ASA: Ethical Guidelines for Good Research Practice
DRAFT (June 2005): Developing anthropological ethics in the ASA
Ian Harper, ethics(at)theasa.org; Alberto Corsin-Jimnez, media(at)theasa.org
Recent years have seen a proliferation of concern and focus on ethics and ethical discourses. Anthropology, too, has developed an "ethical anxiety" (Faubion 2003) and writings have proliferated around ethics in the discipline (Strathern 2000a, Caplan 2003a, Fluehr-Lobban 2004a, Meskell & Pels 2005), and with ethics as more broadly conceived (Ong and Collier 2005). This broader concern has also been reflected in the association's concern with the development of the ASA ethical guidelines, which are increasingly perceived as having less relevance for much research dealing with issues of a contemporary nature. Simultaneously, whatever an ethics of anthropology might look like, the discipline itself finds that its ethical standards are frequently being judged by the standards of other disciplines. This is increasingly so in situations of the development of guidelines where institutionally anthropology finds itself aligned with differing constellations of disciplines depending on how anthropology departments have been farmed out into faculties or schools.
This process of exteriorising ethics, such that it becomes something external to the discipline and dealt with by committees, tends to the codification of ethics and to ethical discourses of a legalistic and judicial kind (Pels 2005). One consequence of this has been an increasing focus on "informed consent" and a form of ethics that focuses on the technical issues; for example, has informed consent been achieved or not being made into a fetish at the expense of broader moral issues. Anthropologists have developed a critique of making a fetish out of informed consent, and how this positions our subjects of research in ways that may be both demeaning and predetermines the research (Strathern 2000b). The tendency as well has been for this to focus on research, and the technical aspects of this, rather than the broader concern of anthropology as a field of critical enquiry. Yet in terms of our relations with others, focus on our research methodologies, and on the capacity to develop informed consent, is one of the main ways the discipline is judged.
The ASA, as the voluntary professional body where the discipline's code of ethics is housed, is increasingly being asked to act as ethical adjudicator. For example, the ASA was recently asked to adjudicate in a debate over informed consent as a set of school-wide generic ethical guidelines were being developed. Here anthropology was in a school where it was teamed with psychology and sociology, and the restrictions imposed on students over the stringent definition of informed consent made the practice of ethnography all but impossible. In another example, the ASA was approached in an attempt to quash the publication of a book by an organisation that felt that, despite being made anonymous, they were both recognisable and had been misrepresented. Having read the ASA ethical guidelines, they claimed that the researcher broke the first tenet of our own code, that of maintaining anonymity of our research subjects. In short, the ASA is being asked to intervene in these situations in a quasi-legalistic way.
For many anthropologists - particularly those who find themselves in complex contemporary fields of research, and "studying up" - the current ASA guidelines don't allow much purchase to think through current research sites and issues. These guidelines upon which adjudicatory commentary is asked for reflect anthropology of a bygone era, and an assumption that anthropologists will be researching discrete communities frequently marginal in relations with the discipline and state. This is no longer the case, as anthropologists research complex fields of interaction, and frequently with disciplines more powerful than our own.
Also, as has been pointed out in the case of the development of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) guidelines, these have tended to emerge at moments of crisis, the most recent being the Tierney-Chagnon affair (Fluehr-Lobban 2004b). This tendency - the turning to the development of ethical codes at moments of crisis - also leads towards the development of the forms of ethical codes that are legalistic, adjudicative and restrictive; the attempted codification of research behaviour in terms of and anticipation of the legal.
What do we want our ethical guidelines to do? And once decided, how do we achieve this? We feel that we don't want our discipline's relationship with ethics to be legalistic, defensive and precautionary. Rather, they should reflect an expression of the ethical commitment of the profession as a whole. This should not be reactive (to crises) but emergent from a sustained commitment of the discipline, and should be robust enough to deal with these situations. They should be continuously updated as an ongoing project, and not subjected to sporadic updates either by individuals or committee. Finally, they should not be about taking sides, but about a thinking through and learning. As Caplan has remarked ethics should also be "intellectually holistic" - that is, about all aspects of the discipline: its epistemology, fieldwork practices, institutional and wider social contexts, politically conscious and aware of the political conditions under which our knowledge is produced; that is, reflexive and critical (Caplan 2003b)
To achieve this we propose that we use recent technological advances of the internet. The ASA propose the use of an interactive website where the development and evolution of our guidelines is opened up to all ASA members. We believe that we should first and foremost believe in the ethical integrity of our profession, and trust our expert knowledge. In order that we do not exteriorise our relationship with ethics this engagement should be unmediated and reflect the ethical integrity of the profession. This would turn the personal commitment of individual anthropologists into a source of robust knowledge and engagement. The opening up of our guidelines would allow a thick engagement, or ethnographicness, and more open ended and descriptive engagement with the guidelines. This ethnographicness would, in short, be a part of the ethical self-description of the discipline.
This engagement should not, however, make us complacent. What looks from the inside like trust and the development of our strengths, can from another perspective look like collusion. We still need to grapple with how anthropology deals with issues of its accountability with broader publics.
(The ideas in this draft essay were first presented and discussed at a special session of the 2005 ASA conference, "Engaging ethics: an open discussion on revising the ASA ethical guidelines", April 2005. We welcome all feedback on any of the points raised here)
References:
Caplan, P., ed. 2003a. The Ethics of Anthropology: Debates and Dilemmas. London and New York: Routledge.
Caplan, P. 2003b. Introduction: Anthropology and Ethics. In Caplan, P., ed. The Ethics of Anthropology: Debates and Dilemmas. London and New York: Routledge.
Faubion, J. 2003. Toward an Anthropology of Ethics: Foucault and the Pedagogies of Autopoiesis. In E. Wyschogrod & McKenny, G., eds 2003. The Ethical. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Fluehr-Lobban, C., ed. 2004a. Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for an Ethically Conscious Practice. 2nd Edition. Walnut Creek, Lantham, New York & Oxford: Altamira Press.
Fluehr-Lobban, C. 2004b. Darkness in El Dorado: Research Ethics, Then and Now. In Fluehr-Lobban, C. ed. Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for an Ethically Conscious Practice. 2nd Edition. Walnut Creek, Lantham, New York & Oxford: Altamira Press.
Meskell, L & P. Pels, eds. 2005. Embedding Ethics. Oxford & New York: Berg
Ong, A. & S. Collier, eds. 2005. Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Pels, P. 2005. 'Where there ain't no ten commandments': Redefining Ethics during the Darkness in El Dorado Scandal. In Meskell, L. & P. Pels, eds. Embedding Ethics. Oxford & New York: Berg
Strathern, M., ed. 2000a. Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London & New York: Routledge.
Strathern, M. 2000b. Accountability and ethnography. In Strathern, M., ed. Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London & New York: Routledge
Click here to see the ASA's Ethical guidelines.
