Reflecting on Ethics Through Self-Reflexivity

Abstract

What happens when anthropological research concentrating on negotiations of ethics and morality itself creates moments of ethical and moral reflection for its participants? How might we think through and conceptualize the responsibility of the researcher if this were the case? My research on plagiarism and fraud addressed and perhaps interpellated people as subjects of ethics and morality by inviting them to deliberate on their ethical and moral positions. In this short essay, I reflect on that moment of invitation by referring to Butler’s notion of “giving an account of oneself.” This reflection illuminates how accounting for one’s position relates to ethics as well as connecting research ethics as a methodological issue to theoretically problematizing ethics and morality in anthropology.