Not yetOriginally Posted by goesh
. Actually, Academic ethics fit here, and that's what you are talking about.
On the issue of "lying on employment applications", I do have a couple of comments. First, I have never felt comfortable with the race declarations that may American universities use. Technically, they are not required but, according to a number of people I've talked with, you'd better list yours. The first time I filled one out, I was flumoxed: the definitions were so "weird" and poorly defined that I ended up checking off every box. Needless to say, the head of HR emailed me wanting to know what the frak I was doing. My comments back were along the lines of my skin is white, my family lived in Spain 1200 years ago (their definition of "hispanic"), by Mohawk law I am a Mohawk (long story), my family originated on the Asian steppes 2000 years ago, and all modern humans came out of Africa. Her response was, we only care about 3 generations back. These days I just tick off "White".
Let's get back to academic ethics for a minute. One of the things that has always fascinated me about "academic ethics" is how plastic it is depending on who you are and what your supposed identity is. For example, when I was applying for PhD programs, I originally wanted to study how modern Witchcraft was being institutionalized (I'd done my MA on that topic). I was informed by the Chair of one department that a) I knew a lot about the topic (we'd talked for over an hour) and b) I would never get a job in academia with that specialization because I was a man.
To my mind, "ethics" should be based on transcendent principles. I honestly think that Boas tried to do this 100 years ago. Somewhere along the line, however, these principles got replaced with moral statements masquerading as principles. For example, when I started my PhD fieldwork, it was drummed into me how "privileged" a position the ethnographer is in, and how unequal a power relationship exists between the ethnographer and their subjects. Certainly, this is true in some cases but, in my case, I was doing my fieldwork in the offices of the largest accounting / consulting firm in Canada. There was an unequal power relationship all right, but I certainly didn't have the whip hand!
I truly doubt that, had I been a student of Boas in the 1920's or 1930's, I would have had to deal with either of these problems.
Marc
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