‘TO TELL OR NOT TO TELL?’

The chapter is about ethics and secrecy, confidentiality and disclosure, the issues that arose in my fieldwork in rural Malawi, and how they were handled. I experienced the issues discussed here as dilemmas and they provide the opportunity for an exploration of the ethics of anthropological research, specifically concentrating on secret and concealed knowledge. There appears to be limited evidence in the literature indicating anthropologists’ approaches to these tensions, and little specific guidance even in codes of practice. Furthermore, in this fieldwork two very different professions came together and I take the opportunity to reflect on my position as both midwife and anthropologist, the potential disparity between the two and whether their differing ethical stances can be reconciled.