Ethnologia Europaea

The paper examines the interrelations between culture and economy in recent Danish globalization strategies. Taking as its starting point the thesis of an emerging ‘national competitive state’ the paper shows the huge importance ascribed in Danish globalization strategies to national culture as a force for economic competition. The ensuing version of ‘Danishness’ is discussed with reference to the literature on ‘neo-nationalism’ and, more specifically, it is argued that current Danish globalization strategies can to a significant extent be viewed as assertions of the inherent economicrationality of neo-nationalism in an emerging global ‘knowledge’ or ‘innovation’ economy.

This article develops a critique of identity-focused approaches to ethno-cultural diversity in urban settings by shifting attention from categorical identities to the question of socialities. Taking the example of a queer migrant club night as its point of departure, it shows how a focus on the forms of social engagement that are particular to migrant club scenes can contextualize identity claims but also go beyond them by highlighting the complexity of shifting affiliations and interactions that makes for the appeal of such scenes. Rather than seeing queer migrant club scenes as a protected refuge for a doubly discriminated minority, the consideration of socialities allows to reveal their functioning as semi-public urban formations.

The aim of this paper is to examine meanings of “age” in Swedish psychiatric institutions from 1850 to 1970. The paper focuses on psychiatry’s perspectives on individuals of advanced age and on the way that they were understood in terms of age. The majority of aged patients were described as irresponsible, unable to provide for themselves, and more or less unaware of the consequences of their actions. Such patients were regarded as child-like. The childish person’s development had stopped prematurely, and any improving, i.e. through developmental therapies, were scarcely to be had. For old people, this child-like stage in life might be reached sooner, or later. No matter: all that remained was a more-or-less steep downhill course marked by confinement in bed, lack of activities, and waiting for the inevitable.My choice of psychiatry as object of investigation is motivated by its place at the very centre of modern society. In psychiatry we find explicit norms of how human beings are meant to behave, how they are supposed to think, and to what moral standards they should conform. This paper analyses and shows the slow change and continuity in the practices of psychiatric care and its everyday perspectives on age.

This article deals with cultural confrontations and ideological contestations concerning the perception and reception of foreign ‘modern’ and domestic folk dances in the Netherlands between 1918 and 1955. Many contemporary intellectuals were cultural pessimists who regretted the demise of ‘organic’ ties between people. They idealized rural ‘folk culture’, and criticized the ‘cosmopolitan’ culture they ascribed to urbanites. They launched civilizing missions with respect to performing foreign dances, while presenting ‘traditional’ folk dances as a socio-culturally beneficial alternative. However, folk dances also proved to be a site of contention and conflict, particularly concerning their ‘authenticity’ and practical use.

This article discusses how the East–West boundary is renegotiated in today's unified Germany. By analyzing biographical interviews with persons born in the GDR in the 1970s, the author shows how the “East” and the “West” are given different situated meanings. The interviewees are positioned by and articulate intersecting and antagonistic discourses, thereby reifying but also challenging existing categorizations and stereotypes. Their subject positioning is an ambivalent process in which the East is described as an anachronistic but authentic “Other”, and the West is defined as a superficial consumer society or as a colonizer. The hierarchical relationship, which marks the East, but leaves the West unmarked, is thus alternately reconfirmed and questioned.