The special issue on ethical challenges in ethnographic research involving cognitively impaired older adults has now been finalized and published by Elsevier (Journal of Aging Studies). We hope it will be a valuable resource for ethnographers preparing for – or already conducting – ethnographic fieldwork which involves older adults living with dementia or other cognitively impairing conditions. It will also be of interest to academic teachers who supervise gerontologically sensitive ethnographic research as well as to members of research governing bodies interested in improving ways ethics is “done”, taught and regulated.
We have brought together stories of ethnographers working in various countries and institutional contexts and thus also within various bureaucratic ethical regimes. On one hand, such a selection sensitizes the readers to the ways in which forms of ethics governance may both generate and overlook ethical tensions that researchers encounter before, during and after fieldwork with cognitively impaired older participants. On the other hand, this special issue offers new conceptual and methodological tools that will help researchers navigate ethical conundrums generated (or not predicted) by the regimes of research ethics within which their own research is situated.
To read the Editorial for Special Issue, click here (free access only until 11 October, please download and share before this date!): https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1lelz3AT7ieDj8. To read the remaining articles- if you do not have institutional access, please contact individual authors to obtain a preprint copy.
This special issue is a new initiative of the Ethics Lab – interdisciplinary research community and collaborative space where ethics of ethnographic dementia research is analytically attended to and debated rather than preformulated or imposed. More about the Ethics Lab of the EASA´s AGENET under this link: https://ageneteasa.wordpress.com/ethics-collective/.