Call for Book Chapters: Thinking Critically about Laudable Research Relations

Research is often funded by interested parties. Perhaps it is easiest to think of those ‘interested parties’ being inclined towards deflation of problems associated with licit drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol.  But interested parties might also be those we regard as being laudably inclined; the Cancer Council and the Foundation of Alcohol Research and Education that deal with smoking cessation and alcohol regulation respectively, routinely fund research. Such associations are regarded in quite different terms than, say, a research relationship forged with the tobacco, alcohol or fast food industries. Agreeing to work with the latter group would indubitably raise the liveliest of suspicions among fellow researchers. In this volume edited by Simone Dennis and Andrew Dawson, we are interested in examining the grounds upon which we might work with industry and interested parties. We do not think that we ought instantly and without due consideration take up ostensibly laudable research, such as that carried out by good citizens trying to address significant problems, just as much as we think it intellectually unsophisticated to automatically reject research alignments with industry players with financial or other peculiar interest in the field of enquiry. We invite papers that consider the bases upon which we should and should not make research associations. So doing raises serious questions about the critical edges of disciplinary enquiry, and the need to keep them open and sharp.  

Papers may focus on (but are not by any means limited to): 

• Engagements, relations and expectations with laudable parties, as understood and analysed by recourse to author experience;  
• 'Debate' pieces that consider current grounds for agreeing (or not) to undertake work with industry;  
• Speculative pieces that propose new foundations for agreeing to work;  
• Limitations, parameters and blind spots in laudable partnership agreements;  
• Or, otherwise, pieces that defend the current parameters surrounding partnering with well-intentioned parties;  
• Imaginative works on how to deal with unintended, unexpected or even predicted outcomes of agreeing to work;  
• papers that consider the role of the university as ethical arbitrator of agreement to work; 
• speculative pieces considering the contribution to knowledge that thinking through conditions of working with laudable partners might make to Anthropology or other disciplines.  

Please submit an abstract no longer than 500 words to simone.dennis@anu.edu.au by March 01 2021. Contributors can expect to receive a response from the editor by April 10 2021. Final chapter drafts are due on June 30, 2021. The proposal should also include a short biographical note. Complete chapter lengths should be between 6000-8000 words.