Ethnologia Europaea

In 1984, French and German ethnologists convened in Bad Homburg to discuss the specificities of their research traditions. They came to the insight that beneath the level of differences in the scientific discourse, there are wast domains of cultural differences, diverging habits and emotional dispositions.These are summed up by the author as “latent ethnicity”.We might point out differences among national ethnologies on the level of “intellectual style” (different ways of theory-formation and argumentation, diverse routines and ethics of scientific discourse etc.) and on the level of conceptualization and terminology. For the latter, Norbert Elias’ explication of the different social background and significance of French civilisation and German Kultur is a classic example. A third kind of differences are caused by different pasts, and the diverging working up of the past.To avoid misunderstanding among ethnologists, a careful examination of cultural backgrounds, positions and intentions is suggested. European ethnology of the future can be imagined as a “network of perspectives”, in which every national or regional group can make conscious use of its cultural specificity.

The main questions in European ethnology today are: (1) Why do people behave in a certain manner? (2) How do they interpret and describe their world? (3) What are they looking for? These questions entail assessing tradition and culture.Tradition comprises more and more cultural patterns which are not visible, sowe now have the broader but problematic mentality beside the concept of tradition. Passing phenomena may be expressions of a specific ideology and situation, seeming like tradition without being so in the conventional sense. Today’s mixture of cultural patterns of short duration requires new methods of conceptual analysis. Subcultures come and go in quick succession. Information technology etches fleeting cultural patterns in the mind, and the broader between real life and virtual reality is blurred.

Ethnological concepts and research traditions in Croatia are viewed from the experience of the ethnologists, testimonies to the war and transition. Postmodern approach and rhetorics in describing/writing about the war is analyzed along with the recent use of the traditional ethnographic and folklore archive material. The political bias in ethnology is questioned and the necessity of a critical dialogued with the bearers of power is emphasized.

This short comment on Tamás Hofer’s paper discusses the opportunity of the association on ‘latent’ ethnicity with national schools of European ethnology rather than with certain academic centres of influence in the history of European ethnology. It also points out the danger of overestimation of the cultural dimension of ethnologist’s personality compared to his personality as a scientist. Finally, the use of an ‘ethnic’ terminology in an European context is questioned.

Although Spanish ethnology has a long tradition, associated with ethnographic reports prepared by Catholic missionaries converting American Indians, today this tradition is based largely on the university and museums. Parallel to the evolution in ethnology, folklore, the study of rural cultural tradition, has followed its own historical development, though while it has attracted a wide audience, it has remained at the margins of the university.Ethnology retained a place in university studies up to 1968 when it entered aperiod of transition in which it was incorporated within cultural anthropology (1971). Cultural anthropology subsequently became associated with social anthropology leaving ethnology as a variety of comparative ethnography. Today, cultural anthropology retains more elements of ethnology, while social anthropology retains more elements of folklore. However, there is a degree of interdisciplinary influence through ethnographically oriented fieldwork and the presence of researcher who adopt simply the name of anthropologists. There are more anthropologists working in academic institutions than physical anthropologists, the latter having become increasingly associated with the study of biology and genetics, than with culture, concerned more with laboratory studies than fieldwork.European anthropology is facing a number of problems. One of them is the methods needed for an integrated study of ethnographic globalities and local ethnographies, while another is the analysis of cultural change and the consequences of modern technologies applied to the rapid transformation of culture in Europe. In addition, there are the problems we face in analyzing ethnicity, nationalism, identity, migration, integration, mobility and social disorganization.

The aims of this contribution are first to give short review of the conditions of development of the ethnographic disciplines – especially of the German variant “Volkskunde” – and of their shaping as historical sciences. Second, it’s an attempt to balance the new orientations of historical research as they have crystallized in the last two decades. Third, the present role of a “cultural history” is discussed which seems to be ambivalent: on the one hand it is characterized by growing public attention to the ethnological interpretation of the cultural and the historical process; on the other, it is characterized by problems of the current scientific as well as sociopolitical position finding. In an ethnological understanding “Historizing the Present” should mean to reconstruct that specific “ethnic paradigm” which influenced social as well as scientific self-images in past and present – and to deconstruct the ethnic discourse as a phenomenon of “politics of identity”.

It is thought provoking that it was the West’s modern project in the 20th century that almost eliminated history in much of education and the social sciences while at the same time political and cultural development in the last decade in Europe has strongly emphasized the necessity of a historical perspective. The conscious and unconscious mythologising of the past, which powers of state, organisations and minority groups often practice in order to further their own interests, can only be revealed, if researchers are able to work both synchronically and diachronically. To work historically with the concept of cultural complexity calls for different forms of historical analysis than we find in the traditional historicism od the 19th century until today. One of the challenges we are confronted with lies in developing a form of new cultural history of historical cultural analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to present a short account of the inter-disciplinary relationships between history and the ethnology of France. This account is set within the larger framework of anthropology and tries to show, at the light of recent French research, what separates and what unites both views when tackling the same topics, such as death or kinship and inheritance practice. While the present-day situation in France is characterized again by the drifting apart of both disciplines, the paper, to conclude, examines briefly the situation in other European anthropologies and shows some striking discrepancies, notably between the German and the French traditions.

The first part of the paper gives a historical overview of some ways in which the interest in the local, the national and the global has shifted European ethnology – mainly in Sweden – during this century, whereas the second part discusses current research strategies for linking these levels, exploring some possible ethnological contributions to the current debate on space, place and identity formations.

The current identity discourse inside and outside ethnology is – for different reasons –since more than a decade connected with political rhetorics. It includes a frequent labelling of artifacts and attitude as “ethnic” and the use of history in search for key-words as “roots” and “authenticity”. Since ethnologists often are authors or mediators of plausible metaphorics they seem to serve as story-tellers, as entertainers.Since ethnologists offer materials for the construction of the self by interpreting habits, rituals etc., contemporary everyday-life turns out to be a scientificated one and has lost its quality of indisputable self-evidence. Modern lives have to be narrated and explained by stories. People have learned to use a set of options and thus are enabled to celebrate a ‘virtual identity’ which turns out to be the everyday practice.Interpretations surrounding identity brought up by ethno-sciences as well as its creators achieve more importance since ethnological knowledge is to be regarded as an integral part of modern lifestyles. They demand responsibility. The planned celebrations for the year 2000 e.g. are stuffed with cited patterns of culture marking a change.

The public research policy in the humanities and the social sciences in Sweden during the postwar period – linked to the idea of the welfare state – is the starting point of this article. Priority has been given to particular research themes “facing society”. At the same time, the general left-wing orientation and the concomitant interest in processes of modern society accounts for a genuine interest of similar kind among many young ethnologists.The author’s personal research policy is summarized in a four-point program arguing for a more courageous stress of synthesis, for more culture comparisons– preferably through interdisciplinary cooperation, for combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods, and, finally, for a theoretical involvement in the study of human being, not only of cultural variation.