Author: Anttonen, Pertti

Source: Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Autumn 2008 , pp. 84-97(14)

Abstract:

All scholarly fields feed on rhetoric of praise and criticism, mostly self-praise and self-criticism. Ethnology and folklore studies are not exceptions in this, regardless of whether they constitute a single field or two separate but related ones. This essay discusses questions concerning ethnological practice and object formation, cultural theory and the theory of tradition (or the lack thereof), cultural transmission, cultural representation, and the ethics and politics of cultural ownership and repatriation. It draws on general observations as well as on work in progress. The main concern is with a discursive move: from tradition to heritage, from the ethnography of repetition and replication to cultural relativist descriptions and prescriptions of identity construction and cultural policy, from ethnography as explanation to ethnography as representation and presentation. In addition, the essay seeks to delineate other underlying tenets that appear to constitute our traditions and heritages - both as strengths and as long-term constraints and biases. Where is ethnology headed in its quest to transcend theories and practices? Less theory and more practice? More theory on practice? Or more practice on theory?

Keywords: CHRISTIAN HERITAGE; ETHNOPOLITICS; FINLAND; REPRESENTATION; TEXTUALISATION

DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2008.170206

User name

 

Password

 

 

Remember me

 

 

 

• forgotten your password?
• Sign in via Athens