Abstract

This talk is part of a series of interventions that aims at inviting the Swiss anthropological research community to reflect with us on the push towards open science and data management. We present the current Position Paper on “Open Science and Data Management in Anthropological Research” of the Swiss Anthropological Association that results from a four-year, multi-party process launched in 2017. This process was catalyzed by new data management protocols introduced by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

While the push towards open science and data management is mostly welcome, we take the opportunity to reflect on its consequences for disciplinary practices across a wide array of issues, ranging from collaborative research to informed consent, from data protection to procedures for sharing our research results with the people with whom we work. Moreover, we propose to rethink the “FAIR” framework and, in particular, the notions of “interoperability” and “reusability” that do not have straightforward equivalents in the ethnographic research paradigm.

Wiebke Wiesigel and Faduma Abukar Mursal are members of the Commission CRED (Ethical and Deontological Think Tank, in English) of the Swiss Anthropological Association. The commission is a working group which brings together both junior and senior researchers in Switzerland to explore the ethical implications of anthropological research and the various aspects of knowledge production (fieldwork, analysis, publication, dissemination, etc.) it involves. Eschewing normative policing of "research ethics", the CRED aims to provide a platform for in-depth debate and exchange on questions of everyday ethics in the research process, questions that are often embedded in complex and ambiguous situations.