Organizing and Contesting Research Ethics

Abstract

The machinery of research ethics oversight has grown in size, disciplinary ambit, and geographical reach over the last 50 years, generating overlapping patterns of regulation, statements, and guidelines that operate at supranational, national, local, community, discipline, topic, and institutional levels. These documents generate intersections as well as leaving interstitial spaces as governments, research agencies, institutions, associations, and supranational bodies attempt to assert, extend, and sometimes deny their authority over particular practices. While commentators have noted the widening control and intensification of the gaze that has occurred, the nature of, philosophical and actuarial support for, and the effectiveness of this oversight have been contested by researchers, research institutions, and communities of participants.