Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. “Informed Consent in Anthropological Research: We are Not Exempt.” Human Organization 53 (1994): 1–10.

• The article investigates the history of the idea of informed consent and attempts to articulate why anthropology has not incorporated it into their research methods.
• The idea of “Informed Consent without Forms” is used to show that the “spirit of informed consent can be fulfilled without the intrusive and unnecessarily legalistic use of a signed form” (1).
• Informed consent is ultimately viewed as a process that “encourages greater openness and disclosure on the part of researchers, empowers voluntary participants in social research, and engenders a more collaborative relationship between researcher and researched” (1).
• Informed consent grew out of the 1972 supreme court case Cantebury v. Spence.
• The question of harm motivated “informed consent” studies.  The harm could be psychological or physical.
• This piece also traces consent to the Nazi experiements in WWII.
• Milgram’s electroshock experiments dealing with authority began the discussion of consent in the social sciences.
• Some interesting tensions are discussed considering social science research in places where the “outing” of the research would get the researcher in trouble – Communist China for example.
• Social science research is often not consented because “it is either unobtrusive, face-to-face participant observation, where voluntary consent is presumed by the open nature of the research situation” (4).
• The issue of IRB’s suitability when dealing with non-biomedical/experimental research is a real issue.
• Informed consent is protested by social scientists because: it difficult to obtain, it affects subjects behavior, it is obtuse/obtrusive, cannot be explained in non-literate societies, is an impediment to finding out info about illegal activities, It is impractical to obtain consent to every newcomer in a research situation.

Important Sources:

• Wax, Murray Lionel, and Joan Cassell. Federal Regulations : Ethical Issues and Social Research. Aaas Selected Symposium. Boulder, Colo.: Published by Westview Press for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1979. Print.
• Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology : Dialogue for a New Era. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Print.
• Faden, Ruth R. Beauchamp Tom L. King Nancy M. P. A History and Theory of Informed Consent. 1986.