8.1.4. Ethics, Permissions and Representing Religions Fairly
Respect and evidential integrity
The investigative study rests on two commitments: respect for the views and beliefs of those studied, and the integrity of the information reported about them.
Respect does not mean agreement. A student may hold that a belief is false and still be obliged to represent it accurately and without mockery.
The study reports what adherents hold as what adherents hold. Its business is describing and analysing a religious life, not ruling on whether the beliefs behind it are true.
Representation must be evidence-based, balanced and neutral. Every claim about what a group believes or does should be traceable to an observation, an interview or a source.
Integrity also rules out tidying. Findings that contradict the student's expectations, or that make a community look less coherent than expected, are reported as they are.
Teachers approve topics before work begins and advise on protocols. A student unsure whether an approach is appropriate should raise it then rather than after fieldwork.
The obligations extend past submission. Communities that host students often host them again, and a study that misrepresents a group damages access for everyone who follows.
Note
Ethical care and academic quality are not in competition here.
An accurate account is what a respectful account requires.
Balance is a standard of evidence as much as of courtesy.
Studies that generalize or editorialize are weaker as well as unfair.
Informed consent before fieldwork
Participants must be told what they are taking part in. Informed consent means they know the study's nature, its academic purpose and how their words will be used before they agree.
Consent has to be sought in advance. Turning up at a service with a notebook, or asking for an interview after a conversation has already happened, does not meet the standard.
The explanation should be plain. Naming the course, the length of the study, the research question and who will read it takes a minute and settles most concerns.
Consent to be interviewed is not consent to be quoted. The two are separate permissions, and both should be asked for explicitly.
Extra care is needed with young participants and with anyone in a vulnerable position. Where a participant is a minor, the teacher advises on what additional permission is required.
Consent can be withdrawn. If a participant later asks for something to be removed, the material comes out of the study.
Recording requires its own agreement. A participant may be willing to talk and unwilling to be recorded, and that answer is final.
Definition
Informed consent is agreement given with full knowledge of the study.
The participant is told its nature, its academic goals and its readership.
It is obtained before the interview or observation takes place.
It may be withdrawn by the participant at any point.
Confidentiality and permission to quote
Interviews are guaranteed confidential. A participant speaks on the understanding that the material is used for the study and not passed on for other purposes.
Reproducing interview material requires permission. Where permission to quote has not been given, the source is kept anonymous in the written analysis.
Anonymity is achieved by description rather than by name. A study can refer to a Sikh man in his sixties, or to a longstanding member of the congregation, and lose nothing analytically.
Anonymity has to be real. In a small community a description precise enough to be useful may identify someone completely, so identifying details are generalized.
Sensitive material deserves an extra check. Where an interviewee describes doubt, family conflict or a difficult experience, it is worth confirming that they are content for it to appear.
Recordings and transcripts are handled carefully. They are kept securely, used only for the study, and not circulated to classmates.
The appendix of interview questions is not a transcript. It shows what was asked, which is different from publishing what was answered.
Definition
Confidentiality is the guarantee that interview material stays within the study.
It is promised to the participant before the interview begins.
Quoting a named participant requires separate permission.
Without that permission the source is reported anonymously.
Example
An interviewee describes a painful decision to leave her former congregation.
She agrees to the interview but not to being named.
The study reports her account as that of a woman who converted in adulthood.
The finding survives intact, and she is not identifiable from it.
Internal diversity and generalization
No generalization may erase internal diversity. Every religion contains disagreement, and a study that reports one group's practice as the practice of the whole religion has misrepresented it.
The fix is usually a matter of wording. Writing about the Muslims of one mosque, or about this particular family, says exactly as much as the evidence supports.
One interviewee speaks for one person. What a rabbi says about a rite is that rabbi's account, and other rabbis in the same movement may explain it differently.
Findings should be contextualized by denomination, culture and geography. Orthodox and Reform, Punjabi and North American, urban and rural congregations differ, and naming which one was studied is part of the finding.
Internal diversity within a single congregation matters too. Members of one community often disagree about what a practice means, and that disagreement is a finding rather than a problem.
The temptation is strongest when findings are summarized. Compressing several interviews into a single sentence about what a community believes is where careful evidence usually gets lost.
Preliminary reading helps here as well. Knowing that a tradition contains several positions makes it much harder to mistake one of them for the whole.
Definition
Internal diversity is the range of belief and practice inside one religion.
It runs between denominations and also within a single congregation.
Studies must name the particular group they examined.
Claims about a whole religion need evidence about the whole religion.
Common Mistake
Writing that Hindus believe something is almost always too broad.
Writing that the worshippers at this temple described it so is accurate.
The second version is narrower and much better evidenced.
Generalizing costs marks as well as fairness.
Controversial issues handled fairly
Controversial issues are not to be avoided. Questions about gender, conversion, authority, sexuality and religious violence are legitimate subjects for the study.
What they require is balance. The range of positions actually held inside the tradition is set out, with an indication of who holds each one and on what grounds.
Value judgments about who counts as a real adherent are out of bounds. Writing that some group are not true Muslims takes a side in an internal dispute the study is there to describe.
The student's own opinion is not the subject. A study may report that a practice is contested and by whom, without announcing a verdict on it.
Language does much of the work. Neutral description of what each side holds allows a reader to see the disagreement without being steered through it.
Media coverage of controversy needs particular care. Reporting selects and frames, so a source-based study of a contested issue should say who produced each account and for whom.
Balance is not false equivalence. Where a position is held by a small minority, saying so is part of representing the tradition accurately.
Definition
Balance means representing the range of positions held within a tradition.
Each position is attributed to those who actually hold it.
The relative weight of each position is indicated honestly.
The student's own verdict is left out of the account.
Sources, authority and honest use
Interviewees are chosen with their authority and appropriateness in mind. A student should be able to say why this person is positioned to speak about this question.
Being an adherent does not make someone an expert on the tradition. A congregant can describe their own practice reliably and may be mistaken about the history behind it.
Nothing is quoted out of context. Trimming a quotation so that it says something the speaker did not mean is misrepresentation even when every word is accurate.
Sources are also not used uncritically. Accepting an account because it comes from an adherent, or from a scholar, without weighing it is a failure of method.
Group visits and visiting speakers may be used, but only within a larger individual study. The investigation and the analysis have to be the student's own.
References acknowledge everything used. A consistent system, applied to reading, interviews and observations alike, is what allows a reader to check the study's claims.
The standard is simple to state and harder to keep. Everything reported should be something the student could defend to the people it describes.
Active recall
What must a participant be told before agreeing to an interview?
Distinguish confidentiality from permission to quote, and say what follows when permission is refused.
Why is a claim about what Muslims believe usually a weaker claim than one about a named congregation?
How should a study handle a controversial issue without taking sides?
Give two ways a source can be misused even when it is quoted accurately.