The ethical conduct of research is addressed from two perspectives, as a regulatory enterprise that creates an illusion of ethical practice and as a philosophical concern for equity and the imposition of power within the conceptualization and practice of research itself. The authors discuss various contemporary positions that influence conceptualizations of ethical practices that include imperialist market imperatives for research that marginalize ethical concerns, positions held by peoples who have themselves been traditionally placed in the margins of societal power, academic positions and the selves of individual researchers, and locations created for the specific regulation of research. The final section of the paper introduces the articles in this special issue; these articles illustrate the complexity and cultural embeddedness of research regulation as well as the need for reflexive critical discourses that recognize the moral and ethical dimensions of everything but especially as related to the construction and practice of research. (Contains 1 note.)