Ethnologia Europaea

The “new Europe” is making a noticeable contribution to the reorganisation of “peoplehood and territory”. By doing so, EU-Europe is really constructing with “Euroland” and “Schengenland” a “European space”. But in a powerful process it is simultaneously creating “European places” and “European localities”, whereby the “European” is becoming increasingly “local” and the “local” clearly “europeanised” at the same time. Using Brussels, Euralille and Vienna as examples, this essay will look into this process of the localisation of Europe and the Europeanisation of the local. In doing so, my ethnographical perspective is directed at cities, setting its sights on the various forms but also on the respective protagonists of Europeanisation, because the Europeanisation of the local and the localisation of the European are often contested and linked with the construction of a specific“cultural heritage”.

The principal purpose of this article is to pay attention to events that emphasize and give profile to local, everyday life. It also focuses on “the multiplicity of Europe” and the politics of distinction through local markets, national commemoration days and open-air museums. Cultural heritage is presented as an ongoing process of production and re-production of meaning in these events. The article raises questions about how we can conduct fieldwork on matters as elusive as “the presence of Europe”, and the sensory experiences of taking part in ceremonial activities.

In the year 2000, Bergen, the secondlargest city of Norway, managed to get the status of European City of Culture. The new won position provided opportunities to profile Bergen as a modern city and prove its rank at the national and international stage. However, results did not measure up to ambitions. Looking back, it seems that the year turned out to be dedicated to a rural and regional self-celebration. In a way Bergen might be regarded as an example of how pre-modern culture heritage get actualised and rediscovered in an urban setting. This raises questions regarding the intentions of emphasising the past and how people respond to such efforts. In answering these questions, focus will be directed towards how place not only is an integral part of social, economic and political processes, but also the way it constitutes essential elements that touches upon the inner landscape of the individual.

The importance of place and material culture for identity-construction in contemporary European regionalism is here brought up in an investigation of the region of Istria in Croatia and Slovenia. Theories of modernity tend to regard place either as disappearing in a time-place compression or as a compensation for the uprooting in a world of globalisation and insecurity. A slightly different perspective comes to the fore when focus is being put on how regions actually are used in a contemporary praxis: as basis for people’s culture building and identification. Not as a place to defend or escape to, but as an “opening”, a possibility. From a phenomenological point of view the imaginary potentials of things and heritage are being discussed, arguing that lived experience and agency must be studied in parallel to narrations and cultural constructions. Regions also could be seen both as outcomes of micro-nationalism and as cultural imaginaries where something different is formulated.

Violence imposed on a place bears not only the implicit challenge to the identities associated with it, but it also provokes responses related to a sense of place. In the context of war, place suddenly matters in a more direct and more intense way. The uniqueness of the place based primarily on the social value it has for people becomes visible and reflected upon as concrete and at one with action and thought. In this article, personal narratives on war experiences in the 1990s by the civilians in Dubrovnik, are related to Edward S. Casey’s propositions about every place being encultured and every culture being implaced. The tension is explored, between being “Europeans” and being “war victims” – two types of place-bound identity.

The paper addresses the performance and display of cultural heritage in context of late modern urban culture. Contemporary metropolises constitute core settings for the political and symbolic representation of cultural diversity and multiculturalism. One of the most important forms of such representation is the “ethnic” or “multi-ethnic” festival. The Carnival of Cultures in Berlin is analysed as anexample and compared to the much more prominent Notting Hill Carnival. The paper concludes that “ethnic” cultural heritage has strong social and political components which should be made central in ethnological analysis.

There is growing belief within the discipline of cultural studies that heritage no longer relates to our historical past, but attempts to recreate a mythological past. We are witnessing a progressive process in which the Land of the Past is changing into the Land of the Different, a world which may well be charged with moral messages; an arena designed to create random continuity and cultural identities, a past designed to provide experiences and identities. A past intended to convince through its credibility rather than its genuineness, to be experienced rather than understood.In order to discuss what happens in this ”muddled past”, in the transition between history and heritage, this article focus on the specific praxis that makes the Lands of the Past materialise. Detailed, first-hand descriptions and interpretations of how school children encounter, perceive, and invest two Norwegian historical parks with significance, play with traditions, consume and practice heritage, and make the past happen. To establish further knowledge regarding the cultural processes associated with modernity’s relationship with the past, comparative analysis of the traditional museums is also taken into the discussions.

This paper shows how the rhetoric of food can be used as a tool in the construction of European identities. Meals, shopping, cooking, manufacture and marketing are used as a mean to achieve the goal of a distinctive European character – particularly through the encouragement of culinary diversity. By talking of identities in the plural, I want to demonstrate that, parallel to the intention of strengthening a pan-European community, food can be used to highlight many contrastive identities. The labelling of food with texts and pictures offers a symbolic field that is redolent with meaning, where questions of distinction and categorization, belonging and anchorage in a changeable world are both raised and answered.

This article proposes reflections about how food and restaurants can be a comment on territorial issues. Empirically it mainly departs from two different eating experiences in Istrian restaurants in Croatia. It illustrates different understandings of what Europe can represent and how our understanding about food cultures reflect our interpretation and reflection about concepts such as cultural heterogenisation/homogenisation, national identity and globalisation.