The second life of ethnographic fieldnotes

• Main Author: Robert Leopold
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative 2008-08-01
• Series: Ateliers d'Anthropologie
• Subjects: anthropological archives; archivist; ethical problem; source communities
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ateliers/3132

The second life of ethnographic fieldnotes. The National Anthropological Archives has been collecting and preserving ethnographic field notes and related materials since its founding as the Archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879. Each year, these field notes, photographs, sound recordings and moving images are consulted by anthropologists writing biographies and intellectual histories, conducting comparative research, and reviewing the work of anthropologists who conducted research in the same ethnographic region. These field materials are also increasingly consulted by non-anthropologists, particularly native peoples studying their own cultural heritage. This text discusses some of the challenges involved in collecting ethnographic field notes and making them available to the public both on-site in our archives and online. It also considers the archivist’s relationship to source communities, particularly ethical issues relating to the curation of culturally sensitive materials.