The Laura Boulton collection's history includes disputes between the collector and various institutions, and among and within the institutions as well, about the extent and nature of its contents. Through repatriation, the cultural and scholarly value of archives like Boulton's, this chapter suggests ways to move ethnomusicology forward as an ethical as well as scholarly enterprise, by confronting the moral obligations the discipline has incurred. The diversity of Boulton's sources, representing hundreds of different performers, dance, cultural traditions, communities, and languages, of which Boulton's knowledge was uniformly superficial at best, further hinders assessment of the collection as a scholarly or public resource. The recordings and films Boulton had made were her only claim to significance as an ethnomusicologist. Musical archives are only meaningful, only valuable for any purpose at all, when they are embedded in and actualize networks of forward-looking reciprocity. Their value in a history of world music is inseparable, morally and ethically, from such reciprocity.

Food habits formed under particular social and economic conditions, and entirely adequate to those conditions, may be carried by individuals and groups into other settings where they may be unsuitable and even harmful to health. Human behaviour as it relates to food embraces a complex of culinary activities and patterns of consumption resulting from the interaction of ecological, economic, technological, and social factors. This chapter deals with the cultural definition and classification of foods, traditional beliefs and practices as they affect nutrition and health. It also presents the symbolic roles of food that contribute to the integration of social and political units, of nations, communities, and families. Food habits are both changeable and conservative, as they are based on deeply rooted cultural traditions. In suggesting alternatives to existing practices, one must carefully consider, in advance, the costs involved and the means of attaining the desired change.