Paper Short Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the ethics of research on human communality in anthropology of crises. Ethics in anthropology will be identified with the question of what is legal and illegal in current crises research. These issues could shed a new light on anthropological theory.

Paper Abstract:

Recent anthropological studies suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has traumatised many populations in Europe, and especially at the border (Katarzyna Stakłosa, Birte Wassenberg 2021). Little is known about how the pandemic affected the Lithuanian and Lithuanian border population. We also know little about how people felt in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and the outbreak of war. Do these 21st century crises remind people of the wars and plagues of the past? The questions raised open up the issue of human communality, which anthropology is an excellent tool for studying. The aim of this paper is to explore the ethics of research on human communality in anthropology of crises. Discussing the new theoretical approach of the American anthropologist Jarrett Zigon (Zigon 2024), it will be argued that the most important ethical question in anthropology of crises is: what about between us? Ethics in anthropology will be identified with the question of what is legal and illegal in current crises research. The paper will analyse ethics in anthropology and ethnography of crises from three perspectives. First, how fieldwork reveals issues of crises, showing the various relationships between individuals, institutions, governments, masses, etc. Second, what legal and even illegal global voices from below provide on pandemic and war. Finally, which attitudes reveal the ethical relationship between the researcher and the presenter in cases of fieldwork in Lithuania. Research on these issues could shed a new light on antropological theory, methods and the crises management.