However, on the other hand, more and more social scientists are helping these organizations and they all sing the same song. It is becoming harder for decision-makers to ignore outright. As of right now, it is left to us to maintain what protections we have in our power to protect (data protections, informed consent, uses for data) and work on getting those aspects we cannot control (the big one in the military is the right of a subject to discontinue participation) to fall into compliance.

One of the things I struggle with is reminding myself that I am working with people who have different sets of ethics that are equally valid when it comes to their role. For example, imagine a person bleeding on the ground: a policeman should probably go find out who did it, a doctor should help the victim, and a journalist should document it. An anthropologist.. well, we should do all three (investigate, help the subject, document).

The Human Terrain System explicitly trains the people under its control about legal and ethical considerations, especially in regards to subjects. It also trains its people about the pressures they will be under to violate those ethics from people with different priorities. Ultimately, it comes down to the individual if they can resist those forces.

I guess it boils down to the fact that no one can force me to violate the ethical or legal codes regarding HPS. In some lesser ethical concerns (such as data reporting, ‘analysis’ and conclusions), I do often find myself weary from years of fighting over this. Heck, I get weary from fighting over HSP. But I have been lucky in that I came into my work with the military with ethics first and foremost in my mind, and I am in fact here partially to better my understanding of ethics as they relate to the field, as well as the luck I have had that my moments of weakness have never come at the wrong time when the decision to do or not do something was imminent.

I do believe engagement is the only way to resolve some of these issues. if there is no one there to tell the military how to treat subjects, they will do what they have done for decades (Tuskeegee, Trinity, etc). We need to recognize it is not going to be won ina day, decade, or maybe even century. I try to keep this in mind.

Some days are better than others.

@Gottlieb:
I definitely wanted to be a little more careful about what I meant after your earlier comment, and I’m with you on wanting to avoid the use of the term “selling out” in a pejorative sense!

To be honest, no, I’m not sure I want to make those tradeoffs. I certainly could, but I would sorely miss the flexibility and engagement with academic work. But then again, that’s probably part of what makes the transition *feel like* selling out, at least for me.

I’m also really interested to hear about the fetishization of anthropology – I had suspected that was probably the case, and I wondered to what extent space was/could be made for ethnographic methods by various organizations.

@John:
I would never want to understate the importance of having a supportive spouse!

@Ben:
Thanks for weighing in – and it’s interesting to hear your comment get back to Gottlieb’s problems with the fetishization of anthropology and ethnographic work. Clearly, part of the problem (at least on the employer side) is a lack of understanding surrounding what ethnographic work is, or can do. Have the groups you’ve worked with been at least partially open to addressing your concerns about human subjects protections, etc?

Allow me to offer an encouraging word. You may drift away, but reconnecting with academia is possible. In my case, I failed to get tenure in 1976, followed my wife to Japan in 1980, joined the Japanese ad agency where I worked as a copywriter for thirteen years in 1983. It wasn’t until 1990 that I dig out some old field notes, wrote an article, and sent it off to the Journal of Chinese Religion, who changed my life by publishing it. They didn’t, I observe, change the way I made my living. I continued to work at the agency until 1996, when I joined my wife as a partner in the translation and writing company that now provides our livelihood. What changed was knowing that I didn’t have to have an academic job to feed my academic fix. Since then I have managed to publish in academic journals (once in American Ethnologist) and have one book and several chapters in print. I attend conferences, which are a lot more fun since I’m not job hunting or playing career games; I even get invited to some.

What has made this possible? A smart, supportive spouse, without whose support an encouragement none of this would be possible is reason No. 1. The Internet, which makes access to people, books and articles previously unimaginable without access to a university library. Not owning a car. The several thousand bucks a year I save by living in a city and using public transportation (only renting a car when I really need one) is, since I have no other expensive hobbies, enough to support my research. Plus, being an owner-partner in a small service sector business with an established clientele, gives me a lot of flexibility in how I organize my time.

I guess what I’m saying is, you may find yourself spending a decade or so in the wilderness, away from academic. But with luck and playing your cards right, you don’t have to stay there.

The biggest challenge I’ve found is actually the fetishization of the anthropologist. In previous jobs, I’ve been hired with this excitement and optimism about what I can contribute, but my attempts to actually introduce more anthropological (and not just ethnographic…which is a discussion for another day) approaches have not really fit well with the private sector model. Anthropology and ethnography especially (thanks to its use in design research) are considered a way to show cool cachet, but that doesn’t mean that companies are always that receptive to the real challenges of integrating less conventional approaches into their existing practices. It’s also hard to distill anthropological methods into a 2 month or 3 month project cycle without feeling like you’ve rushed through the way you would normally consider any proposed problem.

I appreciate the further elaboration, and I think my initial reaction came more from the title than the content of your previous post. I worry about re-hashing a term, even if your goal was to disrupt the assumption that one is selling out for choosing alternative paths. I just want to take an active role in avoiding the term “selling out” so that others will not feel guilt or the sense of having to defend their decisions in the future!

@Beth: I think your comment is right on–how indeed do we work for positive change wherever we are planted? I’ll talk about this in my final post where I take on issues of complicity and complicity at the margins of the academia.

I agree – I think there are real opportunities for positive change (even more so after your comment about your colleagues), and my co-blogger Lane made a similar statement earlier on Facebook. I don’t want to give it away quite yet, though, it’s part of my post for next week!

So perhaps then, we can be a force for positive change in the areas where our training tells us we should never go!