Paper short abstract:

My presentation is phenomenologically oriented reflection of ethics and questions current frameworks of good research practice, power relations and consent in (British) Anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

The following paper builds on my ongoing research on the political ecology of the 'Afar salt trade in North Eastern Ethiopia. The 'Afar traditional customary laws (meda'a) and the information sharing meshwork (ɖāgu) both serve as ethical codex for the relationship between individuals. Among the communities I conducted my research, the "ethical-self" (rather than any other self (social, personal or political)) is salient in self-identification processes and defining in how individuals treat and behave towards others. Using data from my ethnographic research and inspiration from the works of the Danish philosopher and phenomenologist Knud Løgstrup (1905-1981), I question current frameworks, guidelines and regulations for research practices in (British) Anthropology. Academic institutions, ethic panels and research committees are postulating what ethics are and what ethical behavior is. These frameworks, however, often bare colonial implications through written consent forms (among other) and rarely consider what communities themselves and the people involved in the research consider ethical. My core argument is that researchers, by signing and obeying to these ethical frames, become conformist, thereby casual and non-committed, insofar as the authoritative nature of conformity has been watered down in postmodern society. Conformity to rules, I claim, drowns the personal responsibility and undeniable power anthropologists have over the people during their research. I therefore propose a phenomenology of ethics that defines research as an ethical driven correspondence arising out of people's compassion, empathy, honesty, and trust towards each other. This correspondence can neither be demanded nor per-determined, but is negotiated in the "spontaneous".