Showing papers on "Professional ethics published in 1971"

On Professional Ethics and Epistemological Foundations

Abstract: The practice of publishing papers with CA* comment has the advantage of showing that the discipline is a living enterprise in which dissent and criticism are important factors of growth. Occasionally, however, the effect may be to the contrary in that the comments, in spite of some surface criticism, only dramatize the limitations of anthropology. The latter seems to have happened in the CA* treatment of \"Problems of Role Conflicts in Social Studies\" (CA 10: 505-23). In indicating the reasons for the bafflement I felt when reading the papers and comments, I shall take issue mainly with Jarvie's contribution. As several observers have noted, Kloos's report of personal experiences can only invite accounts of similar situations. Let me recapitulate the way in which Jarvie defines the problem, which he declares to be \"partly ethical and partly methodological\" (p. 505). The anthropological fieldworker finds himself in a conflict between the roles of stranger and of friend. The resolution of that dilemma is to choose the role of the stranger, for reasons of personal integrity, but also because of methodological considerations since \"the success of the method of participant observation derives from exploiting the situations created by the role clashes.\" It seems to me that his position and further treatment of the problem suffer (a) from certain assumptions concerning the foundations of social science, (b) from a serious theoretical-logical flaw, and (c) from a provincial definition of the scientific community. a) Jarvie's argument is based on an unreflected, uncriticized scientistic view of anthropology. It expresses a dominant positivist-pragmatist bias characteristic of most Anglo-Saxon social science. No matter how humanely a positivistpragmatist fieldworker relates to his natives, in terms of the very premises of his enterprise he must treat them as research subjects, and the closer he can get to creating a laboratory situation (in which the test animals' behaviour is undisturbed and as many factors as possible are held \"constant\") the better will be his \"data.\" I might add that it makes little difference in terms of the effects on a \"philosophy of fieldwork\" whether his search for undisturbed ata is motivated by a desire to approximate an experimental scientific situation or by a desire to get at the products of culture history \"as they are.\" After all, both Durkheim and Boas (and the cultural diffusionists) have taught us in effect he same thing: to treat social and cultural phenomena \"comme des choses.\" It is easy to see that, when such considerations dominate, fieldwork poses only two problems: methodological improvement of techniques to guarantee the success of data-gathering and a \"clear conscience\" in terms of ethical conformity with the norms of the society which sponsors the scientific enterprise. An internal connection between the two is not seriously taken into consideration (which, one might argue, reflects the alienation of theory and practice, ethics and research, in the anthropologist's society). NeitherJarvie's paper nor any of the comments (with the possible exception of Brandewie's) contains so much as a hint of the fact that the observer-data dichotomy as an ethical problem is created (not discovered) by espousing a certain philosophy of social science. To put it more boldly, I would suggest that current concern with professional ethics in our discipline is nothing but a symptom of the failure to confront he epistemological foundations of anthropology in the postcolonial period. For some of its branches it may even be seen as a string of attempts to cover up the inherently domineering and exploitative attitude of a scientistic bias which is (more and more successfully) being resented by our research \"subjects.\" Is there an alternative? Clearly, I cannot be expected to formulate one in this brief communication. Let me just indicate two major trends (completely overlooked by the authors and commentators of the CA papers): various attempts to incorporate the current insights of philosophical reflection into the social sciences (represented, for example, as early as in the writings of A. Schutz, and recently analyzed in Habermas 1967 and Radnitzky 1968), and certain \"trends toward language\" in recent anthropology (still best documented by Hymes 1964; cf. also Fabian 1969). Both of these developments converge on one crucial issue. The naive Comtean subjectobject dichotomy (which in turn generates naive fieldwork-analysis, datatheory dichotomies) must be criticized in terms of post-Kantian epistemology. Two insights are gaining acceptance; for social-cultural nthropology, the \"things\" it studies are not primarily products, objects, but production, process. This thesis simply reformulates W. von Humboldt's definition of language as energeia rather than ergon, a view which has revolutionized linguistics. Consequently the task of \"observation\" is not a mere recording of givens: it is possible only through participation in the process of their production. In other words, it is entirely dependent on an intersubjective field of communication between fieldworker and observed. We may say, then, that anthropology, before lamenting its difficulties concerning objectivity of observation in the field, must have a theory of the synthesis ofknowledge, a theory of its objectivation, a theory of intersubjectivity, and a theory of communication. While the first wo are clearly the business of philosophy proper, the latter should be (and for some people are) a current concern of anthropology. But none of the contributors to the CA* treatment felt that problems of data collection in the field should be seen in the light of a theory of communication. b) Probably this blindness to the epistemological (not just methodological) questions of field anthropology is one reason for perceiving the problem of fieldwork primarily as an ethical dilemma. The stress is on \"primarily\"-of course it creates an ethical dilemma, but not more so than life in any human society. This subliminal concern with normative rightness (not to say, righteousness) is expressed quite appropriately in the concepts which serve to define the dilemma: role and role conflict. Contrary to Jarvie's assertion in his rejoinder, Williams (p. 250) raised an important point when he argued that \"friend\" and \"stranger\" are not properly roles. I was disturbed by the implication that one may \"choose\" among them, but even more so by the logical function which Jarvie seems to attribute to the role concept. Strictly speaking, \"role\" is a conceptual device (whether a model or a theory does not matter in this context) construed in order to organize data on human behaviour. It is explanatory inasmuch as it allows \"successful\" (lawlike, predictive verificatory or falsificatory) generalizations. As a device of knowledge, it cannot serve to explain its own genesis. No role analysis of organized knowledge (such as of anthropological knowledge) can be an ersatz for epistemological reflection on the constitution of such knowledge. Above all, it contains, as far as I can see, no basis for a critique of the concepts and theories of our discipline. Jarvie's approach is by no means an extraordinary one. It has been noted (see, for example, Habermas 1968) that, in positivist-pragmatist science, epistemology is replaced by methodology, i.e., by rules of successful procedure. While it cannot be doubted that the natural sciences (and those branches of anthro-

The Moral Nature of Man in Organizations: A Comparative Analysis: Comment

Abstract: The article presents the author's opinions regarding the article “The Moral Nature of Man in Organizations: A Comparative Analysis,” by William G. Scott and David K. Hart, published in the June 197...