Dear Derek,
Payments for anthropological research are often considered ok in the case of ethnic communities where the nature of the research is intrusive and or the local people presume payment is part of the deal.
There is obviously a balance between inducement and recompenses which shifts according to the nature of the project.
Rewarding drug addicts with 100 dollars for filling out a survey on their addiction would most likely fail ethics whereas paying a similar sum to a tribal elder for deep cultural access would probably pass.
Cheers
Krith
>>> "Derek B. Miller" <[log in to unmask]> 17/12/10 7:56 PM >>>
On the SNAP team at UNIDIR, we confronted the issue of intellectual property created by groups in three ways.
1. For our advisory group (made up of about a dozen scholars and practitioners). we cited as ideas as coming from the group. That is, footnotes, references, attributions, etc. all noted that certain ideas or activities were the product of our collaboration. It was through the push and pull of discussion and debate that we settled on solutions, as is common.
2. In the field — Ghana, Nepal, Yemen, Sierra Leone — we ensured that findings about daily life and articulated as such were credited to cooperative activity. Naturally, the authors of the publications are given copyright. The bigger issue, though, was the concern over learning things about people, representing them to others from which decisions would be made about their lives (sanitation, security, etc.), and contending with the problem that the people whom we learned from would never know what we "learned" and what we said to others. Our solution was to ensure that we reported back to people what we had learned, took the time to negotiate the meanings that we derived from the activities together, and ensured that there was no secret or proprietary data sets. That is, they could access (in principle, if often not in fact due to language and technological barriers) the data sets and our recommendations. People we met always understood that we couldn't promise what other people would do with what we said. Peole everywhere are familiar — in one way or another — with matters of power.
3. Among research teams we have a non-disclosure and non-compete. This is because the effort required to make research happen needs to be honored and protected.
In the commercial or private sector, we tell companies that we will not hide research findings from communities. The value to the companies lies in our capacity to align generic findings with goal-driven, institutional actions. That is, knowledge does not apply itself. It is the process of application that creates the value.
Keith Russell said that a small sum would be viewed an inducement and therefore would not get through an ethics panel. The American Anthropological Association does not prevent the use of inducements (see Nov. 2007 Code of Ethics). Likewise, compensation for time lost otherwise working is not an inducement. The UN regularly assumes people have nothing better to do than sit around and answer their questions. Our team thought otherwise.
Derek Miller
_______________
Derek B. Miller, Ph.D.
—Senior Fellow
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)
—Associate Scholar
Center for Local Strategies Research, University of Washington
Norwegian telephone: +47 450 393 66
U.S. voicemail: +1 617 440 4409
On Dec 17, 2010, at 3:54 AM, Keith Russell wrote:
> Dear Terry
>
> Is the meta-idea that ideas are two a penny merely a half penny idea like other ideas or is it a three penny idea?
>
> I appreciate the critique and I can agree with many of your provocations. While we are bashing up assumptions about design, could we have a go at the idea that design is about problem solving and that design is typified by wicked problems?
>
> There seems to be a few extra oxygen atoms in the water in WA at the moment?
>
> cheers
>
> keith
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