残障研究方法与研究伦理Barnes-disability-research-ethics.pdfVIP

An Ethical Agenda in Disability Research: rhetoric or reality? Colin Barnes (This is the penultimate draft of an article that appears in: Mertens, D. M. and Ginsberg P. E. (eds.) 2008: The Handbook of Social Research Ethics, London: Sage, pp. 458 – 473). Introduction Over recent years there has been a growing interest in the ethics of social research (Hammersley 1999). This is especially pertinent to studies that are considered overtly politically motivated and challenge conventional notions of objectivity, the elimination of bias and academic freedom (Humphries, Mertens and Truman, 2000: 3). A particular case in point is disability research. Inspired by the writings of disabled activists and scholars in the 1980s and 90s the emancipatory turn in social research has had a particularly important influence on disability researchers in the UK. The emergent critique of conventional wisdom and ways of theorising disability was extended to mainstream social research. The shift from explaining disability solely in terms of individual pathology to the ways in which environmental and cultural barriers effectively exclude people with accredited impairments1 from every day life was especially influential. Indeed, this socio-political, or social model of disability, approach has stimulated the adoption of a more justifiable emancipatory research paradigm that draws explicitly upon disabled people’s collective experience and so challenges directly the widespread social oppression of disabled people. This chapter will review key issues in the emergence of emancipatory disability research with particular reference to the British literature. It begins with a brief discussion of research ethics in relation to the emergent critique of traditional ways of researching disability, particularly its theoretical standpoint and the disempowering role of research experts. Second, attention centres on the key features of ethical or emancipatory disability resea