Anthropologists
Approve Ethics Code November 7, 2012 - By
Scott Jaschik Inside Higher Ed - As a
discipline, anthropology has at times been divided over ethics, with many in
the field feeling shame over early work in the field that was used to promote
imperialism and with more recent debate over whether it is appropriate for
anthropologists to work with the U.S. military… The new code offers seven main
principles:
- Do no harm.
- Be open and
honest regarding your work.
- Obtain informed
consent and necessary permissions.
- Weigh competing
ethical obligations due collaborators and affected parties.
- Make your results
accessible.
- Protect and
preserve your records.
- Maintain
respectful and ethical professional relationships.
Barter comes into picture because not everybody is good at everything…
Barter also exemplifies the concept of voluntary cooperation. People looking
for their own benefit enter into an agreement without the use of force… Gold
has high value density… In some sense the uselessness of Gold is one of the
qualities that make it useful as money. The fact that gold does not react with
anything else makes it non-perishable and so it can be preserved for eternity
at very low cost. Its cost is actually only regarding its security. In fact,
all of the gold ever mined on this planet remains as gold. Unlike diamond which
is pure carbon and can be burnt at sufficiently high temperatures to give
carbon di-oxide, gold virtually does not combine with any other element and can
be purified from contamination at very low costs (you cannot get back a diamond
from carbon di-oxide).Thus, its ‘noble’ nature makes gold ‘useless’ for any
productive activity while makes it immensely useful as an eternal preserver of
value… This stored or saved money is the ‘Capital’… voluntary cooperation in
which two people or entities enter into an agreement to help each other in
exchange for money or goods… Legal force might be initiated only if a violation
of a voluntary contract occurs.
The other major point to differentiate between wealth and money is
that while wealth deteriorates over time, money remains intact. The effect of
this is that simply having money cannot give us our standard of living. Wealth
has to be created, repaired and serviced. We may end up consuming all of our
wealth and we’ll still remain with all our money, but that money would not be
of any use; its use is only in enabling our transactions of what we produce.
Thus we need to constantly work, if only to maintain our current standard of
living.
It’s useful if more and more people work, according to their will,
inclination and need. These issues are highly subjective and best left to the
individual. But one cannot deny the fact that without working productively no increase
in wealth is possible. You can put it anyway you like but at the end of the day
it’s only the products and services that matter and enable our living. Of
course, we would like to work less and worry less about our daily chores and
popular perception would have you believe that we are too materialistic; In
fact our material progress is what allows us to enjoy more of our lives and
creative pursuits.
Nothing was more total throughout human history than the constant
tyranny of daily subsistence. Socially,
this was expressed in human social interactions (“hermit” alternatives were
biologically unproductive – those trying it, died out in one generation). Only
in cooperation have humans continued their propagation through the
generations. This requires, as Smith pointed out, the mediation of
self-interest (not the ‘dictatorship’ a la Ayn Rand over others) in human
contact, as represented by the classic common howlers in the neoclassical
misreading of Smith’s “butcher, brewer, baker” example as “Max U” (see Deirdre
McCloskey’s” brilliant rebuttal of ‘Max U’ thinking). To which we
can add the almost total unfamiliarity of modern theorists with Smith’s “Moral
Sentiments” (how carefully did Polanyi read TMS?). Markets are but one form of
social and individual exchange, and not the only one today, nor throughout
human history. Smith understood that.
Unfortunately, the power of the scientific method - its satisfying
promise of certain knowledge - has emboldened many to see it as a universal
method, as applicable to humans as the physical world. Some of the most
fundamental forms of human creativity and activity - how we use language, our
religious beliefs, economic exchange, morality itself - are increasingly
studied by means of statistical models borrowed from a partial understanding of
science.
Sometimes, significant patterns and shapes are revealed, while other
times what's discovered may be more akin to the face a child detects in a cloud
formation than a basic causal connection. One impulse of those who apply the scientific method to human activity
is to reduce action, intellection and belief to instrumental functions.
Religion and ethics, for instance, are viewed as serving evolutionary aims, the
mind is seen as essentially a biological system, and ideas become neurological
emanations.
The historical irony is rich. From its origins, human civilisation has
been driven by an urge to escape the constraints of nature. The scientific
method was a human invention designed to understand nature better, precisely so
humans could escape its exigencies and expand the realm of their free action.
Yet now, the method's intellectual rampage seeks to imprison us within nature -
by telling us that any action we believe to be freely chosen is in fact
determined and necessitated by nature's purposes. Thus generalised, scientific
method is transformed into scientism: less a predetermined biological reflex than
a superstitious, ideological choice about how to see the world.
Consider the discipline of economics - perhaps the most spectacular
example of scientism's imperiousness. An obsession with modelling, market
efficiency, individual rational expectations, and with pure technical prowess,
has populated financial institutions with experts focussed on narrow
imperatives. Certain of their ability to master uncertainty, they have in fact
massively proliferated it - and as such bear a large responsibility for the
crisis of the global economy.
Admittedly, policy economists are today deeply divided over how to get
out of the crisis - some advocate severe austerity, others expansionist
spending. But very few indeed have felt any need to examine the recent evidence
and seriously question the foundations of their discipline. Those economists, and all aspirants to scientism, would do well to
reflect on the physicists in pursuit of their fundamental particle. If firmly
established, the Higgs boson will confirm extant theories of the nature of the
physical universe.
If the CERN experiment disproves its existence, our view of the
universe will be thrown into crisis. Physicists don't seem to shy away from
that prospect, and some seem to be almost hoping for evidence that may upend
the certainties of our world-picture. That openness to new uncertainty is the
part of the scientific method that needs to rampage a little wider. The
writer is director of the India Institute, King's College, London.
Mar 15-18, 2013 SACAC, New Delhi, an arts, communication and management institute of Sri Aurobindo Society, is organizing a
festival of Akira Kurosawa films, titled Kurosawa Retrospective — Experiencing
the Genius Akira Kurosawa. All world cinema aficionados are cordially invited. Hall
of Divine, SACAC Campus, New Delhi
| Integral Education - SACAC
Recently, Dr Sampadanand Mishra, Director—Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Indian Culture
(SAFIC),was invited as a special guest speaker at Sanskrit Sahityotsav, a grand Sanskrit
Festival organized by the Madhya Pradesh Government in collaboration with
Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi; Kalidasa Academy, Ujjain; and Sanskrit
Promotion Foundation, New Delhi, to speak on ‘Challenges in the Development of Sanskrit’. The festival took
place in Ujjain, the city of Mahakaleshwar in Madhya Pradesh, from 22nd to
24th February 2013. There were nearly 3,000 delegates invited from various
parts of India.
The Dussehra Maidan of Ujjain
was pulsating with all the people communicating in Sanskrit.
Dilip Datta, Trustee of the Ashram, has been
siphoning Ashram funds to benefit his immediate family members. The Ashram
Trust holds vast properties in Pondicherry,
and since the Trustees keep all Ashram affairs hidden from the Ashram resident
Inmates, they can get away with surreptitious sales of the Ashram’s lands and
properties. There have been many land scams in the last 15 years in which the
Trustees sold off Ashram lands purchased by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (or
received by them as gifts) for the Ashram’s needs and future security. Each
time Ashram land is sold off over 50% of the sale price is alleged to be
received by the Trustees in cash and used for their personal benefits.