Respect for Subjects in the Ethics of Causal and Interpretive Social Explanation

Abstract

<jats:p>Rival causal and interpretive approaches to explaining social phenomena have important ethical differences. While human actions can be explained as a result of causal mechanisms, as a meaningful choice based on reasons, or as some combination of the two, it is morally important that social scientists respect others by recognizing them as persons. Interpretive explanations directly respect their subjects in this way, while purely causal explanations do not. Yet although causal explanations are not themselves expressions of respect, they can be used in respectful ways if they are incorporated into subjects’ self-directed projects. This can occur when subjects correctly understand and freely adopt researchers’ goals through a process of informed consent. It can also occur when researchers correctly understand and adopt their subject’s goals, using their research to empower those they study.</jats:p>

Activism and Objectivity in Political Research

“…If, as Grant suggests (2002), the humanities are devoted to interpreting meaning and significance, while science seeks to trace mechanisms of cause and effect, then we must reject a sharp distinction between the two when it comes to the explanation of political phenomena. In politics, the meaning and significance that agents attribute to causally determined events are themselves then causes of further events, whose meaning is then also interpreted in turn (Frazer 2020). Any form of objectivity that can be adopted as an ideal for political research would therefore have to be one compatible with humanistic as well as scientific methods.…”

Field Experiments on Gender: Where the Personal and Political Collide

“… 3. For example, see Henry (2004), Lewis et al (2019), and Sanghera and Thapar-Björkert (2008). In suggestions for how causal social scientists may show respect for subjects, Frazer (2020) noted collaboration with “experts on the local culture or experts on cross-cultural understanding.” Underlying this suggestion is an assumption about the cultural location of the causal social scientist as non-local. In highlighting the opportunities that randomized controlled trials offer, Naritomi et al (2020) suggested that they facilitate collaboration between Northern researchers, “who have more resources,” and Southern researchers, who “have knowledge about locally relevant constraints to development processes and locally feasible interventions.” This binary misses the perspective of researchers based at Global North institutions for whom locations in the Global South are both field and home.…”

Ethics, Epistemology, and Openness in Research with Human Participants

“…Interpretivist approaches draw on decidedly different epistemological commitments, with correspondingly distinct logics of inquiry, openness, and explanation (Frazer 2020). Many scholars who engage in ethnography, for instance, have a sensibility focused on the nuances of meaning and meaning making and seek to chronicle aspects of lived experience (Wedeen 2010).…”