Anthropology Today最新文献

Across the world, economically marginalized people employ inventive strategies to encourage pedestrians to part with small sums of money by offering goods or services rather than directly requesting cash. People who use drugs wander urban streets selling magazines that some will buy but few will read. The homeless clean car windows that need no cleaning or provide token items instead of requesting donations because asking for money is contentious to the extent that selling stuff is not. Surveying existing ethnographic research, this article explores why. I analyse how informal income-generating practices adapt to the cultural assumptions of majority populations, including the notion that adults should become valuable through gainful employment and the idea that the unreturned gift humiliates givers and receivers.

This article critiques the expanding influence of research ethics committees (RECs) on social research, emphasizing their adverse effects on ethnographic methodologies. It argues that the bureaucratization of ethics, emphasizing compliance over contextual understanding, fundamentally misunderstands and impedes the nuanced nature of ethnographic work. Drawing on personal experiences and broader critiques, the article proposes the need for an alternative system that better accommodates the ethical complexities of social research, advocating for a more tailored approach that respects disciplinary methodologies and fosters genuine ethical engagement.

This article critiques research ethics committees (RECs) for stifling social sciences research through rigid, one-size-fits-all ethics protocols. It highlights how these protocols, rooted in medical science perspectives, ignore the complexities of fieldwork, and prioritize institutional protection over knowledge advancement. The article illustrates the bureaucratic barriers to sociological and gender studies research through a case study involving fieldwork in a Greek hospital, showing how intersecting hierarchies in the field can render REC instruments invasive or moot. This article aims to enrich academic enquiry by acknowledging the diverse realities of research subjects and methodologies.

This article explores the challenges of maintaining ethical ethnographic practices amid the evolving bureaucratic regulations of research ethics. Drawing on the author's fieldwork experiences in Lesvos, Greece, during different periods, including the recent European ‘refugee crisis’, it reflects on the deep ethics inherent in the ethnographic encounter, shaped by long-term commitments and mutual exposure between the researcher and interlocutors. It critiques the bureaucratization of research ethics, arguing that legalistic guarantees, such as consent forms, undermine the nuanced, context-dependent nature of ethnographic work. By contrasting engagements with locals, activists and professional humanitarians, the author highlights the tensions between bureaucratic regulation and the need for a flexible, situated approach to ethics, calling for a critical assessment of ethical frameworks to preserve the ‘breathing space’ essential for responsible and insightful ethnography. The article advocates for resistance against one-size-fits-all ethical regulations constraining the rich potential of ethnographic research.

This article advocates for a deeper engagement with the organizational structures that shape the governance of research ethics in anthropology. The authors argue that anthropological critiques of bureaucracy often sidestep the kinds of knowledge needed to pursue meaningful institutional change. They show how different regulatory dynamics and organizational arrangements across jurisdictions produce more or less responsive bureaucracies, comparing Institutional Review Boards in the United States with a case study of a European university's Ethics Review Committee. The authors suggest that such organizational understandings of bureaucratic processes can more meaningfully inform their redesign and contribute to developing more appropriately scaled ethics governance. In so doing, ethics review promises greater responsiveness to the particular demands of ethnographic research while remaining legible to regulatory stakeholders.