Doing Field Projects. John Forrest

in relation to the projects in this book and in each case I give detailed instructions and caveats. Here I want to underscore general ethical guidelines that are always applicable. These guidelines are in place both for the protection of the people you interact with, and for your own protection. First, consider the ethical guidelines established by the American Anthropological Association. The full text of the latest (2012) Principles of Professional Responsibility can be found here: http://ethics.americananthro.org/category/statement. This Statement is divided into sections that are self-explanatory and should be read in detail. Each section has a list of citations (with links) that you can also consult.

      1 Do No Harm

      2 Be Open and Honest Regarding Your Work.

      3 Obtain Informed Consent and Necessary Permissions.

      4 Weigh Competing Ethical Obligations Due Collaborators and Affected Parties.

      5 Make Your Results Accessible.

      6 Protect and Preserve Your Records.

      7 Maintain Respectful and Professional Relationships.

      You may also consult: Ethics and Anthropology: Ideas and Practice by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2013)

      Not all the ethical points raised in the AAA’s Statement are germane to the projects in this book; they cover the full range of professional fieldwork endeavors. The following is a discussion of some of the key points that are most relevant to the projects in this book.

      Do No Harm

The promise to “Do No Harm” comes from the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, but it equally applies to ethnography. Physicians have their own ethical dilemmas to contend with, but yours are somewhat similar, somewhat different. When physicians want to suggest a risky or experimental procedure that might potentially cause harm, they are ethically obligated to discuss the procedure with their patients. An analogous situation can occur during fieldwork. All information is power, and that information has the potential to do harm. Fieldworkers are obliged to protect their informants and themselves from physical, psychological, and other types of harm.

      Imagine, for example, you want to map the layout of supermarket shelves, and, having obtained the requisite informed consent of the manager or owner, you proceed to gather data. In the course of your investigations you determine that product placement on the shelves is directly linked to the store’s profitability. Items with the highest profit margin for the store are placed at eye level within easy reach, whereas those with the lowest profit margin are harder to access. You map the store with this research question in mind, and then produce a finished map. Such “insight” is not exactly breaking news, but its dissemination is potentially damaging to the store’s bottom line. You have to consider your ethical obligations in this regard. If you are open with the manager, and he/she agrees that you may proceed, you have fulfilled your ethical obligation, but you must still decide whether the conclusions that you reach outweigh the potential harm caused by their dissemination. That equation must always be in your mind.

      Take, for example, a situation that occurred to Katie Nelson when she worked with a group of 10 undocumented Mexican immigrant college students in Minnesota, USA, for 13 months. She was studying this population as part of her doctoral research looking at identity formation and contestation among undocumented youth in the context of national discourses and labels that tend to dehumanize, marginalize, and discriminate against them. As part of her research strategy she collected detailed life history interviews of each of her primary informants. After her fieldwork period came to an end, Nelson included the life histories in her 250-page dissertation, which she planned to publish. After consulting with her academic advisors and other colleagues she came to the decision that in order to protect her informants from any harm the publication of her work might cause, she would use pseudonyms to obscure their true names and identities.

      After completing the dissertation, she shared the completed draft with her informants for their feedback. On the whole they were pleased with the way Nelson portrayed them in her work, yet one informant didn’t want to be represented using a pseudonym. Instead, he asked Nelson to use his true name in the written document. In the time since Nelson had interviewed him, this young man had become an outspoken local activist for the rights of the undocumented in Minnesota and U.S. society. He wanted his true name to be used so his activism work would be documented and substantiated by Nelson’s research. Additionally, a new executive action initiative established by President Obama had taken place, which had shifted the political landscape. After discussing the issue with him further, Nelson’s informant felt the Deferred Action measure provided him some protection from future deportation and thus a pseudonym was not necessary. Nelson, however, still had some doubts. She knew the Deferred Action could be reversed in future when another U.S. president took power. This would put her informant at risk for discovery and possible deportation. She wanted to protect all her informants from harm, but also wanted to meet her informant’s wishes.

More problematic in the admonition to Do No Harm is the possibility that the fieldwork situation may harm you. Here the Self Study can be critically useful. Before embarking on fieldwork I recommend you first carry out the Self Study project (Chapter 5). One of the objectives of this project is to identify what activities could potentially harm you. The types of harm can be wide-ranging For instance, if you decide to be a participant observer in a rock climbing group, the dangers and safety measures will be spelled out by your leader, and you will be able to make a sensible decision as to whether to proceed. Participating in a political protest is another matter entirely. Even if the other participants are expressly nonviolent, there may yet be violent encounters – with counter-protesters or the police, for example. As a general rule, you should not be involved in any activities in which you run the risk of physical harm.

      The potential for emotional or psychological harm to yourself is harder to assess. For example, a woman conducting an interview with a man, which seems at the outset to be innocuous, may devolve into sexual harassment or abuse. Your normal, commonsense radar should be able to alert you to such situations, and you should not shut your usual defenses off just because you are conducting fieldwork. If this kind of situation occurs, you should end the fieldwork immediately. Data gathering should never supersede personal safety.

      Somewhat more abstract psychological dangers may turn up, and here is where the Self Study project is most important. We all have emotional triggers, and you may have memories of past traumas that trouble you. Addressing these issues is the domain of therapy, and if you have been in therapy you will be aware of them. I am not proposing that you engage in intense therapy before beginning fieldwork, but you must always have a degree of self-awareness, and you must always conclude a fieldwork session with a modicum of self-analysis and self-criticism. You must not expose yourself to psychological harm in the course of fieldwork, in the same way that you must avoid harming others. My general rule of thumb is not to embark on any fieldwork exercise that makes you uncomfortable in a significant way.

      Institutional Approval

      At minimum, all fieldwork conducted by undergraduates (and university students in general) must be approved by a university’s Human Subjects Committee, Internal Review Board, or similar committee. DO NOT START WORK ON PROJECTS IN THIS BOOK WITHOUT INSTITUTIONAL APPROVAL. This is a hard-and-fast rule with no exceptions. If you are doing these projects for a field methods class, it is possible that the class has blanket approval for its students. My field methods course had general approval from my university on the condition that I monitor each project, and that I submit an annual report to the committee. Check with your instructor if you are using these projects for a class. If you are pursuing them alone, or as part of a larger research project, check with the head of your department, dean, or supervisor.

Having standards for the ethical use of human subjects in experimentation has long been an issue when it comes to testing drugs, inducing clinical problems for trial purposes, and the like. But