Ethical Issues in Anthropological Research

The outcome of a national seminar, the papers presented here are concerned with bioethics. Emphasising the importance of ethics in research and viewing ethics as a prerequisite for the protection of the participants under study, they focus on derivation of abstract principles and code of ethics from armchair philosophy and lack of cross-cultural analysis without taking into consideration cultural disparities. The study, undertaken in the light of anthropological fieldwork, examines cultural constructs of morality keeping in view mind-cultural relativism. Incorporating their own observations and field findings, the authors deal with diverse topics like ethics in social research, global ethics vis-à-vis issues of rights and responsibilities and paying informants in ethnographical research. They delve into ethical issues in epidemiological study of Type 2 diabetes among the Gangadikara Vokkaliga of the state of Karnataka.