Ethical and Methodological Dilemmas in Social Science Interventions

This book develops an understanding of researchers' engagements with their subjects as a generative mode of knowledge production that takes place between researchers and their research fields. It promotes the idea that rather than value neutrality, caring may be helpful when a researcher makes suggestions for improvement and constructs interventions. The authors reflect on questions such as how researchers take can sides without taking a fundamental principle of action for granted. What tensions and obstacles do researchers meet while they strive to engage carefully? How do careful engagements affect academic work and output? What inequalities are produced especially when there is funding involved in the research? The contributions discuss a range of topics including responsibility (and response-ability), collaboration, proximity, ethics, bodily entanglements, values, and affective attachments in social research. The book brings together an impressive team of international researchers from different disciplines to nuance the discussion and provides a rich collection of empirical studies from healthcare, urban planning, environmental science, participatory design, and museums, among others.
This is a very topical volume for all social and behavioural scientists engaging in research, particularly those engaged in ethnographic research.