Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis

This chapter examines central ethical, legal, and practical responsibilities of linguists and ethnographers in fieldwork-based projects. These issues span all research phases, from planning to fieldwork to dissemination. We focus on the process of language documentation, beginning with a discussion of common ethical questions associated with fieldwork: When is documentation appropriate in a particular community, and who benefits from it? Which power structures are involved, both in and out of the field? Section 1 explores key concepts of participant relations, rights, and responsibilities in fieldwork in the context of ethical decision-making. It introduces a set of guiding principles and examines some potential pitfalls. Section 2 discusses the legal rights issues of data ownership (intellectual property rights and copyright) and data access. Such information aids planning before fieldwork and especially the archiving phase. Sections 3 and 4 cover the more concrete practical aspects of the fieldwork situation: developing a relationship with a speech community and organizing and running a project. We survey what may be termed "the five Cs" critical to planning and executing a project: criteria (for choosing a field site), contacts, cold calls, community, and compensation. Finally, since even the best-planned projects encounter logistical and interpersonal challenges, we present several generic case studies and some possible methods of resolving such disputes. Such ethical and logistical planning is essential to successful community-centred knowledge mobilization, from which documentation products useful for both academics and community members are produced in an environment of reciprocity. It is the linguist's responsibility to focus on process (Rice 2005: 9) as much as the end goals.