Ethical tensions in designing ethnographic research with schoolchildren in rural Karnataka

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the ethical tensions of preparing for ethnographic research with children in a rural district in Karnataka, India. Such children are at the receiving end of policy and international organisation interest, which alternately frames them as both victims of poverty and conflict and as agents of potential change in their communities. Additionally, researchers must often negotiate particularly muddy ethical waters when working with Majority World children from marginalised backgrounds. A critical exploration of the various complexities is provided in order to develop a working ethical framework. Of key importance is the need for reflexivity when journeying from western higher institutions (the ‘ivory tower’) to the ‘field’, a space and time carrying different weight and implications for the participants than the researcher. This article argues for the need to critically examine and weave in the multiple discourses of power that permeate children’s lives and engage with children’s responses to these discourses. While rural Karnataka provides a case study for the ethical tensions of ethnographic research with Majority World children from marginalised backgrounds, the principles espoused here are broadly applicable to children in a variety of contexts.

Research ethics in childhood research

“…There is now considerable excellent work internationally that is evidencing closer attention to some of these issues. This includes decolonising, participatory approaches that seek to go beyond ‘rescuing’, ‘developing’ or ‘empowering’ to recognising children’s agency and resilience and building upon this in a contextually-relevant way (Abebe and Ofosu-Kusi, 2016; Abebe et al, 2022; Beazley and Ball, 2017; Brear and Tsotetsi, 2021; De Castro, 2020; Ipe, 2019; Jiménez, 2021; Moletsane, et al, 2021). Closer attention is also being paid to some of the explicitly relational issues across North-South contexts – such as the use of interpreters and training of local research assistants, aimed at reducing community burden and attending more closely to social justice issues.…”