The significance of informed consent in research involving humans has been a topic of active debate in the last decade. Much of this debate, we submit, is predicated on an ideology of individualism. We draw on our experiences as anthropologists working in Western and non Western (Iban) health care settings to present ethnographic data derived from diverse scenes in which consent is gained. Employing classical anthropological ritual theory, we subject these observational data to comparative analysis. Our article argues that the individualist assumptions underlying current bioethics guidelines do not have universal applicability, even in Western research settings. This is based on the recognition that the social world is constitutive of personhood in diverse forms, just one of which is individualistic. We submit that greater attention must be paid to the social relations the researcher inevitably engages in when conducting research involving other people, be this in the context of conventional medical research or anthropological field work. We propose, firstly, that the consenting process continues throughout the life of any research project, long after the signature has been secured, and secondly, that both group and individual dimensions of consent, and the sequence in which these dimensions are addressed, should be carefully considered in all cases where consent is sought.
Changes in medical research ethics in the past two decades have made the communication of risk to potential participants a legal imperative. Using ethnographic data from two different cultures, we examine the hazards associated with medical research in relation to the respective societal contexts that imbue them with meaning. The Iban, a Dayak people indigenous to Borneo, perceive the hazards of participating in research in terms of danger to the collective. In Australia they are construed in terms of risk to individuals. Risk in medical research is one manifestation of a broader notion of 'risk' that is constitutive of the research enterprise itself and, we argue, fundamental to post-industrial society.