Should we be objective? Can we be objective?

Should we be engaged with the subjects whose lives and culture we represent in our work? Should we have to be from the culture in order to have the right to represent it?

How does the audience affect the representation? Do we write/create museum exhibits/make films for other anthropologists (and therefore maintain academic rigour and theoretical sophistication)? Or do we present to a more popular audience, in particular our research subjects?

Do we need to think about how people read/see our work, or simply concentrate on how we do it?

To what extent is academic freedom a right, and to what extent do the rights of other stakeholders, especially the subjects of anthropological research, limit it?

How might the issues we deal with – for example, refugees from conflict, colonialism, inequality, exploitation, etc. – affect the product (and the research methods)?

How does the form of representation (article, ethnography, policy, fiction, museum exhibit, film, cyberspace production, etc) and the technology used to gather information and put it together in this form, permit or limit what we present?

Do we need to think about the relationship between the anthropologist, the anthropologist’s published work, the society that is the subject of the anthropologist’s work, and the audience?