Embedding Ethics Shifting Boundaries of the Anthropological Profession

Embedding Ethics questions why ethics have been divorced from scientific expertise.Invoking different disciplinary practices from biological, archaeological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology, contributors show how ethics should be resituated at the heart of, rather than exterior to, scientific activity. Positioning the researcher as a negotiator of significant truths rather than an adjudicator of a priori precepts enables contributors to relocate ethics in new sets of social and scientific relationships triggered by recent globalization processes--from new forms of intellectual and cultural ownership to accountability in governance, and the very ways in which people are studied. Case studies from ethnographic research, museum display, archaeological fieldwork and professional monitoring illustrate both best practice and potential pitfalls.

Lynn Meskell is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.

Peter Pels is Professor in the Anthropology of Sub-Saharan Africa, University Leiden, The Netherlands.