FEATURED ARTICLE: THE ETHICS OF LONG-DISTANCE ETHNOGRAPHIES: RUTH BENEDICT'S 1943 REPORT ON ROMANIA.

During World War II many governmental agencies worked with anthropologists to create reports on allied or enemy countries. One of them was the Office of War Information and one of the anthropologists employed was Ruth Benedict. Because the reports were classified and only opened in the 1970s, it is difficult to discover how much these reports influenced policy or military decisions during the war. What this paper discusses is the ethics of long-distance ethnographies, a method used by social scientists during World War II, to write country reports, especially Benedict's study of Romania. Because these reports were made public decades after the war, it is often difficult or impossible to discuss these reports with their authors and collaborators. Further, many of these reports were bibliographical sources for research after the war, especially the report on Romania, which became a definitive reference on the country and its people. This paper argues, if the present researchers are unaware of the conditions in which these reports were written, it is difficult for them to assess many of the ethical, intellectual, and pragmatic issues these studies represent. Yet such exploration is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]