Ethics Beyond the Binary: Conceptualizing Dynamic Ethics through the Intersection of Black Studies and Participatory Action Research

Background: Black studies continues to offer critical lessons at the nexus of knowledge, research, and care, all of which remains vital to participatory action research (PAR) work. Within Black studies are lessons on becoming or being “undisciplined” (Wynter, 2006), countering frameworks of marginalization through oppositional geographies (McKittrick, 2006); abandoning categorization (McKittrick, 2021) and binary thinking through the western episteme (Barka as cited in McKittrick, 2015); and acknowledging collective care, wisdom, and experience as foundational to a knowledge basis (Collins, 2000). Collectively, these offerings can inform how PAR work can better grapple with the continued reification of an “othering” dichotomy between academia and “the community”, as well as how it can address the consequential ethical conundrums and gaps that arise from its continuation.

Methods: The purpose of this conceptual article is to analyze how lessons on knowledge building and research, originating from Black studies, can inform ethical considerations in PAR. This analysis at the intersection of Black studies and PAR generates a call to move from dichotomous research and its static ethics, towards a more fluid and expansive framework for research which requires a “dynamic ethical orientation”. The article will provide an in-depth analysis in three ways. First it will critically examine and problematize the ways that academic researchers continue to dichotomize research, that is how academic researchers reify boundaries between “the community” versus those within the academy. Second, it will expand on how dichotomous research categorizations and practices impact and influence normative ethical commitments within the academy, particularly those upheld by institutional review boards. Lastly, it provides an in-depth analysis exemplifying and expanding on “dynamic ethics'” by using three vignettes generated from a research collective between the authors and two grassroots abolitionist organizations.

Conclusion: The vignette analysis will define “dynamic ethical orientation” and exemplify how it moves away from static and dichotomous research and instead encourages an analysis and revision of what the authors call “baseline ethics”. Said differently, a “dynamic ethical orientation” requires an analysis on how baseline ethics can be more equitably standardized to honor the human in every research project (Wynter, 2006) and how dynamic ethics necessarily supplement these baseline ethics by honoring the fluidity of situational and unique multi-location research collectives and their projects. The vignettes will build on an introductory analysis of the word community as a signifier of “other” within academia, and discuss the normative assumptions innate to this dichotomy between academia and community. Further it will provide a reflection on the static nature of academic research, how ethics tied to the research dichotomy are “frozen in time” or centralized around a “one and done” framework, prohibiting or not making adequate space for intentional long standing research projects or collectives driven by researchers outside of the university.

In summation, by guiding PAR work by a Black liberatory epistemology, the paper's analysis provides researchers with critical new insight into how one might reconsider their ethical commitments and provides actionable steps for those wanting to advocate for change within academic institutional review boards.