People who do research care about what they research. The topics they research matter to them, and how they impact on people matters too. Researchers live in relation to others in friendship groups, families, local or national communities, and through identities based in ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion or other characteristics. They may choose to become involved in research to address the hardships or inequalities they see through personal experience, such as of racism or colonial domination; as a result of professional awareness, such as that of unequal access to health services or the impact of contemporary lifestyles on the environment; or through a political sense of injustices deriving from poverty or discrimination. Researchers may be connected to their research field in multiple ways, and the focus of their research may change over time as they start to become aware of other concerns (Letherby, 2003) and as they deepen relationships with those whose lives they research. Recognition of the positioning of researchers and their personal and political stance in relation to issues is quite common in social science circles, but it applies to researchers in all fields of enquiry. It is impossible to consider an environmental researcher who does not care about the state of the planet, or medical researchers unconcerned about finding cures or treatments for illnesses affecting people.

Researchers are social beings implicated in the world they research. In the introduction to his book Participation in Human Inquiry, Peter Reason (1994) made a similar connection to that we have been advancing between Fisher and Tronto’s inclusion of ‘repair’ in their definition of caring; the practice of research, and the importance of thinking together the human and more-than-human world: