Cultural properties, cultural documents, and cultural effects : An ethics discussion for ISFNR

Here, Mills undertakes not to provide a prescriptive code of ethics for international folk narrative research, an unrealistic and perhaps undesirable project, but instead to open up for folk narrative researchers, broadly defined, a discussion of the problematics of ethics codes, either their formulation or their application. For the purposes of this discussion, she draws her examples of codes, their problematics, working principles, and some resulting dilemmas, from four US-based cultural research organizations, three of them with major international aspirations, one with more of a focus on local constituencies and a more limited organizational mission. She also compares and contrasts recent position Statements of two prominent American folk narrative scholars, Barre Toelken and Dell Hymes, and other case material, specifically sample accounts of individual scholars' experiences published in the long-running 'Ethical Dilemmas' column and other published discussion from the American Anthropological Association's Anthropology Newsletter. She refers to these American scholars and organizations not in any way to imply that American discussions are taking the lead regarding professional ethics in cultural research, but to the contrary, to offer examples of codes of ethics and ethical positions generated from particular political, historical and disciplinary locales with which she is familiar, whose particular positions may or may not speak to issues arising elsewhere.