What Ethical Issues Does Ethnography Raise? How Might We Deal with These? Essay Example

Ethics can be defined as a “set of moral principles and beliefs that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity” with its main principle of doing ‘good’ and preventing harm (Oxford Dictionaries: 2011). However Orb et al (2002:93) states that Ethical issues can best be described or expressed as the “tension between the aims of research to make generalizations for the good of others, and the rights of participants to maintain privacy.” Ethical issues and moral dilemmas are seen to arise in almost any type of research concerning human participants; in quantitative, biomedical, psychological, anthropological and sociological research. The infringement of some ethical issues which arise are considered to be more serious than others; however in order to minimise these ethical dilemmas, researchers must follow and obey a strict set of ethical guidelines in order to protect and minimise harm caused to participants or research subjects. Urie Bronfenbrenner suggests that there is no way of conducting research without breaching the principles of professional ethics, and that the only way of avoiding such dilemmas is to cease the conduct of any research (Fine 1993:267). Clearly there a variety of differing ethical dilemmas which occur in research, however those which arise in ethnographic research are in complete contrast to those ethical dilemmas raised in biomedical or quantitative research, where some might suggest that ethical problems are greater (Alder et al 1986). Punch (1994) goes further in suggesting that qualitative studies such as ethnography rarely, if ever, raise ethical issues (Orb 2000:93); however this statement is heavily debated. This essay aspires to discuss and analyse the ethical issues which arise in ethnography and discuss how valid and harmful these issues really are. The paper will also seek to discuss how researchers may overcome these ethical dilemmas and as to whether they are really effective means to dealing with the issue.