ABSTRACT
There used to be little discussion of the ethics of research, with fieldworkers just expected to get on with it. Nowadays we are more aware of moral and political issues, and no serious student within the human sciences-whatever the particular theoretical orientation-can now afford to ignore the ethical dimension. This applies in research on oral traditions and the verbal arts too, for oral forms are the creations of human beings, part of their social, political and artistic activities rather than (as once assumed) a-social products of some impersonal Tradition. Further, collecting and analysing these creations are inescapably human processes too, with all that means for social controversies and responsibilities. Moral dilemmas are perhaps particularly pressing in field-based studies, but there are also issues long after any field phase is completed, some of them also applicable to work with archive sources.
