Fieldwork and ethics

Abstract

The Slovak Association of Social Anthropologists initiated recently a discussion about the ethics in the ethnology, social and cultural anthropology. In January 2009 the association organized the seminar “Ethics in ethnology/social anthropology which brought vivid response in the academic community in Slovakia. The paper will deal with the question which are the most frequent ethic problems in field work such as for example the selection of research topic from the ethic point of view, ethic regulations during the conducting of field work, the protection of respondent’s personal data during the elaboration of data and archiving, the publication of research data etc. The author will inform about approaches and react to the current discussion about the possibilities how to solve the ethic questions in the field work.

Keywords

• fieldwork
• ethnology
• social and cultural anthropology
• ethics