Applications of Anthropology: Professional Anthropology in the Twenty-first Century

By Sarah Pink

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the demand for anthropological approaches, understandings and methodologies outside academic departments is shifting and changing. Through a series of fascinating case studies of anthropologists’ experiences of working with very diverse organizations in the private and public sector this volume examines existing and historical debates about applied anthropology. It explores the relationship between the "pure and the impure" – academic and applied anthropology, the question of anthropological identities in new working environments, new methodologies appropriate to these contexts, the skills needed by anthropologists working in applied contexts where multidisciplinary work is often undertaken, issues of ethics and responsibility, and how anthropology is perceived from the ‘outside’. The volume signifies an encouraging future both for the application of anthropology outside academic departments and for the new generation of anthropologists who might be involved in these developments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2005
• ISBN: 9780857456885

Book preview

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1   BASAPP activities: agenda of the Annual meeting 1992

1.2   BASAPP Newsletter: booklet format with reports of events and short articles (1988–1993)

1.3   Anthropology in Action’s activities, June–December 1994

1.4   Anthropology in Action: journal format with themed articles (1994–present)

1.5a Letter disbanding AinA as a membership organisation with a programme of activities, May 2000 (p. 1)

1.5b Letter disbanding AinA as a membership organisation with a programme of activities, May 2000 (p. 2)

8.1   Lamahalot fishermen

8.2   Terry Turner interviews a Kayapó leader

8.3   A workshop in the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology

8.4   Nigel Farage

8.5   Anthropology on British television today

9.1   A flyer for The Hunt

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Applications of Anthropology has been above all a collaborative venture, and those who have contributed their ideas and energies to it go far beyond the set of authors listed on the contents page. This book is based on the Applications of Anthropology seminar series, a project I developed as Networking Officer of the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA). Indeed I was inspired to develop this project as a result of being invited to take up this role by the ASA committee, keen at that time to develop closer links with anthropologists working outside the academy. My first thanks must go to the ASA committee for their support and feedback in the development of my proposal to the ESRC who with the ASA and the Centre for Learning and Teaching Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) cofunded the seminar series.

Most of the chapters in this book are from our first seminar, which aimed to survey the contemporary field of applied anthropology. The exception is Adam Drazin’s chapter, presented in the second seminar. Due to the constraints of time that so often plague applied anthropologists, two further contributions, from Genevieve Bell and Chris Loxley, both of which were very important to our discussions during the seminar could not be published here. This seminar was a highly stimulating event driven not solely by the stunning and excellent set of presentations from our speakers, but equally by the discussion and comment from the seminar participants. This enthusiastic, critical and collaborative set of people ranged from undergraduate, masters and doctoral students to established senior applied and academic anthropologists. Their contributions have inevitably influenced the ways these chapters have been rewritten for publication. In particular our discussions helped me shape my own perspective on the issues and questions I have raised in the introduction to this volume. Without these participants the seminar and this book could not have developed as they have, and this volume would be incomplete without an acknowledgement of their exceptional contribution.

Finally, I would like to thank those who have helped in and supported the process of producing both the seminar itself and this book: Sue Jeffels and Ann Smith for their secretarial assistance; John Postill for his help in organising our first seminar; and Marion Berghahn for her enthusiasm and support in the publication of this volume.

PART I

THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE U.K.

INTRODUCTION:

Applications of Anthropology

Sarah Pink

In a recent guest editorial in Anthropology Today (19(1)), Paul Sillitoe urged anthropology to ‘promote its professional identity beyond the academy’ in what he saw as the obvious areas ‘such as development … forensic science, the media, the ‘culture’ industry, heritage work, museums and galleries, teaching, intercultural relations, refugee work and the travel industry’ and what were to him the less obvious occupations ‘such as law, banking, social work, human resources, retailing, management and the armed forces’ (2003: 2). This, Sillitoe hoped, would help anthropology to develop a profile as a profession and in doing so increase student numbers and prevent non-anthropologists from posing as members of our profession. Two years earlier, in 2001 I was invited to become the networking officer for the Association of Social Anthropologists¹ (ASA) committee, and as part of that role I endeavoured to develop links between anthropologists working inside and outside academic departments.² Through this came the idea for the Applications of Anthropology seminar³ from which this book has been developed. At this time the scope for anthropologists’ involvement outside academic departments was growing and shifting. The seminar unfolded in a context of expansion of the use of anthropology in business, education and the public sector, while in overseas development the demand seems to be shifting to meet a different set of needs. Likewise in visual anthropology the application of anthropology to television in the Disappearing World and Under the Sun documentary series of the 1970s and 1980s has diminished. A contemporary applied visual anthropologist is more likely to be using a camera to do consumer ethnography for a multinational company or medical anthropology research than taking a television crew to Africa (see Pink 2004b).

Sillitoe (2003) lists a good number of areas in which anthropologists might work. In fact some of those that he considers less likely as well as those that he classifies as likely were represented during our seminar series. We learnt not only about what anthropologists are actually doing in these areas, but also how their involvement is developing, what new roles they are presently involved in, and how they envisage the future of applied anthropology in their field.⁴ More specifically our focus was on how the developments are unfolding in the socio-cultural and political context of contemporary Britain and how they are part of a particularly British experience of applied anthropology. As well as its particular place in the global political economy, Britain also has its own unique experience of applied anthropology. In the United States there are well-established associations of applied anthropologists⁵ and a substantial literature for teaching, professionals and career guidance,⁶ some of which I refer to below as point of comparison and as the ‘existing literature’ that this work contributes to. In Britain no such associations are currently active (although they have been in the past) and no similar body of literature exists (with the exception of the Anthropology in Action Journal and e-mail list discussed in more detail by Susan Wright in Chapter 1).⁷ It is however clear that in Britain at the beginning of the twenty-first century the demand for anthropological approaches, understandings and methodologies outside academic departments is shifting and changing. This is happening in relation to developments both internal and external to the discipline. Wider changes in British culture, society and politics within a global context, changing approaches within anthropology, not to mention a situation where there are more anthropology Ph.D.s than academic jobs, all contribute. The contributors to Applications of Anthropology explore this new context where anthropologists, anthropological approaches and ethnographic methods are increasingly important in the public sector and in industry. For example, in organisations as diverse as television production companies, multinationals such as Unilever and Intel, as expert witnesses in legal cases, as public health service researchers and as employees of or consultants to government in the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Department for Education and Skills (DfESS) and Department for International Development (DfID).

Although it may as yet lack the public profile that Sillitoe urges it to develop, applied anthropology is beginning to thrive in Britain. It also has a history (see also Pink forthcoming). In Chapters 1 and 2 respectively Susan Wright and David Mills outline this historical context.⁸ Some early missionaries and colonial administrators can be said to have practised applied anthropology of a sort, although it was not named as such (Mills personal communication; see also Van Willigen 2002: 20–25 for a North American perspective). As for some other western national anthropological traditions (see Hill and Baba 1997), the roots of British applied anthropology were as Shore and Wright put it, embedded in its ‘Colonial Gaze’. They note how Evans-Pritchard’s (1951) and Firth’s (1981) writings tended to define applied anthropology ‘in the rather narrow terms of its value for government’ (1997: 141). During this time the Colonial Social Science Research Council (CSSRC) (1944–1962) funded applied anthropology in the colonies until it was wound up in 1961 (Mills 2002; see also Pink forthcoming). Rather than dwelling on this well-versed colonial history here I would direct the reader to the detailed historical work of David Mills (especially 2002, 2003 and this volume) and Adam Kuper (1996).

In this volume Mills draws from archival materials to offer us an insight into how, after the colonial period, a new form of applied anthropology – what is today sometimes called ‘business and industrial anthropology’ (see McDonald 2002: 378–421) – was flirted with and finally abandoned by the leading anthropologists and institutions of the 1950s. Mills’ chapter also provides an important historical context for the question of the relationship between the ‘pure’ (academic) and ‘impure’ (applied) anthropologies of the ensuing years (see below), as well as a delightful contrast to the contemporary blossoming of the relationship between anthropology and industry reported both in the media (see for example Hafner 1999) and in the contributions to this volume. Susan Wright’s chapter provides our second stage of the historical context, drawing from, amongst other things, Wright’s own experience of being one of the people central to developing and promoting applied anthropology in Britain in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. Indeed it is particularly important that we take heed of her commentary as it has happened all too often in Britain (but not in the U.S.) that proponents of more systematic attention to Applied Anthropology become caught up in a cycle of reinventing a wheel which gradually stops spinning, awaiting the momentum of the next generation of enthusiastic seminar and network organisers. However one encouraging factor regarding the particular wheel that this present book spins is that it has been fully supported by the key institutions involved in the development and representation of anthropology in Britain today: the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA); the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI); and the Centre for learning and teaching in Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP).

In the ensuing chapters, through a set of case studies of anthropologists’ experiences of working with diverse organisations, this book revisits historical debates about applied anthropology, defines existing issues and explores possible futures. In doing so it develops a series of themes that by way of introduction I begin to unravel below: the relationship between the ‘pure and the impure’ – academic and applied – anthropology; the question of anthropological identities in new working environments; innovative methodologies appropriate to these new contexts and the new research questions they involve; the skills needed by anthropologists working in applied contexts where multidisciplinary work is often undertaken; issues of ethics and responsibility; and how anthropology is perceived from the ‘outside’. It reflects on the implications of these for the future both of the application of anthropology outside academic departments and of the new generation of anthropologists who might be involved in this.

The Pure and the Impure – or the Academic and the Applied

The question of the relationship between academia and applied anthropology never ceased to rear its head during the Applications of Anthropology seminar series. As Mills (2002, 2003 and this volume) shows, it was a key issue in the era of applied colonial anthropology and persisted to fudge the chances of any relationship between anthropology and industry in the 1950s. Indeed as Mills describes, soon after the ASA was founded in 1946 the debate was represented in two proposals circulated to the membership by Evans-Pritchard (its first Chairman and Secretary General): ‘Nadel urged that the association should address the issues of applied anthropology, and provide some scope for discussing colonial problems so far as they come within the purview of social anthropology. Gluckman, on the other hand, was adamant that in the present situation there is a grave danger that the demands of colonial governments for research workers may lead to the detriment of basic research and the lowering of professional standards’, arguing that the theoretical development of social anthropology should be the priority (Mills 2003: 10). Wright (this volume) describes how the debate over the acceptability of an applied anthropology was played out in the following years, through to the present, as applied anthropologists were sidelined by those who opposed it. Nevertheless, practising applied anthropologists and their supporters with academic posts held their ground. Their presence through GAPP (Group for Anthropology in Policy and Practice) and Anthropology in Action made a powerful impact and established them sufficiently for the academic/applied dichotomy to persist as it indeed has. Now in the twenty-first century some recent anthropology Ph.D.s who have opted for a career outside the academy still comment on the negative responses they received from their ex-tutors, echoing Shore and Wright’s characterisation of the 1990s situation where ‘when anthropologists have gained employment outside university departments, the discipline has tended to slough them off and no longer define them as real anthropologists’ (1997: 142). While the climate has definitely changed to some degree, some practising anthropologists still feel they are considered to have left the profession.

To consider what might be specifically British about this situation we might take recourse to one of anthropology’s ‘traditional’ endeavours – cross-cultural comparison. Hill and Baba (1997) compared the status of applied anthropology internationally in the 1990s. According to them, ‘The relationship between anthropologists who practice anthropology and those who work in traditional academic settings often is an uneasy one in many countries’. In Britain (c.f. Shore and Wright (1997)) and elsewhere (such as France, Canada and Australia) ‘the usefulness of anthropological knowledge is being held hostage by the culture of the discipline itself’. Comparing this with Central America, Mexico and Israel they note how ‘the practice of anthropology in these countries dominates the discipline, and, in effect, is the discipline’ (emphasis in original) (Hill and Baba 1997: 10–11) in these ‘countries that have a tradition of using anthropology to solve their problems’ (Hill and Baba 1997: 12). The status of applied anthropology is particularly bound up with its relationship to theory which in the 1990s in Britain, as in most western/westernised nations, was one of a ‘traditional linear model’ whereby a ‘one way flow from theory to practice is reinforced by various distancing mechanisms that separate theorists and practitioners -- they work in different types of institutions with little interchange between them, they dwell on different ends of the disciplinary status hierarchy and they clash almost obsessively over ethical issues’ (Hill and Baba 1997: 16). There was, they note, an ‘absence of a strong feedback loop from practice to theory in the West’, whereas in non-Western nations (Costa Rica, India, Mexico, Nigeria and Russia) ‘anthropological theory often was embedded consciously in larger state-level political and economic theories that were used broadly to construct and implement national policy over many decades’ (1997: 17).

In the context of British social anthropology in the 1990s Shore and Wright described this in terms of Mary Douglas’s (1966) work on classificatory systems. There was, they propose ‘a characteristic preoccupation with the purity of academic boundaries, where purity is associated with academic theory, neutrality and detachment’, thus maiming applied work ‘not only untheoretical, but also impure, even parasitical and polluting to the discipline’ (1997: 142). Moreover, the discipline was conservative and reluctant ‘to accept that knowledge generated from work in policy and practice can constitute a legitimate basis for constructing theory’ (1997: 143). This assessment is still accurate to some extent, and the cross-cultural comparison Hill and Baba engage in demonstrates how the relationship between applied and academic anthropology in Britain is part of a specific national context, providing a background that situates chapters 1 (Mills) and 2 (Wright) globally.⁹ Currently, however, with the expansion of applied anthropology in Britain an increasing number of anthropologists are beginning to bridge the gap between making a theoretical contribution to the academy and applying their anthropological approaches to practical problems. My book, Home Truths (2004a), a monograph, based on a video ethnography of ‘Cleaning, Homes and Lifestyles’ carried out for Unilever Research, is an attempt to achieve just this. Contributors to this book also combine theoretical and applied work relating to the same project. In chapter 9 Marvin describes how his academic work on the fox hunt has involved him in filmmaking and report writing and in chapter 10 Schwander-Sievers discusses how as an academic she also plays a role as an expert witness in legal cases. Further examples of projects that combine academic and applied components can be found in Gellner and Hirsch’s (2001) edited volume Inside Organisations: Anthropologists at Work. However, it should be noted that when they have engaged in work that has had both applied and theoretical import, most anthropologists involved have been employed by academic institutions. Practising anthropologists working full-time outside the academy have less time to develop and publish theoretical work to contribute to academic anthropology. Indeed they have less motivation to do so as their own career development does not depend on academic publications, unlike for academics publishing for Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) success. This however does not mean that practising anthropologists have no need for theory, that they are incapable of producing it or that their work has no theoretical implications. Indeed, the need to establish and maintain a dialogue between applied and academic anthropology was emphasised throughout our seminar series. There are various ways to bridge the gap between the academic and applied and different arrangements (e.g. seminars, training and updating workshops, invited speakers) will suit academic and applied anthropologists in different working situations.

Wright (chapter 1) describes how, in the 1980s and 1990s, GAPP steered away from dichotomy between pure and applied anthropology (not least in its decision to use the term ‘practice’ rather than ‘applied’ in its title, but also to emphasise the importance of practice for anthropological teaching and researching).¹⁰ By the early twenty-first century it is clear that any mutually exclusive dichotomy between applied and academic anthropology is not only now undesirable for a great many contemporary anthropologists from both ‘camps’ but also clearly misinformed. In many areas of practice the two are fundamentally related: academic anthropology nowadays often has an applied or ‘user’ focus (and indeed this appears to be encouraged by the Economic and Social Research Council who asks applicants to name potential users of their research in their grant application forms); and applied anthropology is inevitably academically informed in that it draws from and represents the theoretical and methodological concerns of academic anthropology. The current problem is that these links are often not sufficiently consolidated in the training, work practices, publications and networks of applied and academic anthropologists. A questionnaire survey as well as the qualitative materials noted from the seminar and workshop sessions showed that there is a need for updating in academic theory and methods for applied anthropologists and for training in applied anthropology skills for both postgraduates and academics considering doing applied work.¹¹ Such connections are more likely to be made in the work of university-employed academic anthropologists who also carry out applied work. Nevertheless, most important is that the relationship between academic and applied anthropology be recognised and nurtured from both inside and outside academic departments. I take this idea up again at the end of this introduction in the section about the future of applied anthropology. I think it is now difficult to say that The Academy in any general or unanimous sense is opposed to applied anthropology for a number of reasons. First, because it is being taught at undergraduate level in several departments (e.g. at the University of Durham and University of Wales, Lampeter). Second, it is not so unusual for academic anthropologists to do applied consultancy work. Finally, as noted above, the key institutions of academic anthropology in Britain have tabled their support for applied anthropology.

How do Anthropologists Define Themselves?

In 2003 a lively discussion developed on the ‘Anthropology in Action’ e-mail list. The topic was the question of when and with what credentials might one consider or call oneself an anthropologist? The themes discussed – such as having an anthropological way of thinking and one’s work being theoretically informed, as well as having a Ph.D. or M.A. in anthropology – resonated with the issues raised at the Applications of Anthropology seminar. The question of anthropological identities is furthermore crucial because it is not only a question of how anthropologists feel about and define themselves to one another, but crucially how the discipline and the unique skills and advantages offered by anthropology are represented externally by both the academy and practitioner groups.

The question of the identity of applied or practising anthropologists has for a long time been a contested identity. As I noted above, the history of applied anthropology in Britain has been characterised by the opposition of ‘the academy’. In the past applied anthropologists have not only felt invisible, as many continue to feel today, but it was made clear to them in no uncertain terms that leading academics of the day had little sympathy with their project to use anthropology to solve problems in the real world. However, present day anthropologists who undertake applied work, whether anthropologists in academic posts, working freelance, or within organisations, continue to insist on their anthropological identities and the anthropological nature of their work. Indeed their work as individuals has contributed greatly to the process by which anthropology is becoming increasingly established as a discipline that can respond to practical questions and provide unique insights. It is through their individual efforts and persistence combined with the support offered in the past by BSAPP, GAPP and Anthropology in Action that British applied anthropology has progressed as far as it has.

Anthropology has always been hard to define, be it academic or applied. Indeed the authors of leading introductory anthropology textbooks have found it difficult to arrive at a satisfactory definition for undergraduates, often skirting around the issue by describing what anthropologists do (i.e. long-term fieldwork) rather than what anthropology is (e.g. Hendry 1999, Eriksen 2001). This is even more unsatisfactory if we want to extend the definition of anthropology to include the work of applied anthropology. The work of applied anthropologists is often undertaken in new contexts, it involves researching new topics, asking different questions and requires innovative methodologies. As such this means a shift from the idea that anthropology might be defined by its method – of long-term participant observation – to defining anthropology as a type of approach, paradigm or a set of ideas that inform our understandings (applied methodologies are discussed in more detail below). The contributors to this book demonstrate that doing anthropology might take a variety of different forms that include doing ethnographic research, doing anthropologically informed research, or taking anthropologically informed decisions in the role of manager or policy maker. They show how one aspect of being an anthropologist is about having a particular way of constructing and analysing a problem, producing and critically reviewing ‘evidence’ and reflecting on the wider social and cultural contexts that impinge on this. As the contributors to Applications of Anthropology insist, we should not essentialise anthropology and what anthropologists do as being only one thing, rather the discipline needs to accept that there are in fact many different ways one can be or call oneself an anthropologist in and out of ‘pure’ academic contexts.

Academic anthropology has avoided essentialising itself (although sometimes perhaps by default). Definitions of the discipline are vague and contested, even more so when characteristics that have been used to define it – such as cross-cultural comparison, relativism, long-term fieldwork, its object of study, and forms of representation – have been systematically critiqued and redefined. It would be difficult at any rate to find agreement about the purpose, theory and method of anthropology amongst all anthropologists. Applied anthropology perhaps needs to resolve this problem more urgently. Again universal agreement over a definition of applied anthropology (especially over ethical issues and questions of range and method – see below) is very unlikely. Nevertheless to ‘sell’ anthropology, to develop its public profile, applied anthropologists need to make its unique benefits clear and known. Indeed, one of the key issues that occupied the seminar participants was how to ‘sell’ anthropology outside the academy. What is it about anthropology that is unique? How does it provide understandings that other disciplines cannot and what are the advantages of this to a client. To some degree North American writing on applied anthropology has already attempted to answer this question. For example, in his guide for students contemplating a career in applied anthropology Nolan identifies a series of advantages that an anthropology graduate has which can be paraphrased as follows (Nolan 2003: 78):

ability to ‘define the shape of the world of work’;

skills in researching and evaluating existing literature;

can understand local ‘languages’ and subcultures;

skills in interviewing and liking interview data to other materials;

used to contradiction and complexity and flexible to revise ideas as new meanings emerge.

Recommending how graduates might convince employers that their anthropology skills give them advantages over other candidates Nolan suggests the ‘anthropological advantage’ is that they: ‘understand that culture is key to many of the patterns we see and to many of the problems we try to resolve’; gain their understanding inductively from the ground up rather than by imposing theories beforehand; ‘are holistic in their approaches and perspectives’; are comparative; ‘are interactive’ and realise the importance of formal and informal relationships (Nolan 2003: 119–120). Nolan’s set of generic skills that one would also hope anthropology students in the UK to graduate with (and academic anthropologists to have gained during the course of their own training and experience) is notably different from academic attempts to define anthropology by means of long-term fieldwork methods and a comparative perspective. It reminds us that there are two sides of the coin: one where anthropologists might usefully operate in contexts where they work not as anthropologists but apply anthropological approaches and methods; and another where anthropologists are employed as consultants or in salaried posts to actually provide anthropological research, insights or expertise. In this book we will be looking at mainly the latter, although most of the contributors also use what Nolan calls their ‘anthropological advantage’ not only to do applied anthropology but in their everyday work practices as individuals interacting with and in organisations and institutions. As the seminar participants emphasised, an anthropological approach inevitably involves one not simply using anthropology to do the job one is paid to do, but informs one’s whole approach to understanding and operating in the organisation or industry one is working in/for. Such an approach is implicit to the contributions to this book, and is most explicitly expressed in Drazin’s analysis of the market research industry in chapter 4. In this sense applied anthropology almost always becomes an anthropology of organisations, and fieldwork in itself as the anthropologist learns how to speak the language of the organisation, understand its power hierarchies, and social and cultural systems.

Ethics, Rights and Responsibilities

New working contexts, methodologies and research sponsors all have implications for ethics in anthropological research and representation. When one does applied work one is confronted with a series of ethical choices. First one can decide whom to work for. Some types of applied work are perhaps more universally morally justified – for instance Good suggests that ‘Acting as an expert in the asylum courts is easy to justify morally, all the more so in view of the manifest failings in Home Office procedures’ (Good 2003a: 7). This view of what we might call ‘applied anthropology as a moral corrective’ is quite a common approach to policy research. Some anthropologists would feel uncomfortable working for the Ministry of Defence, for multinational companies that are integral to global capitalism or for organisations involved with fox hunting. However the idea of anthropology as a moral corrective is also suggested in some of these more controversial contexts. For example Lucy Suchman, reflecting on the role of corporate anthropology, has suggested that ‘As anthropologists and consumers, our problem is to find the spaces that allow us to refigure the projects of those who purchase our services and from whom we buy, rather than merely to be incorporated passively into them’ (Suchman 2000). Regarding his work in the MoD, Mils Hills argues ‘Unfortunately, if one has no stake in this domain, no participation in the evolution of policy and plans; no commitment to improving the knowledge base that sustains decision-making, one can hardly complain about malformed outcomes’ (this volume). The contributors to this volume show that such questions as ‘should anthropologists work for this or that organisation?’ are actually more complex than they first appear. Applied anthropology inevitably constitutes a social intervention, in whatever context one is working, be it commercial, public sector or for another independent organisation. Ethical questions do not only apply to the choice of who to work with/for, but also to the question of to whom one is responsible when involved in an applied project. A Ph.D. anthropologist may feel her or his main responsibility is to her or his informants. But when an anthropologist is employed by a university to carry out a consultancy for another organisation, and simultaneously finds her or himself doing research with a set of informants with whose lives her or his own becomes intertwined, this becomes combined with new sets of responsibilities. As such applied anthropologists can become tied up in complex series of loyalties and moral responsibilities. To whom, and under what circumstances are anthropologists responsible?; to the consumers, to the institution, to the film production company, to their own university or to the company who is the client paying for results? All of these relationships must be clearly set out at the start of a project. They will make the way information is produced, used and shared differ from the way it is managed in academic work and will inform how consent and informed consent and the ownership and control over research materials are negotiated.

In the U.S., NAPA and the SfAA have published relevant sets of ethical guidelines on their web sites.¹² The NAPA ethical guidelines have been developed collaboratively with practitioner groups and were first published in 1988. They address ‘general contexts, priorities and relationships’ since ‘No code or set of guidelines can anticipate unique circumstances or direct practitioner actions in specific situations’ (NAFA web site). To gain a full sense of their coverage the reader should consult the guidelines. Briefly they cover issues of: welfare and human rights; disclosure of research objectives and confidentiality; competent communication of ethical priorities and commitments to employers; commitments to students and colleagues; and making a contribution to and publicly representing the discipline. The SfAA guidelines are broadly similar with perhaps more emphasis on preventing harm to communities studied and anthropologists’ duty to ‘communicate our understanding of human life to society at large’