Ethical Considerations for Research and Practice in the Human Sciences, edited by Mila Tuli and Bhavna Negi (2024) and published by Information Age Publishing, offers a comprehensive and timely reflection on the ethical, epistemological and practical dimensions of research in the human sciences as they unfold within contemporary research landscapes and human contexts. The volume comes together as a dialogue among the authors across thirteen chapters grouped into three sections, which collectively succeed in mapping what it means to engage ethically in Human Science research today and highlight the blind spots that researchers are called to bring into focus in doing so. The opening chapter sets the epistemological ground for the volume by interrogating the very notion of “knowing” in the social sciences. Framing research as a ‘Quest to Know’, it foregrounds intersubjectivity, reflexivity, and epistemic care, while critically questioning the hegemony of established research practices. The second chapter extends this reflection by deepening the concept of ‘Putting on Other People's Shoes’ in social inquiry, emphasizing the potential to foster solidarity, tolerance, and pluralism. The third chapter argues for expanding ethics beyond standardized institutional prescriptions. It contests the overemphasis on empiricism and procedural compliance, calling for a restoration of knowledge's primacy through grounded reflections of cultural and contextual aspects of the studied phenomena, and for extending ethical responsibility across all phases of the research process. The second section of the book starts with a focus on ethical accountability within qualitative research. This chapter challenges methodological neutrality and foregrounds researcher’s interpretive role. Ethical dilemmas are presented not as exceptions, but as intrinsic to qualitative inquiry itself. The fifth chapter discusses ethical responsibility of researching in times of crisis through reflections on research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting how ethical attention should be used all along the research process, from design to interpretation. A culturally situated rethinking of research obligations is then offered in the sixth chapter through an ethnographic engagement grounded in the concept of dharma. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, it questions standardized notions of ethics, emphasizing responsibility, reciprocity, and care within researcher–participant relationships. Issues of scientific integrity and publication ethics are examined in the seventh chapter through authors’ works in Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa. The chapter foregrounds the structural inequalities shaping global academic publishing, addressing dilemmas related to originality, professional survival, and the pressure to conform to dominant epistemic frameworks. The final section of the book starts with a grounded discussion on ethics in an ethnographic practice dealing with families and children of an invisibilized community. The author critically discusses ethical dilemmas of trust, positionality and methodological flexibility in responsible research practice when representing silenced voices. Building on this, the following chapter provides reflections on the benefits of co-creating methods with research participants and the need of methodological adaptation to the field ‘Without a Road Map’, bringing experience working with marginalized communities in New Delhi. The tenth chapter focuses on the challenges faced in dealing with the complex and evolving nature of classrooms and researching with children. Ethical complexity when researching on sensitive topics, such as adolescents’ perceptions of abuse is instead addressed in the eleventh chapter. The authors foreground the complexity of this kind of inquiry, exploring challenges involving all parties and phases of a sensitive research phenomenon, such as consent, confidentiality, emotional responsibility, and the ethical importance of centering participants’ voices. The twelfth chapter examines the use of visual methods in social research, focusing on photography as both a methodological tool and an ethical challenge. Questions of representation, authorship, authenticity, and interpretive authority are central to this discussion. The volume concludes with a dialogical chapter which brings together reflections on ethics and social justice, highlighting the need for courage to embrace methodological relativism and forms of innovation capable of addressing ethical and research challenges beyond the standpoint of dominant Western epistemology. Bringing together scholars with diverse research and academic experiences, along with critical reflections, methodologies and contexts, the book co-constructs a multifaceted account of how ethics is embedded in the whole research process - what it means to do ethics, and, crucially, to be ethical in research. Considering micro and macro-levels of analysis, addressing both individual and political dynamics shaping research practice, the text also offers a broader critique of Western hegemonic epistemologies and methodologies. Drawing attention to the growing dominance of evidence-based paradigms at the expense of alternative, innovative, and culturally grounded directions, it exposes the limits of standardised ethics and critically advocates for contextually grounded, insight-driven research.
Mila Tuli and Bhavna Negi (Eds), Grounding Ethics: Review of Ethical Considerations for Research and Practice in the Human Sciences
Raffaele Modugno
2026
Abstract
Ethical Considerations for Research and Practice in the Human Sciences, edited by Mila Tuli and Bhavna Negi (2024) and published by Information Age Publishing, offers a comprehensive and timely reflection on the ethical, epistemological and practical dimensions of research in the human sciences as they unfold within contemporary research landscapes and human contexts. The volume comes together as a dialogue among the authors across thirteen chapters grouped into three sections, which collectively succeed in mapping what it means to engage ethically in Human Science research today and highlight the blind spots that researchers are called to bring into focus in doing so. The opening chapter sets the epistemological ground for the volume by interrogating the very notion of “knowing” in the social sciences. Framing research as a ‘Quest to Know’, it foregrounds intersubjectivity, reflexivity, and epistemic care, while critically questioning the hegemony of established research practices. The second chapter extends this reflection by deepening the concept of ‘Putting on Other People's Shoes’ in social inquiry, emphasizing the potential to foster solidarity, tolerance, and pluralism. The third chapter argues for expanding ethics beyond standardized institutional prescriptions. It contests the overemphasis on empiricism and procedural compliance, calling for a restoration of knowledge's primacy through grounded reflections of cultural and contextual aspects of the studied phenomena, and for extending ethical responsibility across all phases of the research process. The second section of the book starts with a focus on ethical accountability within qualitative research. This chapter challenges methodological neutrality and foregrounds researcher’s interpretive role. Ethical dilemmas are presented not as exceptions, but as intrinsic to qualitative inquiry itself. The fifth chapter discusses ethical responsibility of researching in times of crisis through reflections on research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting how ethical attention should be used all along the research process, from design to interpretation. A culturally situated rethinking of research obligations is then offered in the sixth chapter through an ethnographic engagement grounded in the concept of dharma. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, it questions standardized notions of ethics, emphasizing responsibility, reciprocity, and care within researcher–participant relationships. Issues of scientific integrity and publication ethics are examined in the seventh chapter through authors’ works in Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa. The chapter foregrounds the structural inequalities shaping global academic publishing, addressing dilemmas related to originality, professional survival, and the pressure to conform to dominant epistemic frameworks. The final section of the book starts with a grounded discussion on ethics in an ethnographic practice dealing with families and children of an invisibilized community. The author critically discusses ethical dilemmas of trust, positionality and methodological flexibility in responsible research practice when representing silenced voices. Building on this, the following chapter provides reflections on the benefits of co-creating methods with research participants and the need of methodological adaptation to the field ‘Without a Road Map’, bringing experience working with marginalized communities in New Delhi. The tenth chapter focuses on the challenges faced in dealing with the complex and evolving nature of classrooms and researching with children. Ethical complexity when researching on sensitive topics, such as adolescents’ perceptions of abuse is instead addressed in the eleventh chapter. The authors foreground the complexity of this kind of inquiry, exploring challenges involving all parties and phases of a sensitive research phenomenon, such as consent, confidentiality, emotional responsibility, and the ethical importance of centering participants’ voices. The twelfth chapter examines the use of visual methods in social research, focusing on photography as both a methodological tool and an ethical challenge. Questions of representation, authorship, authenticity, and interpretive authority are central to this discussion. The volume concludes with a dialogical chapter which brings together reflections on ethics and social justice, highlighting the need for courage to embrace methodological relativism and forms of innovation capable of addressing ethical and research challenges beyond the standpoint of dominant Western epistemology. Bringing together scholars with diverse research and academic experiences, along with critical reflections, methodologies and contexts, the book co-constructs a multifaceted account of how ethics is embedded in the whole research process - what it means to do ethics, and, crucially, to be ethical in research. Considering micro and macro-levels of analysis, addressing both individual and political dynamics shaping research practice, the text also offers a broader critique of Western hegemonic epistemologies and methodologies. Drawing attention to the growing dominance of evidence-based paradigms at the expense of alternative, innovative, and culturally grounded directions, it exposes the limits of standardised ethics and critically advocates for contextually grounded, insight-driven research.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
