Ethnologia Europaea

The author– who has retired from a chair in European ethnology at the University of Copenhagen – has a past as curator at the Open Air Museum near Copenhagen. In this article he is investigating his own roots by analyzing the role that “folk culture”, especially peasant houses and dwelling-rooms, played in the construction of national culture.The interest for the material elements of folk culture developed inside the framework of the great exhibitions, and was further cultivated in two new types of permanent institutions: museums of applied art and “folk museums”/open air museums. The establishment of folk museums culminated in the decades around 1900. This was also a period of national mobilization and dominated by the national principle that political and ethnic unity should agree, with oppression of minorities as well as their political mobilization as consequences. How is this development mirrored in the uses of folk culture? Among other things in the way that ethnic groups without a proper state of their own become providers of national symbols for the dominant nations. This is exemplified by the way in which the Dutch, the Germans and the Danes have used elements of Frisian culture in their respective nation-building. In the same period there is a national struggle to possess desired treasures of folk culture. This is illustrated by two examples of a national German-Danish conflict about old farm houses from the border area between the two nations.

In recent Norwegian society we can observe great changes in the use and the apprehension of humour, both in the mass media and in the daily life of people. Changes occur in the expectations, practice and evaluation of humorous communication.The focus in this article is on the changes in gender differences as regards humour. Creating my sources through fieldwork and distributing detailed questionnaires, I have been careful to establish a body of material that reflects experiences and views held by the informants. The possibility of applying an internal perspective to the relationship between humour and gender gives an opportunity to concretize and qualify theoretically based knowledge of gender differences. In the main the reflections of the informants verify our knowledge of gender patterns in the use and interpretation of humour, but at the same time they demonstrate the variety of apprehension inherent in this extensive field of communication.

The paper examines the intersection of tourist productions and materialized fiction such as Märchen and other narrative genres in themed environments. On the backdrop of the rarely considered history of the materialization of genres such as the folk tale, a spectrum of touristic sites in Carinthia (Kärnten), Austria, are examined in terms of their aesthetic, generic, and ideological components. In the confluence of cultural commodification, market, and touristic utopias, the tensions between a globalizing economy and local aesthetic, educational and economic practices become apparent.

Some presentations of the history of leprosy can be seen as paradigmatic stories of how the knowledge of leprosy has been constituted in a historical process.Conflicts in the daily lives of leprosy patients have arisen as a result of two basically opposing stories. One emphasizes the continuity between leprosy in modern life with its existence in an ancient past. The other emphasizes the historical breaking points. These conflicting stories have different repercussions as to which form of knowledge of leprosy is produced or reproduced. Power over the knowledge about leprosy is maintained by people that become accomplices in these stories. This article demonstrates how a Greek woman who suffers from leprosy incorporates her interpretations on history with her self-understanding. The analysis shows she transforms the painful history into an embodied force using intertextual strategies. Two theoretical frameworks, folkloristic text analysis and discourse analysis in a Foucaultian sense, provide its points of departure. The conclusion points to some of the consequences of a linkage between these two frameworks and shows that the intertextual strategies of leprosy patients can be connected to each. This assumes that intertextuality can be viewed on two analytical levels. One level concerns the strategic intertextual constructs of the leprosy sufferers. The other concerns the contexts of meaning in which these constructs are a part.

Anhand von Artikeln aus den sowjetischen Jugendzeitschriften Smena und Sobesednik und Leserbriefen an beide Zeitschriften aus der 80er Jahren werden Imaginationen des westlichen Auslands und der Sowjetunion, ihre diskursive Herstellung und Veränderung nachgezeichnet. Gerade unter der Bedingungen von Perestrojka (Umbau) und Glasnost‘ (Offenheit) verliefen in der zweiten Hälfte der 80er Jahre presseöffentliche Auseinandersetzungen besonders dynamisch, die sowjetische Presseöffentlichkeit wurde pluralistischer und differenzierter. Im Zuge der gesellschaftlichen Neuorientierung lösten neue symbolische kulturelle Ordnungen systemisch bestimmte Verortungen ab und führten zu differenzierteren Betrachtungen und Standortbestimmungen fremder und eigener, kapitalistischer und sozialistischer Lebensweisen, kultureller Leistungen und sozialer Errungenschaften; neue virtuelle Kartierungen entstanden. Interessant sind nicht nur die Logiken, nach denen sie gezeichnet wurden, sondern vielmehr auch das in der späten Sowjetunion spezifische Wechselspiel von Presseberichterstattung und Leserbriefen, das durch eine eigentümliche Beziehung zwischen Redaktion und LeserInnen geprägt war.

Turning to the example of a particular Hungarian intellectual circle, I examine how Western-oriented thinkers in Eastern Europe formed their views about the pinnacle of civilization between the two world wars. My inquiry centers around the intellectual community of a literary and critical journal called Nyugal (West) which exerted a crucial and enduring influence on Hungarian print culture and public debates. The paper reveals that dreaming of and interpreting modernity in its fully developed Western forms fostered the creation of meaning and dignity for a local culture but developed new visions and expressions of life transcending local contexts and possibilities as well.

Compared to the research done in urban ethnology in other European countries, the French studies in this field come up with some interesting features. In order to formulate a critical evaluation of urban ethnology in France, the following article sketches its development, capturing trends and main topics and trying to identify structural patterns. It turns out that ethnological approaches to urban culture have turned up since the 1970s and that this field of research has been practices mainly in Paris. There is no particular discipline dealing with urban ethnology, investigations are carried out by specialists from various disciplines, working individually or in teams. In view of the heterogenous approaches the scientific positions of French urban ethnology can hardly be defined precisely. Nevertheless, a particular interest for ‘the other’ within the own society can be seen to emerge. The various but often highly specialized projects of contemporary research form a colorful mosaic, reflecting an ‘ethnology in the city’ (ethnologie dansla ville) whereas a more general ‘ethnology of the city’ (ethnologie de la ville) is still lacking.