‘If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry’: Emotional labour, reflexivity and ethics-as-practice in a qualitative fieldwork context

Abstract

This article takes Guillemin and Gillam’s distinction between ‘procedural ethics’ and ‘ethics in practice’ as a point of departure and return for reflecting critically on a recently completed doctoral research project about political violence and terrorism. It provides an overview of the study before offering some instructive vignettes to show how ethical decision-making processes engaged with ‘in the field’ were an extension of more everyday and mundane reasoning than we may typically associate with such quintessentially ‘sensitive research’. As the final section of this article argues, it is this everyday and mundane quality to ethical reasoning which is sometimes obscured in formal accounts of ‘reflexivity’. It is hoped that this article is useful for scholars interested in the ethics and emotional practices of qualitative inquiry, as well as those researching serious violence and bereavement.

Comprehensive or Comprehensible Experience? A Case Study of Religion and Traumatic Bereavement

“…The second, related implication of this approach would be to re-evaluate some of our typical institutional approaches to certain ethical and safeguarding norms, including a more nuanced approach to harm. From most institutional ethical review perspectives, successfully entering and exiting research fields hinges almost entirely on our ability to do no harm (McGowan, 2020: 8). This should, of course, remain an absolute ethical requisite of any project – to the extent that it should almost go without saying.…”

Reflexivity in Quantitative Research: a Rationale and Beginner’s Guide

“…For example, Wiggington (in Lafrance & Wiggington, 2019, p. 541) discusses the "light-bulb moment" they had when they became aware of how their own position as researcher was affecting the questions they asked of their participants, noting how this influenced and shaped their assumptions. Moreover, reflexivity can help researchers to navigate the ethics and emotional labour of their research (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004;McGowan, 2020).…”

A research note: Using ethics memoranda of understanding in community-based research

“…In particular, activists expressed concern about what might be called the emotional labor involved-labor in managing either their own or others' feelings and public emotional displays consistent with what was required in their job, or in this case, the research collaboration at hand (Hochschild, 1983). This could entail less visible preliminary work and trust-building, impression management, folding the chairs at the ends of meeting after meeting, or thinking together through strategic or logistical issues, even if none of it is quite related to the research questions at hand (McGowan, 2020). For instance, some researchers at the convening spoke of how difficult it was to maintain "neutral" demeanors during fieldwork, as per their training, when they were actually quite passionate about larger goals being pursued by communities or social movements.…”

“…Using this framework might also allow us to foreground the sorts of emotional labor and community benefits that help to guide research ethics, and are often overlooked by Institutional Review Boards (McGowan, 2020). For instance, in the hypothetical scenario, we can think about how Professor Blue might engage Ms. Red (and others at Green Power) as a critical friend.…”

“…. at an individual or interactional level,” a growing number of researchers have called attention to the false division between these categories, and some have advocated for “incorporating the development” of REC proposals into the research process itself (Brydon-Miller and Greenwood, 2006; McGowan, 2020: 2). Research ethics reviews can engage investigators to reflect deeply on their process, from the perspective of all stakeholders; they can reflect a commitment to situated ethics and build in moments of reconsideration and revision.…”