On Being Let Loose in the Field: The Execution of Professional Ethics

In recent years concerns over litigation and the trend towards close monitoring of academic activity has seen the effective hijacking of research ethics by university managers and bureaucrats. This can effectively curtail cutting edge research as perceived ‘safe’ research strategies are encouraged. However, ethics is about more than research governance. Ultimately, it seeks to avoid harm and to increase benefits to society. Rural development debate is fairly quiet on the question of ethics, leaving guidance to professional bodies. This study draws on empirical research that examined the lives of migrant communities in Northern Ireland. This context of increasingly diverse rural development actors provides a backdrop for the way in which the researcher navigates through ethical issues as they unfold in the field. The analysis seeks to relocate ethics from being an annoying bureaucratic requirement to one where it is inherent to rigorous and professional research and practice. It reveals how attention to professional ethics can contribute to effective, situated and reflexive practice, thus transforming ethics to become an asset to professional researchers.

Doing Focus Groups and Interviews with Recent Migrants to Northern Ireland: A Dynamic Interplay of Ethics, Language and Access

This case describes a qualitative social science research project that was conducted in 2009 and that examined the experiences of recent migrants to Northern Ireland. While background to the research and key findings are presented, the topic forms a backdrop to the case. The following aspects of the study are presented: the theoretical context; formulating the research question, design and methodology; key methodological issues; data collection and analysis; project dissemination; and research funding and reporting. The case pays particular attention to the needs and impact of different groups including the researcher, the funding body, the researcher’s employer and the researched. The significance of access, language and ethics to this study are examined. Finally, the way in which the research unfolded in an often-unpredictable way throughout the implementation process is highlighted in the narrative.

An Inclusive Design Dialogue on Ethics and Aesthetics

One of the many definitions of inclusive design is that it is a user-led approach to design. To date its focus has been on ‘critical’ users, in particular disabled people. As such, there is pressure to design environments that meet the often urgent and complex demands of these users. Designers, uncertain of their knowledge, rely heavily on user input and guidance, often resulting in designs that are ‘solution’ driven (rather than solution seeking) and short term; users focus on what they need, not what they might need. This paper argues that design needs to reclaim an equal presence within inclusive design. It proposes that the ‘weakness’ of design lies in the uneasy and at times conflicting relationship between ethics and aesthetics. The paper itself is constructed around a dialogue between two academics, one concerned with critical user needs, the other with aesthetics, but both directed towards the support of design quality

Research Ethics in Divided and Violent Societies: Seizing the Ethical Opportunity

This chapter explores how to conduct social research in divided and violent societies by developing the concept of the ‘ethical opportunity’. The ‘ethical opportunity’ is situated in a brief discussion of ‘action’ and feminist approaches to research. It argues that seizing the ethical opportunity requires researchers to: plan for their personal safety, plan for participants’ personal safety and plan how they will communicate and disseminate their results. It draws on the author’s personal experience researching in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland, concluding that it is in the communication and dissemination phase that researchers’ hopes for ‘making a difference’ may be realised or dashed. It cautions would-be researchers to manage their own – and research participants’ – expectations about what social research can achieve. Its effects may not often be as transforming and liberating as idealistic researchers hope for, but that should not dissuade them from striving towards those ends.

“How Can a Woman Who Has Been Raped Be Believed?”: Andrea Dworkin, Sexual Violence and the Ethics of Belief

In June 2000, Andrea Dworkin, an American feminist activist and author, published an account of being raped in a Paris hotel room a year earlier. The story was met with widespread disbelief, including from feminist readers. This article explores the reasons for this disbelief, asking how and why narratives of rape are granted – or denied – truth status by their readers. The article argues for understanding the conferral of belief as a narrative transaction involving the actions of both narrator and reader. It posits that Dworkin was widely seen as an unreliable narrator but argues that for ideologically charged narratives such as rape narratives judgements of reliability and belief inevitably draw upon the normative standpoint of the reader. I suggest that there are opposing criteria for establishing the truth of rape narratives; a ‘factual’ or legal model, which sees rape narratives as requiring scrutiny, and an ‘experiential’ model, located within certain strands of feminist politics, which emphasises the ethical importance of believing women’s narratives. The article finishes with a consideration of the place of belief within an ethics of reading and reception of rape narratives.

English Language Education at University: Trends and Challenges in Teaching and Learning Academic Discourse in the UK

This chapter discusses English Language Education at university and highlights a number of trends and their associated challenges in teaching and learning academic discourse. Academic discourse refers to the ways in which language is used by participants in academia. It encompasses written discourse, from article and book publishing, PhD theses to course assignments; spoken discourse, from study groups, tutorials, conference presentations to inaugural lectures; and more recently, computer-mediated discourse, from asynchronous text-based conferencing to academic blogs. The role of English language educators in preparing students and academics for successful participation in these academic events, or the academy, in English is not to be underestimated. Academic communication is not only vital to an individual’s success at university, but to the maintenance and creation of academic communities and to scientific progress itself (Hyland, 2009). This chapter presents an overview of academic discourse and discusses recent issues which have an impact on teaching and learning English at university and discusses their associated challenges: first, the increasing internationalisation of universities. Second, the emergence of a mobile academe in its broadest sense, in which students and academics move across traditional geopolitical, institutional and disciplinary boundaries, is discussed. Third, the growth of UK transnational higher education is examined as a trend which sees academics and students vicariously or otherwise involved in English language teaching and learning. Fourth, the chapter delves into the rapid and ongoing development in technology assisted and online learning. While responding to trends can be difficult, they can also inspire ingenuity. Furthermore, such trends and challenges will not emerge in the same manner in different contexts. The discussion in this chapter is illustrated with examples from a UK context but the implications of the trends and challenges are such that they reach beyond borders.

Using Comparative Constitutionalism in Human Rights Discourse:Ireland’s Past and Scotland’s Future

The article considers the use of comparisons in constitutional development, specifically the use of comparative reasoning in the context of debates about human rights in newly emerging independent states, using the examples of Ireland and Scotland.

Governing Public Health: EU Law, Regulation and Biopolitics

This book contributes towards EU studies and the growing discourse on law and public health. It uses the EU’s governance of public health as a lens through which to explore questions of legal competence and its development through policy and concrete techniques, processes and practices, risk and security, human rights and bioethics, accountability and legitimacy, democracy and citizenship, and the nature, essence and ‘future trajectory’ of the European integration project. These issues are explored first, by situating the EU's public health strategy within the overarching architecture of governance and subsequently by examining its operationalisation in relation to the key public health problems of cancer, HIV/AIDS and pandemic planning.

The book argues that the centrality and valorisation of scientific and technical knowledge and expertise in the EU's risk-based governance means that citizen participation in decision-making is largely marginalised and underdeveloped – and that this must change if public health and the quality, accountability and legitimacy of EU governance and its regulation are to be improved. Subsequently the book goes on to argue that the legitimating discourses of ethics and human rights, and the developing notion of EU (supra-)stewardship responsibility, can help to highlight the normative dimensions of governance and its interventions in public health. These discourses and dimensions provide openings and possibilities for citizens to power ‘technologies of participation’ and contribute important supplementary knowledge to decision-making.

Can Consent Training End Sexual Violence On Campus?: Students, Consent and Sexual Ethics

The ongoing, potentially worsening problem of sexual violence and harassment on university campuses has emerged in the last few years as an area of concern. Female students have been identified as one of the most likely groups to experience sexual violence and this violence is exacerbated by contemporary student cultures around alcohol consumption and gendered and sexual norms. University campuses have also become central to prevention efforts in many countries due to their relatively accessible populations and an ability to implement social policies at an institutional level.
Many of these measures are based around promoting or educating students about sexual consent, and particularly notions of affirmative consent, expressed as ‘Yes means Yes’. However, there exists little research around sexual ethics with students exploring whether consent is in fact the best way to tackle cultural problems of sexual violence on campus. This paper makes use of existing literature on sexual ethics and focus group research undertaken with Australian university students to argue for an approach to the problem of sexual ethics on campus that is broader than simply focusing on training programs in sexual consent. It identifies a number of limitations to the consent framework and argues that prevention efforts need to more seriously engage with broader cultural norms around heterosexuality and gendered relationships.