At the 2011 AAA Annual Meeting recently held in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, the AAA Executive Board (EB) voted to receive a draft revision of the AAA’s Code of Ethics as revised by the Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review. The EB also passed a resolution thanking the task force and its chair, Dena Plemmons, for all of their hard work. Beginning in early 2009, the Task Force was commissioned to review the Code of Ethics and consult extensively with relevant AAA committees and commissions, the Section Assembly, the membership at large and other interested parties. The Task Force finished its review in October 2011.
After receiving the draft, the EB appointed a subcommittee to review the draft code which is currently available for review on the AAA website. The subcommittee is chaired by Vice President and President-Elect Monica Heller, and members include Hugh Gusterson, Jean Schensul, Ida Susser, Vilma Santiago, Deb Martin, Sandra Lopez Varela and AAA President Leith Mullings (ex-officio). The subcommittee will present its recommendation to the Executive Board at its May meeting.
We invite you, the membership at large to review the posted code, and submit your comments by January 30, 2012 to ethicsfeedback@aaanet.org for the subcommittee to consider. Your input is crucial to this process, and we thank you for your dedication to our association.
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Quick Links to view draft principles:
- Draft Code of Ethics Compared With Existing Code
- Complete Draft Principles Release by Ethics Task Force
- Ethical Dimension to our Professional Relationships
- Protect and Preserve Your Records
- Informed consent is a dynamic, continuous and reflective process
- Code of Ethics: Draft Principles first four reviewed principles
A recap of draft principles thus far - Balance the responsibility to disseminate with its potential consequence
- Be open and honest regarding your work. Make your results accessible
- Balance competing ethical obligations due collaborators and affected parties
- Do no harm
View the Task Force introduction and draft principle, with comment response from Task Force
For more resources on Ethics, click here.
Dear AAA Member:
Over the past year and a half, the Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review, pursuant to a charge put forward by the Executive Board, has been undertaking a thorough review of our association’s Code of Ethics [you can see the original charge here].
REVIEW
The task force began their work in early 2009 by creating a survey which was disseminated to the entire membership. The survey was meant to be both a broad examination of perceptions of codes of ethics in general – what they should do, what they cannot do – and an assessment of opinions about the AAA code of ethics and its specific content. We wanted to know if and how the membership used the code in practice and in teaching, and if there were ways to make the code more relevant to our work.
At the same time, task force members began consulting with other sections of the AAA as well as organizations outside the AAA, and we also began a comprehensive review of the codes of ethics of these other organizations. We used all of this information, along with the results of the survey, to inform the agenda for our first face to face meeting in September of 2009. We created several workgroups to focus on the major concepts or issues of practice which we saw as central to our code of ethics; the task of these workgroups was to make clear all the dimensions of these issues so that we would have a simultaneously clear and nuanced picture. The workgroups examined relevant resources from a broad range of sources, as well as soliciting cases from anthropologists which helped contextualize the concepts with which we were working. Throughout the process, we continuously connected our work back to the current code of ethics.
We have continued soliciting comments and feedback from the membership through, for instance, columns in Anthropology News and through roundtable events at the AAA annual meetings of 2008, 2009, and 2010. These included specific roundtables to address student concerns and section/committee concerns.
REFORMULATION
As our review process continues, we are asking for your help as we begin to think about revisions to our current code. As we’ve noted previously, our decision to reformulate the current code isn’t meant to imply that the current code is necessarily deficient. We do think, however, that any effective and meaningful code needs to be periodically revised and restated to keep current with the ways in which ethical issues, however timeless, are encountered, discussed and debated in the field. Our intent has not been to suggest a completely new code that will stand without further revision, but to make the current code more immediately relevant. We hope and expect that it will be revisited and revised again on a regular basis, not just in the event of a disciplinary crisis, and always with member input in the revision process.
OUTREACH
We believe that there is value in presenting many of the same ideas in different ways. Doing so helps anthropologists of all kinds focus in on core concepts and problems. To that end, we are seeking to identify from both the current code and the earlier Principles of Professional Responsibility broad statements or principles applicable to all anthropologists. We are asking for your help in doing so, and are actively soliciting input from AAA members on several suggested “draft principles” presented over the past several months (available for viewing on this blog). This is a reminder to you to take a look at the drafts and provide feedback. This is an important process and your involvement is critical to its success.
PROCESS
Principles are being released one at a time for several reasons. First and foremost is to allow members to focus on each individual principle in turn; we hope to encourage deliberate and substantive discussion on the merits of each as a meaningful and relevant principle on its own. Second, the work of the Task Force itself is ongoing, with additional meetings and discussions scheduled throughout the remainder of the year. Finally, this is part of an iterative process in which ongoing discussion by the membership will determine both how each draft principle should be revised and how many additional principles may be needed to adequately address the concerns identified from discussion by the membership. The result should be a series of carefully vetted and debated principles, each able to stand alone, which can then be reviewed, revised and discussed as a whole by the AAA membership to ensure that the complete document adequately and coherently addresses all key areas and concerns.
INVOLVEMENT
Every member of the AAA has the opportunity to be involved in this process of review and revision of our code of ethics, and we urge you to make use of that opportunity.
We thank you for your support thus far, and welcome your continued participation.
Sincerely,
The Task Force for Comprehensive Ethics Review
[...] Ethics Task Force [...]
Dear AAA folks,
Something has been on my mind re. the ethics review, which I thought I needed to share.
In theory it sounds great that an anthropologist going to research in an area be up-front in what they are going to do. That is, not to engage in covert research leading to people perhaps later prosecuting … etc.
There are also problems with the above. One in particular – that an American anthro. coming into a ‘poor’ community is often enough of a ‘shock to the system’. Then, if instead of quietly becoming a part of the community, they are constantly talking about ethical laws, telling everyone about their university, and what they are trying to achieve (which will almost invariably sound very obscure) and their wanting to comply with international ethical standards – may blow people’s minds. In addition, the implications behind that kind of approach include a kind of neo-colonialism of ‘I am important because I am connected to a US university …’. And ‘I have to talk before you talk …’.
In practice, a lot of attention to ethical issues that seem important in the USA may be skewing one’s whole approach to a community in poorer parts. How important is this?
Jim
I think you hit a very good point, Jim, and maybe there should be a guide to the AAA Ethics Code that says more about how the guidelines and principles of the code apply in the field, apart from getting consent papers signed and telling everyone what and whom we represent. As you say, talking too much about ourselves and about our projects can also repel people who might want to interact with us simply on an interpersonal basis.
What is ethics all about and how do we read the AAA Ethics Code? If ethics is not primarily about laws, can there be an ethics code? I think, from the beginning it should be clear that AAA Ethics do not work as a law code, but as an education and advisory program (according to the AAA Ethics Committee). This means that the Code does not give instructions and rather intends anthropologists to be aware of certain things. Reading the guidelines, I had the impression that all this is relevant and important, but also familiar. Although I would not be able to recite the guidelines ad hoc, most of what they imply is some kind of intuitive practical knowledge that we should all have automatically ready when we interact with other people. I do not want to address some innate human morality here, but I clearly see AAA Ethics work only as a platform where education, advice and relevant discussion (of case studies) can take place. As a communicative platform, then, AAA Ethics can have positive long term effects rather than providing anthropologists with a tool kit for their work.
Nevertheless it is good to have all the important guidelines compiled and reasonably put together in one official text. Here they will remind us once more of our main responsibilities as human social beings in the role of anthropological researchers. Maybe we would not need to have an extra code of ethics in anthropology, if we understood ourselves not as researchers in the first place. In particular anthropology could help us to a broader understanding of ethics that always applies where differences meet and interactions take place. Instead of doing research on other people, we could also say: we learn from other people, they let us know, they allow us to handle this knowledge in our own way and they make us sign consent papers. This might sound idealistic, but so are the guidelines. No principles will help, if we anthropologists do not want to also see the basic ethical idea of the gift-exchange, which is total reciprocity even on the risk of questioning ourselves and our role as anthropologists. Ethics is all about being alive and interacting with a manifold world, and there seems to be much more to them than a code of guidelines. That is why debate and discussion are as much important. Also I support the idea of the AAA Committee that tries to calculate ethics on a long term basis and that can be asked for advice in particular situations.
Norman
[...] AAA ethics board extended editorial authority to its membership on the code of ethics, creating a blog on which the revisions would be posted and members could comment [...]
[...] Ethics Task Force [...]
[...] Ethics Task Force [...]
I admire the AAA and the teask force for taking on this complex and difficult task. As anthropologists we should recognize that we are not always the best judges of ourselves. I think it would be constructive and prudent at SOME point in the process to submit a draft revised code of ethics to an independent panel consisting of philosophers with expertise on ethics, and perhaps a couple of sociologists or historians of science … my idea is not to ask such a panel to redraft our code of ethics, but rather perhaps to review and assess it with an eye towards producing a set of questions for the membership that they feel would contribute to the process. It would initiate another stage of discussion but one more focused and that would ensure that we have considered angles that may not be as obvious to us.
[...] Ethics Task Force [...]
[...] Ethics Task Force [...]
Just a couple of comments/questions here.
1. Collaboration is discussed frequently in the beginning of the code of ethics (and I understand it can be difficult to define given a person’s specialization), however, no mention is made about dissemination of research to “nonanthropologists” (for which I’m assuming also means those in the community who made the research possible) until near 2/3 way through the code in C.1. Research participants/consultants should be mentioned in the first line of C.1.
Section B2 – “…When they see evidence of research misconduct, they are obligated to report it. They should not obstruct the scholarly efforts of others when they are carried out responsibly.” To whom should he/she be reported to? To their institutional affiliation and its accompanying IRB? To their department? To their funding agency?