NAPA Has Standards! Webinar
Introduction to NAPA’s Professional Standards
Core Concepts of NAPA’s Professional Standards
Why Professional Standards?
- Professional, practicing, and applied anthropologists (PPA) are the rising majority of the anthropological work continuum in the United States; that disciplinary dominance will only continue in the future.
- Few schools are prepared to fully train anthropologists for the kinds of work that PPA anthropologists undertake.
- No one has prepared grounded guidance for what good and ethical PPA anthropologists will do in their work.
- The Disciplinary Standards are important as guidance for PPA anthropologists.
- The Disciplinary Standards are also necessary to ground all training materials to be developed.
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NAPA Has Standards
Summary
Self Awareness
Cultural Relativism
Engagement & Service
Empowerment & Advocacy
Transparency & Accuracy
Accessibility
Command of our Craft
NAPA HAS STANDARDS!
New Guidance for Professional, Practicing, and Applied Anthropologists
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A WEBINAR TO CELEBRATE THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF NAPA
Professional Anthropology Standards
Core Concepts
- Self Awareness
- Cultural Relativism
- Engagement & Service
- Empowerment & Advocacy
- Transparency & Accuracy
- Accessibility
- Command of our Craft
Each Core Concept is divided into Basic Elements that includes examples of Observable Indicators. The Observable Indicators are not meant to be an exhaustive list, but serve as a springboard for deeper discussion.
Self Awareness
The Core Concept of Self Awareness is broken up into four Basic Elements which include several examples of Observable Indicators. .
Avoiding Bias
- Feedback from peers, clients, and partners
- Professional reviews of work by others
- Measures against disciplinary, industry, and community standards
- Practicing reflexivity
Humility
- Recognition of personal and professional limits
- Willingness to admit things that you don’t know or can’t do
- Willingness to ask for and receive advice
- Openness to continual improvement and professional development
- Willingness to recognize and confront hubris
Presentation of (Professional) Self
- Eliciting and listening to feedback from others
- Identifying areas for development and improvement
- Identifying models of effective self-presentation
How We Behave
- Understanding professionalism and its components (see below)
- Finding ways to signal, demonstrate, and utilize professional tenets in work situations
- Privileging purpose over personal interests
Cultural Relativism
The Core Concept of Cultural Relativism is broken up into eight Basic Elements which include several examples of Observable Indicators for each.
Open Mindedness
- Ability to frame and ask non-leading questions
- Projecting neutrality to partners
- Avoiding stereotyping and/or essentializing people and cultures
- Avoid invidious comparisons of people and cultures
Thoroughness
- Asking follow-up questions to get a complete picture
- Relying on more than one account
Attention to Context
- Probing to fully understand the situation
- Taking note of circumstances and surroundings
- Investigating connections between one thing and another
Pause – Consider – Reformulate
- Reserving analysis and conclusions until the picture develops
- Re-evaluating “knowledge” on an iterative basis throughout a project
Patience
- Allowing time for trust, confidence, and “the right moment” to occur in learning about a culture
Empathy
- Demonstrating the ability to understand another perspective
- Demonstrating the ability to feel what another person feels
- Understanding what your partners need from you in the way of behavior
Trust and Respect
- Understanding how to show respect to your partners
- Understanding how to behave towards them so as to gain trust
- Finding ways to signal, demonstrate, and utilize professional tenets in work situations
Limits
- Know the limits to the ethical employment of cultural relativism, i.e. harm to others (physical, psychic, spiritual)
- Know the limits to the legal employment of cultural relativism, i.e. harm to children or other vulnerable individuals, participation in criminal activities
Engagement & Service
The Core Concept of Engagement and Service is broken up into four Basic Elements. Each includes several examples of Observable Indicators.
Do No Harm
- Ensure that safety and harm avoidance are active elements in all activity planning and conduct
- Always avoid harm to others: respondents, clients, colleagues
- Assuming an affirmative duty to being responsible for the conditions of engagement
- Actively promote safety
Strive to do Good
- Focus on work resulting in better conditions/outcomes
- Always consider diversity, equity, and inclusion of populations
- Promote the best outcomes for the community (recognize your limitations in defining)
Responsibility for Knowledge
- Responsibility is to learn and then to use that learning in the conduct of the activity
- Understand the knowledge gained as on loan to you in order to actively use it for an agreed upon purpose
- Respect the agency of the community
- Assume an affirmative responsibility for sharing information appropriately with respondent communities
- It is insufficient to just learn, you must translate it into something useful
- Initiate and anchor communications across groups, exiting as no longer needed
- Reporting information that 1) pertains to the security, wellbeing, or safety of an individual or group of people and 2) breaches the limits of cultural relativism
Approach to Service
- Embrace ambiguity and complexity as the reality of people and cultures; don’t simplify for ease
- Learn to create, manage, and use discomfort for learning
- Be prepared to support change/growth/stability as needed
- Focus on listening without filters
- Employ analytic filters with care for original meaning and intention
- Be an active, honest, clear learner and communicator
- Admit limits
- Support the value of complex findings
- Step back to allow others to engage and move concepts/ideas/plans forward
- Have courage and conviction tempered by humility and respect for others’ agency
Empowerment & Advocacy
The Core Concept of Empowerment and Advocacy is broken up into five Basic Elements, each of which includes several examples of Observable Indicators.
Capacity Building
- Ability to identify and understand salient intervention points
- Ability to specify what interventions are appropriate
- Ability to work with others to design and carry out interventions
Representation
- Ability and willingness to let partners determine how they will be represented and to whom
- Skill at crafting and delivering narratives
- Familiarity with basic media and how to work with them
- Ensuring that individuals or groups, living or deceased, are appropriately represented
Accuracy
- Checking work with partners to ensure accuracy
- Maintaining good documentary records
Effectiveness
- Familiarity with outside structures and procedures
- Ability to gain access to outlets and platforms
- Understand the metric of success within the cultural context
Attention to, and Identification of, Potential Harm
- Understanding and respecting sensitive areas
- Awareness of how information can be
- Monitoring and resolving difficulties in this regard
Transparency & Accuracy
The Core Concept of Transparency and Accuracy is broken up into four Basic Elements which include several examples of Observable Indicators for each.
Record Keeping
- Understanding how to record and store field materials
- Understanding how to extend the life of recorded materials
Disclosure
- Working with partners to establish an information plan
- Negotiating reciprocity with partners for information and field materials
- Negotiating boundaries and procedures with clients for handover of information
- Being clear with respondents about terms of anonymity and confidentiality
- Being clear with respondents about limits of control of data
- Clearly communicating breaches and mistakes – what happened, what steps are being done to mitigate, and what harm may arise
Review & Feedback
- Checking findings and interpretations with partners
- Correcting errors and omissions
- Incorporating new materials where relevant
- Development and maintenance of professional networks for discussion of ethical concerns, challenges, peer review, etc.
Protection
- Understanding and employing appropriate research/evaluation oversight, i.e., IRB, review groups
- Building in protections (passwords, encryption, etc.) into field materials
- Retaining possession of materials where possible
- Arranging for materials to be stored safely
Accessibility
The Core Concept of Accessibility is broken up into three Basic Elements, each of which include several examples of Observable Indicators.
Research Design
- Purposeful research design that is accessible to the full population, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or ability
- Careful analysis of methods and strategy to determine who is missing/not seated “at the table”
Results
- Purposeful dissemination that is accessible to the research population in a format they can utilize
- Where possible, ensuring that publications are available publicly and written in a way that the public can understand and benefit from them
- In addition to traditional print formats, explore a variety of media and approach options that convey findings and expand accessibility
Accommodation
- Ensuring that all research materials, including recruitment, data collection instruments, and reports meet accessibility standards for differently abled individuals.
- Where possible, accommodate different learning styles and abilities through the use of language leveling, visual representations, and auditory interpretation of materials.
Command of our Craft
The Core Concept of Command of Our Craft is broken up into four Basic Elements. Each includes several examples of Observable Indicators.
Methodological Expertise & Precision
- Having a clear understanding of, and experience with, an appropriate range of methods
- Understanding which methods to use in a given situation
- Being able to explain those to clients and partners (what you’re doing and why)
- Continuous development/taking opportunities to gain experience (openness/commitment to learning & improvement)
Protection of Participants
- Understanding the risks, benefits, and levels of effort associated with the methods being used
- Negotiating the minimization of harm and risk with clients and partners before work begins
- Setting up standards and procedures to maintain protection and confidentiality following field work
- Being able to accurately discover and describe specific types of risk in specific situations for different stakeholders
- Prioritizing the welfare of the participant/respondent over the conduct of the project/ research.
- Staying fully aware of and up to date with changing ethical practices / participant protection practices
Thorough Documentation of Work
- Understanding how to present qualitative results and link these to quantitative measures
- Understanding how to organize and present different types of research findings for maximum credibility and impact
- Making materials available, if appropriate, for others to examine and/or replicate
Include the documentation of planning, not just what we have done
Modeling our Standards, Methods, and Ethics to Others
- Taking care to always present ourselves as careful professionals
- Pointing out and offering guidance when we see concerns in the work of others (clients, peers, etc.)
- Demonstrating how the employment of anthropology’s methods & approach are connected to the quality of the product/project/results
One smalll editorial sugggestion:
In No. 5, Transparency & Accuracy, rearrange the “elements” — Put Disclosure and Review/feedback first, because they both relate to Transparency. Then Record-keeping and Protection after them, as they relate more to accuracy.
I suggest a few small changes to the standards presented at SfAA on 29 March:
1. Add clothing/jewelry choices as an indicator to the element of Prewssentation of Professional Self in Self-awareness Concept.
2. In Concept No. 4 – I suggest splitting the Element of Capacity building into two: One should be Needs assessment, sspecification of appropriate interventions. The other could be Capacity building, which is a standard term in development work meaning building up people’s ability to help themselves.
I echo the suggestion of adding a preamble about the kinds of work situations in which these standards may be of use. I suggest that you also explain what “anthropology” is (four fields in U.S., different definitions elsewhere), because it isn’t always clear to professionals in other disciplines what we may do, what different specialties are. And in different countries anthropology has different meanings.
Explain PPA too, of course.
There are a few organizations beyond AAA, SfAA that might be interested in this effort. One is the International Sociological Association, which has an applied wing that they call “”clinical.” . I can give contact information later.
Congratulations on your amazing effort and smart process!