ABSTRACT
The chapter interrogates ethical issues that an ethnographer should execute when collecting data from a community. The overarching impression by the author is that the use of sound ethics by etic ethnographic fieldworkers, employed in juxtaposition with their cognition of reflexivity, should culminate not only in collecting detailed data but also in safeguarding the indigenousness of the traditional music heritage of the communities under study. The author is a Shona by origin and comes from a mbira-playing family which has been constantly visited by researchers interested in mbira music. The experiences he got and the exposés by other elder members of the family culminated in the writing of a chapter presenting a “netnography” of data about mbira research from members of communities who have acted as primary sources for various researchers. To contextualize the discussions which run through this chapter, particular reference will be made to the views presented by members of the Shona communities of Zimbabwe concerning what they feel about how fieldworkers handled issues of ethics. Is it done reflexively enough to safeguard the indigenous mbira music heritage studied during fieldwork? The chapter will also interrogate fieldworkers’ experiences within the same Shona communities. The chapter presents thematically information concerning the Shona people and their beliefs, their mbira heritage, the various definitions of the term “ethics” as given by different authors, a discussion around ethics in fieldwork, and an interrogation of the protection and sustenance of the indigenous Shona mbira heritage.
