Vanguard Actors: The role of researchers in the emergence of ethics review procedures in the social sciences in Europe

The convergence of bureaucratic systems in higher education is fueled by a variety of actors. However, academics in their roles as researchers are typically conceptualized as recipients or resisters. In this paper we study an instance of non-convergence—the slow, scattered, and sparse emergence of ethics review procedures for social science in Europe—and identify the role of researchers in movement towards convergence. We examine the actors, pressures, and actions that lead to the emergence of ethics review procedures for social science research in three theoretically sampled countries—Denmark, Finland, and France. Contrary to established theory we do not observe change emanating from states, professional associations, or intermediary organizations. Instead, we show that pockets of researchers sought out, created, and expanded ethics review procedures for social science. We conceptualize these researchers as vanguard actors: members of a profession who seek out practices that will allow them to continue their work in a changing environment and expand it to include new audiences, methodologies, phenomena, resources, and collaborators. In establishing new practices that ensure the viability of their work, vanguard actors are a distributed, unintentional, bottom-up engine of practice change. We contribute to the literature on the convergence of forms and practices in higher education by showing how vanguard actors are distributed points of action that organize movement towards convergence as they engage in their daily research work. We enlarge understandings of professions and stratification by showing how practicing members, operating as vanguard actors, create profession-level changes in practices. Finally, we complicate critical conversations about ethics review procedures in social sciences by calling attention to the heterogeneity of researchers, including those who understand ethics review procedures to be a resource.