Lecture Reflections: “Doing Science & Human Rights: Praxis, Ethics, and Outcomes”

On Tuesday, October 24, 2013, Dr. Barbara Rose Johnston presented a lunch talk to the Anthropology Department. As part of department's new blog features, we'll be highlighting student reflections and observations of events, lectures, seminars, and more. Rebecca Alberda is currently a first year Masters student in the Applied Anthropology program here at the University of Maryland; focusing her research on disaster management and the relief aid process in order to implement improvements in cultural relativity. 

Dr. Johnston asked several important questions during her lunch lecture. These questions included: “What does it mean to do work with a purpose? What are you [the anthropologist] doing and to what effect? What are the ramifications for the community? Why do we [anthropologists] have the issues we do within the field? and most importantly, What are we [anthropologists] going to do about it?” These are all incredibly important questions to reflect upon when working on projects or with communities that are, in particular, facing social justice and or environmental justice issues - among many other human right issues. Johnston didn’t just leave these questions hanging out in the air, critiquing the system without offering some practical solutions, as many in the field do. Instead, she gives us some potential solutions to implement in our own work, such as, employing the four field approach, advocating for a remedy by developing a political strategy, collaborating with other fields, engaging in action-based research (research for a purpose where the definition of success is not an outcome, it’s the process), and advocating for a people by assisting in giving them a voice. Don’t represent them, but advocate for them, and know the difference when doing so. One way to do this is to make sure the community you are working with has the power to say what images are being projected of them to the world on their behalf, and above all, do not make a poster child out of them. Additionally, you must engage in what she calls the “eyes wide open” approach, in other words, keeping the community informed and allowing information to be anticipatory. Finally, she defines what she believes citizen science is and asserts that if you can assist, then you have a moral obligation to do so.