Abstract
It is argued that the present incarnation of the American Sociological Association’s “Code of Professional Ethics” supplants moral precepts of sociological practice with particularistic procedures and restrictions. This drift from moral reflection to intraprofessional control mechanisms is compared with various ethical theories applicable to social sciences, and explained in terms of perceived structural conditions within and external to the discipline.
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References
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Richard G. Mitchell, Jr. is an ethnographer whose interest in ethics grew out of fieldwork experience as a participant and observer among mountain climbers (Mountain Experience, University of Chicago Press, 1983), and recently, among American survivalists and related right-wing paramilitary groups (forthcoming).
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Mitchell, R.G. An unprincipled ethics?: The missing morality of the ASA code. Am Soc 21, 271–274 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692426
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692426