One of the nice things about being a pessimistic romantic is that one can still have a sense of wonder about everyday things. That sense of wonder kicked in again today upon reading a very nice, plain English exposition by Cobalt on why Anthropologists working with the US military can be unethical (actual, “a dick”; hat tip to Max Forte). The reason why it kicked in can be shown with this snippet:
I think in light of all this that work with the military is generally going to entail compromising a scholar’s ethics. There are individual cases where it won’t, in which case the opportunity to educate military leaders and help inform their decisions is absolutely worth taking. If anthropology can be done ethically with the US military, it’s probably our responsibility as scholars to do it.
Throughout the debate on the ethics of Anthropologists working with the Military, one word keeps turning up over and over again - “Harm” - as in “First, do no harm” (aka Primum non nocere). What is fascinating about this word (and its association with the phrase) is that it is really a quite recent invention, apparently entering into medicine in the 18th or 19th centuries, becoming quite widespread by ~1900. As a specific note, it is not part of either the original or the modern versions of the Hppocratic Oath.
The most interesting thing about the use of the word, however, is that “harm” is never defined. I would guess, and that’s all it is, that this is because in medical practice, “harm” would be self-evident to the physician in an immediate sense. Indeed, the very concept of harm appears to be rooted in the Anglo culture complex twinned legal conceptualization of mens rea and actus reus (”intention” or “knowledge”; literally “thing of the mind”, and “action” or “act itself”). If this is the case, then “do no harm” applies to the temporally immediate relationship between a practitioner and the object of their practice (patient, informant, essay, etc.) while the mental “objective” is to not intentionally degrade the object of that practice.
There are two key points to note, here. First of all, the ethical nature of an action is based on a combination of intent and application of knowledge. Second, “harm” is not “hurt”, and the injunction says absolutely nothing about the methods of knowledge application - unlike the original Hippocratic Oath.
Let me pull this second point out a bit more. Firstly, “methods” are part of a professional knowledge base and are subject, at least in scientific disciplines, to constant revision (cf Andrew Abbott’s The System of Professions
This is the model that is underlying much of the ethics debate inside Anthropology. What I find fascinating, and sometimes depressing, is that the particulars of the model are generally not examined, especially in the area of risk assessment of leaving a situation untreated. This is also how I see the debate parceling out, at least in some ways. For example, going back to Cobalt’s post, there is a very good discussion of the side effects of the “treatment” option of having Anthropologists working with the US military. In a contrary manner, Montgomery McFate and Marcus Griffin tend to highlight the dangers of leaving a situation untreated. This shows up quite clearly in a recent speech at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center, where Griffin is quoted as saying that
“The people making these claims [against Anthropolgists working with the US military] are simply blind to the possibility that it is possible to interact with [local people] without harming them,” Griffin said.
Now, what I find frustrating about these “debates” is that very few people take the time to consider just where their ethical structures and pre-suppositions come from. I certainly find this in the case of the concept of primum non nocere, since almost no one appears to be noting that “harm” is a relative judgment that focuses on a professional act which, in turn, is conditioned by the standards and knowledge system of the profession itself.
Now, one of the things that bugs me about the way the debate has turned is that there just doesn’t seem to be much of a distinction made between “harm” and “hurt”. I believe that this distinction is absolutely crucial if we want to move the debate away from the mutually incomprehensible yelling of children in a sandbox.
Medical ethics says very little about “hurt”; indeed, much of medical practice is based on the infliction of an immediate hurt in order to relieve a long term “harm”. Surgery is not a “warm and fuzzy” experience (as I can personally attest), but it is often necessary in order to alleviate the risk of long term harm. Is there an analog here for Anthropology?
I would argue that there is such an analog, and that this is one of the places where we should be focusing our ethics debates. Just taking the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would argue that the analog is that a claim is being made that long term harm will come to both countries based on a precipitous withdrawal of Coalition forces - “the patient will die without treatment”. Furthermore, while the US military lacks the professional knowledge base to reduce the likelihood of such an outcome, the application of professional knowledge to mitigate against this risk is increasingly being applied by non-professionals. I would also note that here appears to be a severe hole in the professional knowledge base dealing with current realities in these countries, a lacuna that reduces the effects of any application.
If we are going to engage in this debate, let’s start acting rationally and, if we are serious about applying the primum non nocere principle, then let’s actually start analyzing the risks. For myself, I would like to see the following:
- better risk analyses of the effects of withdrawl;
- better information of what the HTS is actually doing;
- increasing debate on the personal risks to Anthropologists of working with the military.
4 users commented in " What is “harm”? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI think that the most important thing that should really be bugging you about these debates is the fact that it seems like we anthropologists are the only ones who get to decide what is right, wrong, hurt, or harm. Presumably, we work with local hosts and collaborators? When we already have difficulty showing of what benefit our research can be to them, when our hanging around their necks asking a thousand daily questions can be odious and insufferable from even the most harmless house guest, “we” now want to talk about “hurting” them in the short term for the sake of reducing “harm” in the long term? Wow. All I can say then is that some people have found some real suckers to work with. Normally, some protocols are in place with research funding agencies concerning work with the mentally handicapped. You must be speaking of the latter, if besides accepting your uninvited presence they also submit to hurt from you. And what do you give up, by the way?
Marc, this is a ‘rationale’ you are offering — whether it is rational or not is something open to debate. I can’t see how it is rational to expect people to work with you if you intend to either hurt or harm or whatever that goes against their interests.
Hi Max,
As always, some very good points. Let me see if I can respond to them.
One you point about to being “us” who decides, I would say that a part (not all) of that has to be assumed. Any code of ethics will be a guideline for a articular group and will contain the definitions, assumptions and perceptions of that group. As such, “we” definitely should be part of the decision as to what we feel is right, wrong, hurt and harm.
At the same time, I agree that we cannot be all of that decision. But if we don’t even recognize the difference between harm and hurt, sticking only with a “good” or “bad” dichotomy, I think we, and the other stakeholders including our informants, are being naive. At any rate, some of what is irritating me is that I feel that the right to decide has, in some cases, already been abrogated by a smallish group inside the discipline.
On the benefits vs. potential harm/hurt issue, let me give you an example from my own fieldwork. When I was working with career transition counsellors which, BTW, was a cut throat business at the time (2 Billion/year in North America and totally unregulated), one of the potential dangers for them, which we all recognized, was that they might loose business as a result of what I published. Right at the start of that fieldwork, I sat down with my main informants and mentioned this to them. Their response was a) they recognized it as a danger, and b) they wanted me to give them an interim set of observations that would allow them to improve based on my observations. I should also note that they required me to use their real names. They felt that the long term risk was greater if their practices were not studied. And, quite honestly, some of my observations were taken by them and used to rework heir own practices.
On the “uninvited presence”, I suspect hat we are dealing with somewhat different ways of entering the field ;). And, yes, that is a key point, especially if we are looking at something like the HTS.
Let me invert that for a minute and ask, do you consider pure observational research (no interviews, no informant relationships) to invoke an informant (host) bond? To my mind, this moves beyond the reciprocity relationship of such a bond, at least as we usually talk about it, and I would like to explore the implications of it more fully.
On whether or not this is a “rationale”, I wouldn’t go that far. I would say it is the beginning of examining a possible rationale and, certainly one that appears to have more face validity for most people than that of “pure research” or “naive ideology” (I’m sure you’ve run across this as well, the type of argument that goes “I want to study oppressed people because they are oppressed and, if they don’t know it, I’ll teach them” - an extension of the old London Missionary Society ethic that Bush used as a rationale for his invasion of Iraq).
Honestly, a lot of this goes back to what the metaphysical “ground of being” is for our research - something I’ll be looking at in he next few days.
Anyway, thanks again for the critique, Max - I appreciate it :).
Hi Marc, thanks for the response.
To answer your question,
“Let me invert that for a minute and ask, do you consider pure observational research (no interviews, no informant relationships) to invoke an informant (host) bond?”
I would say “no.” I have nothing against observational research of whatever is freely put “out there” in public view, and I engage in such research all the time. But I also know that it is not participant observation and normally does not involve the kinds of ties that organizations such as the AAA are concerned about when producing their codes of ethics. My only comment in this case is that whatever you got from the public scene, should be put back out in public for comment, just to see if the author can defend his/her claims and interpretations in light of the feedback offered by the “producers” of whatever the reseacher studied. You are already practicing this, so obviously this comment does not apply to you.
Hi Max,
In general, I would agree with you although I suspect that a lot of “observational research” is never put out for comment. For example, I now that I do a lot of observational research “automatically” - you know, just walking around observing things - that may never be written up. Despite that, I have noticed time and again how often I will draw on that “data” in my work.
Part of the reason why I brought up purely observational research is because I believe that in the heat of the debate, we are not being careful about why type of research the HTT’s may be conducting. Just as an example, there’s an incident in Steve Featherston’s Harpers article about observing needles in front of the doctor’s office, and treating that as a clue (in the Piercian sense) regarding local Taliban and AQ activity; it’s pure “observation”, but it could have a major impact on US forces activity in that village.
The other reason I brought it up was that it is the type of “research” (along with “just chatting”) that is being done by soldiers in the field. They may or may not be able to analyze it in the same way we would, but they are certainly using the same basic observational (and “chatting”) skills that we do.
This leads us, or me at any rate, into questioning what, exactly, is our “professional knowledge” and how much of it is common knowledge? We certainly can’t claim to have basic observation and chatting as “unique skills” . So, what sets us apart from non-Anthropologists in terms of access to a professional knowledge base? Is it a training of those skills in a manner analogous to training a singer? Is it a “database” we carry around in our heads? Is it a toolkit of analytic skills? Is it something else?
I’m just tossing this out for discussion, since I actually think it is all of the above plus some pretty specialized knowledge of self tools as well, but I haven’t sat down and done a rigorous analysis on it yet.
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