Ethics and regulatory compliance in the human sciences: Anthropologists’ critique through the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Abstract

Scholars in the human sciences, particularly anthropology, have long perceived tensions between ethical concerns and the demands of regulatory compliance emanating from institutional research ethics committees. This article focuses on anthropologists’ writings about such tensions, up to and including discussions of the 2016 European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It does not assess whether their “complaints” are well-founded, or examine if they match actual practical consequences. Rather, it documents how criticism of ethical regulation has become integral to anthropology’s characteristic reflexivity. While in the 1960s “ethics” referred primarily to social or political responsibility, six decades later it largely concerns issues of regulatory compliance. Illustrative of such development is Didier Fassin’s wondering whether ethical regulation might not lead to the “end of ethnography,” and, later on, other authors asking if anthropology can “remain legal” in the framework of the GDPR.