Applied Anthropology, Ethics, and Contemporary Issues
What this domain tests
Applied anthropology uses anthropological methods outside the academy - development, health, education, cultural resource management, forensics, business, and policy. Items also test ethics: consent, harm, confidentiality, community rights, and debates over cultural relativism and human rights.
Core rules and concepts
- Applied anthropology solves a client or community problem; engaged anthropology explicitly takes a political stance.
- Informed consent must be voluntary, ongoing, and understandable; it is not a one-time signature, and community consent does not replace individual consent.
- Confidentiality protects identities; anonymity removes them entirely. Data can re-identify people in small communities.
- Beneficence and non-maleficence: maximize benefit, avoid harm.
- Cultural relativism as method does not require tolerating violence; human-rights debates hinge on this distinction.
- Community-based and participatory research shares control with participants; decolonizing anthropology critiques extractive research.
- Contemporary issues: globalization, migration, climate change, digital ethnography, racism, gender, and intersectionality.
Worked example
A mining company hires an anthropologist to assess a proposed road through a village's land. The company asks for a confidential report. Reasoning: the anthropologist must disclose her role and funding to villagers, obtain informed consent, and negotiate whether findings can be shared. If the road threatens the community, confidentiality to the company could cause harm; ethical practice requires advance agreement on data access and community review. The anthropologist's obligation is not only to the client.
Traps that cost marks
Assuming ethics approval covers community relations; treating applied work as less rigorous; confusing confidentiality with anonymity; invoking cultural relativism to excuse harm; ignoring the anthropologist's own position and interests.