One part of the theme ”ethics and folklorism” concerns the ethnologist and his/her research, the other one folklorism itself.
Ethics is not a frequented word in the other part, although this
phenomenon - because of its importance it has in the society -
would deserve it. In the dominating part of the entire phase of
folklorism, there is no extensive awareness of ethical effect of several activities. Today, it is very difficult to differ in particular regions or locations, what has survived as a relic of older
traditions, what has been included in them for various reasons, how the first arrangers, choreographers, whose results were often passed off as transmissions of original materials, proceeded at their flights of imaginations. The phenomenon that we could call as “folk culture free for use” remains big problem as well. Here we are also missing an ethica codex that, however, does not concern just ethnology. The general need for ethics in relation to cultural tradition is not deep-rooted at all by us. It is a widely social matter and it should concern cultural tradition in the legal sense of the word - not to exploit it, not to misuse it commercially, to understand it as a part of national culture. In addition to the research principles, it is thus necessary to promote generally the fact that nobody may behave destructively or unethically to cultural heritage of any nature.
The article opens the basic issues of ethics in the case of
collection-creating and presentation activity of museums. It defines the contemporary position of museums within the modern information society as a space for memory transformation. It points out the ethical dimension of curator’s work, whose presentation and interpretation results are connected with the institution
more than elsewhere. The interpretation as well as the involvement
of the public into this activity is a fundamentally ethical task of the museum as a memory institution. In this connection, the running discussion concerns the model of the community museum or “eco-museum” as an institution that is defined by its relation to the organism (the museum) and its environment (the society). This institution distinguishes itself by the ability to respond to or to adapt itself to the conditions and to create a wide network of social relations.
The contribution focuses on ethnography in the Czech lands and its application as a research method. The concept of ethnography used for this purpose sees ethnography as one of the major methods of qualitative research, transformed and modified by development in the field and changes in the society. The author reminds of the fact that ethnography was widely used as a research instrument already in 20th century under different names not only within ethnology and social anthropology but also within other disciplines and that at present it is a favourite research instrument of a number of branches of social science which emphasize qualitative research. Thus ethnography is not the sole property of ethnologists and social anthropologists and they cannot be sure that this method will remain typical and characteristic exclusively for them. Although the text is historically retrospective, it mainly focuses on transformations of ethnography in the late 20th and at the turn of 20th and 21st centuries.
The article deals with the situation of Bulgarian ethnology at the
beginning of the 21st century. It addresses three main forms of
institutionalised ethnology: the relevant department of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, university departments and ethnographic museums. The first institution of this type was the National Ethnographic Museumin Sofia (1906). In 1947, an independent ethnographic institute was founded as apart of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the present-day Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum. The text describe in detail this academic institution, summarises its main research activities and mentions examples of past projects. In addition, it references the ongoing “ethnology versus anthropology” debate. The academic discipline of ethnology in Bulgaria has lately suffered financial difficulties and is largely dependent on international and national grants.