Paper short abstract:

I consider how questions of consent are complicated by shifting relations of power between research participants and the state.

Paper long abstract:

Questions about the relations of power between researchers and both informants and gatekeepers have long been a concern for anthropologists, as has the recognition that consent is more meaningfully understood as a process that must be continuously re-negotiated rather than a simple binary. Here, drawing on fieldwork in Xinjiang, China, I consider how these issues are complicated by shifting relations of power between research participants and the state. How can their data be used when it is no longer safe to contact participants, and their consent was given under very different circumstances? And how should power relations between different groups influence the weight given to their respective rights of consent? I argue here that at such critical moments standard codes of ethics fail to offer helpful guidance, but that consideration of the internal good of anthropology, and insights offered by its practice, can provide potential answers.

Paper short abstract:

This paper interrogates approaches of anthropologists equipped with a camera and dimensions of consent through the collection of the biography of one research-participant. The description raises issues of power and ethics doing fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

"You could make a documentary based on my life history." - "But, Sabon-Nim, that is what we are already doing for more than a year," replied a peer loudly and surprisedly to the 80-year-old Taekwondo Master, while I was setting up the camera for my last filmed interview. Hence, the utterance of the elderly research participant caused tension and led me to question the ways of having obtained his consent and adhering ethical standards. Did I assess properly power dynamics in the field? Was it consented due to a disinterest in the output? Is it an expression of approval for dissemination?

The paper discusses power constellations and forms of consent - to probe approaches of anthropologists equipped with a camera. Nowadays, people are used to being photographed, filmed and recorded in everyday-life. Especially, in recent years the students of the Master are recording his statements to create legacy. Conducting fieldwork in Argentina on practices of care in the realm of Asian martial arts, the applied methods of filming interviews and situations of everyday life did not contradict the group's idea to promote the position of their Master. Additionally, ethical guidelines barely discuss the issue of practical audio-visual methods including, recording, analysis and dissemination (Cox and Wright 2010). Over the core of a year, I collected the life story of a Taekwondo pioneer and one little comment brought up the big question: What does informed consent mean for visual anthropologists?

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will contribute to the panel by reflecting on the specificities of negotiating confidentiality in my recent projects exploring experiences of minoritisation among the Jewish and the Muslims communities of India and the UK.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will contribute to the panel by reflecting on the specificities of negotiating confidentiality in my recent projects exploring experiences of minoritisation among the Jewish and the Muslims communities of India and the UK. The paper will discuss the way sensitive topics in the study of antisemitism, Islamophobia and Jewish-Muslims relations were addressed during fieldwork and the writing up process by drawing on published literary sources that were representative of the opinions of my interlocutors. The second half of the paper will address the main theoretical theme of this panel by discussing the power dimension of conducting community-engaged fieldwork on a topic of heightened public concern and media visibility.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the power dynamics inherent in ethnographic research with vulnerable people. It specifically focuses on issues of informed consent and confidentiality and how these issues become more complex at different field sites when working with marginalized homeless people in Croatia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the power dynamics inherent in ethnographic research with vulnerable people. It specifically focuses on issues of informed consent and confidentiality and how these issues become more complex at different field sites when working with marginalized homeless people in Croatia. Based on collaborative team fieldwork in Croatia, this comparative research aims to understand homeless people's everyday lives from their perspectives exploring their experiences of homelessness, vulnerability, and identities (CSRP). Preliminary findings show that power dynamics between researchers and research participants are variable depending on field site (shelter facility vs street) and positionality. This exploratory study also explores the relationship between research sites, researcher positionality, and informed consent. Findings show that this is often more complex and challenging when working with populations that lack resources and trust in others. The different variants of informed consent (i.e, oral and written), as well as the achievability and ethical issues of consent in ethnographic research with vulnerable populations are discussed. Similarly, managing participant confidentiality while yielding in-depth information about people who may have connections with substance abuse and anti-social behaviour is more challenging in different research spaces. Conversely, researcher vulnerability (i.e., safety and burn-out) is magnified in immersed ethnographic work with vulnerable groups and variable depending on research site and positionality. These ethical issues are considered with the intention of engaging in responsible scholarship and in an attempt to minimize the possibility of harm to research participants.

Paper short abstract:

Considering the increasing demands made for data-sharing, this paper explores the role of the ethnographic researchers in the management of research materials. It discusses the responsibility of the researcher for maintaining research materials in diverging forms of ethnographic research.

Paper long abstract:

This paper builds on the Leiden statement on data management in anthropology (Pels 2018; Boog et al 2018), which maintains that, as research materials are always based on mutual trust and collaboration, and are co-produced in a social context, they can never be fully owned or controlled by the researcher, their interlocutors, or third parties. In this presentation, first, I clarify what the emphasis on the coproduction of knowledge means in the context of the GDPR. Second, I argue that ethnographic research oriented on, say, 'studying down', 'collaborative equality' and 'studying down' require radically different approach to research ethics; and, third, I conclude that to accommodate the diverse modes of fieldwork orientations, it is necessary to nuance the Leiden statement's emphasis on 'mutual trust'. To include research contexts where there is a very narrow, or even no, trust-basis, we still need to recognize the rights of those involved in the co-production of research materials. This implies that, rather than third parties, the principal researcher is responsible for maintaining research materials of a field study with a primary consideration of co-researchers and/or the socio-political and economic situation of the research participants.

Paper short abstract:

My presentation is phenomenologically oriented reflection of ethics and questions current frameworks of good research practice, power relations and consent in (British) Anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

The following paper builds on my ongoing research on the political ecology of the 'Afar salt trade in North Eastern Ethiopia. The 'Afar traditional customary laws (meda'a) and the information sharing meshwork (ɖāgu) both serve as ethical codex for the relationship between individuals. Among the communities I conducted my research, the "ethical-self" (rather than any other self (social, personal or political)) is salient in self-identification processes and defining in how individuals treat and behave towards others. Using data from my ethnographic research and inspiration from the works of the Danish philosopher and phenomenologist Knud Løgstrup (1905-1981), I question current frameworks, guidelines and regulations for research practices in (British) Anthropology. Academic institutions, ethic panels and research committees are postulating what ethics are and what ethical behavior is. These frameworks, however, often bare colonial implications through written consent forms (among other) and rarely consider what communities themselves and the people involved in the research consider ethical. My core argument is that researchers, by signing and obeying to these ethical frames, become conformist, thereby casual and non-committed, insofar as the authoritative nature of conformity has been watered down in postmodern society. Conformity to rules, I claim, drowns the personal responsibility and undeniable power anthropologists have over the people during their research. I therefore propose a phenomenology of ethics that defines research as an ethical driven correspondence arising out of people's compassion, empathy, honesty, and trust towards each other. This correspondence can neither be demanded nor per-determined, but is negotiated in the "spontaneous".

Paper short abstract:

We share our experiences of censorship in evaluation research, reflecting on what our experience reveals about the changing meaning of 'informed consent'. Legalistic approaches to ethics extend protections to organizations, challenging social scientists' ability to protect the public interest.

Paper long abstract:

In a Viewpoint recently published in the medical journal The Lancet, we shared our experience of censorship in evaluation research for global health. During our ethnographic policy research into donor-funded NGOs' efforts to influence reproductive health policy in several countries in Africa and Asia, the NGOs issued "concerns" to our university ethics committee that we had not followed appropriate procedures for obtaining informed consent. Moreover, in a coordinated move, three individuals retroactively withdrew consent for using their specific contributions in our research. In this paper, we reflect on what our experience reveals about the changing meaning of 'informed consent' and research ethics more broadly. In particular, we analyse how increasingly formalized research ethics and governance frameworks promote a legalistic approach to research ethics, and serve to extend protections intended for vulnerable individuals to powerful organizations. This tendency, we argue, not only challenges the independence of research, but may also undermine the critical role of social science research in questioning social, economic and political structures and processes and protecting the public interest.

Paper short abstract:

The paper presents a cautionary tale of a junior researchers' challenges in exiting the field - in this case, a government bureaucracy. It shows how pressure from powerful gatekeepers can result in negotiation around consent and control of material, and the implications for researcher obligations.

Paper long abstract:

While government bureaucracies are often impregnable to an outsider ethnographer, this paper presents a cautionary tale about the pressures faced if access is gained. Exiting the field presents if anything a graver challenge. Gatekeepers can reach into the writing, blocking the researchers' ability to exit the field and to proceed to the distance needed to develop the analysis. The pressure can be particularly inhibiting if the researcher is in a vulnerable position in the context of their career. The paper reviews a case drawn from the author's experience of completing his doctoral thesis, an ethnographic study of an office in a government department. Ultimately the author agreed with the gatekeeper to embargo the thesis, whilst accepting a process for publication of articles. The paper situates the discussion of ethics in the context of the pressure brought to bear by the gatekeeper on the drafting process: in particular, it addresses the limits of consent when fieldwork is likely to evolve. The paper analyses the outcome as a negotiated compromise between the researcher and the key gatekeeper, under threat of legal action and at a time of considerable personal vulnerability: a process that moved from the bureaucratic and rule-like forms of ethics, to a compromise between individuals. The paper discusses the academy's obligations to protect the researcher and the nature of the researcher's obligations to the academy. It shows how mistakes are made and compromises reached at a time of considerable vulnerability - and asks under what circumstances 'studying up' is possible.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will engage in discussions relating to power, ethics, and consent by drawing upon a period of fieldwork exploring the nuances of professional knowledge and the identities of contemporary art curators in the UK.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore how a period of fieldwork with professionals in the creative sector in the UK, resulted in the navigation of multitudinous knowledge constructs. Through discussions regarding access, confidentiality, and the challenges of engaging with the everyday rhythms of a work place and/or professional landscape, this paper will consider how anthropological field-research design and its subsequent enactment responds to questions of ethics, power and knowledge. Similarly, this paper will consider the role of ethics and consent in relation to the curatorial profession specifically, by discussing how the profession itself contributes to debates about expertise, transparency, collaboration, the nuances of the creative sector, power relations and hierarchies. Contemporary art curators direct social and cultural landscapes through art, and this research will also demonstrate how the role is as diverse as it is creative.

Paper short abstract:

Two principles of informed consent are that people feel free to chose to take part in research and that they are able to withdraw at any time. Despite developed understandings of positionality and power, the influence of places and relationships on consent are often overlooked in ethical reflections

Paper long abstract:

Informed consent is underpinned by principles of openness and transparency, yet these can become compromised when research undertaken in different settings. Using Goffman's concept of total institutions I explore how conventional practices of ethical research are transformed within different settings and the ways which these transformations challenge ideas of the freedom and autonomy of participants. Drawing on different research projects carried out in UK prisons, with serving soldiers in army camps and with inpatients in hospitals, I explore the process and limitations of following established practices of 'consenting' people in research and suggest new ways of ethical engagement. Following Scott's identification of 'weapons of the weak' I reflect on my observations as to how people may negotiate and resist 'participation' in research without apparently refusing or withdrawing, and ways of working within these often invisible areas of ethical unease.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores ethics and consent in the context of a 'critical ethnographic' study of elite philanthropy in Brazil and the UK. It examines the ethics of gaining access to exclusive elite fieldsites, and of consent to the analysis of research data on elite experience gathered in these sites.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores issues of ethics and consent in ethnographic research among elites, with reference to on-going study on philanthropy in Brazil and the UK. It examines how these issues complicate the objectives of a 'critical ethnography', concerned with the ways in which elite experience and worldviews lead to the design of the 'philanthrocapitalist' project, whose benevolent objectives ultimately serve to conceal the unequal social and economic structures on which elite power, privilege and influence depend. The collection of much research material for this study has been dependent on gaining access to exclusive elite spaces, particularly 'donor education' programmes and philanthropic 'learning journeys', where wealthy philanthropists share and discuss their activities amongst elite peers. Entry to these spaces has required the building of close relationships of trust, and has often been dependent on a blurring of my own academic and personal identities. In these spaces, discussion goes beyond the operational aspects of philanthropy, encompassing themes of elite family dynamics, inheritance, family business succession, wealth and money. These themes, and the ways in which they intersect with the design of philanthropic practice, are central to my research. But they are also deeply sensitive, and the obtaining of informed consent to use data gathered on them throws up complex ethical questions. These concerns are further complicated by the growing 'impact agenda' for anthropological research, accompanied - in the case of my project - by emerging interest among research participants on the reflexive possibilities offered by my enquiry into their activities.