Costelloe-KuehnMemo35

=Memo35: Ethical Conundrums= This memo should return you to reflection on the ethical issues and double-binds you may well face as your research proceeds. Try to consider the many places where "ethics" (broadly conceived) will be in play -- in the way you describe your project to potential interviewees, for example, in your choice of who to interview (and who to ignore), in the way you describe your interviewees (as in Memo 27).

Quotes & Responses:
 * 1) "In the conservative vision, there is displacement from one privileged term ('heterosexual'), to another ('conventional marriage'), to another (traditionally gendered men and women), to another ('sex differentiated, gender conservative, sexually traditional, conventional marriage). The unceasingly refined negotiation of what the conservative really privileges as 'natural' or 'biological' or 'virtuous' or 'intended by God,' creates the illusion that these refinements are moving us closer to 'values', or morality, or God, or nature. Their definition is never complete and always in some sense deferred" (can't remember where this comes from!).
 * 2) So what about when we make huge lists about what counts as democracy? these lists are deferred to other lists, etc. What is that illusion? What is democracy, as "impossible?" Always in need of revision? "Ethic of continual struggle" (Day).
 * 3) How can my project be "accountable to the ways anthropological writing ends up supporting dominant constructs of society and culture, even if unintentionally. In other words, they embrace a mode of anthropology that is attuned to the swirl of discourse around what is studied, and keyed into the way that anthropological writing relates to entrenched understandings" (Kim Fortun, book review of Writing Culture and Testing Women).
 * 4) What are the dominant constructs of society that I need to be aware of and what "swirls of discourse" might I get caught up in?

Ethical Questions:
 * 1) What standards or principles will govern my "conduct" as a researcher, participant, writer?
 * 2) Ethics vs. Morals?
 * 3) Will "local" moral standards clash with my own stance?
 * 4) How will "my" moral "identity" be transformed in research encounters?
 * 5) How will I valorize the groups I am involved with but also criticize them? If I show their practice to be a pharmakon, will they feel betrayed? How can I package my analysis of their shortcomings as a "gift" for them, but also for other similar groups and scholars that wish to make related contributions?

Ethical Conundrums:
 * 1) A practical conundrum (I'm not sure it is "ethical") will continue to be the balance of activism and scholarship. I will face questions of "objectivity," "bias," "vested interest," etc. and need compelling articulations with which to "defend" myself. I also will need to negotiate my own imaginations of what counts as "political" if I am to focus most of my energy on teaching and researching. As I teach, I will sometimes be conflicted about wanting to "indoctrinate" my students and wanting to help them think critically and see proliferating perspectives on just about everything. This ties in with the negotiation in my research, teaching and writing between highlighting "complexity" and making simplifying moves that help a wider audience understand my points.
 * 2) As a privileged, "highly educated," white, male I will negotiate the "ethnographic authority" that comes with the enterprise of writing cultures. One way to work this conundrum will be to privilege "the interviewee's own perceptions and words" (M. Fortun, letter to interviewees), highlighting chunks of "data" coming directly from my informants and tangentially "explaining" it. But I will also need to be wary that such strategies might end up masking my own authority as the "curator" of such data. Engagement with conceptual-theoretical texts such as "Can the Subaltern Speak?" may provide helpful theoretical sensitivities that I can incorporate into my methodology and writing.