Some Ethical Problems in Modern Fieldwork

1t / tANY PEOPLE maintain that social anthropology and other \/ empirically based social sciences would advance faster if they aL Tb iwere modelled more closely on the natural sciences or on mathematics. There are two parts to this view. On the one hand we are urged to use concepts and methods of analysis closer akin to those of the natural sciences, on the other we are told that we should collect our empirical data in what is thought to be a more systematic and objective way. Here I am not concerned with the first issue, whether mathematics or atomic physics are better analytical models for social science than history or geology. My point of departure is the second issue. Can we behave in the field in essentially the same way as we would in a laboratory, looking down a microscope or watching through a one-way screen; or, since this is generally admitted to be a policy of perfection, should we in the field at least try to get as close as possible to laboratory conditions of work? I hope to show that this aim can lead to poorer, not better, research and that eSective fieldwork in part depends on realizing how the field situation diSers from the natural science laboratory. Any empirical inquiry is likely to have several objectives, some theoretical, others practical, but usually one objective has precedence over the others. My discussion is restricted to scientific or academic research, where the main commitment of the investigator is to his discipline, to the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. The problems I shall discuss present themselves in different guise when the primary research goals are administrative, therapeutic, educative or ameliorative, and their examination under these conditions lies outside the scope of this paper. I refer to the field investigator as an ethnographer, a convenient neutral term, whether the people he is studying are tribesmen or tonsmen, pre-literate or industrialized, and whether he thinks of himself as sociologist or social anthropologist or both.