[Air-l] Response to Thomas Koenig - Part I

Charles Ess cmess at drury.edu
Tue May 25 08:14:05 PDT 2004


[I'm sorry to say, but I'm running out of time... I depart for an East-West
philosophy conference this Saturday, and will be traveling through much of
June.  As much fun as all of this is, I have to limit myself to a couple of
replies before disconnecting from the thread.  I'll return to it in the
middle of July when things settle down again, if it seems useful to do so.]

> From: "Maximilian Forte" <mcforte at kacike.org>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 19:04:18 -0300
> To: <air-l at aoir.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] Response to Thomas Koenig - Part I
> 
> From Charles Ess:
> 
>> "For the  purposes of such registration people must, as a rule, be
> informed
>> that recordings are  being made."
> That is, informed consent _is_ required for any recording/registration of
> publicly observable behavior.
> 
> I am confused here. Is this particular set of guidelines suggesting that if
> one is videotaping, say, a parade, with hundreds of participants and maybe
> thousands of spectators, that each of the 200 people with video cameras
> circulate amongst everyone else seeking informed consent?
> 
> Should this with photographic memories who take detailed mental notes and
> then write an article based on their observations also seek informed
> consent?
> 
> I must have misunderstood, otherwise this is just too comical. I'd
> appreciate any clarification as this particulat statement of ethical
> research would then be contradicted by several others that explicitly do not
> require informed consent for naturalistic research.
> 
These are nice questions -
but 
1. They'd have more force if you could come up with a specific research
project / design that would entail registering / recording people in a
public space - in Norway -
and then raise the specific problems faced by a researcher utilizing such a
design who seeks to adhere to the NESH guidelines.
2.  Your questions would also have more force and interest if they were
addressed to our Norwegian colleagues as serious questions, ones that that
did not prima facie reject their guidelines as "comical" - but rather sought
clarification as to how they dealt with such difficulties in their research
practice, given these guidelines.
Indeed, given the guidelines, it is likely that, in many cases at least,
researchers will develop their designs and projects so as to meet these
ethical guidelines in the first place,
just as researchers in other countries / ethical traditions shape their
research designs to accord to the pertinent laws (if any), their oversight
authorities, etc.
We thus might get some really interesting answers to such questions - but I
doubt that anyone will be interested in responding to general questions that
function as reductio arguments showing their national ethical guidelines (in
this case, the result of nearly a decade's work) to be "comical."

Finally, let's not lose track of the point: I cited the NESH guidelines as
an _example_ of ethical guidelines that are more insistent on privacy rights
than the AoIR guidelines.  I take it that that point still holds.

Cheers,

Charles Ess
Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.                          Voice: 417-873-7230
Springfield, MO  65802  USA            FAX: 417-873-7435

Home page:  http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html
Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23





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