In recent years, there has been an increased interest in ethics within anthropology, which has been expressed through a significant concern for the establishment or revision of codes of ethics in many anthropological societies in the Euro-American context.

This book attempts a critical review of the ethical politics of anthropology and the dynamics that have developed at various times within certain anthropological societies during the formation of their codes of ethics. In this genealogical journey, the author focuses her analysis on certain key moments in the transformations of the moral responsibility of anthropologists, which she refers to as milestones, as they represent pivotal points in the evolution of ethical politics and the anthropological research itself.

This review demonstrates significant cuts in the dynamics that have developed. While the early codes supported a radical version of anthropology wherein ethics were intertwined with a political commitment of anthropologists on behalf of the people they engaged with, by the mid-1980s this situation changed drastically with the spread of neoliberal policies and the culture of control.

The codes have now become politically conservative and appear to be part of the bureaucratic evaluation processes that challenge the previously accepted theoretical and methodological habitus of ethnographic research. However, they do not simply constitute harmless, neutral, rational practices, but seem to serve more as tools for the exercise of new forms of governance, power, and control.

The moral responsibility of anthropologists seems to have shifted from their interlocutors to the increasingly numerous entities that are now part of the research process and continuously introduce new control regulations: funders, employers, auditors, ethics committees. All of this raises valid questions about the usefulness of the codes.