A Moral Epistemology of Knowing Subjects

This article is an analysis of “relation” in qualitative research. The analysis emerges from consideration of feminist philosophies of ethics and epistemologies, including Code's moral epistemology, and exemplars of qualitative research by Duneier and Lather and Smithies. The central argument of the article is that the quality of qualitative research reflects the quality of relation developed between the researcher and researched as “knowing subjects.” The article shows the implications of a turn to relation as following these themes: the commitment to knowing to care, engendering multiple relations, illusions of closeness, and representation of relational knowing.