Ethics in the Field

In recent years ever-increasing concerns about ethical dimensions of fieldwork practice have forced anthropologists and other social scientists to radically reconsider the nature, process, and outcomes of fieldwork: what should we be doing, how, for whom, and to what end? In this volume, practitioners from across anthropological disciplines—social and biological anthropology and primatology—come together to question and compare the ethical regulation of fieldwork, what is common to their practices, and what is distinctive to each discipline. Contributors probe a rich variety of contemporary questions: the new, unique problems raised by conducting fieldwork online and via email; the potential dangers of primatological fieldwork for locals, primates, the environment, and the fieldworkers themselves; the problems of studying the military; and the role of ethical clearance for anthropologists involved in international health programs. The distinctive aim of this book is to develop of a transdisciplinary anthropology at the methodological, not theoretical, level.

In recent years ever-increasing concerns about ethical dimensions of fieldwork practice have forced anthropologists and other social scientists to radically reconsider the nature, process, and outcomes of fieldwork: what should we be doing, how, for whom, and to what end? In this volume, practitioners from across anthropological disciplines—social and biological anthropology and primatology—come together to question and compare the ethical regulation of fieldwork, what is common to their practices, and what is distinctive to each discipline. Contributors probe a rich variety of contemporary questions: the new, unique problems raised by conducting fieldwork online and via email; the potential dangers of primatological fieldwork for locals, primates, the environment, and the fieldworkers themselves; the problems of studying the military; and the role of ethical clearance for anthropologists involved in international health programs. The distinctive aim of this book is to develop of a transdisciplinary anthropology at the methodological, not theoretical, level.

Chapter 1. The ethical fieldworker, and other problems
Jeremy MacClancy & Agustín Fuentes

Chapter 2. Constructing success and controlling information: the place of ethical clearance in international health
Melissa Parker & Tim Allen

Chapter 3. Ethical issues in the study and conservation of an African great ape in non-protected human-dominated habitat
Matt R. McLennan and Catherine M. Hill

Chapter 4. Are observational field studies really noninvasive?
Karen Strier

Chapter 5. Complex and heterogeneous ethical structures in field primatology
Nobuyuki Kutsukake

Chapter 6. Contemporary Ethical Issues in Field Primatology
Katherine MacKinnon and Erin Riley

Chapter 7. The Ethics of Conducting Field Research: Do Long-term Great Ape Field Studies Help to Conserve Primates?
Anna Nekaris & Vincent Nijman

Chapter 8. Studying suffering: the ethics of studying contested illness
Susie Kilshaw

Chapter 9. Messy Ethics: Negotiating the terrain between ethics approval and ethical practice
Tina Miller

Chapter 10. Key Ethical Considerations Which Inform the Use of Anonymous Asynchronous Websurveys in ‘Sensitive’ Research
Em Rundall

Chapter 11. Covering all bases, or covering our backs? An ethnography of URECs
Jeremy MacClancy

Notes on Contributors
Bibliograhpy
Index