Anthropology, Ethical Dissonance, and the Construction of the Object

In this article, I discuss certain questions relating to the ethical difficulties faced by anthropologists when dealing with two different social groups and when one group holds a position of dominance over the other. In the first example, I draw on my work on doctor-patient relationships in France; in the second, on a study on reproduction in immigrant African families from Mali and Senegal, living in polygynous households in France. I use these examples to explore questions of positionality, beneficence, and potential harm. I show the choices I made in order to construct an epistemologically ethical object.