ABSTRACT
Performance autoethnography and social theatre involve taking the side of the oppressed. Performance ethics provide the foundation for resistance, for critique, for understanding performance ethics inspire militant utopianism and pedagogies of freedom performance ethics imagine a world free of conflict and injustice. Clifford Christians locates the ethics and politics of qualitative inquiry within a broader historical and intellectual framework. He first examines the Enlightenment model of positivism, value-free inquiry, utilitarianism and utilitarian ethics. The consequence of these restrictions is a disciplining of qualitative inquiry that extends from granting agencies to qualitative research seminars and even the conduct of qualitative dissertations. Oral historians have contested the narrow view of science and research contained in current reports. Anthropologists and archaeologists have challenged the concept of informed consent as it impacts ethnographic inquiry. A critical ethical stance works outward from the core of the person. A critical social science incorporates feminist, postcolonial and even postmodern challenges to oppressive power.
