Researching the Powerful: A Call for the Reconstruction of Research Ethics

This article analyses the contradictions that arise when the widely accepted ethical principles we use as social researchers are applied in the context of researching the powerful. It does so in order to encourage a debate about how we might reconstruct a workable ethical framework in the context of ‘studying up’. This article draws on prolonged debates on the relevance and appropriateness of ethical codes, exploring how the concepts and the guidelines that codify them might be reframed. The people thus analyses the dominant ethical principles adopted in professional codes of conduct, foregrounding a twin obsession with professional (the social scientist) and institutional (the university) autonomy that hampers the development of a research ethics that meaningfully contributes to enhancing the public or common interest. Instead, we argue for a reconstruction of social science research ethics based on a collectivist understanding of the ‘public interest’ that is not exclusively defined for and by the academy but connects to all groups interested in knowing about the closed-off worlds of the powerful.