Ethnologia Europaea

The phenomenon pejoratively known as the new "ethno-nationalism" conceals a rich array of cultural processes. Having seen how this ideology can be used to manipulate, can we then take the leap down to everyday life to see how people use it in practice? On the basis of Nordic experience, the article discusses how the national is informalized and wrested from the hands of power, how it is appropriated by individuals, groups, and local communities to articulate a cultural identity that does not need to have so much to do with the nation. It is used to convey messages that can be about the relation of periphery to centre, about young people's relations to adults, tho relations of Swedes to immigrants, etc. By giving a temporary cultural identity, the national can be used to highlight life policy questions about how we should live in late modernity. In this way, it becomes a channel for remoralizing everyday life. The care with which people seize national symbol is partly due to informalization: hardly a single birthday, annual festival, sports contest, or other event passes without the flag being used - literally - to decorate the cake. But this is a type of national identity which people can allow themselves to play with, without being exposed to anything deadly serious. The article discusses how national identity can also become a tool in the service of cultural complexity - not of homogenization - and it can contribute to the negotiation of new collective identities and deeper reflexivity.

This article investigates the complexity of ethnicity in modern society. It is basedon an ethnological field work at car industries in Europe and explores the way ethnic groups are sorted on growing cultural labour market, representing a varying set of profitable morales. Earlier, anthropologists were mainly interested in the general features of ethnic groups, i.e. formal construction of communication, language, rituals and religious confession, instead of their internal dynamics. The general tendency became focusing on the deviation from anational majority. The impact of geography was profound in anthropologists’ thinking. This paper suggests other interpretations, based on re-establishing of the ideas of classes. A departure from ethnicity will make it easier to give a voice to the minorities and to unveil the technologies of representation.

Die Gegenwart konfrontiert auf Schritt und Tritt mit neuen ästhetischen Erfahrungen, welche nicht dem Fundus der eigenen Kultur entstammen, sondern direkt oder auf Umwegen dem kulturellen Repertoire „Fremder“ entnommen sind. Wie unterschiedlich sich solche Kulturkontakte gestalten, ist bekannt; wenig wissen wir jedoch über die jeweiligen Mechanismen der Aneignungen und Valorisierungen. Anhand von Beobachtungen zur emblematischen Ethnizität im urbanen Raum – mit besonderem Augenmerk für die erlebnisorientierte Alltagskultur der Gegenwart – stellt der Beitrag die Frage nach einem neuen Verhältnis zum „Fremden“ in einer Zeit individualisierter Identitäten und der globalen Verfügbarkeit kultureller Zeichen. Das Interesse gilt dabei den Zusammenhängen zwischen den harmlosen alltagsästhetischen Aneignungen auf der einen und dem wachsenden Bemühen, kollektive Identitäten und Vorstellungen des Gemeinschaftlichen neu zu etablieren, auf der anderen Seite. Schließlich werden die Möglichkeiten und Kompetenzen der Europäischen Ethnologie angesichts einer sich neu definierenden Rolle des Ethnischen in der Alltagskultur zur Diskussion gestellt.

The wave of Jewish emigration from the former Soviet Union since the late 1980s has created various groups, ideological trends and new political movements. The setting up of political organizations among the new immigrants in Israel is presented here as a reaction to power-relations, both within the Russian Jewish community, and in the Israeli society around it. This paper presents some empiric findings of my field-work, conducted in Israel in 1994, about the dynamics of the involvement of new immigrants into Israeli’s political life, their political tendencies and the activities of their leaders. Two political movements are presented here: 1.) the independent party of new immigrants, based on the representatives of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, who consider Russian and Russian-Jewish culture and history to be commonly shared. On the other side they realize that in order to mobilize wide support among the potential Israeli voters they have to search for a special strategy to combine different identities and ethnic symbols; 2.) the ultra-nationalist movement of new immigrants, based on representatives of the existing ultra-Right parties, trying to unite the Russian Jews against the governmental policy on the territories after the peace agreement with the Palestinians. Some aspects of the relationship between new immigrants and Israeli Arabs, which lead to the tendency of many Russian Jews to identify themselves with the ideas of the ultra-Right parties, are analysed as well.

Im Zeitraum von 1880 bis 1950 vollzog sich eine erhebliche Konsolidierung der schwedischsprachigen Bevölkerung Finnlands. Daher ist es heute möglich von „Finnlandschweden“ als eine ethnische Gruppe mit starkem Selbstbewusstsein zu sprechen. Dieser Prozess soll im Folgenden untersucht werden, wobei die Betonung auf dem kulturellen Inhalt und der verbalen Rhetorik der allmählich entstandenen Selbsteinschätzung liegt. Ich konzentriere mich in diesem Zusammenhang auf den Wortschatz in Verbindung mit der Ideologie, dem ethno-historischen Konzept und der pragmatischen Verwirklichung von Separatismus und Konsolidierung.

The anthropological concepts mentality and national character are briefly discussed. Research of national character in South Slavic ethnologies is presented along with the contrasting models produced by the Serbian and Croat ethno-anthropologists in the first part of this century. Consequently, heroism as the dominant value and its role in contemporary national politics and in the construction of identity has been questioned.

The author seeks to answer questions concerning the process by which a national identity was built in Croatia from 1990 onwards. She analyses visual messages of different kinds, stating that these phenomena can not be measured by numerical interpretation of the data. Therefore, she selects the most prominent signs and symbols by which an image of the new Croatia was constructed, and the war was continuously interpreted and follows their flow through different levels of culture giving a description or interpretation of the context.

Ornamente, bestimmte Farben und Formen haben die lettische Nationalkultur und nationale Identität bis zu dem heutigen Tag geprägt. Durch einen zurückhaltenden Gebrauch und durch ihren begrenzten Anwendungsbereich behaupteten sich diese Symbole durch Okkupationen und Exile, ohne ihren emotionalen Wert zu verlieren.Fast paradox erscheint dagegen die Kulturentwicklung seit 1987. Was die Sowjetmacht durch die fast 50-jährige Anstrengungen nicht geschafft hat, nämlich diese Symbole aus der Welt zu schaffen, hat ihr übermäßig frequenter Gebrauch während der Perestroika, unterstützt durch geschickte Geschäftsleute und die Begeisterung über westliche Konsumgüter, innerhalb von ein paar Jahren geschafft. Die nationalen Symbole sind zu angelächelten Klischees geworden, deren bewusste Nichtanwendung fast eine stärkere emotionale Brisanz enthält als deren Anwendung.

The present time in Central and Eastern Europe is characterised by two seemingly opposing trends: a striving for profound knowledge of one’s own nation and a striving for identification with the rest of Europe. A contribution to both types of striving could be ethnological atlases of European regions, one of which could be a Slavic Ethnological Atlas. It would aim at presenting a picture of selected phenomena of the traditional culture of Slavic nations in their entirety as well as in their ethnic variety.This picture could establish preconditions for the definition of what is common Slavic for every Slavic nation as well as what is ethnically specific for each. At the same time the Atlas could help to define what connects the Slavic nations with other nations living in Europe. The data presented in the Atlas would either confirm or deny the unity of affinity of traditional cultures of Slavic nations. It has already been unambiguously proved that their languages are cognate.