PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY
Since the beginnings of anthropology about 150 years ago, some anthropologists have clearly been genuinely concerned with professional ethics and moral decency in their work. For example, throughout the history of the discipline, many anthropologists and anthropological organizations have demonstrated humanitarian concerns and actions for the survival, welfare, and rights of indigenous societies in the face of European colonialism and the ethnocide and genocide it has so often precipitated which since WWII continued under the guise of economic development and most recently as globalization (Bartolome, et al., 1973, Bodley 1999, Dostal 1971, Ramos 1998, Smith 1999, Cultural Survival Quarterly). On the other hand, to this day far too many anthropologists blindly pursue careerism and scientism with the mistaken faith that science can be amoral and apolitical and that it is sufficient for them to contribute to the general fund of human knowledge which is supposed to somehow inevitably benefit humankind. To this day anthropologists disagree as to whether advocacy on behalf of the communities who host research is a choice of the individual anthropologist or a professional and moral imperative (Fluehr-Lobban 1998:180, Sponsel 2002).
While ethical questions arose in U.S. anthropology at least as early as 1919, the first formal code of professional ethics was not developed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) until 1967. It was stimulated to a considerable extent by political conflicts within the country and beyond over the Vietnam War and related issues in which some anthropologists were scandalously involved in clandestine government research (Fluehr-Lobban 1991:Table 1.1, p. 33, Hymes 1972, Wakin 1992). (Much of this early history is illustrated and recorded in articles published during the first decade of the international journal Current Anthropology). By 1971 the American Anthropological Association (AAA) established a standing Committee on Ethics, although by 1996 its function had been reduced to education, and even then, it has not been very active or effective so far, a fact which some would argue is an ethical problem in itself (http://www.aaanet.org, http://www.publicanthropology.org).
As Fluehr-Lobban (1998:174) perceptively observes:
The history of ethical discourse in cultural anthropology intersects with national and international politics and the changing contexts and paradigms of fieldwork. Various incidents have precipitated crises that have forced anthropologists to hold a mirror up to ourselves and to be reflective about the consequences of our actions. Until recently, historical concern with matters of ethics have been more reactive than proactive, more defensive maneuvering than an affirmative tackling of ethical issues.
Ethical concern, and sometimes action, intensifies during periods when scandals and/or controversies erupt, and then subsequently subsides (Fluehr-Lobban 1991:33, Spencer 1996). The most recent ethical crisis in anthropology exploded in late 2000 and only subsided in the middle of 2002. It was characterized by its unprecedented magnitude, complexity, difficulty, and ugliness. This crisis arose in response to investigative journalist Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado: How Anthropologists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. Although based on more than a decade of field and archival research, there are serious problems with some of Tierney's points, but by far on most he was proven correct by the AAA Task Force on El Dorado as documented in their Final Report (see http://www.aaanet.org) and several other investigations (http://www.publicanthropology.org, Turner 2001). This unprecedented, scandalous controversy centers around the American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. (He worked off and on with Yanomami in the Venezuelan Amazon over a period of nearly three decades, but with around 60 months of actual fieldwork). (For a summary of Tierney's book see Tierney 2000b).
There was a surprising amount of misinformation, disinformation, and even just plain lies marshalled by a few vocal defenders of Chagnon, yet another problem with professional ethics. Nevertheless, there was also much civil, positive, and constructive discussion and debate among other anthropologists who were able to transcend the particulars, including personal animosities and attacks from Chagnon's defenders, to actually deal with the serious implications for the Yanomami as well as the broader ramifications for professional practice and ethics in anthropology. (See the most extensive documentation of all sides and aspects of this matter under Darkness in El Dorado on the website http://members.aol.com/archaeodog/index.htm). One among many results of the Pandora's Box opened by Tierney has been a very useful set of six briefing papers developed by the AAA Committee on Ethics which invited comments on the AAA website (http://www.aaanet.org).
The recent leadership of the AAA claims that it does not have any formal procedures to legally sanction, morally censure, or even reprimand a member for serious violations of professional ethics, unlike law or medicine. However, in late spring 2002, the AAA Executive Board publicly disapproved of Chagnon's proven violations of professional ethics and abuses of the human rights of the Yanomami by accepting the Final Report of the AAA Task Force on El Dorado and by writing and posting a Preface (http://www.aaanet.org). The Final Report is quite a mixed affair, and in many ways very disappointing. For example, some would argue that the appointment of two members of the Task Force was itself unethical, given their clear conflict of interests. (See the comments posted on the Preliminary Report and Final Report on the AAA website).
Nevertheless, the Final Report does condemn Chagnon for the following, among other things: (1) failing to speak out against misuses of his negative characterization of the Yanomami as "the fierce people" to block the Yanomami reserve in Brazil and undermine their ancestral territorial, land, and resource rights; (2) failing to obtain adequate informed consent for taking blood and other biological samples from the Yanomami as well as misinforming them that this would provide them with medical benefits; (3) making unfounded and damaging public attacks, including in the Brazilian press, on Yanomami leaders and spokespersons as well as advocacy anthropologists and NGOs assisting the Yanomami and promoting their human rights; (4) collaborating with corrupt politicians in Venezuela engaged in criminal activities designed to create a much reduced Yanomami reserve in part to facilitate illegal mining activity and also to develop a private research zone; and (5) repeatedly transporting groups of outsiders with public funds into Yanomami communities without proper quarantine precautions thereby risking and probably causing outbreaks of serious illnesses among the Yanomami. While this scandalous controversy now appears to have subsided, it will probably linger for decades and occasionally erupt, judging by the history of the Tasaday controversy (Headland 1992, 1996).
In any case, by now there is ample literature, including substantial case studies, on professional ethics in anthropology, thus there is absolutely no excuse for any future researcher, teacher, or student to not be familiar with the subject and to not seriously consider various guidelines in their own work. Still, seldom can anyone actually specify to an individual precisely what to do in any particular situation, that must be left to the professional maturity, moral conscience, and common decency of the individual. Yet it is obvious that some kinds of behavior are unprofessional, unethical, and even downright immoral. (The publications of Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban are by far the best place to enter this literature. Also see Shore and Ahmed 1995).
At the same time, anthropological research is supposed to be variously regulated to some degree by multiple sources: federal and state laws and agencies; the university Institutional Review Board (IRBs); national, "tribal" and community review boards; clients with guidelines requiring informed consent. IRBs are not only supposed to monitor research by institutional staff, but also provide helpful advice. Nevertheless, after more than 30 years of sporadic deliberations on professional ethics by the AAA and others, Fluehr-Lobban (2002) still concluded recently: "The development of an ethically conscious culture that promotes discussion of ethically responsible decision-making still eludes us as a profession." This deficiency is rather revealing and embarassing, to say the least.
Following Glazer (1996), among other things, any anthropologist genuinely concerned with professional ethics must inquire about the ethics of power, reciprocity, respect, and accountability. Accordingly, Glazer's review of ethics in anthropology raises these questions: Are researchers invariably exploiting the people they study, and if so, how can this be minimized? Do the subjects benefit from the research in ways that they themselves consider meaningful and fair? Does the researcher adequately respect the integrity of the subjects' culture, avoid undue interference, and minimize disturbance? How are anthropologists held accountable for their behavior, research, and publications? On this last point, Glazer (1996:392) observes: "To this day, those who protest unethical actions risk the ire of their colleagues even when raising the most serious issues.... Ethical whistle-blowers are reluctant to come forward for fear they will be labeled as troublemakers and find future opportunities closed to them." This may go a long way toward explaining the lack of an ethically conscious culture in anthropology as observed by Fluehr-Lobban. Perhaps therein lies one of the greatest ethical challenges facing anthropologists and the future of their profession, unfortunately. There is nothing better to conclude this reflective essay with than another statement from Fluehr-Lobban (1998:183): "There is no subfield of anthropology, nor any part of the practice of anthropology, that is free from ethical responsibility."
References Cited
Bartolome, Miguel Alberto, et al., 1973 (June), "The Declaration of Barbados: For the Liberation of Indians," Current Anthropology 14(3):267-270.
Bodley, John, 1999, Victims of Progress, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield (especially chs. 10-11 and appendices).
Dostal, W., ed., 1971, The Situation of the Indian in South America, Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches.
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 1991, Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for a New Era, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press (second edition 2002).
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 1998, "Ethics," in Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, H. Russell Bernard, ed., Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, pp. 173-202.
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 2002a (March), "A Century of Ethics and Professional Anthropology," American Anthropological Association Anthropology News 43(3):20.
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 2002b, "Darkness in El Dorado: Research Ethics, Then and Now," in her Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for a New Era, Thousand Oaks, CA: Altamira Press, Ch. 4.
Glazer, Myron Perez, 1996, "Ethics," in Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, David Levinson and Melvin Ember, eds., New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 2:389-393.
Headland, Thomas N., ed., 1992, The Tasaday Controversy: Assessing the Evidence, Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.
Headland, Thomas N., 1996, "Tasaday Controversy," in Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, David Levinson and Melvin Ember, eds., New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 4:1285-1286.
Ramos, Alcida Rita, 1998, Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Shore, Chris, and A. Ahmed, eds., 1995, The Future of Anthropology: Its Relevance to the Contemporary World, London, England: Athlone.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 1999, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London, England: Zed Books Ltd.
Sponsel, Leslie E., 2001, "Advocacy in Anthropology," International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Oxford, England: Pergamon, pp. 204-205.
Tierney, Patrick, 2000a, Darkness in El Dorado: How Anthropologists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon, New York, NY: W.W. Norton (Second paperback ediiton 2002).
Tierney, Patrick, 2000b (October 9), "The Fierce Anthropologist," The New Yorker pp. 50-61.
Turner, Terence, 2001 (November), The Yanomami and the Ethics of Anthropological Practice, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Latin American Studies Program Occasional Paper Series Volume 6.
Wakin, Eric, 1992, Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counter-Insurgency in Thailand, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies.