Abstracts
Abstract
Most research ethics literature on vulnerability focuses on the vulnerability of individuals and populations defined by the potential vulnerability of their members (such as adults with intellectual disabilities or prisoners). However, research involving human participants does not always take the individual as the unit of analysis: political experiments may apply an intervention to a community as a whole. This paper argues that community-level vulnerability is not reducible to the sum of the vulnerabilities of community members, and that there is thus a need to consider vulnerability at the community level of analysis when analyzing the ethical implications of political field experiments. I first review ethical literature on community intervention research and the emerging scholarship on the ethics of political field experiments. I then highlight key accounts of the concept of vulnerability at an individual level. Drawing on Whitfield’s concept of “collective wrongs,” I argue that communities can be negatively affected in ways that are distinct from harms to individual community members, and that variation in susceptibility to such wrongs at the community level is largely consistent with existing conceptualizations of vulnerability. I suggest questions that researchers should consider when designing political field experiments to ensure that community-level vulnerabilities are taken into account.
Keywords:
- vulnerability,
- policy experiments,
- field experiments,
- research ethics,
- communities
Résumé
La plupart des documents relatifs à l’éthique de la recherche sur la vulnérabilité s’intéressent à la vulnérabilité des individus et des populations définies par la vulnérabilité potentielle de leurs membres (comme les adultes souffrant de déficiences intellectuelles ou les prisonniers). Cependant, la recherche impliquant des sujets humains ne prend pas toujours l’individu comme unité d’analyse : les expériences politiques de terrain peuvent appliquer une intervention à une communauté dans son ensemble. Cet article soutient que la vulnérabilité au niveau de la communauté n’est pas réductible à la somme des vulnérabilités des membres d’une communauté, et qu’il est donc nécessaire de considérer la vulnérabilité au niveau de l’analyse de la communauté lors de l’analyse des implications éthiques des expériences politiques sur le terrain. Je passe d’abord en revue la littérature éthique sur la recherche d’intervention communautaire et la recherche émergente sur l’éthique des expériences de terrain politiques. Je mets ensuite en évidence les principaux comptes rendus du concept de vulnérabilité au niveau individuel. En m’appuyant sur le concept de « torts collectifs » de Whitfield, je soutiens que les communautés peuvent être affectées négativement de manière distincte des torts causés aux membres individuels de la communauté, et que la variation de la susceptibilité à de tels torts au niveau de la communauté est largement conforme aux conceptualisations existantes de la vulnérabilité. Je suggère des questions que les chercheurs peuvent prendre en considération lors de la conception d’expériences politiques sur le terrain afin de s’assurer que les vulnérabilités au niveau communautaire sont prises en compte.
Mots-clés :
- vulnérabilité,
- expériences politiques,
- expériences de terrain,
- éthique de la recherche,
- communautés
Appendices
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