Situational and relational ethics

Relational and situational ethics locate a research participant’s position within the broader structural power relations of advanced capitalist societies and are sensitive to how this can impact on perceptions of truth and credibility. Because we are dealing with human relationships, objectivity and value neutrality are considered impossible and constructions of social reality (ontology) are understood within the context of oppressive power relations and intersections between different social identities (Barton, 2006). Asymmetries of power are also important in shaping ethical commit- ments and obligations. For the ethicist Dussel (2013), the researcher’s ethical responsibilities are tied to those participants who have the least power and/or ability to present an accurate representation of their lived realities.

Social and criminological researchers alike are tasked with the responsibility of illuminating the experiences of those people on the margins of society – those who have been exploited, dominated and oppressed. Epistemology should be directed to eliciting knowledge and understandings of worldviews that have been forgotten or erased in mainstream analysis. Significantly, for Dussel (2013) knowledge claims are shaped through the actual encounter (relationship) with the research participant. Rather than just being ‘virtuous hearers’, there is an ethical responsibility to move beyond existing ways of interpreting the world (ontologies) and to embrace the worldview of the Other (that is, the person who is considered as an outsider and does not belong in our sense of community and sometimes, in extreme circumstances, our ‘moral universe’ as someone who counts as a fellow human being). This process will always be aspirational and unfinished because it demands the continual search for new inclusionary visions of social reality which acknowledge difference and diversity whilst at the same time recognizing what we all share: a common humanity. The promoting of new epistemologies (knowledge claims) grounded in the ontological assumptions (worldview) of those placed on the margins of society is known in criminological research as the ‘view from below’ (Scraton, 2004; Sim et al., 1987).

The ‘view from below’ is a way of looking at the world through the eyes of those people who, because of social structures, have limited credibility or authority. It highlights the importance of hearing the voice of the poor, marginalized or disem- powered. It is central to the ethical and political priorities of critical criminology.

The ethical responsibilities placed on the researcher are much more than simply calculations of harm and utility, adherence to ethical guidelines, or developing excel- lent research skills and value judgements. For relational ethicists such as Dussel (2013) and McCormack (2014), the researcher has a responsibility to ensure that all are heard, even when words are not spoken. This means looking at the world through the eyes of the Other, adopting or translating their language, meanings and understandings, and trying to read any unexpected forms of communication (McCormack, 2014):

When words cannot be heard, the body becomes the only means of communication. Hunger strikes, silent marches and destruction or harm to the self can be political actions that make manifest the extreme violence and inequality of the ruling system, and thus the impossibility of communication and justice under the existing institutional parameters. (McCormack, 2014: 184)

Thus, self-harm and para-suicide (attempted self-inflicted deaths) in prison may be ways of trying to communicate the unspeakable and ungraspable pain and suffering generated by institutionally structured violence (Scott, 2016a). SIDs may well be a tragically sad way of expressing a prisoner’s ontology (reality) of prison life. The prison researcher therefore needs to learn to feel and understand the experience of otherness, to excavate silences, acknowledge that which is normally denied and attempt to translate into nar- rative form currently unarticulated stories of human life (McCormack, 2014).

Yet, for Dussel (2013), even this is still not enough to be considered an ethical researcher. The researcher must also show solidarity to sufferers by taking responsi- bility for the rebuilding of lives alongside a political commitment to transform existing asymmetrical power relations. The search for truth is essential but not a suf- ficient condition in itself to be ethical. As Haiven and Khasnabish (2014) argue, social researchers should stand alongside the dominated and exploited, locate them- selves as part of their struggle for justice and help to facilitate their critical and emancipatory potential for social transformation. In the spirit of the left-wing phi- losophy of ‘commonism’ (working with the common people, for common goals in the common interest), Haiven and Khasnabish (2014) maintain that social research should be a collective endeavour that we do with and for others. As such, the ethics and politics of criminological research intimately intertwine.