cfs

中国民俗学会第7届全国代表大会召开在即。

学术秘书处拟制订本会的“学术伦理守则”，供大会讨论。
目前这项工作由本会副秘书长刘晓峰博士（清华大学）负责。

这里先转发相关学会的学术伦理，以资讨论。。。

转发内容大多为英文，请各位鉴谅。。。如有哪位同道愿意提供相关的汉文译文，我们将不胜感激！

欢迎各位同道提出建议和意见，或将您认为值得推荐的“学术伦理守则”通过跟帖方式转发到这个楼里。

中国民俗学会秘书处

2010年10月30日

==============分割线=============

本楼从第七次代表大会版块移动过来，略作说明如下：

上周，在东岳书院召开的秘书处工作会议上，大家提出将“学术伦理”问题纳入纪念活动的专题讨论范围。
希望大家继续参与意见或提出建议。
如果大家发现相关文献或文章可跟帖回复。

中国民俗学会秘书处
2013年3月25日

cfs

AFS Statement on Ethics: Principles of Professional Responsibility  

(From the AFSNews, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 1 (February 1988)

At its October 1987 meeting, the Executive Board of the Society approved a final draft of a Statement of Ethics for AFS. Though the Statement printed below has gained the approval of the Board, this should not be considered the final word on the subject. The Board expects and in fact urges members to explore the abstract and practical implications of this statement, and most important, to communicate their descriptions on and opinions on matters of ethical concern in the Newsletter and the Journal of American Folklore.

The Board would like to extend its thanks to all members of the State of the Profession Committee and the membership at large, whose thought, effort, comments and criticism have gone into the making of this Statement. Particular thanks are due to Frank de Caro, Lynwood Montell and William Nicolaisen, who were active in early discussions of the Statement; to Rayna Green, who prepared early drafts for Committee and Board discussion; to Jack Santino, who drafted the version of the Statement distributed to the membership for comment in AFSNL 15:5; and to Yvonne Milspaw, who prepared a text based on Santino's draft for Board consideration in October 1987.

Preamble

This statement of principles is intended to clarify the professional responsibilities of professional folklorists. Folklorists, more than most other professionals, work with peoples from many different communities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Their professional situation is therefore particularly varied and complex. They are involved in different ways with their discipline, their colleagues, their students, their sponsors, their own and host governments, the particular individuals and groups with whom they conduct their fieldwork, and other populations and interest groups in the nations where they work. Because folklorists study issues and processes that affect general human welfare, they are faced with unusual complexities and ethical dilemmas. It is a major responsibility of folklorists to anticipate these and to plan to resolve them in such a way as to do least damage to those with whom they work and to their scholarly community.


Relations with those studied:

In research, folklorists' primary responsibility is to those they study. When there is a conflict of interest, these individuals must come first. Folklorists must do everything in their power to protect the physical, social, and psychological welfare of their informants and to honor the dignity and privacy of those studied.

a. Where research involves the acquisition of materials and information transferred on the assumption of trust between persons, the rights, interests, and sensitivities of those studied must be safeguarded.

b. The aims of the investigation should be communicated as is possible to the informant.

c. Informants have the right to remain anonymous. The right should be respected both where it has been promised explicitly and, as much as possible, where no clear understanding to the contrary has been reached. These strictures apply to the collection of data by means of cameras, tape recorders, and other data-collecting devises, as well as to data collected in interviews.

d. There shall be no exploitation of individual informants for personal gain. Fair return should be given them for all services.

e. There is an obligation to reflect on the foreseeable repercussions of research and publication on the general population being studied.

f. The anticipated consequences of the research should be communicated as fully as possible to the individuals and groups likely to be affected.


Responsibility to the public:

Folklorists are responsible to all presumed consumers of their professional efforts. To them they owe a commitment to candor and truth in the dissemination of their research results and in statements of their opinions as students of human behavior.


Responsibility to the discipline:

Folklorists bear responsibility for the good reputation of the discipline and its practitioners.


Responsibility to students:

In relations with students, folklorists should be candid, fair, nonexploitative, and committed to the students' welfare and progress. Folklorists as teachers have responsibility of instruction in the professional ethics of academe in general and of folklore in particular in addition to their duties of instruction in the field, career counseling, academic supervision, evaluation, compensation, and placement.

a. Folklorists must alert students to the ethical problems of research and discourage them from participating in projects that employ questionable ethical standards.

b. Folklorists should acknowledge in print the student assistance used in their own publications; give appropriate credit (including coauthorship) when student research is used in publication; encourage and assist students in publication of worthy student papers; and compensate students justly for the use of their time, energy, and intelligence in research and writing.


Responsibilities to sponsors, including one's own and host governments:

In relations with sponsors of research, folklorists should be honest about their qualifications, capabilities, and aims. Thus, they face the obligation, prior to entering into any commitment for research to reflect upon the purposes of their sponsors in terms of those sponsors' past behavior and what the likely uses of their research data will be. Folklorists should be especially careful not to promise or imply acceptance either of conditions contrary to their professional ethics or of competing commitments, and they should demand assurance that they will not be required to compromise their professional responsibilities and ethics as a condition of the sponsors' permission to pursue research.


Epilogue

Folklore research is a human undertaking for which the individual bears ethical as well as scientific responsibility. This statement provided guidelines to the accepted professional standards of research and the presentation of that research. When folklorists by their actions jeopardize peoples studied, professional colleagues, students or others, or if they otherwise betray their professional commitments, the American Folklore Society, through its State of the Profession Committee, may legitimately inquire into the propriety of those actions and take such measures as lie within its legitimate powers.

cfs

Code of Ethics
of the American Anthropological Association
Approved June 1998



I. Preamble

Anthropological researchers, teachers and practitioners are members of many different communities, each with its own moral rules or codes of ethics. Anthropologists have moral obligations as members of other groups, such as the family, religion, and community, as well as the profession. They also have obligations to the scholarly discipline, to the wider society and culture, and to the human species, other species, and the environment. Furthermore, fieldworkers may develop close relationships with persons or animals with whom they work, generating an additional level of ethical considerations

In a field of such complex involvements and obligations, it is inevitable that misunderstandings, conflicts, and the need to make choices among apparently incompatible values will arise. Anthropologists are responsible for grappling with such difficulties and struggling to resolve them in ways compatible with the principles stated here. The purpose of this Code is to foster discussion and education. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) does not adjudicate claims for unethical behavior.

The principles and guidelines in this Code provide the anthropologist with tools to engage in developing and maintaining an ethical framework for all anthropological work.

II. Introduction

Anthropology is a multidisciplinary field of science and scholarship, which includes the study of all aspects of humankind--archaeological, biological, linguistic and sociocultural. Anthropology has roots in the natural and social sciences and in the humanities, ranging in approach from basic to applied research and to scholarly interpretation.

As the principal organization representing the breadth of anthropology, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) starts from the position that generating and appropriately utilizing knowledge (i.e., publishing, teaching, developing programs, and informing policy) of the peoples of the world, past and present, is a worthy goal; that the generation of anthropological knowledge is a dynamic process using many different and ever-evolving approaches; and that for moral and practical reasons, the generation and utilization of knowledge should be achieved in an ethical manner.

The mission of American Anthropological Association is to advance all aspects of anthropological research and to foster dissemination of anthropological knowledge through publications, teaching, public education, and application. An important part of that mission is to help educate AAA members about ethical obligations and challenges involved in the generation, dissemination, and utilization of anthropological knowledge.

The purpose of this Code is to provide AAA members and other interested persons with guidelines for making ethical choices in the conduct of their anthropological work. Because anthropologists can find themselves in complex situations and subject to more than one code of ethics, the AAA Code of Ethics provides a framework, not an ironclad formula, for making decisions.

Persons using the Code as a guideline for making ethical choices or for teaching are encouraged to seek out illustrative examples and appropriate case studies to enrich their knowledge base.

Anthropologists have a duty to be informed about ethical codes relating to their work, and ought periodically to receive training on current research activities and ethical issues. In addition, departments offering anthropology degrees should include and require ethical training in their curriculums.

No code or set of guidelines can anticipate unique circumstances or direct actions in specific situations. The individual anthropologist must be willing to make carefully considered ethical choices and be prepared to make clear the assumptions, facts and issues on which those choices are based. These guidelines therefore address general contexts, priorities and relationships which should be considered in ethical decision making in anthropological work.

III. Research

In both proposing and carrying out research, anthropological researchers must be open about the purpose(s), potential impacts, and source(s) of support for research projects with funders, colleagues, persons studied or providing information, and with relevant parties affected by the research. Researchers must expect to utilize the results of their work in an appropriate fashion and disseminate the results through appropriate and timely activities. Research fulfilling these expectations is ethical, regardless of the source of funding (public or private) or purpose (i.e., "applied," "basic," "pure," or "proprietary").

Anthropological researchers should be alert to the danger of compromising anthropological ethics as a condition to engage in research, yet also be alert to proper demands of good citizenship or host-guest relations. Active contribution and leadership in seeking to shape public or private sector actions and policies may be as ethically justifiable as inaction, detachment, or noncooperation, depending on circumstances. Similar principles hold for anthropological researchers employed or otherwise affiliated with nonanthropological institutions, public institutions, or private enterprises.

A. Responsibility to people and animals with whom anthropological researchers work and whose lives and cultures they study.
1. Anthropological researchers have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work. These obligations can supersede the goal of seeking new knowledge, and can lead to decisions not to undertake or to discontinue a research project when the primary obligation conflicts with other responsibilities, such as those owed to sponsors or clients. These ethical obligations include:

To avoid harm or wrong, understanding that the development of knowledge can lead to change which may be positive or negative for the people or animals worked with or studied
To respect the well-being of humans and nonhuman primates
To work for the long-term conservation of the archaeological, fossil, and historical records
To consult actively with the affected individuals or group(s), with the goal of establishing a working relationship that can be beneficial to all parties involved
2. Anthropological researchers must do everything in their power to ensure that their research does not harm the safety, dignity, or privacy of the people with whom they work, conduct research, or perform other professional activities. Anthropological researchers working with animals must do everything in their power to ensure that the research does not harm the safety, psychological well-being or survival of the animals or species with which they work.

3. Anthropological researchers must determine in advance whether their hosts/providers of information wish to remain anonymous or receive recognition, and make every effort to comply with those wishes. Researchers must present to their research participants the possible impacts of the choices, and make clear that despite their best efforts, anonymity may be compromised or recognition fail to materialize.

4. Anthropological researchers should obtain in advance the informed consent of persons being studied, providing information, owning or controlling access to material being studied, or otherwise identified as having interests which might be impacted by the research. It is understood that the degree and breadth of informed consent required will depend on the nature of the project and may be affected by requirements of other codes, laws, and ethics of the country or community in which the research is pursued. Further, it is understood that the informed consent process is dynamic and continuous; the process should be initiated in the project design and continue through implementation by way of dialogue and negotiation with those studied. Researchers are responsible for identifying and complying with the various informed consent codes, laws and regulations affecting their projects. Informed consent, for the purposes of this code, does not necessarily imply or require a particular written or signed form. It is the quality of the consent, not the format, that is relevant.

5. Anthropological researchers who have developed close and enduring relationships (i.e., covenantal relationships) with either individual persons providing information or with hosts must adhere to the obligations of openness and informed consent, while carefully and respectfully negotiating the limits of the relationship.

6. While anthropologists may gain personally from their work, they must not exploit individuals, groups, animals, or cultural or biological materials. They should recognize their debt to the societies in which they work and their obligation to reciprocate with people studied in appropriate ways.

B. Responsibility to scholarship and science
1. Anthropological researchers must expect to encounter ethical dilemmas at every stage of their work, and must make good-faith efforts to identify potential ethical claims and conflicts in advance when preparing proposals and as projects proceed. A section raising and responding to potential ethical issues should be part of every research proposal.

2. Anthropological researchers bear responsibility for the integrity and reputation of their discipline, of scholarship, and of science. Thus, anthropological researchers are subject to the general moral rules of scientific and scholarly conduct: they should not deceive or knowingly misrepresent (i.e., fabricate evidence, falsify, plagiarize), or attempt to prevent reporting of misconduct, or obstruct the scientific/scholarly research of others.

3. Anthropological researchers should do all they can to preserve opportunities for future fieldworkers to follow them to the field.

4. Anthropological researchers should utilize the results of their work in an appropriate fashion, and whenever possible disseminate their findings to the scientific and scholarly community.

5. Anthropological researchers should seriously consider all reasonable requests for access to their data and other research materials for purposes of research. They should also make every effort to insure preservation of their fieldwork data for use by posterity.

C. Responsibility to the public
1. Anthropological researchers should make the results of their research appropriately available to sponsors, students, decision makers, and other nonanthropologists. In so doing, they must be truthful; they are not only responsible for the factual content of their statements but also must consider carefully the social and political implications of the information they disseminate. They must do everything in their power to insure that such information is well understood, properly contextualized, and responsibly utilized. They should make clear the empirical bases upon which their reports stand, be candid about their qualifications and philosophical or political biases, and recognize and make clear the limits of anthropological expertise. At the same time, they must be alert to possible harm their information may cause people with whom they work or colleagues.

2. Anthropologists may choose to move beyond disseminating research results to a position of advocacy. This is an individual decision, but not an ethical responsibility.

IV. Teaching

Responsibility to students and trainees
While adhering to ethical and legal codes governing relations between teachers/mentors and students/trainees at their educational institutions or as members of wider organizations, anthropological teachers should be particularly sensitive to the ways such codes apply in their discipline (for example, when teaching involves close contact with students/trainees in field situations). Among the widely recognized precepts which anthropological teachers, like other teachers/mentors, should follow are:

1. Teachers/mentors should conduct their programs in ways that preclude discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, "race," social class, political convictions, disability, religion, ethnic background, national origin, sexual orientation, age, or other criteria irrelevant to academic performance.

2. Teachers'/mentors' duties include continually striving to improve their teaching/training techniques; being available and responsive to student/trainee interests; counseling students/ trainees realistically regarding career opportunities; conscientiously supervising, encouraging, and supporting students'/trainees' studies; being fair, prompt, and reliable in communicating evaluations; assisting students/trainees in securing research support; and helping students/trainees when they seek professional placement.

3. Teachers/mentors should impress upon students/trainees the ethical challenges involved in every phase of anthropological work; encourage them to reflect upon this and other codes; encourage dialogue with colleagues on ethical issues; and discourage participation in ethically questionable projects.

4. Teachers/mentors should publicly acknowledge student/trainee assistance in research and preparation of their work; give appropriate credit for coauthorship to students/trainees; encourage publication of worthy student/trainee papers; and compensate students/trainees justly for their participation in all professional activities.

5. Teachers/mentors should beware of the exploitation and serious conflicts of interest which may result if they engage in sexual relations with students/trainees. They must avoid sexual liaisons with students/trainees for whose education and professional training they are in any way responsible.

V. Application

1. The same ethical guidelines apply to all anthropological work. That is, in both proposing and carrying out research, anthropologists must be open with funders, colleagues, persons studied or providing information, and relevant parties affected by the work about the purpose(s), potential impacts, and source(s) of support for the work. Applied anthropologists must intend and expect to utilize the results of their work appropriately (i.e., publication, teaching, program and policy development) within a reasonable time. In situations in which anthropological knowledge is applied, anthropologists bear the same responsibility to be open and candid about their skills and intentions, and monitor the effects of their work on all persons affected. Anthropologists may be involved in many types of work, frequently affecting individuals and groups with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests. The individual anthropologist must make carefully considered ethical choices and be prepared to make clear the assumptions, facts and issues on which those choices are based.

2. In all dealings with employers, persons hired to pursue anthropological research or apply anthropological knowledge should be honest about their qualifications, capabilities, and aims. Prior to making any professional commitments, they must review the purposes of prospective employers, taking into consideration the employer's past activities and future goals. In working for governmental agencies or private businesses, they should be especially careful not to promise or imply acceptance of conditions contrary to professional ethics or competing commitments.

3. Applied anthropologists, as any anthropologist, should be alert to the danger of compromising anthropological ethics as a condition for engaging in research or practice. They should also be alert to proper demands of hospitality, good citizenship and guest status. Proactive contribution and leadership in shaping public or private sector actions and policies may be as ethically justifiable as inaction, detachment, or noncooperation, depending on circumstances.

VI. Epilogue

Anthropological research, teaching, and application, like any human actions, pose choices for which anthropologists individually and collectively bear ethical responsibility. Since anthropologists are members of a variety of groups and subject to a variety of ethical codes, choices must sometimes be made not only between the varied obligations presented in this code but also between those of this code and those incurred in other statuses or roles. This statement does not dictate choice or propose sanctions. Rather, it is designed to promote discussion and provide general guidelines for ethically responsible decisions.

VII. Acknowledgments

This Code was drafted by the Commission to Review the AAA Statements on Ethics during the period January 1995-March 1997. The Commission members were James Peacock (Chair), Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Barbara Frankel, Kathleen Gibson, Janet Levy, and Murray Wax. In addition, the following individuals participated in the Commission meetings: philosopher Bernard Gert, anthropologists Cathleen Crain, Shirley Fiske, David Freyer, Felix Moos, Yolanda Moses, and Niel Tashima; and members of the American Sociological Association Committee on Ethics. Open hearings on the Code were held at the 1995 and 1996 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. The Commission solicited comments from all AAA Sections. The first draft of the AAA Code of Ethics was discussed at the May 1995 AAA Section Assembly meeting; the second draft was briefly discussed at the November 1996 meeting of the AAA Section Assembly.

The Final Report of the Commission was published in the September 1995 edition of the Anthropology Newsletter and on the AAA web site (http://www.aaanet.org). Drafts of the Code were published in the April 1996 and 1996 annual meeting edition of the Anthropology Newsletter and the AAA web site, and comments were solicited from the membership. The Commission considered all comments from the membership in formulating the final draft in February 1997. The Commission gratefully acknowledge the use of some language from the codes of ethics of the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology and the Society for American Archaeology.

VIII. Other Relevant Codes of Ethics

The following list of other Codes of Ethics may be useful to anthropological researchers, teachers and practitioners:

Animal Behavior Society
1991 Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research. Animal Behavior 41:183-186.

American Board of Forensic Examiners
n.d. Code of Ethical Conduct. (American Board of Forensic Examiners, 300 South Jefferson Avenue, Suite 411, Springfield, MO 65806).

Archaeological Institute of America
1991 Code of Ethics. American Journal of Archaeology 95:285.
1994 Code of Professional Standards. (Archaeological Institute of America, 675 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215-1401. Supplements and expands but does not replace the earlier Code of Ethics).

National Academy of Sciences
1995 On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research. 2nd edition. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press (2121 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20418).

National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
1988 Ethical Guidelines for Practitioners.

Sigma Xi
1992 Sigma Xi Statement on the Use of Animals in Research. American Scientist 80:73-76.

Society for American Archaeology
1996 Principles of Archaeological Ethics. (Society for American Archaeology, 900 Second Street, NE, Suite 12, Washington, D.C. 20002-3557).

Society for Applied Anthropology
1983 Professional and Ethical Responsibilities. (Revised 1983).

Society of Professional Archaeologists
1976 Code of Ethics, Standards of Research Performance and Institutional Standards. (Society of Professional Archaeologists, PO Box 60911, Oklahoma City, OK 73146-0911).

United Nations
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
1983 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
1987 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Forthcoming United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples.



Download the Code of Ethics (PDF)

cfs

An invitation to participate in an interdisciplinary debate

(FFN 14, December 1997: 11-12)

Folklore, understood as traditional expressive culture, is universally accepted as constituting an important part of the cultural heritage of mankind. Folklorists, whose prime task it is to research, document, and teach folklore, are concerned with a field of study that is at the same time highly sensitive to extraneous interference and heavily pressurized by modern developments. Often dealing with contemporary issues of living expressive culture, folklorists are confronted with an imminent need for responsible action, and thus, ethical behavior.

While the scientific occupation with folklore is concerned with various forms of traditional expressive culture, verbal expression constitutes a common concern of all its branches of interest. Words, whether oral or written, are essential for the performance and documentation of verbal art, music, plays, rituals, and even for the production of tangible objects. Thus, the discipline of folk narrative research faces a particular responsibility in terms of ethical guidelines for instruction, research, and publication. Some of the neighboring disciplines in the humanities, such as anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, sociology, philosophy or history, in a number of individual countries, have in the past shown a considerable concern for the ethical behavior of their members. However, folklorists on the general scale have so far not given any priority to the consideration of a code of ethics. Debates concerning particular cases have been initiated only by spectacular breaches of ethical behavior. Today, it appears imperative to propose a focused, international and interdisciplinary debate in order to create and further awareness about the ethical dilemmas especially pertinent to the documentation of verbal art, as well as the basic assets, implications, and ethical responsibilities of the discipline.
  




Suggested outlines

Though there are codes of ethics in the neighboring disciplines which could easily be adapted to the requirements of folklore studies, it seems advisable that the folklorist debate start by considering its own position. The following remarks without any aspiration of being comprehensive might serve as initial suggestions as to how to outline the potential for a code of ethics for folklorists.

The stages of research concerned encompass the

preparation, including the initial conception of a plan of work, the communication with responsible or relevant people, the arrangements for research etc.,
realization, concerning the actual gathering of data, whether by field work, research in an archive or documentation center, or any other research activity, and
publication, comprising all steps necessary for the adequate documentation and analysis of the data collected, and also including the accessibly published final results as well as due acknowledgements and an adequate sharing of revenues.
Key topics for the debate might be:
awareness of and sensitivity towards the various stages and positions implied, such as
the individual (What is my position as a researcher?);
the goal (Why am I doing this? What is it I want to achieve?);
the object (What is it I am dealing with?);
the method (How do I go about my research?)
the implications (What are the possible repercussions on the people researched?);
the informant (Who am I dealing with?);
the choice and availability of data (How, where and under what circumstances do I collect my data?);
the result (Which criteria do I apply to which choice of data? Which of the results do I publish for which audience?);
responsibility in terms of accuracy, representative selection, adequate treatment of sensible data, and
respect for the personal or communal dignity of the individual or people researched.
More than other disciplines, folklorists pursue their activities in an international arena and profit from interdisciplinary interaction. This may result in different definitions and priorities, conflicting experiences and points of view. Yet, it also affords the opportunity to generate a lively and productive debate with the potential for furthering individual and international understanding.
  



Proposed steps

FF Network has agreed to support such a debate, to serve as an initial, and probably constant forum for the debate. As a first step, it is proposed that the debate consist of collecting various opinions and approaches, besides considering existing relevant documents. Above all, this concerns above all the Unesco documents International Code of Ethics (Code of Athens), the Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore, the Draft Treaty for the Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions. Also, existing codes of ethics of neighboring disciplines ought to be discussed, such as the one recently proposed by the American Anthropological Association (final draft, March 1, 1997; see http://www.ameranthassn.org/committees/ethics/ethics.htm).

The purpose of the present communication is to invite active folklorist participation in an ongoing debate. The idea is to discuss ethical issues from various angles, while taking into account on an international level the points of view of different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds. Also, efforts in neighboring international organizational bodies, such as the International Society for Folk Narrative Reserch, the Société International d'Ethnologie et Folklore, or the European Association of Social Anthropology, will be considered. Moreover, national folklorist associations, such as the British Folklore Society, the American Folklore Society, or the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Volkskunde will be invited to join in the debate. A constantly available forum for the discussion and the necessary distribution of information has yet to be decided on. Since international participation also implies varying degrees of access to means of communication, this question shall have to be considered with all due care. As an initial forum, the present author offers his address: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Marzolph, Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Friedländer Weg 2, D-37085 Gsttingen (e-mail umarzol@gwdg.de, Tel. +49 551 395357, Fax +49 551 392526).

The eventual goal of the debate might be the proposal of a code of ethics to a suitably large international organization, such as the Folklore Fellows. Yet the prime objective of the present invitation is to initiate the debate as such, to further the exchange of ideas, the process of communication and the resulting creation of awareness.

Ulrich Marzolph
Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Göttingen

cfs

Staffordshire University

Code of Conduct for Research and Enterprise

Introduction

The purpose of this code of conduct is to help rectify cases of inadequate research and enterprise practice before they become cases of misconduct. Adherence to this Code is mandatory and breaches may lead to disciplinary action. This code applies to all who engage in research and/or enterprise activity. It also applies to students when undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations. The University expects all members of staff undertaking research and enterprise activity to adhere to the highest standards of probity.

1.        General Principles

This Code of Conduct prescribes standards of conduct expected of all persons engaged in research and enterprise at Staffordshire University (“the University"). All such persons are expected to:
i.        maintain professional standards;
ii.        take steps to ensure and maintain good research and enterprise practice, for example in relation to matters of policy, ethics, finance and safety;
iii.        observe legal and ethical requirements laid down by the University or other properly appointed bodies involved in the research or enterprise project;
iv.        recognise the importance of good leadership and co-operation within  research and enterprise groups;
v.        take special account of the needs of inexperienced members of staff;
vi.        document progress of the project and keep secure primary data;
vii.        question findings;
viii.        attribute honestly the contribution of others;
ix.        take steps to ensure the safety of all those associated with the research or enterprise; and
x.        report any conflict of interest, actual or prospective to the appropriate person, usually the Faculty Director for Research and Enterprise.

2.        Quality Assurance

Faculty Directors, Heads of Research and Enterprise Institutes and Programme Area Managers have a duty to ensure that:
i.        each member of the research or enterprise team is qualified by education, training and experience to discharge his/her role in the work;
ii.        attendance on professional development programmes is required for all research staff;
iii.        students and new researchers have adequate supervision, support and training;
iv.        the Principal Investigator and the other members of the research or enterprise team are aware of and understand the scope of the work and are aware of, understand and comply with this Code of Practice, and their obligations under the law;
v.        controlled trials are registered;
vi.        mechanisms are in place to monitor and assess compliance with paragraphs (iv) and (v) above;
vii.        the research or enterprise work follows any protocol required and approved by the Ethics Committee and the research sponsor or enterprise client;
viii.        any proposed material changes or amendments to or deviations from the protocol referred to at paragraph (vii) are submitted for approval to the appropriate bodies;
ix.        procedures are in place within Faculties, Programme Areas and Research and Enterprise Institutes to monitor all research and enterprise projects being undertaken by staff/students;
x.        procedures are in place for the management of financial and other resources provided for the project;
xi.        any licences/other authorisations/insurance cover needed to undertake the research  or enterprise project are in place prior to the commencement of the same;
xii.        any special standards of work performance and ethical conduct imposed by law or by the University in relation to particular categories of research or enterprise are complied with;
xiii.        procedures are in place for the conduct of investigations involving animals which require the consideration of alternative methods of research before the use of animals is proposed.
xiv.        where appropriate for the type of research or enterprise being conducted procedures are in place to ensure collection of high quality, accurate data and the integrity and confidentiality of data during storage as required by the Data Protection Act;
xv.        subject to the University's Guidelines on Intellectual Property, reports on progress and outcomes of the work reasonably required by the research sponsor, funders or others with a legitimate interest are produced within a reasonable time and to reasonably acceptable standard;
xvi.        subject to the University's Guidelines on Intellectual Property, all data and documentation associated with the work are available for audit at the request of the appropriate auditing authority;
xvii.        where appropriate for the type of research or enterprise being conducted arrangements are made for the appropriate archiving of data when the Work has finished


3.        Consent and Welfare of Participants

All researchers must ensure that where third parties participate in research or enterprise projects that:¬
i.        consent must be obtained from anyone invited to take part in a project, this must be based on a knowledge and understanding of the risks, benefits and alternatives of taking part. Unless otherwise agreed by an ethics committee or other approved body, consent should be explicit and written;
ii.        the Chief Executive (or nominee) of any external agency involved (and any other individual with relevant responsibilities) must be informed that the Work is planned, and that, where appropriate, their approval is given before the Work commences;
iii.        where required, the approval of the external agencies' research ethics committee for the Work must be obtained before the Work commences;
iv.        the dignity, rights, safety and well-being of participants must be given priority at all times by the research or enterprise team;
v.        when the work involves participants under the care of a doctor, nurse, school or college principal or social worker for the condition to which the work relates, those care professionals must be informed that their patients or users are being invited to participate and agree to retain overall responsibility for their care;
vi.        where the work involves work with vulnerable people, e.g. a mental health service user or a child, that the carer or other responsible adult must agree to the person (and/or their carer) being invited to participate and must be fully aware of arrangements for dealing with disclosures or other relevant information; and unless participants or the relevant REC request otherwise, that participants' care professionals must be given information specifically relevant to their care which arises in the work.

4.        Approval of Projects

i.        Before any application for funding of a research or enterprise project is made, the approval of the Faculty Director for Research and Enterprise to the conduct of the project must be obtained. The Faculty Director must satisfy him/herself that the project is scientifically or otherwise appropriately robust for the type of research or enterprise being conducted, has been approved by the relevant ethics committee and that requirements detailed in Clauses 2 and 3 above can be satisfied before approval is granted. He/she must also satisfy himself/herself that any additional requirements of the funding body can be complied with by the University before final approval to conduct the project is given.
ii.        where the project relates to the provisions of services to a third party the Faculty Director must approve the project and satisfy him/herself of that criteria set out in (i) above can be complied with by the University and before approval is granted.
iii.        in relation to any project where the proposed arrangements relating to Intellectual Property Rights would alter the University's total ownership of IP the proposed arrangements must be approved by the University's nominated IPR officer.


5.        Agreements

There must be clear documented agreements entered into with research or enterprise partners and sponsors and executed in accordance with the University's Financial Regulations prior to the commencement of any project.

6.        Data Protection Matters

All investigators must ensure that where appropriate for the type of research or enterprise being conducted:
i.        data must be recorded in a durable and auditable form, with appropriate references so that it can be readily recovered;
ii.        data must be retained intact normally for a period of at least five years from the date of any publication which is based upon it;
iii.        any project complies with the Data Protection Act, and that copyright is not breached;
iv.        specific arrangements must be made to protect the security of data;
v.        there are procedures for the retention of data in a form which would enable retrieval by a third party, subject to any limitation imposed by the confidentiality of personal data and these procedures are complied with;
vi.        data related to publications must be available for discussion with other investigators, except where confidentiality provisions prevail;
vii.        confidentiality provisions relating to publications which apply in circumstances where the University or the investigator has made or given confidentiality undertakings to third parties or confidentiality is required to protect intellectual property rights, must be complied with. It is the obligation of the investigator to enquire as to whether confidentiality provisions apply and of the head of department to inform investigators of the obligation with respect to these provisions;
viii.        information necessary for annual or other reports of progress with research and enterprise is provided as required by the relevant funding bodies, external sponsors or ethics committees, such information may include details of investigators.

7.        Publications

All investigators must ensure that:¬
i.        a publication must contain appropriate reference to the contributions made by all participants who have made what might reasonably be regarded as a significant contribution to the relevant project;
ii.        any person who has participated in a substantial way in conceiving, executing or interpreting at least part of the relevant research or enterprise should be given the opportunity to be included as an author of a publication derived from that project;
iii.        any person who has not participated in a substantial way in conceiving, executing or interpreting at least part of the relevant research or enterprise should not be included as an author of a publication derived from that project;
iv.        in addition to meeting the requirements of paragraph 7(ii), an author must ensure that the work of research students, research staff and support staff is recognised in a publication derived from research or enterprise to which they have made a significant contribution as defined in 7(i) above;
v.        a publication which is substantially similar to another publication derived from the same project must contain appropriate reference to the other publication.


8.         Conflicts of Interest
i.        Staff members  must make full disclosure of any personal potential or actual conflict of interest in research or enterprise. Conflict of interest means any personal or close family affiliation or financial involvement with any organisation sponsoring or providing financial support for a project undertaken by a member of staff. Financial involvement includes direct personal financial interest, provision of personal benefits (such as travel and accommodation) and provision of material or facilities for personal use. (For the avoidance of doubt, the provision of sponsored studentships, or elements of travel/accommodation for a students, should be excluded from this definition);
ii.        a disclosure of a personal conflict of interest must be made to the Faculty Director for Research and Enterprise as soon as reasonably practicable;
iii.        an investigator must comply with a direction made by the Faculty Director in relation to a personal conflict of interest in a project.

9.        Misconduct

A - Definition of misconduct

In the context of research and enterprise activity, the University has defined misconduct to include the following, whether deliberate, reckless or negligent:
i.        failure to obtain appropriate permission and/or protocols to initiate a project, including failure to obtain ethical approval or submit a disclaimer form to the Faculty Ethics Committee before the commencement of the project;
ii.        deception in relation to proposals and the securing of funding;
iii.        breaches of accepted standards of supervision of researchers and research students;
iv.        unethical behaviour in the conduct of research or enterprise, for example in relation to research subjects/participants;
v.        unauthorised use of material or information acquired confidentially where no permission for the proposed use has been given;
vi.        deviation from good research or enterprise practice, where this results in unreasonable risk of harm to humans, other animals or the environment;
vii.        fabrication, falsification or corruption of data;
viii.        distortion of outcomes, by distortion or omission of data that do not fit expected results;
ix.        dishonest misinterpretation of results;
x.        publication of data known or believed to be false or misleading;
xi.        plagiarism, or dishonest use of unacknowledged sources;
xii.        misquotation or dishonest misrepresentation of other authors;
xiii.        inappropriate attribution of authorship;
xiv.        fraud or other misuse of funds or equipment;
xv.        attempting, planning or conspiring to be involved in research or enterprise misconduct;
xvi.        inciting others to be involved in research or enterprise misconduct;
xvii.        collusion on or concealment of misconduct by others;
xviii.        breach of the University's Financial Regulations in relation to the misuse of funds or equipment;
xix.        supervisors’ negligence in providing inappropriate ethical judgements when fast tracking ethical approval for student research projects/dissertations

B        Exclusions
The University excludes the following from within the definition of misconduct, although it considers these to be all serious matters, these matters may fall within the general definition of misconduct and may be investigated and resolved in accordance with the Disciplinary Procedure
i.        unsound science unless known to be unsound or should reasonably have been known to be unsound;
ii.        honest error or honest differences in the design, execution, interpretation or judgement in evaluating research methods;
iii.        misconduct unrelated to the research or enterprise process;
iv.        failure to maintain scientific rigour (unless repeated or serious);
v.        breaches of Health and Safety/COSHH regulations.

C        Procedure
Any individual who believes that an act of misconduct relating to the research or enterprise process has occurred or is occurring should notify his/her Dean/Director of Service in writing, detailing the precise nature of the allegation and whom this concerns. If a complaint concerns the individual’s Dean/Director of Service, the issue will be referred to the Executive. The Dean/Director of service will ensure that an appropriate investigation and any subsequent management actions are taken in accordance with the University’s Disciplinary Procedure.   The outcome of all investigations of research or enterprise misconduct will be reported to the University’s Research Ethics sub-committee.

D        Harassment of witnesses

Any attempts to harass or pressurise witnesses to the alleged misconduct will result in actions being taken in accordance with the University’s Disciplinary Procedure

10      Monitoring Compliance with this Code

Ten percent of the projects where the University is the formal sponsor of the work will be audited annually. The project will be checked against the protocol which was accepted by the relevant ethics committee, informed consent forms will be checked and all members of the project team will be interviewed. These audits will be conducted by nominees of the University’s Research Ethics sub-committee.

cfs

FFSS99, Workshop III
Principles of Fieldwork and Archiving
(FFN 19, March 2000: 21-24)

Group leaders: Barbro Klein (Sweden), Ulrika Wolf-Knuts (Finland)

Visiting group leaders: Ülo Valk (Estonia), Ríonach úi Ogáin (Ireland)

Report by the group leaders & Pasi Enges (Finland), Laura Jiga (Romania), Hanne Pico Larsen (Denmark), Jonathan Roper (U.K.), Marilena Papachristophorou (Greece), Fredrik Skott (Sweden), Ergo-Hart Västrik (Estonia) and Susanne Österlund (Finland)

Introduction
Fieldwork and archiving are in many ways the core of our discipline, folkloristics. The processes of folkloristic fieldwork, textualisation and archiving are very much interrelated and are perhaps best understood if seen as parts of one and the same process. As fieldworking and archiving folklorists it is crucial for us that we are aware of our own role in this process. At any stage of the journey from fieldwork to the archive we are interacting with, influencing and analysing our material. It is vital to take into consideration ethical, political, and wider social implications concerning this very process.

We took into consideration that the issues related to the folklore archives have not been extensively addressed and folklorists worldwide lack information about the profiles of folklore archives in other countries. The workshop strove to advance critical discussion about the present day archiving and fieldwork conventions as well as to explore different experiences on fieldwork and archiving .

Before the workshop we received an e-mail from Ulrika Wolf- Knuts which formed our first expectations of the workshop. Two central points of departure for the workshop discussion were formulated on the spot by Barbro Klein: (1) Folklore archives are highly contestable ideological and political sites; (2) Documentation of folklore is an analytical act. Thus one of the objectives set out in this workshop was to practise reflexive thinking at every step of the way, bearing in mind the ethical and political connotations of these activities. By sharing our experiences and observations with each other we also had plenty of opportunities to approach the themes from different angles.

The workshop participants and group leaders came from eight European countries: Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Romania and Sweden, representing different cultural and economic backgrounds although limited to Europe. The tradition-archive-related experiences of the participants also varied to a great extent. These included central national folklore archives, such as the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of Athens (Marilena Papachristophorou); the Nordic Museum, Stockholm (Barbro Klein); the National Archive of Folklore in the Institute of Folklore and Ethnography, the Academy of Romania, Bucharest (Laura Jiga); the Estonian Folklore Archives in the Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu (Ergo-Hart Västrik); the Folklore Archives of the Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin (Ríonach úi Ogáin). Other participants are connected with regional and topical archives such as the Ostrobothnian Archives of Traditional Culture, Vasa (Hanna Pico Larsen), the Dialect, Onomastic and Folklore Archive in Gothenburg (Fredrik Skott), the Sound Archive of Folkloristics and Comparative Religion, University of Turku (Pasi Enges), the Folklore Archive at the Department of Comparative Religion and Folkloristics, Åbo Akademi University (Ulrika Wolf-Knuts), the Åland Islands’ Emigrant Institute, Mariehamn (Susanne Österlund). In addition one participant is creating a personal database for charms (Jonathan Roper, based at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition). Thus the participants represented a wide variety of archives.

We began the course by presenting our own folklore archives and archive experiences as well as visiting the folklore archives in the University of Turku and the Åbo Akademi University. Our task for the course was to decide upon a theme for an interview, to plan the interview, and then to conduct it while making a minidisc or tape recording, then to write our fieldnotes, to transcribe five minutes of the interview, before considering how the material could be indexed and archived, as well as the question of how it could (or could not) be put on the Internet. We were also asked to keep a totally private diary, so as to follow our thoughts, observations and feelings throughout the whole duration of the summer school. In the workshop we shared our reflections about our own and the other members’ work.

Interview
Most of us had already settled for a theme for our fieldwork prior to the Summer School. Among the chosen topics were “fear”, “occupational folklore”, “childhood memories” and “immigration”. Due to the shortage of time and the foreign milieu and associated language problems, preselected informants were offered by the FFSS99 organisers (Fredrik, Ergo, Susanne and Laura), but some of the workshop participants (Hanne, Marilena and Jonathan) also arranged their own interviewees, in some cases a fellow hotel guest or a fellow delegate.

  Several of the members of our group found the interview situation unnatural and forced due to having to do the interview in a foreign language, not knowing anything about the informant beforehand, or due to lack of time for the interview in some cases. In those cases in which we selected our own informants, there was more time, although perhaps still not enough. However, this also made us consider if there indeed is such a thing as a “natural” interview context. But even if all interviews may be artificial, those of us who were able to set our own parameters (i.e. choice of informants, location of interview, length and subject of interview, etc.) were happier. Our interview situations varied a great deal from each other and provided us with many examples of how flexibility is a virtue in our field. Our workshop samples of interviews provided examples of different types of interview situations: some of us (Marilena and Hanne) had informants who took over the interview because of the message they wanted to communicate. Others (Ergo and Fredrik) interviewed people with an “economical” approach to answering. We had misunderstandings, and some difficulties in getting the interview off the ground. However, we also recorded many spontaneous examples of folklore genres and even a skilled talker breaking into performance.

We can never 100% predict what an interview or fieldwork situation will be like. As we noticed in our material, not even the best intentions from both the interviewer and the interviewee will guarantee a “successful” result. But sometimes it is beneficial if our intentions are not successful. One of our group participants, Jonathan, had intended to collect occupational folklore (which the man he interviewed knew very little of), but he let the interviewee follow his own thread of discussing his schooldays, and thus received much richer data. This led to a discussion as to what a successful interview is.

Fieldnotes
When writing fieldnotes or fieldwork diaries the folklorist has to make many choices, taking ethical and scientific aspects into consideration. One of the first and last questions is: should the fieldnotes be archived and accessible, or archived with restrictions, or perhaps completely private? No matter what the decision might be, fieldnotes are an integral part of the fieldwork. Fieldnotes should try to address all aspects of the fieldwork that in some way can or will influence the outcome and understanding of our work, no matter how minor the details seem. Sometimes the fieldnotes (our observations in writing) may give us a greater understanding of what is going on than our taped interview would. Furthermore, as we record our own expectations, feelings and interactions with our informants, the fieldnotes can also become a way for us to better analyse our own role in the interview situation. Writing and archiving fieldnotes, therefore, also involves exposure of the self of the fieldworker. Perhaps some of the fieldnotes told us more about the FFSS99 participants themselves than about our informants. An important stage of the workshop came when we shared these notes with each other.

Many of the participants in the workshop had earlier been writing fieldnotes in a rather superficial way. As a part of the workshop we were instructed to write fieldnotes in a new way: we had as many variants of how to write fieldnotes as we had participants. For ethical reasons, all of us felt we could not give out all the information connected with the interview situation. How much of our own and our informant’s life and person are we prepared to lay open to readers in an archive? Often there is no easy answer: things we might find innocent enough might offend our informant, but also the other way around: things we might find problematic our informant might be perfectly at ease with. Our generation is aware of issues focusing on individuals, such as protecting intimacy, confidentiality, etc., and may be oversensitive about them.

The session in which we discussed our fieldnotes could be considered to be a turning point, as we came to see that we as folklorists create our own source of data, as Bente Alver (1990) reminds us. Therefore the topic of “fieldnotes” generated a lot of important discussion, and many of us feel we have learned just how important it is (both for us and future users of the material) to write fieldnotes fully and well, if our data is to be fully understood when we are not there.

It is also evident that fieldnotes are themselves an example of a genre, and can be studied as such when we choose to study fieldwork and fieldworkers. For example, some of us went straight to the computer room after the interviews and typed out the notes immediately, while others of us made notes at that time with pencil and paper, only typing something up later. The question of how long after the fieldwork we write our diaries is an important one involving the balancing of such concerns as the need for a period of time for reflecting on and distancing oneself from the material in a professional manner, with the danger of forgetting (or altering) important details as time passes. Perhaps one solution could be to write both as soon as possible after the fieldwork event, and then to repeat, for example after two weeks, writing the fieldnotes. Then again, there is the question of when fieldwork actually begins and when it ends.

In fieldwork, writing fieldnotes is a means of training us to closely observe phenomena. Fieldnotes are particularly necessary in making supposedly objective and self-sufficient documentation, such as photographs, understandable.

Transcribing
All the members of the group had different ways of solving the problems of transcription. It was very useful to see when we shared our recordings and transcriptions that even our short five-minute excerpts could contain so much information, and this provoked a lot of discussion. Because the method we used for our fieldwork here in Turku was the interview, which consisted solely of speech, we did not discuss the situations when the transcribed material would be only part of a genre, for instance in song or ritual.

Each participant in the workshop used different methods and conventions in transcriptions. Sharing these transcriptions gave us important insights. We also discussed varieties of ethnopoetic transcription, which were fairly new to most of us. Paying close attention to pauses and stresses, pitch and tone in speech can reveal new layers in the interview. During the discussion we focussed on the act of listening. Practising varieties of transcription methods trained us to listen - an important skill for a folklorist, not only during the fieldwork. On the other hand, many of us felt that the tape itself is more important than the transcribed text.

  However, in our discussions it was also stressed how different people would hear the text differently and have different purposes for the transcribed material, and thus could produce widely differing transcriptions. One possibility is phonetic transcription. Laura Jiga, who has been trained in phonetic transcription, showed us a short example of that method. No matter what system one might chose, we all agreed that the main goal is to create audible texts. The decision to use one or another way of transcribing depends also on the purpose of the work. Transcribing is an analytical act and one of our conclusions was that it is difficult to solely rely on any transcription in the absence of the tape.

Archiving
Archiving issues loomed large throughout the course. At the beginning of our workshop we went on guided tours of the departmental archives of the folklore departments of Turku University by Tiina Mahlamäki, and also of Åbo Akademi University. The fieldwork exercise itself immediately gave rise to questions concerning archiving, as most of us had agreed to deposit the material in the TKU archive. The participants in the group were using recording equipment lent out by the TKU archive. The focus of our discussions was the ethical aspects of archiving. What should we deposit in an archive? The dilemma was not easy to solve. When we as folklorists preserve cultural “testimonia”, we participate in the construction of history. However, what we collect now may not be what future generations may be most interested in. By the same token, we cannot consider the interviewed persons as mere objects, who are going to be exposed on shelves for present and future use.

Those of us who had obtained intimate information during our interviews were also more reluctant to deposit the tapes, and fieldnotes, in the TKU archive. Those of us who felt this were most concerned that the information on tape and in the fieldnotes was highly personal for both the informant and the collector himself.

Since the material cannot be considered neutral, the central question is who should decide if it is to be archived or not. In practice, the collector is often the only one responsible for deciding whether the material should be deposited or not. A desirable solution might be to gain the informant’s consent before and after the interview, for the depositing of both the recording and the collector’s fieldnotes. This solution is, for institutional reasons, not always possible. These issues could be addressed by recommendations and, possibly, legislation, which could give some kind of guarantee to both parties. On the one hand, it is necessary to defend the privacy of the informants and their lifeworld, and on the other hand, one must protect information in the archives from arbitrary commercial use and other types of misuse.

These questions are, to be sure, intimately connected to the political history of each country. In most cases (but by no means every case) the institutions themselves have their own internal regulations, which specify the conditions of access to the material and specific degrees of secrecy. These questions were also aired during the discussion with the Ethics workshop.

We felt that the indexing and the digitalisation of the archived material was connected with the purposes of the archive itself. Ergo pointed to the in-between situation of the traditional archive - caught between having to protect information on the one hand and being accessible and “attractive” for users on the other. It is also necessary to associate the archive’s policies with the retrieval system: this can be a means to chanel access to or away from the information the archived material contains.

We also discussed the TKU collcard at length, after having tried them out. The task proved to be difficult for outsiders who are not aware of the specific aims of this archive. We came to feel that the sections on the collcard were typical of one particular paradigm of folklore studies. Most of our concerns touched on the data concerning the identity of informants and ask whether we should give full access to this personal information. How do we describe the informant’s education? Should we have fields for sensitive information such as religious affiliation, and thus provide a direct route to information that could potentially be misused? With regards to the issue keywords, we appreciate the retrieval possibilities they allow. Yet it can be difficult to choose them. One solution is to put in as many keywords as possible. We thought it may also be relevant to ask informants to specify the keywords in their interviews. However, through indices and keywords we also put labels and thus limitations on the access to the material.

Conclusion
Our exercise raised a lot of issues and questions, which, for the most part, did not have one simple answer. Having a group with participants from different countries with different fieldwork and archive experience has been eye-opening. Learning about other folklorists’ problems and backgrounds, seeing differences and, perhaps even more, similarities, has certainly been valuable for all of us, although we realise that this variety of experiences must be limited by its Eurocentricity. Participants from outside Europe would have brought other perspectives. For example, in our meeting with the Ethics workshop Sadhana Naithani pointed out that some of the most important collections of Indian materials are housed in London.

Some conclusions of our discussions and fieldwork experience can be summarised as follows:


Fieldwork, textualisation and archiving are links of the same analytical process, continually involving selection.
Throughout this linked analytical process we have a duty to reflect on our own role and to take responsibility for the effect of our research on our informants, without sacrificing professionalism. Professionalism involves such factors as honesty, distance, risk-taking and responsibility.
We all felt that the course taught us the importance of flexibility of methods. This necessitates familiarity with a variety of research, textualisation and archiving methods.
In our discussions we often came back to the question of the availability of resources as a political issue.
Interviews are one but only one method of fieldwork, but what is a good interview?

Bibliography
Alver, Bente G. 1990: Creating the Source through Folkloristic Fieldwork. A Personal Narrative. (FF Communications 246.) Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
Bauman, Richard & Braid, Donald 1998: The Ethnography of Performance in the Study of Oral Traditions. Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. by John Miles Foley. New York: The Modern Language Association.
Dubois, Thomas 1998: Ethnopoetics. Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. by John Miles Foley. New York: The Modern Language Association.
Emerson, Robert M & Fretz, Rachel I. & Shaw, Linda L. 1995: Writing up Fieldnotes II: Creating Scenes on the Pages. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Fine, Elizabeth C. 1998: Leading Proteus Captive: Editing and Translating Oral Tradition. Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. by John Miles Foley. New York: The Modern Language Association.
Klein, Barbro 1990: Transkribering är en analytisk akt. Rig 2: 41-66.
Klein, Barbro 1993: Fences, Fertilizers, and Foreigners: Moral Dilemmas in the Swedish Cultural Landscape. Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 30, No. 1: 45-59.
Klein, Barbro 1999: Folklore Archives, Heritage Politics, and Ethical Dilemmas: Notes on Writing and Printing. Turku: Folklore Fellows’ Summer School.
Mills, Margaret: Cultural Properties, Cultural Documents, and Cultural Effects: An Ethics Discussion for ISFNR. Fabula 40: 19-30.
Ríonach úi Ogáin 1999: Some Comments on Context, Text and Subtext in Irish Folklore. FFSS99 Preprints 8. Turku: Folklore Fellows’ Summer School.
Salomonsson, Anders 1999: Documentation and Research. FFSS99 Preprints 10. Turku: Folklore Fellows’ Summer School.
Stoeltje, Beverly J. & Fox, Christie L. & Olbrys, Stephen 1999: The Self in “Fieldwork” - A Methodological Concern. Journal of American Folklore 112: 158-82.
Tedlock, Dennis 1983: On the Translation of Style in Oral Narrative. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

cfs

Title:  Folklore Archives: Ethics and the Law
Author:  Stahl, Sandra K.
Keywords:  American Folklore Society; ethics; ethical
Date:  1973-10
Publisher:  Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
Citation:  Stahl, Sandra K. 1973. "Folklore Archives: Ethics and the Law." Folklore Forum 6(4):197.

cfs

Toward the ethics of textualisation
(FFN 20, November 2000: 1 )
The present issue brings the last report from the FF Summer School held in Turku in August 1999. It has been authored by the members of Workshop IV, which concentrated on folkloristic research ethics. Ethics represents an ocean of dilemmas, ideal and real, concerning values, norms and attitudes prevalent in the research process from the collection of folkloristic data through fieldwork to its publication and use. There are three published ethical codes of conduct in folklore work by way of rules and recommendations. Each has a different focus. One deals with copyright (Draft Treaty for the Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions), one with the preservation of folklore documents and the processes of their creation and use (Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore, 1989), while the third addresses the behaviour of the professional folklorist (A Statement of Ethics for the American Folklore Society, 1988). The closest cognates to these three are half-a-dozen anthropological codes of ethics. Also relevant are, of course, several more broadly humanistic and social-scientific codes, as well as the basic tenets of the ethical codes defined for scientists in general.

Workshop IV limited this easily expanding circle of ethical codes to ten in order to compare cognate codes in the hope of assessing the need for the further production of folkloristic codes of ethics. The result of the comparison was mixed insofar as it seemed that while rules may be needed to make scholars aware of the dimensions of ethical conduct, it would be futile to assume that written codes can solve the ethical problems encountered in the field. Problems and their solutions are always situational, embedded in the legal environments created by local, national and organisational codes capable of making general ethical recommendations momentarily inadequate or dysfunctional. This realisation need not lead to “regional and situational relativism” in research ethics, but it does underline that there is no substitute for continuous and alert observation, judgement and decision-making in ethical matters as they emerge and confront the scholar in his daily work. In this respect, all disciplines seem to stand on the same line.

Yet there remains the justified quest for a typically folkloristic contribution to the debate on ethics. Our professional experience should provide observations on special dimensions of ethics not easily attainable even in neighbouring disciplines. Workshop IV was not the only group to cultivate this line of thought, which appeared in discussions with other groups such as Workshop I (Politics of Textualisation) and Workshop III (Fieldwork and Archiving). The future may show whether, for example, our concern with verbal art, the process of its oral and written textualisation and the preservation of the “voice” will constitute the core of our contribution.


Lauri Honko

cfs

(FFN 21, March 2001: 2-7)
A seminar report by Dr Lauri Honko, Kalevala Institute


The position of research ethics in science is probably more conspicuous than ever before. Every grant application addressed to the Academy of Finland, for example, must today contain an assessment of the ethical dimension and impact of the planned research regardless of the discipline to which it belongs or the methodology to be applied. The main financier of research in the public sector in Finland wants to know to what extent the scholars are aware of the human, societal and cultural values which may be at risk if a particular study is carried out in a particular setting, and, perhaps more positively, how a particular study may contribute to a better understanding of and sensitivity to the ethical problems faced or even generated by the scientific enterprise. A new kind of reflexivity and responsibility in this field is very much in demand.



A Nordic project


Three years ago, an international group of folklorists, most of them from the Nordic countries, launched a project in order to assess whether it would be feasible to approach research ethics from a disciplinary angle, viz. that of folkloristics. The question was: is research ethics first and foremost so cross-disciplinary in science in general and in the human and social sciences in particular that no discipline can or needs to delineate a code of conduct of its own? Or is it essential for each branch of scholarship to create in its own sphere an ethical debate which may, in turn, contribute something to the more general cross-disciplinary ethics?

The latter view is manifest in numerous ethical declarations issued in recent years by such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, sociology and related fields. In the United States, the American Folklore Society published a code of ethics in 1988, and in Europe, a more global consideration of folkloristic work ethics was included in the recommendations issued by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) and Unesco during the 1980s. The largest international body of folklorists, the International Society for Folk-Narrative Research, did, at its 1998 congress in Göttingen, institute a special committee on ethics to spearhead international debate on ethics from a folkloristic perspective.

Somewhat optimistically perhaps, the Nordic group consisting of Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish folklorists labelled their project a "Folklore Fellows Code of Ethics" and, since the work was not to concentrate exclusively on the Nordic situation, invited a few members from outside the Nordic countries, too, first from Germany and the U. S. A. and later from India and Israel. An important tenet was to bridge the generation gap: older and younger scholars should work together. That is why young scholars preparing their doctoral dissertations were invited from Finland, Norway (U.S.A.) and Sweden. The steering group of the project consisted of Tove Fjell (Norway), Lauri Honko (Finland) and Barbro Klein (Sweden). Other standing members were Bente Gullveig Alver and Ørjar Øyen (Norway). The consultant experts outside the Nordic countries were Galit Hasan-Rokem (Israel), Ulrich Marzolph (Germany) and Margaret Mills (U.S.A.).

The label chosen for the project put the feasibility of formulating a disciplinary code to the fore. The possibility of a global code was not excluded, despite all the cultural differences in the research traditions of the five continents and the massive format of the task. The relationship between general scholarly ethics and a more discipline-oriented set of norms of conduct was pondered at the first meeting held in Uppsala in November 1998. In addition, a number of cases where ethical norms are put to the test were analysed on the basis of personal experience.

The second meeting took the form of Workshop IV (Folkloristic research ethics) at the 5th Folklore Fellows' Summer School held in Turku in August 1999. Geographically and culturally, the group expanded to include representatives and discussants from India and the United Kingdom. Clarification was achieved in the componential analysis of the field of ethics in folkloristics (Sadhana Naithani, India), in the critical comparison of existing codes of conduct (Judy Rangnes, Norway/U.S.A.) and in the omnipresence of ethics in the entire research process (Sinikka Vakimo and Armi Pekkala, Finland). A detailed report on the proceedings of Workshop IV was published in FF Network 20: 2-10 (November 2000).



The conclusive meeting


The third and conclusive meeting of the project was held at the Kalevala Institute of the University of Turku in November 2000. It concentrated on the discussion of articles to be included in the project publication. The lively debate showed that the ethical code is in a constant state of flux and too comprehensive and complex to be codified in well-polished verbal formulations. On the other hand, the most important thing, ethical reflexivity and awareness of the dimensions of ethical conduct, seems to be growing and becoming a reality in all research, folkloristic and other.

A quick vote on the necessity of establishing a well-formulated ethical code for folklorists revealed a generation gap: the young scholars were fairly favourable to the idea of an "FF Code of Ethics", whereas the feelings of the older ones were more mixed, despite (or because of) the fact that they had more experience and that they had worked extensively on the formulation of ethical codes in international and national organisations. More importantly, the frustration with a list of norms as a "sleeping pillow" gave way to a determined but flexible mode of application of ethical judgement in all research on an everyday basis. In this respect, there was no generation gap but unanimous support for unceasing ethical evaluation as part of the professional competence of scholars.



Comparing the AAA and AFS codes


Two papers at the meeting were devoted to a comparison of the ethical codes published hitherto and bearing some relevance to folkloristics. First, Lauri Honko compared the anthropological and folkloristic codes issued in the United States. These span a period of fifty years (1948-98). Honko stressed the importance of reading these codes very carefully: they are rather different, they date from different periods and historical situations, and we should not assume that they are talking about the same thing. Even the same words and expressions may not denote the same over a long period of time.

What we need by way of a method is a "narratological" analysis of codes, Honko said. They seem to consist of propositions, yet they also reveal a kind of "background narrative" which lends cohesion to the list of propositions. The narrative in question is historically conditioned. That is why it must be contextualised. The situations which are implied in the general propositions may prove to be quite specific. Without a knowledge about the particular settings of ethical dilemmas we may not be able to grasp the actual meaning of propositions. This path naturally leads to the particular experiences of scholars formulating the codes. The true interests and goals served by ethical propositions cannot be disclosed without such contextualisation.

This view is corroborated by the rather limited scope of subsequent codes and by the changes in their focal interests. What was important in the late 1940s may have totally disappeared by the 1980s. For example, the very first anthropological codes had only two concerns: 1) that governments should not suppress scholars' freedom of speech and 2) that informants should be protected. Yet they did not develop the second point as we are doing today. Instead, they elaborated quite extensively on governmental suppression. It is not difficult to see that this was the prime reason for creating the code in the first place. Yet it is a point which has disappeared from the later codes. Either the governmental suppression has become more subtle and taboo, or the pressure is not experienced by the scholars in the same way as before. In any case, the historical situation has changed.

The codes must be read in chronological order and in full. Any kind of piecemeal zig-zag reading or historyless comparison of short propositions is a risky business at best and easily leads to semantic fallacies not founded on the experiential world of the formulators of codes. A few observations stand out in the linear reading of the subsequent codes. One is that codes interact. At least the earlier ones tend to make an impact on the later ones. Another finding is that there is no stable or permanent ethical code. What we see is a continuous negotiation of the main ethical concerns whereby certain aspects of ethics gain importance while others become less visible. There may be horrifying gaps insofar as a particular aspect does not exist for decades until it eventually emerges and may, in certain cases, even dominate the scene for a while. Quite clearly, the codes reflect historical changes in the position of the profession and its institutions. The four codes produced by the American Anthropological Association create a historical profile of a scholarly community and its ideological development.

The five codes compared by Honko were 1) AAA48, 2) AAA67, 3) AAA 71/86, 4) AAA98 and 5) AFS88 (AAA = American Anthropological Association, AFS = American Folklore Society, the numbers indicate the year of publication). Despite the short interval in time, there is a major shift of paradigm between codes 2 and 3, probably due to the impact of the global crisis of colonial anthropology. Amazingly enough, it is only here that true concern for the cultures and people studied emerges as the dominant guideline.

All five codes focus on the behaviour of the researcher. Informants start to mean more in the third one but traditional communities, local and national institutions, commercial enterprises, educational agencies, and numerous other players affecting the cultural processes under study are either absent or mentioned only in passing. Field materials and their preservation are not discussed at all, except in the most recent code 4. The anthropological codes are surprisingly weak at the other end, in the culture of the Other. Such things as research permits are not mentioned in any of the codes. Important concepts from the folkloristic point of view, such as "folk", "folklore" or "tradition", do not appear a single time in these codes. The question is whether folklorists can or should apply ethical codes which do not recognise key aspects of their profession, such as the archiving of collected oral and other materials, the use of documents created in fieldwork and the ethical concern for their ownership, conservation and use outside the traditional context where they were created.

Yet, this is what the only folkloristic code in the bunch (AFS88) is willing to do, Honko said. That code is simply a copy, not a copy of one code only, but for every single sentence in AFS88 a source can be found in the anthropological codes. AAA could have raised a copyright case against the American Folklore Society and they would have won it. Consequently, then, the words "archive", "oral", "tradition" do not appear a single time in the AFS code. It is questionable whether the AFS possessed the competence to "inquire into the propriety of those unethical actions by folklorists and take such measures as lie within its legitimate powers" without first asking the AAA. The code is practically worthless for comparative purposes, and the two remaining, presumably more folkloristic than anthropological declarations, the Unesco Recommendation and the WIPO Draft Treaty must be compared not with AFS88 but with its original source, mainly AAA 71/86.

In the subsequent discussion Ørjar Øyen referred to the Ethical Code of the American Sociological Association, adopted two years ago, saying that it shows "much more concern for the other party, the people, the rights of the individual, the rights of society, the ownership to knowledge, to cultural elements, to I would not say intellectual property rights but folk property rights." Bente Gullveig Alver pointed out "that if you want to read our history it is important for you to have a very broad context of the codes. You ask about the man behind the codes... but for me it is more interesting to read [about] the single cases [reported] in the periodicals, for example. You see where the problems are and how people have tried to deal with them." Galit Hasan-Rokem declared herself "an advocate of the immanent history of folkloristics, the internal history of folkloristics" and emphasised the importance of understanding what kind of ethical problems people have faced while working in different cultures and periods.




General and specialised research ethics


Next, Bente Gullveig Alver and Ørjar Øyen presented their joint paper "The challenge of research ethics: an introduction". Three years earlier they had published a joint book in Norwegian on research ethics in science, social research and humanities. Now they had been invited to write an introduction to the project publication at hand. According to them, there are issues of principle in research ethics that apply to research work in general. It will be necessary to pay attention to the over-arching principles of research ethics. We are supposed to be honest, we are supposed to be truthful; these are among the demands that apply to all branches of science. And then there are some discipline-related issues. We note that different scientific disciplines have different agendas. For example, in sociology people collect data and utilise them for their research purposes, and then the data are thrown away. There is a lot of pressure through data legislation favouring the destruction of data after use. In folkloristics, or in history, data are archived for research purposes. The main agenda is that of recording for posterity, taking care of the cultural heritage. So the disciplines have very different approaches to the material they study.

The Research Council of Norway has invested a lot of money in recent years in programmes on research into ethics. This is in fact a universal tendency. There is interest in how ethics apply to research more specifically. At the same time we notice an emphasis on legislation on data protection, the handling of personal information, the regulations for archives, the protection of cultural heritage, material and intellectual property rights. So work is being done all the time on ethical guidelines for research.

Alver and Øyen addressed "a dramatic reorientation in attitudes towards science. We see it among politicians, we see it among the general public, it is reflected through the mass media. And we note the number of issues through which we as researchers must be prepared to respond. There is a critical attitude towards science and research, which is of a very different nature from what we saw, let us say, 50 years ago. We note the changing role of the researcher, researchers have become a part of the general population [while] they were a very distinct group some time ago, unapproachable, privileged, today just normal people. Then research is a matter of concern to everyone." This change has made an impact on research ethics.

"What are the risks? We talk about risks inflicted on individuals and on society. The risks are that we trespass into what people regard as their private domains, and of course there is a lot of cultural variation in terms of what is regarded as domains of privacy. There is the issue of what can be determined as damage... there is also the issue of the feelings the people have of what is happening to them and anticipated damage, there is risk to third parties... People tell us stories, and the stories involve other people and we do not go out and ask these other people how they feel about having been the object of recording. We trespass into the sacred, we expose hidden knowledge, we commit symbolic violence... We must raise the question, are all problems researchable? Our answer [is that] all problems are researchable as a matter of principle. But we know that some are inaccessible because we do not have the methods. And some problems are so sensitive and ethically so difficult that it might be a good idea not to touch them. We are pointing to what we regard as a fact, that personal engagement sometimes gets in the way of truthful reporting, that proximity to our research topic may threaten the attitude of detachment needed to achieve fruitful reporting."

The ensuing discussion circled around the question of general and disciplinary ethics, the trespassing into sacred traditions, the question whether the change in attitudes toward scientific research has taken place in the West but not necessarily in Africa or India, and whether the customary comparative approach of folkloristics should be avoided in order not to trivialise people's unique experiences, narratives and performances.

The main task, according to Barbro Klein, would be to "delineate the themes that would be specific to folkloristics as a discipline. It seems to me that one of our grand problems is that there are so many colleagues and that the demarcations of the discipline are so fuzzy that we really have a rather fluid notion of what the disciplinary agenda is, so that we need that kind of discussion to be able to formulate the particular disciplinary profile within the area of ethics. So we would really talk about the intellectual agenda of folkloristics as a field at the same time."



The widening scope of research ethics


The next paper, by Judy Rangnes, concentrated on the horizontal comparison of existing research ethical codes. She reiterated the main points of her earlier paper, see FF Network 20: 3-5. She had continued the analysis and went much deeper into such phenomena as the "different implied meanings of harm", the topics that were not mentioned at all in the codes, "such as how to work ethically with photographs, video documentaries, electronic formats and internet access" and the broad variety of ethical aspects in the codes. She did not find this multitude disturbing but said that "the ideal in my view would be to create standards of research ethics that include all these important issues, and that are not limited to meeting the needs of any one interest group."

The discussion which followed dealt with the semantics and interpretation of codes, especially the question whether we are entitled to "rewrite" the expressions found in the codes utilising sources from outside.

Barbro Klein spoke on "Folklore archives, heritage politics and ethical dilemmas. Notes on writing and printing", a topic she had dealt with at the 5th FF Summer School, see FF Network 18: 9. She expanded her presentation to include, for example, the "distinctions between such concepts as ethical notions, political notions and ideological notions", admitting, however, that they tend to overlap. The magnitude of the political and ethical dilemmas that folklore archives can pose seem to derive from the fact that the folklore archives have been central to the construction of national or regional symbols. Along with cultural historical museums, school systems and many other institutions, folklore archives became central to the formation of many modern nation states. The archives do not only represent the traditions of the nation, they also become examples of what a true heritage should be like. Archive materials tend to become normative. Archives may be used for political control and exercise of power. The traditional creative expressions of individual citizens are ordered and classified, and thereby open to surveillance.

Klein exemplified the ethical dilemmas in the editing of folklore texts. "On the one hand as folklorists we have the responsibility to describe correctly and with respect the points of view that our informants express, or the points of view that they construct together with us in interviews. But on the other hand, most of us would not accept or condone destructive behaviour, evil thoughts... ideas or actions on the part of our informants." The editor may often have good reasons for not citing the exact words of the informants: to protect them or third parties, for example. In effect the editor may improve the views of the informant, in order to save him from himself.

"The entire chain from questionnaire to printed text is shot through with heritage politics. The questionnaire, the excerpt card and the printed text all have to do with concern with how national heritage is to be presented, represented." The result is that the informant "is deprived of agency and power" and that "the text conforms to a neutral and fragmented ideal devoid of personal associations" representing "the view of folklore where folklore texts are not seen as the works of individual creators... [but as] examples of a stock of shared traditions."

The participants offered more examples of collation, combining of different sources without specifying them, purposeful editing, disturbingly short quotations from the informant's speech, lack of linguistic exactitude in the presentation of oral discourse and other acts conducive to the unreliability of folklore texts. On the other hand, as Galit Hasan-Rokem pointed out, "canonisation is a process of culture between orality and literacy, all the time. Different parts of society find themselves as agents of canonisation in different stages, it's been priests, it's been kings, it's been all kinds of rulers and so on, it just may be that at certain stages folklorists will find themselves as agents of canonisation of a culture."



Multicultural representation


Galit Hasan-Rokem then presented her paper, a case study asking who is entitled to represent the traditions of a multicultural place, in this case, Jerusalem. "The poetics and politics of visual representation of folk cultures of Jerusalem is political dynamite", she said.

In 1992 a fieldwork project was launched on the folklore and folklife of Jerusalemites, contracted by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. with the intention of including it as an item in the Mall of the American capital in summer 1993, as part of the annual American Folklife Festival. The two other themes planned for the 1993 festival were the Cajun culture and social dancing, both in the U.S. As for Jerusalem, the plan did not materialise and it has been postponed from time to time ever since.

The obvious reason for the postponement, the possible conflict with the simultaneous handling of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process in Oslo, was never openly stated. For two years, however, collecting went on by two teams working separately but informing each other. The project ended up with two archives of folk culture of Jerusalem, one at the Riwaq Institute for vernacular architecture headed by Professor Suad El-Amiri, and the other at the Folklore Research Center of the Hebrew University headed by Professor Galit-Hasan Rokem.

For a moment then, in the words of Hasan-Rokem, there was "a model of cooperation, of regional cooperation, of the possibility for peaceful coexistence that is operated through a folklore project". It "served to contradict and subvert some of the dominant interpretations of... the position of Palestinians and Israelis in the city. It certainly was designed to subvert the idea of a unified Jerusalem under Israeli rule, and it certainly was designed to subvert the idea of the denial of any Jewish right in Jerusalem by some Muslim fundamentalists."

Folklorists from both sides "tended to decline including those forms of traditional expressive culture which had been co-opted by established and elite cultural institutions such as actors functioning as storytellers, again forms of canonisation and institutionalisation. The municipal administrators on the other hand were worried about the trivial and lowly image of the city which the selection of our informants was bound to create. -- On the other hand the suggestion of the deputy director of the culture department of the municipality to send a small chamber music orchestra to represent his Jerusalem at the festival was absolutely unthinkable to us", Hasan-Rokem said.

"The interface between the folklorists and the representatives of the Smithsonian Institution, most of whom were professional folklorists, was occasionally no less complicated than our relations with the municipal administrators. The folk dance groups, a very popular Israeli pastime, were rejected... by the more theoretically oriented of the Smithsonian folklorists. They labeled it revivalism, which in their terminology stands in stark contrast to folklife. -- The Israeli team tended to view the decision as based on a lack of understanding for the role of invented traditions in the actual folklife of the country."

The negotiations between the Palestinian and the Israeli teams touched questions of belonging, identity, lawful claim, inherited ownership, continuity, uniqueness of sentiments of each of the national entities represented. Both parties had difficulty with the fact that the representation had to be such that the Americans could understand what they saw. From the local point of view that was introducing distortion into representation.

The example shows that folklorists always have to operate under knowledge of their own lack of control. Guidelines and rules may be prepared under the presupposition that professional folklorists will be able to control the field. "But there are lots of factors that they are not able to control, not as folklorists and not as humans", the speaker concluded.

In the discussion there was unanimity about the political force inherent in all folklore work. But how are we to draw the line between ethics and politics? Many participants found it very difficult while others felt that, for example, it is not possible to speak of "identity ethics" and that there is a difference between ethical misconduct and political misconduct.

The problem of informed consent


Tove Fjell spoke on the "informed consent" to be acquired from the people studied. She defined three main types of consent, the written consent and the oral consent, both given in advance, and third, "passive consent", which means that the informant has been informed by, say, a superior office, in writing or by word of mouth that a research project will be going on at a given place during a given period without individual consent having been obtained.

Fjell's empirical research setting was observational participation in a birth clinic for which she applied for permission and signed a confidentiality pledge. She was not allowed to meet the women in the ward before they had read an information sheet about the project and signed a consent that allowed the researcher to attend the delivery. In fact the research permission was given at a high administrative level, well above the people to be studied. In the delivery unit it was the midwives who would determine the selection of women to be observed. Fjell was never allowed to see women who were considered too pain-inflicted, or women with a special history like previous deliveries of disabled infants.

Similar situations may occur in connection with interviews. Fjell had interviewed a number of female Vietnamese immigrants about their encounters with the Norwegian health service, prior to, during and after the delivery. Interpreters provided by the municipal interpreter agency were used as the women knew that the interpreters were bound by professional secrecy. The interpreter elicited the women's oral consent on behalf of the researcher.

Despite the major differences between health-work informants and immigrant informants in terms of language skills and cultural knowledge, they did have one thing in common: both groups related to a "door opener" whom they depended on in many ways: their superior officer and their interpreter respectively. The power structures were rather clear. "We may well query the health workers' and the immigrant women's motivation for accepting a proposition from a research community and ask how real their informed consents were", Fjell concluded.

As it turned out in the discussion, few folklorists had elicited written consent from their informants. Yet there was usually an informal "working contract" on the basis that the interviewee accepted or rejected the suggested topics and could withdraw from the project at any time, as Lauri Honko said. Galit Hasan-Rokem saw some difficulty in Fjell's choice of research topics, especially when they implied obvious lack of personal contact between the researcher and the informant. The discussion eventually focused on the big question already mentioned above: are all problems researchable? Is it legitimate to intrude in people's lives at their most vulnerable moments?



The hegemonic impact of the scholar


The last session of the workshop was devoted to a joint paper presented by Armi Pekkala and Maria Vasenkari, both of whom have recently carried out extensive fieldwork interviewing present-day Ingrians in Russia. Although life history interviewing was the main method for both, supported by participant observation, "still we came up with different interpretations", said Pekkala. According to her, it had something to do with the conceptualisation of the interview and the life-history interview in particular. In the beginning, it was not the "informed consent" or similar things but the hegemony, the authority of the researcher's position which proved problematic. The fact that the researchers were Finnish (a nationality that the informants rated high and a language which they shared), created a supremacy which resulted, among other things, in the fact that practically nobody rejected an invitation to interview. The impact of the researcher's position on the material she produces with the informant needs evaluating.

The goal is to produce valid, reliable knowledge about the women's lifestories and the meanings they give to life and themselves. It presupposes trusting relationships with the informants and the creation of a valid source for interpretations. It requires many visits and time-consuming cooperation with a limited number of informants, an active role from both the interviewer and the interviewee. It requires tape-recording in order to grasp the meanings created in the interview situation and to preserve the interaction that was going on in the situation. The interview material will be vast. There is a reciprocal relationship where the researcher tells about herself, too, i.e. she takes part in the interaction as a human being, not only as a human doing.

The material usually contains some very intimate sections; this is typical of life-history interviews. The protection of the informants' anonymity and their right to be treated in a justified manner in the archiving, publication and presentation of research materials are thus essential. The intentions of the research must be made clear to them. The mixing of roles, that of a friend and that of a scholar, becomes increasingly problematic, Pekkala stated.

Maria Vasenkari had sent the participants her article on the dialogical notion of fieldwork published in Arv 1999. In her research, she focuses on representation and "the ethical dimensions of the researcher's and the discipline's influence on culture and society through fieldwork and through research results".

In the discussion the colleagues wanted to know why audiotape, not video, was so heavily emphasised in the methodology. The answer was the tight budget plus the difficulty of carrying lots of equipment in the field. When Lauri Honko provocatively asked whether it was the people studied, their life-stories or the research process by which these were elicited that was the main object of interest, Galit Hasan-Rokem went on to praise "the methodological project in which knowledge is considered to be produced interactively in the situation of communication, and not thought of as existing as an abstract category before that". Bente Gullveig Alver stressed that "we have to have a good knowledge of what we are doing. But we also have to know something about ourselves, about the material... this is a very good example of these young scholars going out and being more conscious of their work than we were when we were young."


Conclusion


The concluding discussion was unanimous over the need for ethical education, also for folklorists, be it guidelines which need to be revised from time to time or just articles, books and debates on ethical dilemmas encountered in modern research. The term "continuous consent" was offered as a reminder of the fact that ethical considerations should never cease during the research process and that folklorists should strive for the status of invited guests in other cultures, i.e. outsiders as such but welcome to share cultural materials in a responsible way without hurting the values inherent in them or the people expressing them.

No ethical code will ever have the power of implementation, yet a knowledge of ethical guidelines will give people in the field of folklore tremendous professional pride. Most ethical principles are multidisciplinary, but, in the words of Ørjar Øyen, the sociologist in our project, the ethics of textualisation could be a folkloristic contribution. Folklorists command "the way texts are formulated to fit preconceived notions of truth or reality or canonisation. Such issues are very important but they are not special to folkloristics; they also apply generally, say, to the entire field of qualitative methods."

The seminar seemed to offer a solution to the dilemma of the simultaneous presentation of general and specialised ethics. This was the processual view on ethics. The strength of the discipline-oriented approach is that we deal with concrete events. A sequential analysis of the research process from the ethical point of view will contextualise the problems. Scholars, however, deal mainly with the primary or first life of folklore, and the ethical problems of the secondary use of folklore remain beyond their reach. For this reason it might be better to analyse not only the research episodes but the entire folklore process from the discovery and archiving of folklore to its recycling and application, revival and commercial use, cultural and political functions. Folklore belongs to people, not scholars.

cfs

(FFN 21, March 2001: 8-10)

by Dr Lauri Honko, Kalevala Institute
Paper read at the National Seminar on Copyright Law and Matters,
Mangalore University, Mangalore, Karnataka, India, on February 9, 2001


Oral traditions constitute a powerful cultural force and an inexhaustible spiritual resource in the history of mankind. Many a venerated literary work has its origins in the songs and narratives of anonymous oral singers and storytellers. In India, for example, the early classical epics Mahaabhaarata and Raamaaya·na are attributed to the great poets Vyaasa and Vaalmiiki, respectively, even though the historical knowledge about the creation processes in question is scanty. The scholarly understanding is, however, that the poetic materials of both epics largely existed in oral forms before the idea of a truly long and well-integrated superstory was conceived by some individual sage or poet and before the narrative was codified into a written form.

Orality never fully conceded its role to literacy and literature. Performance traditions are a case in point: they have remained oral in a variety of ways. The story of Raama has been recited, sung, danced and orally enacted in dozens of languages in about 20 South and Southeast Asian countries over the centuries. The result is that we have today hundreds of Raamaaya·nas which show so few common features that it is doubtful whether these narratives stem from a common root. Some scholars see here only parallel traditions, not derivations from one and the same story. To complicate the matter further, there are hundreds of anti-Raamaaya·nas or local oral epics which reflect popular interpretations of some themes of the classical epic and shape their meaning to suit mainly local, social and communal ends.

In other words, orality and literacy, deesi and maargi, folk literature and classical literature have been in a constant dialogue in the past and that dialogue still continues today. In the face of such cultural variety, which seems to question the true identity of the Raama story, it may appear futile to ask questions of copyright. Who is the rightful owner of the Raama story, if it exists? The quick way out of this dilemma seems to be offered by the age of most tellings and retellings of the Raama stories. They have passed the limit of, say, 70 years, and consequently they belong to the public domain. Unfortunately, the matter is not quite that simple.

I am a folklorist and humanist, not a copyright lawyer. Yet I was invited in 1982 and the following years to participate in several meetings organised by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) and Unesco in Geneva and Paris. One product of these meetings was the "Draft Treaty for the Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions", formulated in 1983 but never formally adopted by Unesco. Another document pertaining to the application of copyright on folklore and produced by several Intergovernmental Expert Committees, in which I had the privilege of participating during 1982-89, was the "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore", adopted by Unesco's General Assembly in November 1989. I wrote two working documents for the latter process and presided over the meeting in Paris in May 1987 which finalised the Recommendation text. About 80 Member States of Unesco were represented and dozens of Non-Governmental Organizations sent their observers to the meetings. Let me briefly sketch the relevance of these two authoritative statements as regards copyright and folklore.



The background


First a few words about how it all began. The idea that folklore could be copyrighted was obviously in the air in the early 1970s, since it emerged independently in two contexts at least. In 1973, the Government of Bolivia submitted to the Director-General of Unesco the request that Unesco begin to examine the state of folklore and make a proposal for an addition to the Universal Copyright Convention. The background to this action may be illustrated by an anecdote which may or may not be true. It was at about that time that the pop singer Paul Simon published his song "El Condor Pasa", which was soon identified as a Bolivian folk song. Since the record brought the "author" considerable revenue, it was felt that at least some of it should be channelled back to Bolivia.

At any rate, the initiative to copyright folklore reflects the more widely felt need in the developing countries to draw new intellectual strength from the country's own unique, freely developed folk tradition once the country becomes freed from its colonial ties. The term "traditional culture" was preferred to "folklore", because the latter carried disparaging Western overtones. Concern was expressed not only over the economic exploitation of folklore but also over the exportation of traditional culture and presentation outside its original contexts in a way that offended against the communities producing and preserving this tradition. Misonstrued performances belittled their cultural identity and values.

From the beginning, then, there were two main concerns, the economic and the ethical. The debate was launched in the industrialised countries, too, first in the Nordic countries in 1974, obviously without any connection to the Bolivian initiative at Unesco. At the time I was serving as the director of the Nordic Institute of Folklore and ordered an investigation on the relations between folklore and copyright from a Finnish lawyer. Her report was published in Swedish in 1975. It pondered, among other things, on the concept of folk artist and the question whether folklore could be protected through neighbouring rights, i.e. through the protection given to artists concerning the copyright of their products and performances. Since folklore is observable only in performance, this alternative would comprehensively cover expressions of folklore. An individual ownership of folklore, however, was problematic in view of the dominant role of the tradition community in the interpretation and maintenance of folklore.

The Bolivian initiative started a process which led to the formulation of a model law to be adopted by those countries which wanted to go ahead with copyrighting folklore. A few countries, such as Tunisia, already had national laws regulating commerce in folk handicrafts and other areas of traditional culture. In summer 1982, WIPO and Unesco convened an intergovernmental meeting of experts in Geneva which approved a document known as the "Draft Treaty for the Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions". It is a toothless tiger in the sense that the Treaty was never signed by anyone, yet its thinking made an impact on the copyright and folklore debate carried on in other fora, too.



How to define the object of protection


One of the key problems for the copyright experts meeting in Geneva was the definition of folklore. The lawyers wanted to know just what should be protected and what could be copyrighted. As a folklorist I was asked to clarify whether there was any folkloric "work" comparable to the works of art in high culture. My answer was twofold. First, since variation is the life substance of folklore, there is no master copy of a product of folklore from which all its variants could be derived. Second, I pointed out the tradition community as the prime holder of rights and ownership, not the individual performer who never claims to have invented the folkloric piece he performs. I referred to the definition of folklore which I had helped to formulate at the meeting of intergovernmental experts on safeguarding folklore held in Paris a few months earlier.

Thus we read the following in the first article of the Draft Treaty:


For the purposes of this Treaty, "expressions of folklore" mean productions consisting of characteristic elements of the traditional artistic heritage developed and maintained by a community, or by individuals reflecting the traditional artistic expectations of their community, in particular,

(i) verbal expressions, such as folk tales, folk poetry and riddles;

(ii) musical expressions, such as folk songs and instrumental music;

(iii) expressions by action, such as folk dances, plays and artistic forms of rituals, whether or not reduced to a material form; and

(iv) tangible expressions, such as

(a) productions of folk art, in particular, drawings, paintings, carvings, sculptures, pottery, terracotta, mosaic, woodwork, metalware, jewellery, basket weaving, needlework, textiles, carpets, costumes;

(b) musical instruments;

(c) architectural forms.


The Committee of Experts leaned heavily on the word "artistic" in an attempt to identify in the folk artist a case comparable to the artist of written high culture. If successful, the definition would provide protection of copyright through neighbouring rights to the performer of folklore. In the definition of folklore presented in the more comprehensive Unesco Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore formally adopted in 1989 but already available in 1982, the word "artistic" does not appear at all. It says:


Folklore (or traditional and popular culture) is the totality of tradition-based creations of a cultural community, expressed by a group or individuals and recognized as reflecting the expectations of a community in so far as they reflect its cultural and social identity; its standards and values are transmitted orally, by imitation or other means. Its forms are, among others, language, literature, music, dance, games, mythology, rituals, customs, handicrafts, architecture and other arts.


Here the keywords are "tradition" and "cultural identity", not "artistic", for obvious reasons. First, limiting the protection to artistic forms would create a skewed profile of the object of protection and leave important domains of folklore outside regulation. Second, whose aesthetics are we going to apply? The word "artistic" carries with it Western connotations not applicable to all cultures. It may be impossible to assess what is art and what is not art in cases where the actual owner of folklore, the traditional community, does not apply such a concept but rather sees the matter in terms of sacred values, world views and group identity.



The secondary use of tradition must be authorised


The Draft Treaty represents a compromise as regards the ownership of folklore insofar as it leans on the concept of "artistic" visualising a talented individual yet accepting simultaneously the traditional community as the holder of ownership. Protecting an individual as a performer, if not the creator, of folkloric expressions is much easier than locating the rightful representative for a traditional community. The community may belong to the past or, if still alive, it may lack the infrastructure able to handle claims of copyright or unethical infringement in the use of its traditions. In order to circumvent this difficulty the Draft Treaty leaves it to the "Contracting State" to designate one or more "competent authorities" to administer and enforce the Treaty within national legislation.

The rationale of the Draft Treaty contains two main points: first, the use of folklore, be it performance or publication, must be authorised and, if the use will bring economic gain, part of it should go to the source. Secondly, if the use is unauthorised or ethically damaging to the source, the act is criminal and must be punished. Otherwise the Draft Treaty contains customary technical guidelines for its scope and enforcement. Much responsibility is left to the hypothetical "competent authority".



Whose rights are at stake


The Unesco Recommendation just mentioned deals with the broader issues of safeguarding folklore. Yet it contains a paragraph on the intellectual property aspects of folklore which complements the rationale of the Draft Treaty in an important way by listing more rights to be protected. The Recommendation formulates the recipients of protection by stating that we should


(i) protect the informant as the transmitter of tradition (protection of privacy and confidentiality);

(ii) protect the interest of the collector by ensuring that the materials gathered are conserved in the archives in good condition and in a methodical manner;

(iii) adopt the necessary measures to safeguard the materials gathered against misuse, whether intentional or otherwise;

(iv) recognize the responsibility of archives to monitor the use made of the materials gathered.


Thus the informant, the collector, the folklore document itself and the folklore archive holding the document should be protected and supported in order to guarantee the responsible use of folklore. Here the focus of protection shifts in fact to tangible objects, the documents containing folklore, be they written, audial or visual. This opens up a pragmatic vista on copyright and folklore, because the works to be protected are not immaterial spiritual phenomena in the minds of people but tangible objects conserving human ideas and expressions. The folklore archive may be said to assume the role of "competent authority" discussed above. The authorisation of use must be sought at the source of folklore performance, the informant, as well as at the source of its documentation, the collector. Both have individual rights concerning particular materials. The folklore archive should monitor their rights and the forms of folklore dissemination in general.

This last constellation of protection is in harmony with the existing infrastructures of folklore work. It need not remain hypothetical but can be written into archival codes and research contracts even regardless of whether certain international treaties have been ratified or not. In many cases the performer of folklore passes for an artist and may receive recognition as an author, not of folklore as such, but of his unique interpretation and performance of it. Without the collector, however, that performance would have disappeared without trace. So he may be respected as a co-author of folklore.

The folklore document thus created will lead a life of its own which is secondary compared to the original folklore process from which it was derived. Yet it lends the indispensable possibility of reviewing culture to future generations. Thus it must be protected as the container of inexhaustible cultural values. The folklore archive, in turn, lends institutional authority to folklore documents and provides for technical competence and judicial arbitration in matters of folklore protection and use. If there is any kind of royalty generated by folklore materials, it is the folklore archive which should be able to channel the funds to the rightful source, be it the performer, the traditional community, the collector or some institution, including the folklore archive itself.



The "competent authority"


Let me conclude with an anecdote. A scholar wrote to me recently saying that he had worked for several years on a database of 11,000 regional folk tales now ready to be displayed on the Internet. He had consulted lawyers about the copyright concerning the individual tales. The answer was that "every narrator is the owner of his or her recorded performance" and that the publisher should acquire permission for each tale from its narrator, if he is still alive, and if not, from the next of kin if less than 70 years have passed since his death. The scholar, envisioning the difficulties involved, was uncertain whether he could realise his plan of putting his database on the World Wide Web at all.

Here again, the folklore archive holding the materials and acting as the "competent authority" could take the responsibility of granting permission after judging the rights of not only the storytellers but the collectors and other shareholders of folklore ownership as well. In other words, a well-functioning and clearly coded infrastructure represents the best guarantee for the enforcement of copyright and other rights actualised through the secondary use of expressions of folklore.



Read more in NIF Newsletter 1-2/1982:1-5; 1/1983:1-7; 3/1984:1-3, 5-31; 1-2/1985:3-13; 4/1986:8-25; 1/1987:4-21; 3/1987:3-9; 4/1987:15-18; 2-3/1989:3-12; 1/1990:3-7.

cfs

rt