Interview with The Chronicle of Higher Ed The Ethics of a Code for Anthropologists (original) (raw)

Anthropological Research, Ethics of

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015

Anthropology's relationship to ethics in research has been driven by periodic disciplinary controversies, often in close association with the involvement of anthropologists in successive war efforts, primarily in the U.S. Over time disciplinary ethics have increasingly focused on the unique exigencies of ethnography, as a disciplinary-specific method. While professional anthropological organizations developed codes of ethics beginning in the Vietnam era, historically, disciplinary ethical language has been used in two ways: as a basis for internal disciplinary self-policing and as a means to claim public professional standing as a social science. These uses continue to be prevalent today. But anthropology's relationship to its ethics also has been historically dynamic, changing with changes in disciplinary identity, values, and priorities. Less recognized are the ways that disciplinary ethics have been regularly reconstituted in close proximity to the frontiers of the identity of anthropology as a changing project. Anthropology's ethics reflect the discipline's specific history and identity debates, and they are one key index of these changing frontiers. This is most evident with respect to anthropology's ambivalent relationship to: science, the nation-state, and encompassing normative structures.

Military Anthropology and the Ethics of Espionage

International Journal of Intelligence Ethics, 2010

A summary account of the U.S. Army's "Human Terrain System" and charges by academics of malfeasance for enlisting civilian anthropologists and other social scientists as "spies" and covert agents in the 2003 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dilemmas of the involvement of Anthropology in Wars: The case of the Human Terrain System

Article, 2020

The involvement of anthropology in warfare, in which anthropologists' performance helps to bridge the gap of cultural awareness of the military in wartime and provide soldiers understandings of foreign local cultures where they deploy, has a long history. The establishment of the Human Terrain System is also to fulfil the need of conducting anthropology research on the life of Iraqis and Afghans for the sake of wars in which the United States has involved. However, the Human Terrain System has been seen as the most controversial program in the history of American anthropology involving in wars. This paper, by systematically reviewing criticism imposed on the Human Terrain System through a desk study, attempts to provide a deep look at dilemmas of the involvement of anthropology in wars. The study found that the Human Terrain System was put under pressure on nine aspects comprising: organizational, financial, institutional, professional, military-strategic, methodological, scholarly, ethical, political. Among others, ethical debates have been heavily taken into account, in which the focus was on whether the Human Terrain System achieves golden principles "do no harm" and "informed consent" in anthropology research on battlefields. The advocates claimed that what the organization did is consistent with codes of ethics, whereas the majority of anthropologists violated the codes. Furthermore, what the Human Terrain System did has been considered as challenges for anthropologists and generated negative effects on the anthropological profession.

Anthropology and the military - 1968, 2003 and beyond

Anthropology Today, 2003

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