Panel:  Ethical and Practical Complexities: Navigating the IRB to Conduct Ethnographies with Vulnerable Populations

Call for Papers: AAA 2016
Minneapolis, MN
November 16-20, 2016
Theme: “Evidence, Accident, Discovery”

Abstract:

Anthropologists face unique challenges in obtaining IRB approval to conduct research with vulnerable populations, particularly (but not limited to) people with mental illnesses or who are undergoing mental health treatment.  Beyond the basic challenges of collecting data while remaining sensitive to the needs of the populations work with, we also face the complexities of satisfying IRB requirements in ever-changing ethnographic environments and maintaining participant confidentiality in clinical settings.  Due to the sensitive nature of mental illnesses, anthropologists also participate in extra screenings in order to ensure the safety of the participants.

Consistent with this year’s AAA theme, “Evidence, Accident, Discovery”, this panel highlights questions for anthropologists conducting mental health and other disability research.  First, how anthropologists face challenges in obtaining IRB approval for our research and how we obtain high-quality data while adhering to high ethical standards?  In the case of uneven balances of power between ethnographer and participant, the panel asks how we can envision our relationships with vulnerable people and populations? This panel also examines the obligations that anthropologists have to our participants, from prevention of harm during the course of research to ensuring the results of our research also do not cause harm, and perhaps can be used to reduce vulnerability.

Papers relevant to this panel might discuss IRB requirements to conduct ethnographic research among people with mental illnesses; whether ethical obligations to participants with mental illnesses differ from those we might hold to other participants; and the challenges of complying with IRB while in the field.

Abstracts are limited to 250 words, and are due to Shir Lerman (shir.lerman@gmail.com) and Olivia Marcus (olivia.marcus@uconn.edu) by March 5, 2016.

ASA 2016 conference – Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth

University of Durham, UK, 4-7 July 2016

Living histories, making futures: Temporality and young lives

Convenors 

Sarah Winkler-Reid (Newcastle University), Ditte Strunge Sass (Mahidol University International College), Camilla Morelli (University of Bristol)

Short Abstract

This panel examines the temporal dimensions of young lives, both in terms of how young people construct their life-trajectories and future selves; and how they experience, discuss, reflect and mobilise personal local, national or global histories and memories.

Long Abstract

Children and young people often symbolise both hope and anxiety in public discourses about the future. Since the 1990s, an increasing number of anthropologists have sought to study children and young people in their own right, rather than as adults-in-the-making or societal symbols. However, as scholars have noted, this leads to a tendency to disconnect young people from the generational relations in which they are embedded (Cole 2004), while on the other hand, the focus on the ‘now-ness’ of youth action can overlook the temporal dimensions of experience (Ansell et al 2014). This panel considers how different temporalities intersect at the level of childhood and youth. It examines how children and young people prepare the ground for their future selves and life-trajectories by mediating between desires, hopes and aspirations for the future on one side; and the social and political-economic constraints informed by previous generations on the other. What are the aspects of continuity and transformation in this process? How can we understand young people’s learning as both an act of creativity, and as the result of past actions and collective histories?

We invite papers that examine the temporal and political dimensions of young lives. Both in terms of the future, as children and young people’s actions, efforts and choices shape the trajectories of their own lives and of society at large; and to the past, by examining how they experience, discuss, reflect and mobilise personal, local, national or global histories and memories.

Please follow this link to submit a paper: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa2016/panels.php5?PanelID=4413