Informed consent in the jungle

[John Hatton]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the comments.  If I understand you correctly, your comments are
quite relevant to the general case, and should be part of crafting the
agreement, or the key points of a recorded conversation.  For my case, and
probably the general case of SIL in PNG, I think I can explain why the kinds
of agreements we're starting might be somewhat outside the norm.

While I'm well aware that repositories have systems to limit access, I've
not personally been in a situation where I would be interested in investing
time in restricted-access data. Although I'm working as part of an
organization that must also exercise responsibility in this realm (and
maintain ethical standards), I am not personally doing this work for a
degree, or working under a grant, so data that isn't sharable is not of
interest. To the extent a person would want to limit the sharing of the
documentation, well, to the same extent, I'd rather simply collect data from
someone else, no hard feelings.  (Were a language down to only a few
accessible speakers, that'd surely be a different situation).  I'm providing
a free service to them, helping them document their language.  Individuals
can choose to participate in that or not.  Does that make sense?  So my
challenge is to make reasonably sure the speaker understands what service
I'm providing, and feels very free to turn it down.  I think it will be rare
in PNG for someone to not want that preservation service from anyone, and
particularly from someone they've known for a long time, who has
demonstrated that he/she is there to serve them, not grab their data for
personal gain alone.  Obviously things are much more complicated  when
gathering stories for anthropological
research or doing LD recordings in other areas of the world (e.g. where
people require that a narrative is restricted until the subjects have died,
or, conversely, to destroy recordings after someone dies).

Which brings me to the second main issue you helpfully bring up, that of
trust.  In most of the relationships I and my colleagues have here, the
problem is not lack of trust, but blind trust.  Particularly in the language
where my wife occasionally does literacy development work, the people trust
me implicitly; I have lived among them, I have earned their trust over the
years, and they have earned mine.  Ironically, this actually makes my job
more ethically challenging; it makes it more difficult to know that someone
giving consent is doing so because they understand the risks/benefits and
are choosing to participate out of their own interests and those of the
community.  It's likely that many people would agree just to please John.
So far, I'm dealing with this conflict by figuring that ok, it's true, I am
a very long-term friend of these people, and I do think this is in their
best interests, and I have precious little to gain from it, personally.  But
I think I could & should do more, say, by discussing with them what harm
could come to them through participation (ideas welcome)!  It could well be
that areas where they might perceive harm through openness, e.g. of Spirit
World/Power nature, would not be discussed with me anyways.  Now, that said,
I haven't got the nerve up yet to record arguments, private conversations,
etc.  I would like to get them... but again, I would like to have them
unrestricted if at all possible.

So in summary, I'm personally not interested in offering to limit access
because restricted data would not meet my goals of helping them shore-up the
strength of their language & oral culture, particularly for future
generations, and to share knowledge of it with the world. Also, trust is a
minor problem because I (and my colleagues here) have the good fortune to
live in-country and have very long-term relationships with the people.  Both
of these situations, no doubt, are rather rare in the broader LD context.
You points, Peter, are all the more well-taken.  Agreements fashioned out of
such rare circumstances may make poor models in most situations. More below.

> Note that recording
consent (eg. as an audio or video recording) rather than relying on
written documentation (which may be problematic in terms of literacy
and fear-generation) is perfectly acceptable and in many cases
preferable as a means of respecting people's rights and making a
proper record of the fact they were informed about their rights,
giving consent and managing access and use of what they are involved
in.

>How does this seem in your situation?

Very relevant.  Particularly with older folks, I have been using video
rather than paper agreements.  Either way, the agreement (paper or video)
only comes out after some conversation.  By the time we get to the
agreement, I'm thinking, it's largely a matter of making a public record,
evidence to back the Creative Commons license under which I will put the
work. So the agreement doesn't need to carry the full weight of
communicating what's on offer; this is better left to a conversation, as you
say. It does, however, need to cover some bases in its role as minimal
evidence.  If it can also indicate that we tried to put things in terms they
would understand, all the better. 

Again, thanks for the feedback.

John Hatton 
SIL Papua New Guinea, Palaso, & SIL International Software Development