Ethics in anthropological fieldwork (Answer in 150 words)

- Ethics in anthropological fieldwork (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Fieldwork places the anthropologist inside relationships of trust and unequal power. Ethics is therefore not a formality but the condition of the method, and the primary obligation is to those studied.
Body
1. Obligations to those studied: informed and continuing consent, protection from harm including harm from publication, anonymity, the right to withdraw, respect for restricted knowledge, and reciprocity. The AAA Principles and the ASA guidelines make this obligation paramount.
2. Obligations beyond the field: honest reporting to sponsors, refusal of covert or intelligence-linked work after Project Camelot and the Human Terrain System, no fabrication or plagiarism, and responsibility to the discipline for the access of those who follow.
3. Where they collide: confidentiality against disclosure of harmful practice; a funder's demand against community consent; the duty to publish against a community's claim over sacred material, as the Yanomami controversy exposed. Ethics review, renewed consent and shared authorship manage these conflicts without dissolving them.
Conclusion
No code decides the hard cases in advance. What ethics requires is that the fieldworker treat the informant's interest, not the project's, as the default in a conflict.