Researching Architecture and Urban Inequality: Toward Engaged Ethics

Abstract

This paper reflects on approaches to conducting “ethical research” on architecture and urban (in)equality in cities in the global south. It focuses on two themes: the formalization of institutional ethics procedures and protocols for conducting such research, and the need to move away from ethical frameworks that emerge from western structures for knowledge production. The paper will question whether ethical principles are universal or specific, and how they affect the possibility of knowledge co-production and its potential to generate pathways to urban equality. These questions arise from the history of contemporary research ethics procedures, which are rooted in the social norms of western modernity that views researchers and research participants as “autonomous individuals.” The paper will suggest that exploring the relation of the individual to the collective and understanding social existence as relationality, is fundamental in formulating an alternative type of ethics methodology.

Keywords:

• research ethics
• knowledge co-production
• inequality
• relationality
• situated ethics
• engaged ethics

Notes

1. KNOW – Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality. https://www.urban-know.com.

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3. See for example Nathan Emmerich, “From Phrónēsis to Habitus: Synderesis and the Practice(s) of Ethics and Social Research,” in Virtue Ethics in the Conduct and Governance of Social Science Research (Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity, Volume 3), ed. N. Emmerich (Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018).

4. Tula Brannelly, “An Ethics of Care Research Manifesto,” International Journal of Care and Caring 2, no. 3 (2018): 367–368.

5. See for example Richard Chenhall, Kate Senior, and Suzanne Belton, “Negotiating Human Research Ethics: Case Noted from Anthropologists in the Field,” Anthropology Today 27, no. 5 (2011): 13–17; P. Ramcharan and J. R. Cutcliffe, “Judging the Ethics of Qualitative Research: Considering the ‘Ethics as Process’ Model,” Health and Social Care in the Community 9, no. 6 (2001): 358–366; Marilys Guillemin and Lynn Gillam, “Ethics, Reflexivity, and ‘Ethically Important Moments’ in Research,” Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 2 (2004): 261–280; Klaus Hoeyer, Lisa Dahlager, and Niels Lynöe, “Conflicting Notions of Research Ethics: The Mutually Challenging Traditions of Social Scientists and Medical Researchers,” Social Science and Medicine, (2005): 1741–1749.

6. Chenhall, Senior, and Belton, “Negotiating Human Research Ethics,” 17.

7. Catriona Mackenzie, Christopher McDowell, and Eileen Pittaway, “Beyond ‘Do No Harm’: The Challenge of Constructing Ethical Relationships in Refugee Research,” Journal of Refugee Studies 20, no. 2 (2007): 300.

8. See for example Kelly-Jo Bluen, Extraction, Expropriation, Erasure? Knowledge Production in International Relations (London: Millenium: Journal of International Studies Annual Conference, 2019).

9. Sarah Banks et al., “Everyday Ethics in Community-Based Participatory Research,” Contemporary Social Science 8, no. 3 (2013): 263.

10. Guillemin and Gillam, “Ethics, Reflexivity, and ‘Ethically Important Moments’ in Research.”

11. L. L. Wynn and Mark Israel, “The Fetishes of Consent: Signatures, Paper, and Writing in Research Ethics Review,” American Anthropologist 120, no. 4 (2018): 795–806.

12. Mackenzie, McDowell, and Pittaway, “Beyond ‘Do No Harm’,” 306.

13. Alasdair C. MacIntyre, “Review of The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, by Albert Jonsen and Stephan Toulmin,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 28, no. 4 (2012): 634.

14. Albert Jonsen and Stephan Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 11.

15. Ibid., 13–14.

16. Ibid., 18.

17. Albert R. Jonsen, “Strong on Specification,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 25, no. 3 (2000): 350–352.

18. MacIntyre, “Review of The Abuse of Casuistry,” 634.

19. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 16.

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21. Georg Spielthenner, “The Casuistic Method of Practical Ethics,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37, no. 5 (2016): 425.

22. Ibid., 429.

23. Haidt and Joseph, “Intuitive Ethics,” 56.

24. Christie, Groarke, and Sweet, “Virtue Ethics as an Alternative,” 52.

25. Christopher Simon Wareham, “A Duty to Explore African Ethics?,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20, no. 4 (2017): 857–872; Haidt and Joseph, “Intuitive Ethics.”

26. Guillemin and Gillam, “Ethics, Reflexivity, and ‘Ethically Important Moments’,” 265.

27. Banks et al., “Everyday Ethics,” 266.

28. Fiona Robinson, The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 10.

29. H. Kögler, “Alienation as Epistemological Source,” Social Epistemology 11, no. 2 (1997): 149.

30. Thomas Osborne, “Bourdieu, Ethics and Reflexivity,” The Structure of Modern Cultural Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 106.

31. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 78.

32. Thomas Meisenhelder, “From Character to Habitus in Sociology,” Social Science Journal 43, no. 1 (2006): 64.

33. Robert Cantwell, “Habitus, Ethnomimesis: A Note on the Logic of Practice,” Journal of Folklore Research 36, no. 2 (1999): 219–234.

34. Emmerich, “From Phrónēsis to Habitus,” 205.

35. Ibid., 212.

36. Ibid., 210.

37. B. Hallen, A Short History of African Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe, “An African Conception of Human Rights? Comments on the Challenges of Relativism,” Human Rights Review 15, no. 3 (2014): 329–347.

38. See for example: John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969); Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Kwasi Wiredu, “An Oral Philosophy of Personhood: Comments on Philosophy and Orality,” Research in African Literatures 40, no. 1 (2009): 8–18; Leonard Tumaini Chuwa, African Indigenous Ethics in Global Bioethics (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014); Joseph Jinja Divala, “Re-Imaging a Conception of Ubuntu That Can Recreate Relevant Knowledge Cultures in Africa and African Universities,” Knowledge Cultures 4, no. 4 (2016): 90–103; Yusef Waghid, “Knowledge(s), Culture and African Philosophy,” Knowledge Cultures 4, no. 4 (2016): 11–17.

39. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 169.

40. Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity , 52.

41. For example, Segun Gbadegesin, African Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary African Realities (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity.

42. Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity, 60.

43. Oyowe, “An African Conception of Human Rights?,” 329–47; Bernard Matolino, Personhood in African Philosophy (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2014); Paulin J. Houtondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (London: Hutchinson University Library for Africa, 1983).

44. Uwaezuoke Precious Obioha, “Radical Communitarian Idea of the Human Person in African Philosophical Thought: A Critique,” The Western Journal of Black Studies 38, no. 1 (2014): 21.

45. Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe and Olga Yurkivska, “Can a Communitarian Concept of African Personhood Be Both Relational and Gender-Neutral?,” South African Journal of Philosophy 33, no. 1 (2014): 87.

46. Samuel J. Ujewe, “Ought-Onomy and Mental Health Ethics From ‘Respect for Personal Autonomy’ to ‘Preservation of Person-in-Community’ in African Ethics,” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 25 no. 4 (2018): 58.

47. Patrick Hanks, “Do Word Meanings Exist?,” Language Resources and Evaluation 34, no. 1–2 (2000): 205.

48. Friederike Moltmann, “Natural Language and Its Ontology,” in Metaphysics and Cognitive Science, ed. Alvin I. Goldman and Brian P. McLaughlin (Dordrecht: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2019), 228.

49. Philipp Cimiano et al., “The Role of Senses in the Ontology-Lexicon,” in New Trends of Research in Ontologies and Lexical Resources: Ideas, Projects, Systems, ed. Alessandro Oltramari et al. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 45.

50. Ibid.

51. Carli Coetzee, “Ethical?! Collaboration?! Keywords for Our Contradictory Times,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 6815 (2019): 7.

52. Diego Velázquez artist QS:P170,Q297 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Las_Meninas,_by_Diego_Velázquez,_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg), “Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, from Prado in Google Earth,” marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-old.

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the KNOW program, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, grant ID ES/P011225/1.

Notes on contributors

Yael Padan

Yael Padan is a researcher working in the interface of architecture, planning, cultural studies and sociology. She holds a PhD in sociology, an MSc in architectural history, and a professional qualification as an architect. Her book Modelscapes of Nationalism: Collective Memories and Future Visions (2017) was published with Amsterdam University Press. Yael is currently a Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, working at KNOW – Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality, an international research program which aims to address the challenge of achieving urban equality in cities in the global south. (https://www.urban-know.com).