So I just had the "joy" of filling out my continuing IRB (Institutional Review Board) application AND my CITI (Collaborative Institutional training Initiative) certifications at the same time. Both of these are mostly formalities, and it's more time-consuming than anything else, but I did find both of these processes somewhat amusing in light of my experiences here. I say this, because I live in a culture where these things are ridiculous.
I remember in 2009 when a friend was helping me translate my approach script into T that he literally laughed out loud when I told him about some of the clauses I had to put in there. He said, "You don't need to say that. If a nomad doesn't agree to participate he'll just walk away anyway, you don't have to tell him that he's allowed to." Fast forward to 2013, and most of the people I'm interviewing are befuddled by the terminology I am bound to use before beginning any interview, and I think that more than one interview has been significantly effected by the way it changes the mood from a conversation between friends to an "interview." Even more recently, my wife has just spent the entire day translating (with some input from yours truly) a grant application for one of her cousins. That's how family works here. But the section about the collection of personal information and data privacy was three pages long and a bear to translate. These things have no meaning to most people who grow up in a society of contracts and fine print. But to people without any grounding in such a culture, it's flat out mind-boggling. More damning still is the fact that there's a clause saying that if the gov't wants it they can have it, so I don't feel like there's really any privacy in there to begin with. Plus (and I might get in trouble for saying this, but...) people here don't really have "r!ght$" to begin with so our concern with protecting them is sort of weird. Even if these things do exist, they exist only at the pleasure of the gov't. As aLet me be clear, I believe that it is good to have such training programs, and essential to learn about these things. But at the same time, they aren't what's ensuring that I protect my informants' privacy.
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About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |