Chapter 2: The Many Worlds of Ethics: Proposing a Latourian Investigation of the Work of Research Ethics in Ethnographies of Education

In this chapter I draw on the philosophical anthropology of Bruno Latour to propose an account of the work of research ethics. Through a consideration of research ethics as text, I explore the ways in which any such text needs to be accompanied – by people, by processes, by other voices or other texts – in order to become meaningful and then impactful for the ethnographer of education. Research ethics are thus positioned as the technological outcome of a dialogue that is prone to misunderstanding and misinterpretation, notwithstanding the strictures of the processes and policies that increasingly seek to codify the work that ethnographers do in the field. Through arguing for Latour's recent philosophical anthropology as a conceptual toolkit for the exploration of research ethics, I propose that it is research ethics as object that should be the focal point for ongoing ethnographic inquiry.