The Times of Caring in a Nuclear World: Sculpture, Contamination and Stillness

Care takes time. Caring, whether with, for, or about a living being or entity that is more-than-human, disrupts expectations of how a linear, human time should progress. To practice care for the contaminated, the lands, waters, and animate life altered by human industry, is to extend that indeterminacy into distant, deeper time. Aesthetic representation of the affective and ethical dimensions of care, in this extreme, offers an experience that can transfer the arguments about nuclear contamination into more nuanced and sensed responses and contributes to current thinking about care in the arts worlds. I was commissioned to make a sculpture exhibition in 2020 as part of an anthropological study into the future of the Sellafield nuclear site in West Cumbria, UK. The exhibition, ‘x = 2140. In the coming 120 years, how can humans decide to dismantle, remember and repair the lands called Sellafield?’, consisted of three sculptural ‘fonts’ which engaged with ideas of knowledge production, nuclear technologies, and the affective dimensions of care about/for/with the contaminated lands and waters. This article presents my intentions for the sculptures in their context of a nuclear-dependent locale: to engage with the experience of nuclear futures without adversarial positioning; to explore the agential qualities of the more-than-human; and to create a stillness expressive of the relationality of the human and the contaminated through which one could fathom what care might feel like. These intentions are alongside theories of time, aesthetics, and care across disciplines: care and relational ethics, science and technology studies, and nuclear culture.

Navigating Ethical Quandaries with Close Personal Contacts in Qualitative Research

There are a variety of ethical situations that qualitative communication researchers must navigate. This point is especially true when the research involves close personal contacts, such as friends and family members. In order to problematize the ethical frameworks that guide qualitative inquiry and illuminate the complexities of relational ethics, we—the authors—reflected on our past experiences engaging in research with close personal contacts. Specifically, we took a collaborative autoethnographic approach that involved sharing personal stories, drafting autoethnographic narratives, and engaging in individual and collaborative sensemaking. In doing so, we highlight the following three quandaries specific to conducting research with close personal contacts: (1) challenging/affirming identity anchors, (2) challenging/affirming power relations, and (3) challenging/affirming ownership. We explicate each of these themes using autoethnographic vignettes and conclude by offering five lessons learned of relational ethics, which are organized using the phases of qualitative research: conceptualization and design, data collection, and representation.

My dear diaries: Following, valuing and reflecting on moments with research materials

This article explores how solicited paper diaries, and the accompanying materials, are carefully handled over the course of one research project. It foregrounds the value of attending to mundane moments with research materials, by tracing tangible material encounters together with intimate fieldnote reflections. Through drawing upon theories of materiality with feminist and relational ethics of care, this article centralises paper diaries as a key mediator of relationships and care within research. It considers the micro processes of choosing diaries, posting them, receiving and storing them and tracing the emotionally charged moments as a researcher in everyday research situations. Such reflections, from the perspective of the researcher, look to offer insights into research relationalities and care. It argues that these momentary fieldwork reflections extend understandings of material methodologies by emphasising relational intimacies as a researcher and connects material and sensory understandings with feminist ethics of care and researcher reciprocities.

TOWARDS OPERATIONALIZING WHITE MALE ACCOUNTABILITY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT INTERROGATING IMPACTS OF AND SOLUTIONS TO OVERREPRESENTATION UTILIZING RELATIONAL ETHICS FRAMEWORKS

Numerical metrics demonstrate that white men are demographically overrepresented in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology development, research, and media coverage. This overrepresentation creates immediate and downstream harms that corporations and technologists in industry and the academy alike must contend with to ensure the creation of AI technologies, AI development organizations, and AI research institutions that are ethical, fair, accountable, transparent, and beneficial to all people. After defining the problem of overrepresentation and exploring why this problem is vital to address, this paper will posit a two-pronged theoretical solution to be implemented: (1) increasing white male accountability in AI technology spaces and (2) moving away from an underlying utilitarian or deontological ethical foundation and towards a relational ethical foundation. Using that theoretical analysis the paper will then present a model for taking this two-pronged theoretical solution from theory into practice by providing specific recommendations for operationalizing the proposed framework at the levels of AI technology development.

Chinese Philosophy of Life, Relational Ethics and the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper investigates the relation between different models of ethics and their impact upon crises solution strategies. Because COVID-19 is a global-scale crisis, it has to be solved on the global level. In this framework, it is important to consider knowledge and ethical theories from different cultures. The paper outlines some theoretical groundworks for alternative models of social ethics from the perspective of traditional Chinese, particularly Confucian, philosophies. Among other issues, this perspective is meaningful because in the Sinitic areas the pandemic has so far been brought under control much quicker and more effectively than in other regions of the world. First, the paper introduces the Chinese philosophy of life and highlights its current relevance; then, it presents traditional Chinese models of relational and anti-essentialist concepts of the self and investigates their impact to the Confucian models of social ethics. On this basis, it illuminates some new ways of understanding interpersonal and intercultural interactions that might help us develop new strategies against current and future pandemics.

Ethics in Forced Migration Research: Taking Stock and Potential Ways Forward

Migration research poses particular ethical challenges because of legal precarity, the criminalization and politicization of migration, and power asymmetries. This paper analyzes these challenges in relation to the ethical principles of voluntary, informed consent; protection of personal information; and minimizing harm. It shows how migration researchers — including those outside of academia — have attempted to address these ethical issues in their work, including through the recent adoption of a Code of Ethics by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM). However, gaps remain, particularly in relation to the intersection of procedural and relational ethics; specific ethical considerations of big data and macrocomparative analyses; localized meanings of ethics; and oversight of researchers collecting information outside of institutional ethics boards. The paper concludes with the following recommendations: Institutional Research Ethics Boards should familiarize themselves with the particular ethical challenges in migration research, as well as available resources, such as the IASFM Code of Ethics. Ethics boards should include researchers and community representatives who are familiar with migration in reviews of related projects. Academic and training programs in migration studies should include sessions and resources on migration-specific research ethics. Nonacademic organizations, including migrant-led organizations, should provide information resources and training to their staff and clients to ensure that they understand procedural ethics requirements, relational ethical principles, as well as the rights of those asked to participate in research. Organizations conducting their own research should establish ethics review processes and relational ethics norms. A leading migration studies center or institution should map existing ethical guidelines and processes in different countries and contexts to be better aware of overlap and gaps. This mapping should take the form of an open access, interactive database, so that information can be accessible and updated in real time. Researchers should engage in more dissemination of lessons learned on ethics in migration. While there is some emerging consensus on key ethical principles for migration research, it is in their application that researchers face dilemmas. Honest reflection and sharing of these experiences will help researchers to anticipate and manage similar dilemmas they encounter while undertaking research. Researchers at all stages of their careers should not undertake migration research without having first reviewed some of the literature on ethics and migration, which is partially cited in this paper. Research centers should facilitate dialogue on ethical issues in languages other than English, particularly languages most spoken by people in migration, and by people who are underrepresented in formal ethics processes and debates, especially those with direct experience of migration.

The importance of people and place

This ecofeminist-inspired research study, influenced by an ethic of care, engaged the participants in photo-elicitation and interviews. Ecofeminism originated as a theory and movement related to women and the environment (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia, 2018), while an ethic of care stems from relational ethics that assumes human connectedness in context (Clement, 1996; Noddings, 2013). Thematic and visual narrative analysis of collected data supported the establishment of findings. The study aimed to contribute to the idea that a place-based approach can be taken to developing a holistic, meaningful and balanced local curriculum – one that privileges a ‘sense of place’ and the relationship between humans and their environments as co-habitors.