“More important, good social research clearly demands a highly developed, ceaseless, daily engagement with ethics as a process—an engagement that far exceeds the requirements of currently existing “ethics committees” and “human-subjects protocols” on university campuses. It is increasingly clear that the conventional understanding of eth- ics as a code—rather than as a process, as we see it here—needs to be critically examined.”
Cerwonka and Malkki situate ethics as a key frame for their book project highlighting the pragmatic challenges and choices characteristic of fieldwork as they intersect with ethical issues (e.g., “Am I somehow misleading my informants?”). This echoes the "everyday" relational ethics that Aellah et al. also seek to shed more light on through their training manual.
Cerwonka writes: “More important, good social research clearly demands a highly developed, ceaseless, daily engagement with ethics as a process—an engagement that far exceeds the requirements of currently existing “ethics committees” and “human-subjects protocols” on university campuses. It is increasingly clear that the conventional understanding of ethics as a code—rather than as a process, as we see it here—needs to be critically examined.” (page 4)
Collaboration (perhaps we could even go so broad as saying discussing/writing about our work with others) necessitates making explicit what usually "goes without saying." Cerwonka writes that her email communications with Lisa (Malkki) required her to make explicit things that usually go without saying. I find this to be similar to the process of doing work on / in PECE where we are forced to write out all of the assumptions and rationales for decisions made.
The passage below is one of many moments in the fieldwork correspondence where what often “goes without saying” is made explicit through our exchange.(page 3).