Il difficile equilibrio fra etica e libertà nella ricerca

Dilemmi etici, conflitti e strategie

  • Francesca Crivellaro Assegnista di ricerca in Antropologia Culturale, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione “Giovanni Maria Bertin”, Università di Bologna

Abstract

For anthropologists working in their own home country, the ethical dilemmas brought about by the relationship with the community they study are different – although not entirely "other" – compared to those that anthropologists working in so called “exotic” fields face (Tarabusi 2014). When the field is "at home" (Jackson 1987; Peirano 1998), the subjects who participated in the research «surround the anthropologist at her or his desk» (Mosse, 2006: 937), “they read what we write” (Brettell 1993), sometimes claiming the possibility to raise objections and challenging the ethnographer’s authority (Mosse 2006, 2015). Our stakeholders – whether the sponsors or the other informants and interlocutors – may also feel somehow "betrayed" by the ethnographic representation (Brettell 1993; Fabietti 1999; Scheper-Hughes 2001; Rossi 2003; Semi 2010); they cannot recognize themselves and their practices in the ethnographic account of their experience (Sorgoni 2011). Reactions to the anthropological writing can be extremely emotional: they, in fact, have to do with «the relationship between professionals [...] to descriptions of their organizational work» (Mosse 2015: 131). Publishing is, therefore, a particularly delicate moment in the relationship between the anthropologist and his interlocutors. Drawing on empirical experience, this paper describes the negative reactions to writing. The purpose is twofold: exploring the issue of ethical dilemmas involved in the negative reception of an ethnographic account; and outlining the possible strategies that allow limiting the risks that Applied and “at home” Anthropology entail.

Published
2024-02-15
How to Cite
Crivellaro, F. (2024). Il difficile equilibrio fra etica e libertà nella ricerca. Antropologia Pubblica, 2(2), 103-114. https://doi.org/10.1473/anpub.v2i2.77
Section
Etiche della ricerca in antropologia applicata - a cura di Angela Biscaldi