Adopted June 23, 2005 by the ASA Board of Directors
ASA Ethical Conduct Guidelines
[for print]
These guidelines for ethical
conduct in scholarly and professional activities in
The African Studies Association represents a
diverse group of people interested in
1. Do No Harm
2. Open and Full Disclosure of Objectives, Sources of
Funding, Methods, and Anticipated Outcomes
3. Informed
Consent and Confidentiality
4. Reciprocity
and Equity
5. Deposition
of Data and Publications
6. Professional Misconduct
7. Preservation of Cultural Heritage
8. Academic Freedom
1. Do No Harm
When conducting research or pursuing professional
activities in
Africanists should commit themselves to
those practices of responsible conduct in research, teaching, or other
professional activity that follow the ethical imperatives of do no harm (nonmalfeasance) and do good (beneficence).
Africanists should commit themselves, as far as possible, to respect, in these
terms, prevailing local practices of collaborating, hiring, training, and using
assistants and subjects. Africanists also should commit themselves to pursue
non-discriminatory practices whenever possible.
2. Open and Full
Disclosure of Objectives, Sources of Funding, Methods, and Anticipated Outcomes
Members of the Association are committed to open and full disclosure of their
work to all cooperating African colleagues and institutions, all graduate and
field assistants, and the subjects with whom we work and whom we study.
Each of these should have full access to information about the objectives of
the work, the sources of institutional support, sponsorship, other funding, the
methods to be employed, and the anticipated outcomes of the research or
professional endeavors.
Because the findings of our research or recommendations or conclusions drawn
from it may affect the interests of the peoples and communities we study,
members of the Association should be conscious of the interests of the sponsors
and funders of the research or professional
endeavors, as well as any third parties who may have access to the findings or
data, and anticipate their potential uses and abuses of the research
data. Further, we shall notify our African colleagues of the sponsors, funders, and their potential uses of the information to be
collected.
We shall not engage in any research which we
know or believe to be funded secretly, is likely to be used for covert
purposes, or to have potentially negative consequences for our African
colleagues. Africanists should not accept funds or sponsorship that
benefit a sponsoring organization or government in self-aggrandizing ways that
compromise the integrity of Africanists’ scholarly endeavors by influencing
results of research, professional work, or the content of presentations.
We shall be particularly sensitive to participation in projects which could be
reasonably construed as sustaining or strengthening the powers of political leaders
or states guilty of violations of human rights. Furthermore, we are
committed to keeping in the public domain all research and publications
completed under sponsorship of any government.
3.
Informed Consent and Confidentiality
We shall seek to obtain the fully voluntary and
informed consent of all the people participating in our research or other work
before it is undertaken. Researchers should develop instruments of informed
consent that are appropriate to the cultural context of their research. Such
instruments should not only inform the subjects of the nature of the research
and its potential risks but also should guarantee to subjects that, if they
wish, their confidentiality will be fully respected. Researchers should be
cognizant of the real difficulties of securing informed consent in contexts of
uneven power relations and should develop strategies or techniques for ensuring
that such consent be entirely voluntary. Institutional Review Board (IRB)
protocols should also be followed, as appropriate to Africanists’ home
institutions and host countries.
4. Reciprocity
and Equity
Members of the Association have a responsibility to support and encourage the
professional activities of African collaborators and colleagues and, when
appropriate, to build collaborative research and other professional programs
with them. Our endeavors should build the capacity of our collaborators and
their institutions through research programs, training, and professional
development.
All Africanists engaged in collaborative
research or other professional endeavors should explain fully the nature of
such collaboration, including issues of authorship, access to data collected,
intellectual property rights, rights to inventions and copyrights with African
colleagues, professionals, and graduate students.
5. Deposition
of Data and Publications
Researchers should return the results of scholarly activities to the
communities and the country in which research was conducted, including
preliminary reports, papers, dissertations, and all forms of publication. The
communities studied or engaged in the research should receive at least a
summary of the research and its findings in a form and language they can understand.
Eventually and to the extent feasible, the
researcher also should return copies of primary data sets and relevant notes to
a responsible archive or depository in the country of research so that the data
and materials can be made available to indigenous researchers. In both the
research reports and the data sets, the identities of the persons who provided
information should be kept confidential or disguised unless they have given
permission for their identities to be revealed. Scholars and professional
Africanists should make every effort to see that their publications or reports
are not exploited for inordinate profit and that they are made available at
charges that are reasonable to scholars, libraries, and higher education
institutions in the appropriate African country/ies.
6. Professional
Misconduct
Members should observe the “Definition of Research Misconduct” contained in the
“Research Misconduct Policy” statement of the National Endowment for the
Humanities [http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/researchmisconduct.html]
in that:
Finally, the ASA follows NEH policy in that a home “institution bears primary
responsibility for prevention and detection of research misconduct and for the
inquiry, investigation, and adjudication of research misconduct alleged to have
occurred in association with their own institutions.”
7. Preservation of
Cultural Heritage
Members of the African Studies Association have a particular responsibility to
respect and protect the cultural heritage of the people in Africa, particularly
in light of the growing illegal international trafficking in African art,
archaeological artifacts, and other cultural materials. Members of ASA
further have an obligation to inform themselves of the provisions, relevant to
their research and other activities in Africa, of The Hague Convention on the
Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of an Armed Conflict
http://www.icomos.org/hague/hague.convention.html, the UNESCO Convention on
Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Export, Import, and Transfer of
Ownership of Cultural Property http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/1970/html_eng/page1.shtml,
the United States Cultural Property Implementation Act http://exchanges.state.gov/culprop/97-446.html,
and bilateral measures taken by the United States and other governments to
prohibit the illicit traffic in stolen art. Members may also wish to
consult the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (U.S. Department of
State) International Cultural Property Protection http://exchanges.state.gov/culprop/.
8. Academic Freedom
As members of their communities, Africanists have the rights and obligations of
other citizens. They measure the urgency of these obligations in light of
their responsibilities to their subject, their professions, their students,
their colleagues, and the university or professional associations to which they
may belong. As citizens engaged in professions that depend upon freedom
for their health and integrity, Africanists have a particular obligation to
promote conditions of free inquiry and the principles and public understanding
of academic freedom.
Policy Statement
Concerning Human Rights
The African Studies Association is dedicated to the defense of human rights and
to drawing attention to acts and events that violate the rights of people and
their communities. In this respect the ASA follows the United Nations “Universal
Declaration of Human Rights” which can be found at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html.
A commitment to universal human rights requires an ethical commitment to the
equal opportunity of all peoples, all communities, and all societies to the
full realization of their humanity.
Policy
Statement Concerning Academic Freedom
The African Studies Association is dedicated to the promotion of teaching,
research, and professional endeavors with respect to Africa with the widest
possible freedom of inquiry and dissemination of findings to the wider public
in the
Last revised 8/8/05
African Studies Association,
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