Essentials of Language Documentation
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42 Arienne M. Dwyer cording session. It is best to be explicit about the consultant’s future rights to the recording at the time of recording.
1.5.3. When a previously uninvolved party becomes involved
A linguist wants to contribute a legacy recording 8 to an archive, but then a grandson of the speaker objects, saying that the rights to the recording now belonged to him. If an archive does not have an explicit policy, then the two parties must attempt to mediate these situations, based on the original agreement and on the cultural norms of the speaker community.
What good is an electronic archive to native speaker communities, espe- cially if they lack Internet access? In addition to “giving back” tangible research products such as primers, the researcher should find ways to get offline electronic data to the communities. A researcher could even con- sider establishing WiFi (wireless) networks, if appropriate. 9
1.5.5. Management of the resources
When material is in an archive or a private collection, the question arises as to who represents the annotated data: the community, the researcher, or the archivist? Since it is inevitably some combination of these actors, it is wise to specify decision-making power in advance for the concerned parties. When one party, for example, wants to close the resource to the public, it is best to have protocols for making ultimate decisions.
2.1. Scope
Participants in linguistic fieldwork are subject to at least three separate ju- ridical realms: (1) the laws of the country in which data recording takes place; (2) the laws of the researcher’s country; and (3) international law. Additionally, researchers may be subject to a regional transnational law, such as EU law for the DoBeS archive in the Netherlands. Within each of Chapter 2 – Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis 43
these realms, the distinction between intellectual property rights, copyright, and access is useful. Note that these issues are moot unless these rights are exercised (e.g., through a claim of ownership of material in an archive). Even then, there is little legal precedent testing protocols on rights and ac- cess to linguistic resources, until language archives accumulate several decades of experience with data rights.
Intellectual property rights concern the individual, group, local, and na- tional ownership of so-called “creations of the mind,” e.g. books, musical performances, films and even folklore. The western notion of property rights may well have no indigenous conceptual counterpart. Nonetheless, a number of documents on indigenous knowledge and property rights have successfully attempted to respectfully address indigenous issues. These include Hansen and VanFleet (2003); AILLA (n.d.a) IPR; and for New Zealand, Sullivan (2002).
At a recording’s origin (i.e. at taping), it is necessary to obtain the informed consent of all parties. Informed consent is a negotiation between researcher and data producer/consultant of all future uses of the material: who will access the data, where will the data be housed, in what form will it be stored, and who will make future decisions over its use. Informed consent does not simply entail the researcher informing the consultant of to what use he/she intends to put the data. Of course, linguistic and anthropological goals often overlap with but differ from community goals, so part of the consent process entails community members convincing outsider linguists of practical data uses, and vice-versa. Though informed consent has both ethical and juridical dimensions, academic institutions in certain countries have emphasized the legal aspects of such contracts. Many field researchers today, particularly those in North America and Australia, find that any of their projects involving direct work with people are subject to an obligatory institutional screening process. 10
versities need to establish a generic and more flexible consent template for 44 Arienne M. Dwyer linguistic and social science research in non-clinical settings under different cultural circumstances. For now, each researcher must tailor his/her own contract with his/her own Institutional Research Board.
There are three major types of consent documentation: written, verbal, and third-party.
– Written consent The advantage of having so-called “Human Subject Consent” forms is that both parties have a written record of their agreement. The disadvan- tages, though, are legion among linguists: they require the anonymity of consultants (which is often inappropriate)
and the written forms may breed mistrust. Therefore, field researchers often resort to verbal consent. – Verbal consent
Verbal contracts should be recorded with audio or video devices if at all possible. Though western societies are insistent that written contracts are the only really binding forms of agreement, in many contexts a verbal contract can be equally or more powerful and binding than a written one. A spoken agreement requires at least two parties physically present, it requires eye contact, and it carries with it all the intertwining obligations and respect of a personal relationship between two people bound to- gether in a social network. For a written agreement, by contrast, both parties need not be present nor have or maintain any sort of personal re- lationship. And this is why many people (e.g. indigenous peoples of the Americas) find oral contracts more binding than written ones: written ones can be torn up and forgotten, but not ones sealed by physical con- tact.
Furthermore, in a society with varying degrees of literacy, the written contract may wisely be viewed with suspicion, as it has often been the medium used historically by colonial powers to wrest property and land from indigenous peoples.
It has been difficult in the past to convince IRBs of the appropriate- ness of oral contracts in certain contexts. Even now, a researcher must make a case to these boards, who by definition represent the legalistic and writing-centered aspect of academic culture. However, today most IRBs accept oral contracts as legitimate. – Third-party consent
The last type of consent entails making use of an intermediary such as a village leader to negotiate a contract between participants. The consent Yüklə 5,72 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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