Although the problematic nature of the insider-outsider dichotomy is often acknowledge, the privileging of the so-called ‘insider perspective’ on ethical grounds remains a well-spread phenomenon in qualitative research conducted in the areas of ethnography, education and social work.
Rehabilitating the ‘authentic’ voice of the subject is often tacitly assumed to pre-empt discursive violence against the subject.
Conceiving qualitative research as a social practice with its own conventions and protocols, this paper seeks to analyse the ‘ethics of voice’ as a structural-discursive phenomenon in qualitative inquiry. From the rhetorical-discursive level, the adoption of an ‘ethics of voice’ appears to redeem (by default) a set of conventional demands made on the researcher. This suggests that the discourse of authenticity has more to do with the social practice of ethnographic and social scientific research itself than with the reality of the subject. In other words, it is a construction which serves the researchers’ agenda rather than the subjects’.

I want to elaborate on some of the side effects of the use of authenticity as an argument of legitimation. In order to do so, I will analyse the workings of the discourse of voice in existing research accounts. Foremost, I will argue that the ‘insider-outsider axis’ does not coincide unproblematically with the ‘oppressive -vs- empowering’ opposition. Insider voices are not homogeneous, and outsider voices are not by definition a source of alienation.
Attention will be given to the current vogue for ‘multiple voices’ in which none of the given interpretation is privileged over others.

What is pivotal – it will be argued – is the faculty of judgement on the part of the researcher, and the accountability which accompanies it. This means that the researcher should not grand himself the privilege to take refuge in the claim that his conclusions stem solely from the ‘insider perspectives’ he/she meticulously represents.

The paper will conclude with arguing for an ethics of accountability rather than an ethics of voice. The ethics of qualitative research entail the acceptance of the responsibility for one’s authorial decisions, rather than shifting them to the subject.

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