Ethics and Accountability in Anthropology
Recently published paper covers a wide range of ethical issues including human rights, globalization, bioethics, cultural property, cyberspace, and government regulation.
Published December 1, 2000
By Jennifer Tang
The uproar over the recent publication of a book alleging the mistreatment of the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon by anthropologists has highlighted one of the many ethical issues confronting today’s anthropologists. In the wake of globalization, new technology, the human rights of indigenous peoples, government regulation, bioethics, and other issues, anthropologists have recognized the need to articulate old and new ethical dilemmas and responsibilities.
“Ethics in Anthropology: Facing Future Issues in Human Biology, Globalism, and Cultural Property,” a new volume in the Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, brings together the perspectives of anthropologists from different subfields within the discipline (i.e., medical anthropology, physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and anticipatory anthropology) who work in traditional research centers and universities as well as in private and public sectors. The volume’s design is interdisciplinary and comparative, reflecting the increased specialization and intertwining of sub fields within the field of anthropology.
“Anthropologists increasingly are no longer in a dominant position, studying ‘the other’ as in the past,” says Anne-Marie Cantwell, the book’s co-editor. The overriding theme of the volume is that of accountability and responsibility towards the people anthropologists study. “Those of us interested in the future of indigenous peoples need to study the First World – its bureaucracies, legal institutions and philosophical underpinnings as it affects these issues,” she adds.
Exploring Ethical Issues
A vocal supporter of human rights for indigenous peoples, Cantwell contributes an incisive essay to the Annals volume regarding the repatriation of human remains to indigenous peoples in Australia and the U.S. She discusses the role anthropologists play in the construction of past, present, and future identities for contemporary indigenous peoples and how anthropologists are “increasingly involved in the witting and unwitting reproduction of indigenous social orders,” as a result of the combination of heritage/cultural resource management legislation, government regulations, and changing professional ethics.
The volume, co-edited by Cantwell, Eva Friedlander, and Madeleine L. Tramm, is drawn from a recent conference entitled Ethics and Anthropology: Facing Future Issues In Human Biology, Globalism, and Cultural Property presented by the Section on Anthropology of the New York Academy of Sciences. Divided into six sections, the volume covers a wide range of ethical issues raised by topics such as human rights, globalization, bioethics, cultural property, cyberspace, and government regulation.
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