Critical Review #4: Agawu

Agawu's article is a fascinating yet sometimes frustrating analysis of ethics in ethnomusicology and ethnography. I say frustrating because every time that he seems to touch upon some sort of conclusion or judgment, he adds a qualification, or says that the issue is up to the reader, or he moves on to a different issue. Not that conclusions or judgment are necessary, but I digress.

Agawu starts with discussion of whether ethics are even necessary for scholars: "Does a code of ethics inhibit or promote intellectual freedom?" (Agawu 200). He then moves to ethnomusicology, asking whether it is ethical for the field to exist, or for the music of the world to be seperated into "Western" and "World Music". Moving into the subtleties of ethics, he points out that fieldworkers commonly decieve their subjects, and that "deception, including the whithholding of information, may be regarded as a condition for successful fieldwork in Africa" (204). The most interesting and illuminating section of his article for me was his discussion of personal experience with applied ethics. The story of his Peki coworker whose identity they had to lie about in order to protect his life brought up the issue of conflicting ethics. Inevitably, different ethical considerations collide and people must make comparitive judgments about which ethics are the most important. Agawu conclues that perfect ethics are impossible, and the best way forward is for ethnographers and ethnomusicologists to recognize the discontinuities between different cultures and just do their best to pursue as ethical an attitude as is possible.

QUESTION:
As students of ethnomusicology, how are we to take this discussion of ethics, and how are we to apply them in our fieldwork projects? Many of us are new to this field and this philosophical discussion of ethics—how are we to know if we are violating ethical principles that we haven't even thought of? Where do we draw the line between getting wrapped up in trying to avoid every possible ethical problem and just using our best judgment as we go about our first fieldwork experiences?