Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, we wish to contribute to the debate concerning ethical rules for ethnographic archives, including embargoes, researchers’ independent decisions, and suggestions for the near future.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology seats in a long story considering the makings of ethnography. Throughout the western world, anthropology grew up with works being done among interlocutors (former “informants”) with whom anthropologists develop intersubjective relations, based in what is called mutuality (Pina-Cabral 2013). In Portugal, ethnographers got used to work with this referential attitude, along with international ethical guidelines (the guidelines from the Association of Social Anthropologists being the most used), but without informed consents signed by people who collaborate in anthropological researches.

Recently, two major changes happened. On the one hand, international projects’ guidelines require that researchers draw ethical frameworks for their projects, and on the other hand, new legislation considering personal data sets new ways of looking at one’s ethnographic archives. Moreover, despite these changes, the debate in Portugal considering ethnographic archives is still immature (Almeida & Cachado 2019a). From another point of view, Portuguese anthropology already dealt in the past with controversial data (Almeida & Cachado 2019b; Leal 2008; Almeida 2014; West 2006). Presently, how can researchers deal with recent debates, norms, and legislation? What kind of education should new anthropologists have to deal with archives from their old colleagues and to produce their own archives?

In this presentation, we wish to contribute to the debate concerning ethical rules for ethnographic archives, including embargoes, researchers’ independent decisions, and suggestions for the near future.

Paper short abstract:

In a cultural science archive with a long background of collection work, you find multifaceted and disparate filing systems and principles. Ultimately, they are based on practises in the various research interests that characterized the university archives interests regarding dubious activities.

Paper long abstract:

Investigations involving criminal activities can be problematic for several reasons. On the one hand, the business may not be perceived as directly criminal, even if it happens to be illegal. With experience from gathering in a Finnish coastal landscape, you can mention wreckage and smuggling (contraband) as activities where research has had problems with how to relate to the whole business. Smuggling (contraband) was very common on the Finnish coastline during the prohibition era (1918-1932).

At a later stage, when time has already done its bit to ensure that the subject is not too fiery, rather reprimanded descriptions were documented in which, for example, one's own parish often was regarded as more innocent in the context of illegal activities. There is certainly also some consensus here between researchers and fellow informants about how things actually were, something that can be difficult to access in the remaining archive sources. At an even later stage, the knowledge and information about smuggling may have been romanticized and so distanced that it is unrestrained to tell about them in a more rife spirit.

However, a further complication arises when researchers and archive staff in recent times, with stiffer regulations, have been seriously interested in getting into the subject (e.g. smuggling) on a deeper plane. The relationship with the informants has then been regarded as highly confidential and the interviews or questionnaires have often been coated with such strong confidentiality regulations that they become difficult to use at all.

Paper short abstract:

Not all data can be shown in the Dutch Folktale Database; some information needs to be hidden and can only be accessed by scholars with a password. We are dealing with three categories here: 1. copyright, 2. privacy and (the most difficult category to determine) 3. offensive content.

Paper long abstract:

Before entering folktales and metadata into the Dutch Folktale Database, three questions need to be answered:

1. Do we have the rights? (think of stories in newspapers, photos or the ATU-catalog)

2. Is privacy at stake? (think of information about narrators, collectors or living people mentioned in legends)

3. Is the material extreme or offensive in any way?

Even though many people think folktales mainly consist of old fairy tales and legends, not all (modern) stories are equally sweet, friendly and nostalgic. Folk culture has its fringes, and the book of folktales also has black pages. Modern jokes and contemporary legends, in particular, can be extreme or offensive. This means that they can be racist, sexist, pornographic or (extremely) violent. In the past there was also a taboo on lese majesty, but this article has now disappeared from Dutch code and is therefore no longer punishable. Nevertheless, caution is still required here too.

Racist folktales include, for example, discriminating or hurtful stories about Jews, Muslims or immigrants. Sexist folktales are derogatory about women or discriminate against certain minority groups on their gender or sexuality. Pornographic folktales are explicit in the field of sexuality, and certain (internet)memes in particular can be visually very explicit. Finally, violent folktales can, for example, incite violence against certain population groups. It is not wise not to collect stories like this (because then the darker sides of storytelling would be ignored), but it is wise not to publish these stories online for everyone to see.

Paper short abstract:

Presentation of a project of linking two important databases of Icelandic folktales, Sagnagrunnur and Ísmús, which share some metadata. We will present the result of an exploration of digital methods to explore these databases as a whole that will help researchers get new insight into the material.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, two important digital projects have emerged in Iceland in relation to folklore material: Sagnagrunnur, a database of legends and wonder tales in printed folklore collections which also includes persons who told and collected the stories. The database also includes geographical references to places mentioned in the legends and is searchable through an online interface. Ísmús is a digital collection of audio recordings from the folklore archive of the Árni Magnússon Institute. Ísmús also includes metadata about informants and recorders. Both projects are gradually growing. The research project “Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri: origin, context and collection” whose aim was to document the collection and publication process of Jón Árnason’s folktale collection contributed greatly to Sagnagrunnur with added letters and references to original manuscripts. Due to highly related material in these two databases the need for a joined search interface is clear. Both databases include similar material and they also share metadata about persons and places. A joined search would thus become a valuable tool, which would provide a continuity, through combining Sagnagrunnur’s data of printed tales collected in the mid nineteenth century onwards to Ísmús’s audio recordings of tales told in the late twentieth century. The work on combining these two databases is in its early stages at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. In the summer 2021 we will present the result of an exploration of digital methods to explore these databases as a whole that will help researchers get new insight into this material.