Abstract This paper critically interrogates the role of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) as ‘research ethics’ within the context of contemporary university-based social science research. While IRBs are ostensibly tasked with safeguarding ethical standards and participant welfare, I posit that they often reduce ethics to a perfunctory exercise as a move to innocence, serving as mechanisms […]
As a visual qualitative researcher, I believe in the value of methods that include images, such as photos, in the production and interpretation of knowledge (Glaw, Inder, Kable, & Hazelton, 2017). Photovoice in particular—a participatory visual qualitative method in which people take pictures to identify, discuss, and address their challenges (Wang & Burris, 1997)—changed my […]
Introduction The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) Code of Research Ethics and Guidelines sets forth the principles and ethical standards that underlie professional responsibilities doing visual research from a diversity of cultures, disciplinary orientations and methodological approaches, including but not limited to multi-national professions: sociology, anthropology, communications, art, history. These principles and standards should be […]
Photovoice is often conceptualised separately from the broader agenda to decolonise methodologies. To address this conceptual problem, this paper critically examines the academic literature on both photovoice and decolonising methodologies. Drawing from insights from decolonising scholarship, it proposes a conceptual framework consisting of three interconnected principles to decolonise photovoice practice. Principle one involves cultivating a […]
In the past decade, the global health community has recognized and increasingly challenged unfair knowledge practices to address epistemic injustice within the field. Bhakuni and Abimbola frame epistemic injustice as “pervasive wrongs related to knowledge production, use, and circulation in global health.” Structural barriers within academic publishing have resulted in perpetuating harmful power hierarchies in […]
Traditionally, the academic community has prioritized the academic value of research over its social impact and relevance. About a decade ago, a study estimated that up to 85% of biomedical research was avoidably wasted. This study highlighted that a key factor contributing to research waste was the limited utility and relevance of research for interest-holders, […]
Abstract The field of planetary health ethics is beginning to emerge. This commentary represents a preliminary effort to articulate ethical principles for planetary health by considering three domains: (1) non‐sentient nature, (2) non‐human animals, and (3) human beings. The paper gives special attention to Japanese traditions and concepts as a possible basis for broader ethical […]
Abstract This article proposes a cosmopolitan theory of global health ethics based on reconciliatory solidarity at both local and global levels. The proposed theory provides the ethical and empirical grounds for the moral imperative of global health solidarity that is often called on today. Reconciliatory solidarity requires that a people/nation-state address the historical injustice and […]
Severe threats to the health of humans and other species derive from degradation of Earth’s life-support systems, particularly the impacts of climate change. Researchers and practitioners in clinical medicine, public health, global health, and One Health are increasingly focusing on these risks to planetary health, which include (but are not limited to) rising temperatures, extreme […]
Following widespread criticism, so-called poverty porn, which usually appears in the guise of photographs featuring people in extreme states of suffering, is now largely discouraged in contemporary ethical communications guidelines, because it reduces people to decontextualised, suffering, and racialised bodies. Does this reduction mean that such biased imagery is a thing of the past? Alarmingly, this […]