I was thinking about workplace ethics this morning; about fair wage, fair practice; about what a sustainable wage in Waterloo Region might be. I was wondering about how these operate in this region; about who does/does not follow fair practices and why/why not; about whether/what to do about such questions. It struck me that some of these questions arise through my own experience and the experiences of others I have known - as well as the more amorphous groups of poor souls out there that work at the hands and whimsy of 'the system'. (It also emerges around discussions of affordable transit and who to bring into the loop and whether employers should be brought in... But that's a different discussion...) Not surprisingly, thinking about these experiences turned me to the question of research and research ethics. Which brought me back to discussions around community research and the ethics of community or community-oriented research.  There was once some discussion around the question of a community ethics board - an approval process not unlike the university's ethics approval that would be run by and on behalf of the community and those groups within it that were to be subjects of research. One might stretch this a bit to include questions around the ethics of fari process, to include the researchers themselves...

All of this seems to be wound up together - and - seems to be wound up with interests and intentions of my own research.  Which then links it all to planning also.  Struck me that this is perhaps one of the (as yet unnamed) points of coalescence; an identifiable point/? that enable some sort of more specified definition to the research itself.

It ties into planning, into methodology, into sustainability, into ontoepistemology; question is how/whether the systems stuff can contribute...