Studying people for an alien audience’s benefit objectifies them without their consent.

Evidence

I use the word object deliberately because that is precisely what the Muntu were both for Tempels and the colonists. While Tempels wore the hat of a priest, the moment he chose to make the Muntu his object of study for the benefit of the colonists, he objectified the Muntu. The objectifi- cation of the Muntu was in making him something to be grasped and understood for purposes that the Muntu was both unaware of and had not acceded to. Since the Muntu lacked awareness and had not agreed to the terms and conditions under which he was going to be studied, we can say, without controversy, that the Muntu became an object in the eyes of Belgians. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 459

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the ethics of knowledge production — how studying a people for outsiders’ ends constitutes objectification regardless of researcher’s personal goodness.
• XREF: Connects to the broader critique of anthropology in Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism and to decolonial scholarship on who research serves.