Answer:
Explanation:
Development studies has an ethical or normative
point of departure – it seeks change or to ‘do
good’, thus it intervenes in the lives of others often
claiming to know what is good for ‘the Other’.
z Development studies involves work with research
participants at completely different levels of
social/economic/political/cultural power to the
researcher.
z Development studies addresses sensitive issues –
war, corruption, inequality, HIV/AIDS, poverty
generally, to name but a few.
z Development studies is cross-cultural and crossdisciplinary – so whose ethics count? Do
researchers give preference to universal principles
(even if concepts such as the primacy of the
individual are ‘alien’ concepts in the context in
which they are working) or to local principles
(even if contradictory to researcher’s personal
notions of social justice or equality)?
In spite of our growing awareness of this complexity,
development studies as a field of enquiry has yet to
explore fully many of the ethical dilemmas raised by
doing research in developing countries. This is
surprising, perhaps, given that many researchers come
to development studies with a strong sense of social
justice and given the recent rise in interest in ethics in
social science generally. That said, some constituent
disciplines of development studies have been far more
reflective than others. As Brown et al. (2004: 4) put it:
It is fair to say that there is a notable paucity of
literature that deals specifically with the ethical
dimensions of social science in developing
contexts… Of the few disciplines to more directly
reflect on these issues, anthropology has been
engaged in sustained debate, especially since the
early 1970s. With a few notable exceptions very
little from within quantitative social science has
been published on the ethical difficulties
presented by the methodological complexities of
underdeveloped regions since … the early 1980s.
Often ethical dilemmas in research are ‘sanitised’ and
rarely appear in final research outputs. However, it is
not as if researchers in development studies are short
of guidance. Development studies has a plethora of
ethical guidelines to choose from: each constituent
discipline in development studies can offer one. Most
funders have one (take for example the UK Economic
and Social Research Council), many universities have
their own guidelines or committees by which
research must be approved. But what about the
ethics and perspectives of participants and the
communities in which research is conducted? One
issue is whether guidelines simply serve to protect the
researcher from legal challenge rather than address
deeper concerns about recipro
