Anthropological Ethics in Context

An Ongoing Dialogue

Dena Plemmons, Alex W Barker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315434834
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume examines general ethical principles and controversies in the social sciences by looking specifically at the recent three-year revision process to the American Anthropological Association's code of ethics. The book's contributors were members of the task force that undertook that revision and thus have first-hand knowledge of the debates, compromises, and areas of consensus involved in shaping any organization's ethical vision. The book-reflects the broad diversity of opinion, approach, and practice within anthropology and the social sciences;-develops ethical principles that reflect core values rather than the latest ethical controversies;-crafts clear, broad statements, increasing the likelihood that the ethical code will be a meaningful part of the daily discourse of practicing anthropologists;-develops the ethical code as a living document, or a process of experience and debate, subject to future revision and amplification;-provides explanation through internet links and other resources, ensuring that the finished product be relevant and vibrant.

Chapter One. Introduction: Ethics, Work, and Life—Individual Struggles and Professional “Comfort Zones” in Anthropology

Virginia R. Dominguez

As a recent past president of the American Anthropological Association—and the president during whose tenure most of the work of the AAA Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review was done—I am especially pleased to help introduce this book and launch it as a reflection and articulation of this deep, difficult, thoughtful, and inspiring project.

Most scientists, as Thomas Kuhn aptly argued in his now classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), work with paradigms, patterns, and habits that he called the workings of “normal science.” It is what I have recently called our professional “comfort zones and their dangers” (Dominguez 2012). They are those ideas, practices, discourses, and questions that get to be so much a part of a scientific discipline or profession at any one time that they often get learned and adopted more than reflected upon or questioned.

This book reminds us of how important it is to reflect on our “comfort zones,” their dangers, and the paradigms, patterns, and habits that become second-nature, at times so much so that they are to the detriment of the practitioner and the people or places s/he studies. I am not saying that thinking about ethics is new to anthropologists. It isn’t. I am saying that the ethical questions are so central to the practice of anthropological life and work that they must be spotlighted and not just added to the training of new anthropologists or the awareness of professional anthropologists.

I am also saying that delving into matters of ethics means plunging into the struggle it entails. It is a struggle that is personal and professional, never-ending and open-ended, and crucial but without simple answers. It is that sense of worthwhileness and necessity, struggle and everydayness that is highlighted in this book. The AAA Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review had predecessors. The AAA has had principles and statements on ethics, and even resolutions on ethics, at various points in its long history (since the turn of the twentieth century) (see Chapter 2). What this book does is to highlight what has been learned from the past and what the current struggles are. It offers the background and conveys the urgency of the matter. It offers reflections and descriptions of the process of the AAA’s deliberations and its “conclusions.” It does not provide a simple answer, or even a simple formula, but it does go far toward keeping anthropologists (and their fellow travelers) from staying too much in their “comfort zones” of their own work and lives (both in their fields of research and in their everyday institutional places of work).

There is myopia in all walks of life. There are tacit agendas that don’t even get noticed. There are ideas, behaviors, values, and practices that are reproduced more than noticed and questioned. These include the profession of anthropology itself—including, but not limited to, the profession in the U.S. That the work of the AAA Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review (from 2008 to 2011) can result in further scrutiny of the profession, its assumptions, its aporia, its strengths, and its potential is obvious to me, but this book makes it possible for it to be chewed on by many others, turned upside down, debated, consulted, expanded, and explored. It is one of this book’s greatest strengths, a point this introductory chapter frames but only as a point of departure.

The Range

Let me begin with the matter of range. Anthropologists have long noticed many of the difficult questions that arise when we do research in the field. People have worried about inequality in our encounters, because so much of the research is extremely well-meaning but still entails a person with two or three university degrees doing research on a topic or issues that concern many people often less socially, economically, and even politically privileged (and indeed frequently far less privileged in the world). Anthropologists usually acknowledge that difference but also seek to temper its significance. The question is how well we succeed and whether the effort actually produces the results we seek. Consider friendship. After months, often years, living with and among people whose lives or struggles the anthropologist is studying, it is common for the anthropologist to get closer to some people than to others. But what does that mean? So central is the anthropologist’s relationship to people in fieldwork that it warrants thinking—indeed, thinking long and hard— about what one does, the extent to which one uses, works with, collaborates with, but possibly exploits people in such settings when pursuing answers to specific questions in the field. Anthropologists may change the terms they use for the people from whom we learn the most in the field (from informant to interlocutor to friend), but do we also change the nature of our relationship with those people over the course of a lifetime or career? I have no doubt that the great majority of anthropologists come to care deeply for people whose lives they set out to study, but these feelings are far from simple and they entail deep and long-lasting ethical struggles for most of us. What are the implications of coming to see someone as a friend, as a partner, as a lover, as family? And what are the implications of coming to be seen as a friend, a partner, a lover, or a member of a family? These are central issues, struggles, and doubts, and indeed are usually aspects of fieldwork that become second-nature but also worrisome to the anthropologist in the field and after fieldwork.

Consider this further. When an anthropologist befriends someone while doing fieldwork, is that relationship more equal than others? Is it more mutual than others? Or might it actually lead to that relationship being more utilitarian than others because one comes to rely more on that person? And would the ethical thing to do then be to not befriend anyone in the field? For some time anthropologists have worried about tacit, unwitting, or de facto exploitation of the “researched” by the “researcher,” perhaps because we (and our profession) care so much about making the world a better place for all, regardless of people’s position in a geopolitical or socioeconomic hierarchy. For professionals who actively seek to include all of humanity into their data-gathering and theorizing about humanity (and not just, or not just primarily, have theories derived from research in prosperous countries or privileged sectors of those countries), the very idea that research/participant observation/fieldwork in less privileged or less powerful communities could exacerbate the problem of inequality is hard to swallow. But we must struggle with that issue and we must realize that much of our research is indeed fraught with ethical difficulties and not just epistemological ones.

But what exactly does this mean? I have had students encountering anthropology for the first time who appreciate much of the cultural, political, and economic critique they get from me as a teacher and from many other colleagues and the books they read, but who find themselves seriously asking themselves (and me) if the simple solution to the big anthropological research question isn’t to stop doing it, that is, to never put oneself in the position of researching other people’s lives. I understand the temptation but worry about its consequences, as I know colleagues on the Task Force have as well. For example, if anthropologists were to stop conducting research in places or locations frequently deemed marginal or powerless by richer and more dominant sectors of the world’s population, I easily imagine two subsequent scenarios: (1) that many parts of the human experience of life on the planet would be ignored in the making of policies, the development of practices, and the elaboration of social theories as a consequence of discontinuing anthropological research; and (2) that other fields, other professions, other occupations would begin to do some of that work, but without the history of anthropologists doing the work and making mistakes, reflecting on those mistakes, and learning from them. This latter scenario worries me just as much as the first, because there is much to be said for the kind of serious engagement with the ethical struggles that are the bread and butter of now decades of anthropological fieldwork and practice.

Consider just a few of the issues that arise for all of us as anthropologists doing participant observation/fieldwork.

1. Intention versus results: We typically seek to make things better for people, or at least not to make them worse. Hence, the Task Force’s first principle of doing “no harm.” But Derrida (1980) was correct when for years he called attention to the fact that we don’t really control the effect our presence has on a group of people or how they respond. So we face the quandary of having intentions that may be laudable but results with which we ourselves are not comfortable. We may, for example, give nicer presents to some people than others (let us say, those we befriend or come to see as members of our family). If those acts of generosity then lead to an improvement in material conditions, life expectancy, educational opportunities, or even migration opportunities of those individuals or families over others, thus exacerbating or altering social relations we did not seek out to alter, our intentions might have been perfectly understandable but the actions we took caused trouble for people we care about and also for ourselves.
2. Knowledge basis and sufficiency: We set out to learn a great deal in the course of doing fieldwork, but do we ever know enough to make decisions about what is best for a group of people? Again, “do no harm” is great, but when do we know enough to make a decision about what is best, for whom, and against what likely or expected results? Doubts arise about how much we know even after several years of research. Even worse, people often ask us for help, but the longer we stay in a place and know people personally, the more we realize that in helping “some” we are not necessarily helping all. We find ourselves taking sides, seeing imbalances and inequalities—for example, seeing bullying, domestic violence, degradation, upward mobility, downward mobility, resignation, and resistance. When people ask us for help and we realize that we would like to help, part of the anthropological dilemma is assessing what we know and how much we know so that we might knowingly anticipate a range of likely responses.
3. Part-time members of a “community” versus full-time members: No matter how immersed we are in a location or the lives of a group of people, anthropologists typically do not live “there” full-time. We have a way out, a life away from what we research, even if we make a point of continuing to do anthropological research with the same group of people over many years. At best we are friendly outsiders, but at worse we might be “slumming” or voyeurs or “snowbirds,” with options and commitments elsewhere. No anthropologist I know likes admitting that. Many make a point of frequently visiting the people (or community) they worked with earlier in their careers. Yet few of us move to those communities full-time and most of us earn a living elsewhere, not as anthropologists in the field but as salaried employees of an educational institution, an NGO, a governmental organization, a company, or a health provider service. This built-in inequality is among the hardest ethical dilemmas for most anthropologists I know. Sometimes the anthropologist feels guilt, sometimes extra commitment, sometimes familial responsibilities, and sometimes downright sadness.
4. Material conditions and our responses to them: We may not enter a research site with a great deal of money, but we frequently have more money than many of the people among whom we do our research. Moreover, we typically have better living conditions than most. We often have far higher levels of formal schooling than most, and we often carry passports and nationalities from countries that are more geopolitically and economically influential in the world— or at least higher socioeconomic classes in countries that may see themselves as “poor,” “small,” or at least “postcolonial.” Of course, there are a good number of anthropologists, especially these days, who study “sideways” or “up” and these differences in material conditions do not hold. However, the majority of anthropologists, even when studying in their own country, a country like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, or Brazil, study the lives of the less economically privileged, the lives of poorer communities or marginalized groups, and these inequalities in existing and long-term material conditions do hold.
5. Equality as desire vs. geopolitical inequality: Implicit in many of these points is the largest issue of all and it pertains to our desire for equality and our understanding that there is much inequality in the world. Consider how frequently we strive for equality and how frequently anthropologists like to advocate for the “underdog.” Yet, as an anthropologist gets to know a group, a community, the people who work in a work setting, or those who live in close quarters, one of the disturbing but recurring facts we discover is that there is always friction. There are power imbalances. There are always differences—in views, likes, dislikes, and even social hierarchies—that were not readily evident from the outside. In such settings, what then are the more and less ethical actions we can take? When we talk more to some people than to others or we find ourselves deeming some people more trustworthy than others, are we not participating in the social setting in ways that carry ethical and not just epistemological implications?

The range of ethical dilemmas is palpable, constant, and wide-ranging in fieldwork, and this Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review did well to concentrate on fieldwork in a good deal of what it debated, examined, and explored. But the range covered by the Task Force—a range for which I am personally quite grateful—also included matters outside the experience of anthropologists conducting fieldwork. Indeed, other matters, which we may not always perceive as ethical, nevertheless haunt us and cannot be ignored. Some may get less attention in ethical discussions because they may appear to pertain to many people and not just to anthropologists. Others get less attention because they occur more “at home,” and still others may get less attention because they pertain to the profession at large and not to individual anthropologists. But do not all of these entail ethical quandaries, ethical struggles, and ethical choices? I think so, and this volume goes far to remind us of those professional responsibilities and struggles outside “the field.” Part of the struggle here (and for the Task Force) has been how to relate to those matters as well as to the basic principle of aiming to do no harm when we do our research and writing. Some of them are institutional matters, some are inherited ones, and many are matters within the larger society/ies in which we normally conduct our professional work. The range of issues that the Task Force contemplated is large and greatly exceeds the issue of anthropologists’ responsibilities to the people whose lives they research or among whom they conduct short-term or long-term fieldwork.

Anthropological Lives

Consider the institutions that pay our salaries, or have us on staff as paid or even unpaid interns. Those institutions may be in the country in which the anthropologist tends to conduct fieldwork, but they often are not. Ethical issues populate our lives in those institutions, organizations, and societies just as much as elsewhere. When we see systemic consequential inequalities in those institutions—inequalities that go against our social and professional ideals—are we supposed to ignore them just because we are not doing fieldwork on them? I do not think so. And when laws concerning research, privacy, employment, gender, inequality, sexuality, health care, property, and inheritance exist in the country in which we are paid and/or the country in which we conduct our research, do we examine them, challenge them, or work to change them, or do we just abide by them? As many anthropologists have long known, those laws often do not meet anthropological standards or they are shaped by considerations and professions other than anthropology, its past, and its intentions. Colleagues in certain countries—South Africa perhaps most significantly—have long histories of seeing much of their work as research and advocacy, but even there it has not always been that easy to decide which laws to challenge, which legal systems to seek to change, and which future to aim for.

Moreover, many other anthropologists live in countries whose legal and political systems are less egregiously objectionable than apartheid South Africa (cf. Ross 2005). In those cases, it might be easier to say that our primary ethical quandary concerns our research and not our everyday lives as employees, managers, citizens, and participants, but should we not actually focus on the overall ethical responsibilities and struggles of anthropologists, rather than just our ethical dilemmas “in the field”? Anthropologists often believe that they are the most progressive or liberal or open-minded group of people on the planet (or at least as a profession), and it is often the case that anthropologists complain about the bureaucracy, regulations, and practices of their own societies. But is this the extent of our engagement with ethical questions, struggles, and quandaries in the societies/institutions in which we tend to live? Is there a simple answer? No, there isn’t. Must anthropologists just be contrary? No, of course not. Must all anthropologists be first and foremost advocates, public interest anthropologists, politicians, and promoters of change? Of course, there’s change and there’s change, and there are differences to consider regarding changes to pursue, when to pursue them, and how to pursue them.

But it is also a matter of extending one’s range of thought, one’s range of responsibility, and thinking of the anthropologist’s range of ethical processes, practices, and dilemmas as including all aspects of one’s life, and not just of one’s research “in the field.” The fact is, that for many anthropologists, abiding by certain rules, laws, and regulations of the state/government in which they live and/or in which they conduct fieldwork is far from simple.

Numerous examples come to mind. When a government granting agency requires a signature stating that the grantee swears allegiance to the country and government making the grant, what can or do most anthropologists do? My sense is that most frown but sign the form because the proposed research is expensive and s/he deems the planned research project to be of higher ethical value or potential and, therefore, necessary. When a university requires its faculty members to uphold high moral standards or risk losing their jobs, anthropologists I know struggle in deciding whether some form of civil disobedience could cause them to lose their jobs. When a museum has the physical remains of people excavated by prior archaeologists, and the museum actually seeks to repatriate the remains but the country’s laws include loopholes that do not make it necessary for the remains to be repatriated, which imperative is invoked? In all of these cases, the matter is not simple, and that is the point. Ethical dilemmas entail struggle. They also rarely entail just one possible solution, resolution, or decision. I wish they did, but they don’t. The question is how best to address the matters, not how to hide them, pretend they fail to exist, or whitewash them.

Consider, for example, those physical remains I just mentioned. The law may express an intention, a necessity, an effort, and a process, and the anthropologist may find it too limiting, but what if the matter isn’t clear and it is not readily obvious to whom the remains should go when there is no current named group of people who can readily be identified as their descendants? Or consider that older term—moral turpitude— in use in the U.S. academy for years to name actions and behaviors deemed by an academic employer so unacceptable that a tenured faculty member can lose tenure if charged with moral turpitude. Moral turpitude (and the general concept behind it) indexes some sense of morality, that is, some system of morals (often implicit rather than explicit but whose system of morality it reflects and whose ethical standards it privileges). In my experience, this charge has been invoked when s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter One. Introduction: Ethics, Work, and Life—Individual Struggles and Professional “Comfort Zones” in Anthropology
• Chapter Two. A Short History of American Anthropological Ethics, Codes, Principles, and Responsibilities— Professional and Otherwise
• Chapter Three. Background and Context to the Current Revisions
• Chapter Four. Do No Harm
• Chapter Five. Be Open and Honest Regarding Your Work
• Chapter Six. Make Your Results Accessible
• Chapter Seven. Obtain Informed Consentand Necessary Permissions
• Chapter Eight. Weigh Competing Ethical Obligations toCollaborators and Affected Parties
• Chapter nine. Protect and Preserve Your Records
• Chapter Ten. Maintain Respectful and EthicalProfessional Relationships
• Chapter Eleven. What’s Different?
• Chapter Twelve. On Professional Diversity and the Future of Anthropology
• Afterword Ethics as Institutional Process
• Index
• About the Editors and Contributors