Abstract

This essay offers the metaphor of hungry ethics to think of ethics alternatively outside the epistemic boundaries of Institutional Review Boards. It argues that due to the ephemeral, embodied, and shifting nature of research relationships, there can be no predetermined definition of what ethical research is in ethnographic contexts. By building on the notions of radical vulnerability and hungry translation as conceptualized by Richa Nagar in Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability, this essay suggests that research ethics must be incessantly hungry and refuse to be satiated or saturated through a set of established rules and regulations. Hungry ethics are undisciplined, unstable, relational, and they are rooted in a dynamic praxis of becoming-sangtin. The author conceptualizes becoming-sangtin as the never-ending process of unlearning to occupy the privileged position of a researcher and relearning to embrace the role of a vulnerable companion. While becoming-sangtin echoes Deleuze & Guattari’s formulation of becoming(-nomad-minority-woman) as a way to dissolve static and hierarchical identity categories, it also draws heavily from feminist epistemologies. Ultimately, this essay makes the case that instead of trying so hard to do ethnography or to be ethical—ideals almost exclusively tied to restraining academic aspirations and regulations—researchers should aspire to become a sangtin, an intimate comrade, to the limited extent that we can.

摘要

这篇文章提供了饥饿伦理的隐喻，以在机构审查委员会的认知边界之外思考伦理。它认为，由于研究关系的短暂、具体和不断变化的性质，对于民族志背景下的伦理研究是什么没有预先确定的定义。通过建立在 Richa Nagar 在Hungry Translations：Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability中概念化的激进脆弱性和饥饿翻译的概念之上，本文建议研究伦理必须不断饥饿，并且拒绝通过一套既定规则来满足或饱和和法规。饥饿的伦理是无纪律的、不稳定的、有关系的，它们植根于一种动态的实践成为桑丁。作者将成为-桑丁概念化为一个永无止境的过程，即联合国学习占据研究人员的特权位置并重新学习接受脆弱伴侣的角色。虽然成为-桑丁呼应了德勒兹和瓜塔里关于成为（-游牧少数民族-女性）作为一种消除静态和等级身份类别的方式的表述，但它也大量借鉴了女权主义认识论。最终，这篇文章表明，研究人员不应如此努力地去做民族志或道德——理想几乎完全与限制学术抱负和法规有关——研究人员应该立志成为一名桑丁，一个亲密的同志，在我们所能做的有限的范围内。