Accomplishing Ethics‐Work as a Generic Social Process

Existing systems of university research ethics are often criticized by those in the qualitative research tradition. A common thread is that ethics cannot be fully anticipated before the research begins, as is expected by most institutional review boards. This is because learning about the ethical priorities of a group must happen emergently, alongside the discovery of other concepts and patterns in our analyses. As such, we introduce the concept of a grounded and processual notion of “ethics‐work” that happens in ways not well captured in formal ethical applications to research ethics boards. To best explore the dynamics of these sometimes clandestine aspects of ethics‐work, we make use of Robert Prus' generic social process framework. Developing a research agenda to study ethics‐work as a social process, we invite others to reflect on their own ethical negotiations in the field and provide lessons for others. Our aim is to move closer to an approach to ethical engagements that are more realistic, flexible, adaptable, and grounded within community contexts.