Traditionally, social research is represented as a neutral (objective) search for
knowledge as an entity, for which claims of ‘reliability’, ‘validity’ and
‘credibility’ may be made if the researcher follows prescribed techniques of
inquiry. From this perspective, techniques of inquiry may cause harm to
informants who are subjected to the process of inquiry. Therefore, ethical
research is about the legal and moral protection of subjects from the
researcher's techniques of inquiry. The research relationship is constituted as
one between ‘powerful researcher’ and ‘powerless researched’. Alternative views
which foreground the researcher (and informants’) subjectivities as positioned
sites of power challenge the unitary identities of ‘more powerful researcher’
and ‘less powerful researched’. In this paper I show through reflection on my
PhD research, how the identities of ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ are fluid,
dynamic relations of power, by which ‘knowledge’ is achieved through processes
of negotiation and access to ‘sites of knowledge/power’. From this perspective,
knowledge is not an entity for which definitive claims of ‘reliability’,
‘validity’ and ‘credibility’ can be made. Nor are ‘research ethics’ simply the
responsibility of the researcher but instead are complex and shifting
micropractices of power/knowledge between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’.
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