(Deadline Extended) Call for Papers: Ethics and Social Welfare Special Issue Extended Deadline - April 15, 2022 (Was April 1, 2022)

They have a place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada where three rivers meet. For thousands of years this place has been a meeting place of different cultures, societies, and peoples. It was the heart of transcontinental trade routes, its location in the geographic centre of Turtle Island. Goods were traded, but also an exchange of knowledges, practices, and experiences. When Europeans arrived, they too traded with the many communities. When these nations and peoples made this journey to this place it was an endeavour. Their return on this labour was only fruitful by the assumption that what was traded would not be arbitrarily devalued. That the journey itself served as a sort of stripping away of power imbalances to reside at a place of mutual benefit. What each group brought would be unique, embedded in their contexts and cultures, and in demand to the others who arrived. Its value recognized based on inimitability derived from the origins of that knowledge/experience. What each brought was valued and the trades reflected that.

To engage in research processes is already to be engaging with ethical complexity. It is an endeavour marked by privilege and authority, prone to misconduct, and shaped by responsibility and relationships. Power, agency, ethical, social, and cultural issues undeniably permeate all research, and it is important that questions of practise in research and the foundations of research are addressed along a broad spectrum of issues that include research processes, methods and purposes, forms of interpretation, and issues related to the values and ethical choices of those conducting the research. Research ethics brings complexity to research processes. While the norms and principles of research (often) seem very simple, dilemmas and controversies abound in research practise. Conducting research and with integrity means conducting research responsibly and in a morally defensible manner, while adhering to relevant ethical principles. Many researchers would certainly agree that the ethical perspective needs to go beyond a legalistic and codified understanding of research ethics to consider the socio-political embeddedness of ethical principles and how research can serve as a means of providing knowledge, interrogating social justice, realising human rights and mobilising social equality and inclusion.

In this context, the journal Ethics and Social Welfare seeks to publish a special issue dedicated to promoting exchange and discussion on issues, challenges, and problems – as well as experiences, practises, and strategies – arising from the conducting of research. Conducting research means anticipating and responding to dilemmas, taking considerations into account (at every stage of the research process) and developing awareness in research issues. While this topic has received increasing attention in recent decades, this has tended to concentrate on particular dilemmas and experiences that certain research domains are more likely to encounter and uncover. The aim of the proposed special issue is to explore and discuss issues specifically related to the ethical conduct of research in social justice, social work, community work, social welfare, social policy, and related areas.

This call is meant to replicate that meeting place, where the three rivers meet at the heart of a continent. Researchers at all instances, the communities they work with, and the peoples who carry the knowledges and wisdom from practice and experience are asked to make the journey to this meeting place. That each of those who choose to make the journey is evidence enough that the value of their reflections will barter fair trade, that the uniqueness of their research practices and reflections derived from their own contextual centre is evidence of its value. At this meeting place, this special issue, we endeavour to hold an account of traditional, re-claimed, re-stated, or re-imagined ethical research practice. Here at this meeting place, we seek not to extract for individual benefit, but exchange and honour embedded and lived ethical research experiences.