THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
presents a
Distinguished Scholars Lecture Series
seminar
Beyond a vacuum: How autoethnographic ethics enhances ethnographic
I begin this two part discussion reviewing my recent publication entitled “A Critique of Current Practice: Ten
Foundational Guidelines for Autoethnographers (in press) Qualitative Health Research and restating the
centrality of my earlier article “internal confidentiality” (Tolich 2004) for qualitative ethics. In the most
recent article, I pose Clandinin and Connelly’s poignant question: Do we own a story because we tell
it? Regrettably, for three prominent academics practising and teaching autoethnography their sub-discipline
takes place in an ethical vacuum where internal confidentiality, as one of ten foundational guidelines, is
routinely dishonoured. Other guidelines coalesce around three core ethical considerations: consent,
consultation and vulnerability. In Part Two I apply, and test these ten guidelines to ethnography arguing that
autoethnography is in no way unique or exempt from generic ethics codes including the Position Statement
on Qualitative Research developed by successive Congresses of Qualitative Inquiry. Moreover, these ten
guidelines inform ethnographic ethics in practice.
by
Prof. Martin Tolich
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Room 1118, K.K. Leung Building
The University of Hong Kong
ALL ARE WELCOME
Professor Martin Tolich is a New Zealander who gained his PhD in 1991 at the University of California,
Davis studying with Lyn Lofland (and all too briefly with Paul Atkinson). He heads the sociology
programme at the University of Otago teaching social psychology, research methods and qualitative research
ethics. He has served continuously on ethics committees for fifteen years and was most recently the chair of
New Zealand’s multi-centre health and disability ethics committee. In 2008, he founded NZ Ethics Limited
to establish a national ethics committee for the non-health and non-university research sectors (i.e.
community research and NGOs). He is a senior consultant with Australian Human Research Ethics
Consultants. His current ethnography explores the lived experience of healthy volunteers in first in human
clinical drug trials.