Ethnologia Europaea

Honor Codes in Modern France

Poaching has been studied in terms of instrumental behaviour, as an economic strategy of the rural poor. However, poaching has always been of marginal economic significance in the Netherlands. Still, it has not disappeared in the course of this century. On the contrary, game-keepers being preoccupied with catching poachers, and a special police force being entrusted with keeping poaching under control, point to an increasing importance. To understand this phenomenon one has to consider that poaching as well as the efforts directed against it are exclusively male domains. To hunt and to be hunted is a challenge to the men involved: a challenge to measure their strength and cunningness. It is one of the scarce opportunities to perform "manliness": a notion which in "unexciting" modern societies is becoming an anachronism.

The paper discusses power among women in the rural family. "Mother-in-law" is a cultural stereotype which is charged with negative meaning. Being a mother-in- law is at best something ambigous. In peasant culture this ambiguity is visible because the mother-in-law is both the one with power and the one who teaches the daughter-in-law how to be a skillful farm woman. The relationship between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law may be studied as a part of the gender division of labour. It has much in common with the relationship between the mistress and the female servants. But unlike the maid, the daughter-in-law was not paid for her work, her labour contract being founded on emotional premises. When you are searching for a collective rationality behind the behaviour of more or less "difficult" mother-in-laws, it becomes apparent that economic and emotional motives comprise individual solutions. Therefore, an understanding of the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law may be established within a polarity determined by economy and love. Such a polarity is loaded with tension which in turn is avoided via "common behaviour" which functions like a lightening rod. The myth about the evil mother-in-law makes women responsible for the exploitation of female labour, and thus conceals the patriarchal structure within the rural family. This myth has served as a barrier against alliances among the female generations within the family. It nourishes the assertion that women are their own worst enemies, and thus contributes to keeping this idea alive.

This paper proposes a re-examination of some 'classic' approaches to the problem of analyzing 'kinship' behaviour in Italy. The essay examines apprenticeship in several contexts and in several locations (southern and central Italy). It is argued that no one single trait, such as access to power (central to viewpoints that deal with 'patronage' and 'brokerage') can explain the behavioural complex associated with apprenticeship. Instead, the concept of public validation of social relationship appears to be a more fruitful tool for analyzing the simulation interplay of distancing and incorporation that characterizes apprentice-master relationship. It is argued that just as there is a strong incorporative tendency in the formation of social relationships - perhaps due to the pervasive notion of competition and limited good - there is an equally strong tendency at exclusion at the same level. That is, because of mutual economic and social interests on both parts, there is a tendency to incorporate apprentices into the same structural dynamics that govern 'close/private' relationships; the family, for example. But since the attaining of goals - fulfilling one's interessi - depends very much on performing in public, the master-apprentice relationship develops along other lines, which can be labelled 'close/public'.

A study of the development of feminism would probably lead us to the conclusion that the emancipation of women has taken place mainly in Protestant countries and cultures. In Roman Catholic cultures, for example, emancipation movements such as feminism have evolved much more slowly. In Islamic cultures, feminism has developed only recently. In this paper I will argue that it is the ethic of Protestantism which led to the "spirit of feminism".

Die Verwendung der Präsensform ist als historisches Präsens wie als ethografisches Präsens mehr als nur eine etablierte Technik der Beschreibung. Das Präsens kommt einer Tendenz entgegen, die in den Ethnowissenschaften als Darstellungsproblem bedacht werden muß. Die Benutzung des tempus praesens unterstellt, daß nicht nur in der Beschreibung, sondern auch tatsächlich Geschichte stillgestellt ist. Damit wird durch die Beschreibungsform im Präsens eine Vorstellung von Dauerhaftigkeit konstituiert. Im Präsens scheinen Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft aufgehoben. Das schließt an die seit einiger Zeit begrifflich neu gefaßte Kategorie "Alltag" an. Der Alltag gilt als Summenbegriff der Erfahrung des Selbstverstandlichen. Neben der zeitlichen Ebene, die Dauer suggeriert, werden die beschriebenen sozialen Systeme durch die Benutzung kultureller Kategorien isoliert. Die Systeme (der Dörfer, aber auch von Gruppen) werden wie Inseln im Meer abgebildet . Die Technik der Tempusverwendung verwandelt sich dabei in einen erzählerischen Kunstgriff und verstärkt den Eindruck, die erzählend beschriebenen Systeme seien nicht nur intakt, sondern auch autonom und geschlossen.

In the ethnological and anthropological literature there are many good ethnographic studies of entities like local communities, class cultures, ethnic groups, particular institutions or age groups. But these studies are seldom anchored in a systematic theory of the total socio-cultural order. What we need are good models of the interrelations between specific forms of life. Based on several stints of fieldwork among different groups of urban working-class families in Norway, this paper attempts to make a systematic argument for the analysis of overarching cultural categories and their interrelations. Such overarching categories help organize, justify and legitimate the social, economic and cultural diversity that may be observed in daily life. More generally the problem under consideration concerns the relationship between contextualized ethnography and interpretations of comprehensive frameworks of implicit meanings in a modern large scale society. It is argued in the paper that this problem should not be phrased as a question of "generalization" of qualitative analysis. Such a phrasing very quickly leads to questions of samplingmand boundaries which make anthropologists and European ethnologists look like bad survey sociologists. Instead the problem is rephrased as one of the "range”, "extent", "era and area of relative power" of our interpretations.

Editorial

Heroic myths of the 19th and 20th century Europe invented by Romantism resonate with echoes of Scandinavian sagas and mythological legacy from our European antiquity. Heroes appear in difficult times in order to deal with existential situations. The hero's birth is forseen and accompanied by special signs; his future deeds portended as early as his childhood; he must, however, pass through initiation rites which reveal his destiny and at the same time transform him into someone capable of undertaking tasks designated by fate: he need not die though he is not allowed to enjoy family life; he must struggle to the end. Polish national heroes retain their traits to this day - they express a specific historical situation which is linked to universal values. Tadeusz Kościuszko, Józef Pilsudski, Father lgnacy Skorupka, Father Jerzy Popieluszko, and, to some extent, Pope John Paul II belong to this group. Still we are awaiting the appearance of new heroes.

In the 1840s and 1850s the pioneers of the Estonian national movement, F. R. Faehlmann and F. R. Kreutzwald, created an Olympus of Estonian gods: the main god Taara or Uku, song god Vanemuine, divine smith Ilmarine, waters god Ahti, the forgotten land of good fortune, Kungla, etc. Much was taken over from the mythology of the Finns, much was the fruit of personal fantasy. It all resulted from the desire to prove that the ancient Estonians had high culture before the foreign conquest in the 13th c. In the 1860s and 1870s the new inspiring mythology became popularized, greatly thanks to C.R. Jakobson, a radical national leader. Poets used the names of mythological heroes in patriotic songs, poems and dramas were written on mythological subjects, national societies were named after mythological gods, etc. In the 1920s, when the national movement had achieved its aims, the folklorists definitively demonstrated that the 19th c. Estonian gods belonged to pseudomythology lacking any root in folk beliefs. Although the society accepted the statement, many pseudomythological names remained firmly rooted. The 19th c. mythology had had a significant role in the formation of Estonian national identity. Today, when the social and cultural life of Estonia has again become especially active, we can notice an analogical interest in antiquity, though entirely different denominators are used.

This study analyzes the process by which Hungarian national culture has been constructed and changed in the last century, by focusing on one set of national symbols: the 'folk cultural heritage'. Competing groups of the elite developed more or less different, rival notions of 'Hungarianness'. In accord with these changing notions, different representations and interpretations of the folk culture emerged. To demonstrate that relationship, the author presents three dilemmas, contradictions of Hungarian self-perception and shows how diverse positions in the political-ideological debates were reflected in rival identity-constructs and rival symbolic strategies. The relation between state and nation was a sensitive question in Hungary, dramatized by abrupt changes of the country's territory and political regime. National membership 'imagined' on the basis of language and culture or on the basis of citizenship resulted in different symbolic economies. Another divide separated modernists and traditionalists - their debates often referred to a richly elaborated symbolism of East and West, to an 'eastern' and to a 'western' image of the folk traditions. Finally, the study surveys the cultural programmes of competing elites, succeeding and replacing each other, the strategies of the 19th century lesser nobility, the 'historic middle class', the upward mobile urban bourgeoisie, the populist intellectuals of the inter-war period, the communists, and their diverse opponents. Ethnographers and folklorists, as professional constructors and interpreters of the 'folk cultural heritage' appear in this picture sometimes in the ideological mainstream, sometimes in opposition or as supporting actors in marginal positions. Professional institutions have a considerable stability or inertia, which gives them some independence from political currents. Nevertheless, the author argues, the history of 'national ethnography' gains in plasticity and depth when placed into the complex process of national identity-construction and reconstruction.

For the last ten years I have been examining the use of the material environment by individuals and families. My data generally concerned the changes in how objects have been used by particular groups over three generations from the beginning of the century to the present. Alongside participant observations my main material has been interviews with old people looking back on their lives, and private photographs “illustrating” family or personal life stories. It struck me in connection with the interviews that not only "souvenirs" exercise the function of recalling memories but in certain contexts, all other objects do so as well. Man remembering and forgetting through objects realizes and expresses his own self. In doing this, objects inevitably become linked with ego-ontological explanations which become mythologies for an individual, a family or a small group, allowing identity to be nurtured and expressed. A growing need for this on the part of fragmented societies bas appeared in the last ninety years when global social myths have been relegated to the background, split, deprived of their meaning, commercialized or affecting the subconscious.

Heilige begleiten die Menschen in Griechenland von der Wiege bis zur Bahre. Sie sind Namensgeber, Schutzpatron und persönllches Vorbild. Die Frauen spielen tradltionell in der Vermittlung zwischen. Familie bzw. lndividuum und Heiligem eine besondere Rolle. Im Prinzip sind sie es, die zu den Wallfahrtsstätten pilgern und die Gottesdienste all jener Heiligen organisieren und besuchen, die in der Gemeinde mit einer Kapelle vertreten sind, und deren man an ihrem Namenstag gedenkt. Durch diese zeitliche und räumliche Präsenz der Heiligen erfährt das Leben in der Dorfgemeinschaft traditionellerweise eine starke Strukturierung, die auch heute keineswegs unbedeutend ist. Die Bedeutung der Heiligen für die dörfliche Gesellschaft gleicht der der byzantinischen Heiligen, die als geistige Führer den lndividuen Gewissheit und Lenkung gaben in einer Situation des Widerstreites zwischen Traditionen und neuen Werten, hervorgerufen durch eine im Wandel begriffenen Welt. Die Bedeutung, die heute die religiöse Praxis der Frauen und hier besonders die Heiligenverehrung für die dörflichen Gemeinschaft hat, ist durchaus äquivalent der Bedeutung, die der traditionell männlich dominierte Bereich der Gesellschaftspolltik für das Dorf hat.

This paper deals with the case of a single girl buried as a bride in a Swiss mountain village. It is a local variant of the death-marriage or Totenhochzeit, a custom that must have been widespread in rural Europe. In the death-marriage the metaphor of death as marriage mitigates the opposition between life and death, because in contrast to death, the parting at marriage is not irreversible (Danforth 1982). Especially unmarried girls are buried as brides . As untimely dead, adolescents, virgins and symbolic brides serve as mediators in the opposition mentioned. ln a village, socially distorted by a loss of life, the death-marriage of the single girl probably was a strategy of the villagers to come to terms with death.