BODIES IN BETWEENEthical Openings on Eating Disorder Recovery

Andrea LaMarre, MSc.Vanier Doctoral Scholar (CIHR)PhD StudentDepartment of Family Relations & Applied NutritionUniversity of Guelph

Dr. Carla RiceCanada Research Chair, Care, Gender, and Relationships (Tier II)Associate Professor, Department of Family Relations & Applied NutritionUniversity of Guelph

Presented by: Advisor:

@andrealala89

INTRODUCTION

Who am I? Who am I to do this

work? {What am I doing

here?}

WHICH ETHICS? Personal Professional Clinical Institutional Disciplinary

WHOSE ETHICS?

Research ethics processes: helpful or burdensome?

Or somewhere in between?

AN ETHIC OF CARE?

Digital storytelling: an opportunity to revisit researcher/researched divide?

An ethic of care in research?

AN ETHIC OF CARE?

Role of: Austerity “Evidence-based practice” Large sample sizes Replicability

FEMINIST ETHICS

“Openness should not be interpreted as weakness, nor as indecision, but rather as the courage to refuse the comforting refuge of broad categories and fixed unidirectional vision” (Shildrick, 1997, p. 3)

FEMINIST ETHICS

Embodied meanings Enacting feminist ethics of care &

embodiment in bureaucratic systems

EMBODIED ETHIC OF CARE

“The body’s role in calling us to respond ethically to one another has continued to be egregiously neglected” (Weiss, 1994, p. 5)

COMMUNITY-ENGAGED ETHIC, +? Community expertise Ongoing, dynamic Reciprocity Reflexivity

+ Embodiment?

SITUATING MY WORK

Digital Storytelling Collaborative, arts-based 2-3 minute films

Eating Disorder Recovery Clinical Lived Experience

EATING DISORDERS & ACCESSIBILITY Participants’ embodied experiences of

digital storytelling E.g., food

WHOSE DATA?

Navigating institutional REB “The participant owns their story”

HOW DO YOU KNOW?

Centralizing participants’ definitions of recovery “But how do you know if they are really

recovered?”

EXPERIENCE & EXPERTISE

“What is your experience in the subject area and in this kind of research?” Is there room for lived experience?

PRIVILEGE & LIVED EXPERIENCE Privileging of recoveries Intersecting subjectivities:

Body size Ethnicity Socioeconomic status

“Recovery” as privilege

REFLEXIVITY

I don’t know I can’t know Meeting of embodiments of recovery

KNOWING VS. BEING

What does it mean to know a participant? What does it mean to work with

participants?

ETHICS COMPOUND

How to be a vulnerable expert without imposing a particular version of recovery?

DIGITAL STORYTELLING

A meeting of bodies A meeting of needs A meeting of subjectivities Whose research is it?

ETHICS

More, not less Dynamic, not passive Messy, not linear Interwoven, not parsed out

EMBODIMENT BETWEEN & WITHIN “To act as a daughter, a mother, a sister,

is not to deny my individuality or to diminish my moral agency; it is to affirm my own embodiment as well as the embodiment of others” (Weiss, 1994, p. 158)

QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, REFLECTION Thank you! alamarre@uoguelph.ca