Improving Formalised Ethics Review: Field Sensitivity, Bundles of Usership and Devolution

Abstract

This chapter illustrates how formalised requirements of research ethics and data management have affected social science research and anthropological research specifically. Examples of anthropological research of the experience of international and national science regulation in China show that, in practice, these requirements can lead to unnecessary complications in ‘the field’ and are apt to disregard the expectations and ethics of potential research participants. To counteract such inadequacies, this chapter suggests conceptual tools for the general improvement of requirements for research ethics and data management. It does so, first, by introducing notions of ‘field sensitivity’ and ‘bundles of usership’, which enable more appropriate ways of thinking about ethics in the field and the management of research materials; second, by explaining how the devolution of ethics review and its rooting in the educational curriculum could make ethics review more productive and more suitable to anthropological research specifically and social science in general; and, third, research is needed into the reasons for the great diversity in research ethics and data management requirements between and within countries in order to understand their impact in practice of fieldwork. Any changes will have to take the socio-cultural and political history of these institutions of governance into account.</p