Research Ethics
The Department for Cultural and Social Anthropology offers a Research Ethics Screening to all research staff of the Department as well as to all PhD students within the framework of the FÖP (Fakultätsöffentliche Präsentation).
It is designed to encourage researchers to reflect carefully on the ethical aspects of their project before they start collecting data.
To take advantage of the Research Ethics Screening, please complete the Research Ethics Screening (see below). Please submit your application at least one month before the start of your data collection. Your submission will then be forwarded to the research ethics team based at the Department to discuss the ethical aspects of your research project. Within four weeks you will receive feedback as to whether you may proceed with your research under the given circumstances or whether a revision or second assessment by the Ethics Committee of the University of Vienna is still necessary.
Research Ethics Screening
The Faculty of Social Sciences has created an Reserach Ethics Screening Tool that researchers are free to use (univie log in required; after logging in please go to "online self-assessment"). It uses a department specific questionnaire (univie log in required; after logging in please go to "Department specifics") that has been adapted to ethnographic research.
The Research Ethics Screening is a compulsory part of the FÖP. All persons preparing for the FÖP must complete the process in form of the Pre-screening for PhD projects (univie log in required). We would recommend to start this project early in the preparation for the FÖP. The questionnaire will only be accessible to the FÖP committee, but will not be automatically forwarded to the Institutional Review Board. Should you desire a formal ethics vote on your PhD project, please make sure to go through the standard Research Ethics Screening after having passed your FÖP and before starting data collection.
Institutional Review Board
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology is represented in the Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Social Sciences (univie log in required; after logging in please go to "Institutional Review Board").
Ethnographic Data Archive
The Ethnographic Data Archive – a cooperation of the University Library Vienna and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology – provides advice and support to PhD students and researchers on questions of research data management, including ethics in working with research data.
Resources and Literature
-
Anthropological Literature on Ethics
- American Anthropological Association. n.d. AAA Statement on Ethics. https://www.americananthro.org/LearnAndTeach/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=22869
- Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK (ASA). 2021. Ethical Guidelines 2021 for good research practice. https://www.theasa.org/downloads/ethics/asa_ethicsgl_2021.pdf
- Bell, Kirsten. 2014. “Resisting Commensurability: Against Informed Consent as an Anthropological Virtue.” American Anthropologist 116 (3): 511–522. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12122
- Bourgois, Philippe. 1990. “Confronting Anthropological Ethics: Ethnographic Lessons from Central America.” Journal of Peace Research 27 (1): 43–54.
- Caplan, Pat, ed. 2003. The Ethics of Anthropology: Debates and Dilemmas. London: Routledge.
- Carroll, Stephanie Russo, Ibrahim Garba, Oscar L. Figueroa-Rodríguez, Jarita Holbrook, Raymond Lovett, Simeon Materechera, Mark Parsons, Kay Raseroka, Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, Robyn Rowe, Rodrigo Sara, Jennifer D. Walker, Jane Anderson, and Maui Hudson. 2020. “The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.” Data Science Journal 19: Art. 43 (12 pp.). https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-043
- Cassell, Joan, and Sue-Ellen Jacobs, eds. 1987. Handbook on Ethical Issues in Anthropology. Special Publication of the American Anthropological Association 23. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Online: https://www.americananthro.org/LearnAndTeach/
Content.aspx?ItemNumber=1942&navItemNumber=731 - DGS. 2017. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie: Ethik-Kodex der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS) und des Berufsverbandes Deutscher Soziologinnen und Soziologen (BDS). https://soziologie.de/dgs/ethik/ethik-kodex [interesting read from an anthropological perspective, compare Hahn et al. 2009]
- DGSKA. 2019. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie: Position Paper on the Handling of Anthropological Research Data, German Anthropological Association (GAA). https://www.dgska.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Positionspapier_Bearbeitet-fu%CC%88r-MV_EN_29.11.2019.pdf
- Denzin, Norman K., and Michael D. Giardina. 2007. Ethical Futures in Qualitative Research: Decolonizing the Politics of Knowledge. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
- Dilger, Hansjörg, Peter Pels, and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner. 2019. “Guidelines for Data Management and Scientific Integrity in Ethnography.” Ethnography 20 (1): 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138118819018
- Eberhard, Igor, and Wolfgang Kraus. 2018. “Der Elefant im Raum: Ethnographisches Forschungsdatenmanagement als Herausforderung für Repositorien.” Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare 71 (1): 41–52. https://doi.org/10.31263/voebm.v71i1.2018
- Fassin, Didier. 2006. “The End of Ethnography as Collateral Damage of Ethical Regulation?” American Ethnologist 33 (4): 522–524. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4098882
- franzke, aline shakti, Anja Bechmann, Michael Zimmer, Charles Ess, and the Association of Internet Researchers. 2020. Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0. https://aoir.org/reports/ethics3.pdf
- Gusterson, Hugh. 2020. Safeguarding Data Across Borders. https://americanethnologist.org/features/professionalization/safeguarding-data-across-borders
- Hahn, Hans Peter, Annette Hornbacher, and Michael Schönhuth. 2009. “Frankfurter Erklärung” zur Ethik in der Ethnologie. https://www.dgska.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DGV-Ethikerklaerung.pdf
- Harper, Ian and Alberto Corsín Jiménez. 2005. “Towards an Interactive Professional Ethics.” Anthropology Today 21 (6): 10–12. https://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/85033/1/Towards%20interactive%20prof%20ethics.pdf
- Haggerty, Kevin D. 2004. “Ethics Creep: Governing Social Science Research in the Name of Ethics.” Qualitative Sociology 27 (4): 391–414. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:QUAS.0000049239.15922.a3
- Hahn, Hans Peter, Annette Hornbacher, and Michael Schönhuth. 2009. “Frankfurter Erklärung” zur Ethik in der Ethnologie. https://www.dgska.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DGV-Ethikerklaerung.pdf
- Harper, Ian. 2014. “Ethics.” In Doing Anthropological Research, ed. Natalie Konopinski, 118–143. London: Routledge.
- Kleinman, Arthur. 1999. “Moral Experience and Ethical Reflection: Can Ethnography Reconcile Them? A Quandary for ‘the New Bioethics’.” Daedalus 128 (4): 69–97. https://www-jstor-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/stable/20027589
- de Koning, Martijn, Birgit Meyer, Annelies Moors, and Peter Pels. 2019. “Guidelines for Anthropological Research: Data Management, Ethics, and Integrity.” Ethnography 20 (2): 170–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138119843312
- Kraus, Wolfgang, and Igor Eberhard. 2022. “Managing Data, Managing Contradictions: Archiving and Sharing Ethnographic Data.” In Interrogating Datafication: Towards a Praxeology of Data, ed. Marcus Burkhardt et al. Bielefeld: Transcript.
- Kukutai, Tahu, and John Taylor, eds. 2016. Indigenous Data Sovereignity: Toward an Agenda. Canberra: ANU Press. http://doi.org/10.22459/CAEPR38.11.2016
- Lederman, Rena. 2009. “Comparing Ethics Codes and Conventions: Anthropological, Sociological and Psychological Approaches.” Anthropology News 50 (6), 11–12. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-3502.2009.50611.x
- Macdonald, Sharon. 2010. “Making Ethics.” In Ethnographic Practice in the Present, ed. Marit Melhuus, Jon P. Mitchell, and Helena Wulff. New York: Berghahn.
- McGranahan, Carole, and Erica Weiss, eds. 2021. Rethinking Pseudonyms in Ethnography. https://americanethnologist.org/features/collections/rethinking-pseudonyms-in-ethnography
- Pels, Peter, Igor Boog, J. Henrike Florusbosch, Zane Kripe, Tessa Minter, Metje Postma, Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, Bob Simpson, Hansjörg Dilger, Michael Schönhuth, Anita von Poser, Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo, Rena Lederman, and Heather Richards-Rissetto. 2018. “Data management in anthropology: The next phase in ethics governance?” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 26 (3): 391–413. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12526
- Perrin, Julie, Nolwenn Bühler, Marc-Antoine Berthod, Jérémie Forney, Sabine Kradolfer, and Laurence Ossipow. 2018. “Searching for Ethics: Legal Requirements and Empirical Issues for Anthropology.” Tsanta 23: 138–153. https://doi.org/10.36950/tsantsa.2018.23.7316
- Perry, Sara, and Jonathan S. Marion. 2010. “State of the Ethics in Visual Anthropology.” Visual Anthropology Review 26 (2): 96–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-7458.2010.01070.x
- Rainie, Stephanie Carroll, Tahu Kukutai, Maggie Walter, Oscar Luis Figueroa-Rodriguez, Jennifer Walker, and Per Axelsson. 2019. “Indigenous Data Sovereignty.” In The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons, ed. Tim Davies, Stephen B. Walker, Mor Rubinstein and Fernando Perini, 300–319. Cape Town: African Minds and Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2668475
- RatSWD. 2017. “Forschungsethische Grundsätze und Prüfverfahren in den Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften.” RatSWD Output 9. Berlin: RatSWD. https://doi.org/10.17620/02671.1
- RDA IG. 2019. Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group: CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. The Global Indigenous Data Alliance. https://www.gida-global.org/care
- Rosenblatt, Paul C. 1995. “Ethics of qualitative interviewing with grieving families.” Death Studies 19 (2): 139–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481189508252721
- Russell, Lisa, and Ruth Barley. 2020. “Ethnography, ethics and ownership of data.” Ethnography 21 (1): 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1466138119859386
- Scholz, Andrea. 2017. “Sharing Knowledge as a Step toward an Epistemological Pluralization of the Museum.” Museum Worlds: Advances in Research 5: 133–148. https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2017.050112
- Shaw, Ian. 2008. “Ethics and the Practice of Qualitative Research.” Qualitative Social Work 7 (4): 400–414. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1473325008097137
- Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. “The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 36 (3): 409–440. https://escholarship.org/content/qt2xq430hc/qt2xq430hc.pdf?t=lnq57k
- Stellmach, Darryl, and Isabel Beshar, eds. 2016. Special Issue on The Ethics of Anthropology in Emergencies = Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online, New Series 8 (1). https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/anthro/documents/media/jaso8_1_2016.pdf
- Walter, Maggie, Tahu Kukutai, Stephanie Russo Carroll, and Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, eds. 2021. Indigenous Data Sovereignity and Policy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42782