Makten över kunskapsproduktionen

Den institutionaliserade etikprövningen och humanistisk och kulturvetenskaplig forskning

Abstract

The debate on research ethics in general and on institutionalized ethical examination by ethical review boards, as well as the possible need for specific guidelines and an ethical review processes based on a humanistic cultural studies practice in particular, has been initiated relatively late in Sweden. Only recently have scholars working within the fields of humanistic and cultural studies begun discussing ethical vetting and ethical review boards in relation to their own research fields, methods and research projects. In this article I discuss the problems with an ethical review process that is permeated by biomedical discourse and practice by displaying how I tried to resist and negotiate the standardized research ethics rules in the ethical review of a project about and with Jewish women and their history and cultural heritage. The empirical sources are the materials that were created during the ethical review process; for example, instructions, protocols, correspondence and notes from telephone conversations with the Ethical Review Board. I describe my attempts to conduct a dialogue with the Ethical Review Board about how the terms “anonymization” and “sensitive information”, as well as “risks and harms”, are understood and handled in a different way within oral history than in the research field of biomedical research, which is the norm in the standardized ethical examination, and what problems this may entail.