 8, 83, 109, 203, 208, 309 and quantitative data 84 support services, referral to 54 support networks for researchers 56 Sultana, F. 250 Taylor, L. 85–6 teaching 71 textual analysis 292 theatre-making 132 Thrift, N. 15 time-sensitive information 94–5 Todd, J. 20 transcription 93, 94 transitional justice 195 translation 93, 114, 151 translators 251 trauma 285–6 trust 134, 138 Turner, S. 249 Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male 13–14 Twitter 273–4, 275–7 UK Data Service 277, 310 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 145 undocumented migrants 62–5, 305 see also sans-papiers Utøya 273, 275–6 Valentine, G. 72 Van Patter, L.E. 48 version control 93 video methodologies 37–38, 138, 173, 185 Vietnam 248–9 virtue ethics 15

Index visual methods see photographs, photowalks, video methodologies voice 63, 113, 152 voluntary sector 257 volunteering and fatigue 260, 265 in Higher Education 257–8 motivations for 260 neoliberalization of 258 for research 74–7, 217, 218, 220, 260–3 and state-citizen relations 259 voluntourism 258, 310 voyeurism 253, 285–6 vulnerable subjects xxvi, 4, 52–3, 74–7, 90, 138, 159–169, 215, 231, 265, 282, 284, 309 and children and young people 184 and consent 35–7 definition of 159–63 non-humans 171–2 weaponization of research 97–103, 310 Wedel, J. 207 white privilege 20, 137 white supremacy 193, 197–201 Widdowfield, R. 68–9, 71 wilderness, 216–7 Wills, J. 110 Wilson, H.F 68 Wilson, S. 154 Wisner, 281 withdrawal from research 38, 298 work visas 248 writing 291–302 accessibility of 293–6 and power 293, 295, 296–8 Young, I.M. 12 Zimmer, M. 278