An ode to caring and qualitative research written in January
2016!
Once upon a time when I was early on in my work as a teacher
of qualitative research, I created a little table to help students understand
the relationship of inside and outside/subjectivity and ethics. It looked like this:
Self
|
Other
|
Subjectivity
(Values, beliefs, assumptions)
|
Access
(Acceptance)
|
Role
(Behaviour)
|
Ethics
(Permission)
|
I was hoping it would help them to see the complexity of the
problem and the ways that self is interacting with other in one-to-one and
institutional contexts. This table shows
up on pg 40 of Qualitative Research
Design for Software Users by diGregorio and Davidson—2008.
The development of my table came about as qualitative
researchers were making the adjustment to being considered part of the whole
Institutional Review Board (IRB) apparatus, and, concurrent with that the
growth of the IRB within higher education and non-profit institutions.
I am thinking that a similar table might be useful to help
students see the relationship that caring has to social justice, and this idea
coincides with another thought (see following paragraph)…
I recently got a request from an administrator to provide
information on the ways ethics and ethical issues were presented in the classes
I teach. My response was that in
qualitative research, ethical concerns are always present and always part of
our thinking. It is there from the start
and continues to be part of the discussion through all phases of the work. Being asked this question forced me to
respond to one thing that had been bugging me about qualitative research
textbooks—the one little chapter or section about ethics…sometimes sitting near
the beginning and sometimes near the end of the book and the one little section
on reflexivity with participants—also sitting out alone somewhere in the text
and the one little section on critical theory approaches that always really
grabs students, who, in my experience care an awful lot about the impact of
their work.
It seems to me that caring (or lack of caring) is part of
subjectivity in the individual researcher…and this is the necessary starting
point for an approach to research that is respectful of the other in all its
forms.
The Caring Self/Researcher
|
The Cared for Other
|
Individual researcher
|
Individual participant
|
Community of researchers (team, advisors)
|
Community of participants (interviewees, observed)
|
Institutional context;
university, NGO
|
Institutional context; school,
community agency, business
|
Disciplinary context: Field,
Communities of researchers addressing this issue, professional organizations
|
? : Education, Umbrella
Organizations
|
Care is the individual and interactive expression of social
justice; social justice then is the
policy and political face of care.
Care is understood in the way we deal with others as beings
(whether persons, groups, or other grouping) that are personally connected to
us. Social justice is the way we resolve
to make our ideas programmatic, legal, visible to the world.
Caring is a stance.
Social justice is a politically enacted response to that stance.
What is the opposite of caring? What is an uncaring stance? An uncaring stance is one where the
motivation or perspective is selfishly motivated for personal gain—a kind of
gain that could be economic, political, or social. Uncaring seeks to put oneself above
others. Uncaring cannot share. Uncaring is ultimately the basis of inauthenticity. One cannot be authentic (and genuinely
reflexive) if one is uncaring.
One can be blind, uninformed, or ignorant and still be
caring…ignorant but uncaring contains the seeds of negotiation, understanding,
and promise. But if one were ignorant
and uncaring, there would be no possibility of understanding. In that case, social justice will not be
served.
Just as I am arguing in an earlier blog that problem, not
philosophy, should be the starting point of a qualitative research
inquiry. Here I am arguing that caring
should be the starting point of a qualitative research inquiry. If caring (about the problem, the people, the
context) is present, then social justice will be worked out through that
stance.
