งานวิจัยและบทความ

Distinguished anthropologist Michael Moerman's donation of his ethnographic fieldwork materials in 2005 to the Anthropological Archives of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC) posed new and compelling questions to the SAC's archival management staff. They have sought to strike a balance between the academic needs of users and the ethical and legal considerations in the management and distribution of tangible and intangible cultural property from the source communities where Moerman did his research. Endeavouring to develop a protocol for the management of an ethnographic archival database, the SAC is aware of its obligation to build awareness of the cultural rights of the source community as the rightful owners of this cultural property. By incorporating the views of multiple stakeholders in a previously binary division of materials as ‘sensitive’ or ‘non-sensitive’, it is trying to take into account a diversity of views about access to these cultural materials. One aim of our research was, thus, to highlight the role of the archivists themselves by asking them to review and question their own processes and contributions to the management of anthropological archives. We expect that the conclusions and observations drawn from this study will be used to create a SAC protocol for cultural information management and distribution. Though the Tai Lue source community that Moerman studied in the 1960s does not have a pre-existing cultural protocol to determine the parameters surrounding digital repatriation and access, the community's opinions and reflections will be fully considered in the creation of the SAC protocol for use as an initial guideline. Thus, the second aim of our research was to elicit and examine the community's reactions to ethnographic material deriving from it, in order to highlight the issue of a community's collective right to be involved in preservation of and access to such material.