Comparative “Research”: A Modest Proposal concerning the Object of Ethics Regulation

Complementing the broader project of treating human subjects research regulation (including “informed consent”) as an ethnographic object, this article scrutinizes the category research: that about which research subjects may (in some way) be informed, to which they may (or may not) consent, and in which they may (variously) participate. What is “research”? When does it begin and end? What is the relationship between its demarcations as a regulatory object and its demarcations in the everyday practices of knowledge production? Federal research ethics regulations take for granted that research can be distinguished from nonresearch and subjected to distinctive constraints. The regulations also presume an idealized scientific method with predetermined spaces, times, personnel, and procedures. Although such clarity is difficult for many kinds of human subjects research, it is impossible for ethnographic fieldwork. A modest proposal is offered concerning with whom ethnographers might make common cause. [definition of research; social and behavioral research ethics; participant-observation; new ethnographic objects; IRBs; audit culture; libel by fiction]