Revisiting Ethics in Ethnographic Research with Children

Abstract

Ethics and methodologtj in ethnographic research are shaped and reshaped ln; the development of streams in anthropological discipline. For example relatively recent streams on child agency and hearing children's voices in research have resulted in reconsideration of ethical guidelines. In this paper I aim to show that ethical dilemmas in research with children are caused by general problems in research ethics that are tramped within 'age' categories or "adult-child" categories. Ethical issues in research with children are overemphasized in theon;, which is engendering unnecessan; complexities in practice. I claim that ethical principles should be the same for both children and adults. I suggest that the way children are seen as vulnerable and incompetent in even; day social life should not affect the way a researcher ethically conducts his or her research. Researchers use different methodological approaches based on the maturity, the level of'understanding' of researched subjects, which should not necessarily be based on 'child-adult' juxtaposition. The first part of this paper argues against considering ethical research with/on children as separate from research with adults. In the second part, based on my own fieldwork experience, I deal with unavoidable ethical dilemmas in ethnographic fieldwork in general without dividing research according to age categories.