Paper short abstract:

This paper will consider the possible dangers of detaching theory from lived reality and lived reality from theory. Should anthropologists and psychologists be 'judgemental' and should philosophers situate their theory in lived realities?

Paper long abstract:

Research in social science is expected to meet certain ethical expectations. Informed consent, no harm of any kind to the community/informant, empowerment of those being studied in relation to results of the research and its dissemination; the ASA offers comprehensive and detailed guidance in regards the good conduct of anthropologists. Those working on an autoethnography are placed in a less clear position. By all accounts their work needn't meet the same strictures of ethics committees and peer scrutiny. You don't need to worry about ethics if the subject is your own life. It will be argued that this division between two kinds of ethical approach to two different kinds of research reveals an antiquated and intellectually unsustainable position within contemporary anthropology. To imagine that anthropological research carries with it special ethical circumstances is to deny the very strength of participant observation and imagine the researcher as somehow special and set apart from their subject. It will be suggested that the dissolution of the boundary between insider and outsider is vital, not only to the conduct of participant observation but also for research in cognate academic disciplines, principally philosophy (and also psychology). At times, philosophers can be guilty of the opposite offence (all judgement and no living as opposed to all living and no judgement). Does the future of anthropology (as the better part of philosophy) lie in its integration of ethical judgement and the ultimate balancing act of insider and outsider?