Logistics and Researchers As Legitimate Tools for 'Doing' Intercultural Research: A Rejoinder to Günther

Abstract

Gunther's (1998) story highlights the critical importance of practical issues such as logistics and the researcher's active role in 'doing' intercultural research. For example, the social psychological notion of 'informed consent' has become institutionalized as a bedrock of North American social science research. Yet in intercultural research, rigid adherence to North American norms for informed consent can violate both subjects' and researchers' culture-specific communication codes in societies where human relations function differently from US or European habitual patterns. 'Cookbook'-type application of the social ethical norms that have become canonized in one society in a different (or even among different subgroups within the same) society can lead to fundamental problems in scientific knowledge construction.

Keywords

cultural codes research ethics researcher-research participant relations

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