Ethical issues are part of ordinary practices in conducting research involving the collection of interactional data in a variety of disciplines: sociology, linguistics, anthropology, etc. Established codes of practices define acceptable standards of conduct within the profession. Moreover, in many countries, ethics committees, which titles such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB), Research Ethic Board (REB), Research Ethic Committee (REC), have been established, and gaining authorization from such boards has become part of the ordinary activities in carrying out social sciences (...) research.In relation to ethical matters, there is a growing awareness among researchers of the importance of confronting the actual contingencies and the complexities of ethical dilemmas on the ground. Some authors (Fogel 2007; Guillemin and Gillam 2004) find the literature relating to ethics in social sciences research lacking, in particular, in relation to the discussion of ethical problems emerging during. (shrink)

The twin concepts of ethics and emotions are used in this paper to examine experiences of doing research on the topic of violence. Ethical questions are of significance when carrying out research which is potentially distressing to the research participant. Through field experiences in South Africa the author argues, however, that despite the growing concern among geographers over the ethical dimensions of their work, the implementation of ethically guided research practice is often less simple in reality. The concept of emotions (...) is used to explore the less well examined issue of the impact of distressing research on the researcher and research assistants. The paper concludes that it is often difficult to separate out ethics from emotions. (shrink)