Folkloristics evolved into an independent scholarship in the context of the nationbuilding
process and the ideas of national romanticism, which implicitly continue
to prevail in many countries. While ...the experience, expressive culture and
environment studied by folklorists today appears dynamic and varied, the discipline
has also undergone a conceptual change. However, theoretical discussions
have remained relatively scarce, particularly in Estonian. Folklorists tend to use
many concepts that are inter- or transdisciplinary in essence, as if these were
neutral, objective or extemporal formulations and epistemological givens, instead
of recognizing their constructed nature and dependence on social, political or historical
contingencies. this contribution proposes to elaborate on the development
of particular concepts (culture, representation, tradition, memory, and cultural
heritage) through international disciplinary histories, and to contemplate their
interpretations as well as their interpretative potentials.
This presentation discusses some aspects of narrative, or narrated, representation by combining life narrative, life-writing and reflexive investigation into disciplinary history, i.e. the progress ...of academic folkloristics in the early 20th century. The broader theoretical and methodological questions dovetail with the philosophical concerns of history writing, but also with the generic
strategies and narrative modes emergent in biographical writing.
The historical perspective focuses on a key figure in Estonian folkloristics and folk narrative research, Matthias Johann Eisen (1857–1934). He was a highly productive collector of expressive culture in narrative form, but also a prolific author and editor of numerous volumes. The current study will focus on narratives which represent this seminal cultural figure for posterity in biographical or autobiographical essays and memoirs, while aiming to analyse Eisen’s public and self-referential representation, based on publications and manuscripts engaged in constructing his life narrative. This perspective on narrative discourse combines a critical examination of historical representation with a reflexive analysis of individual portrayals created by selves and others in
the process, guided by the perception of constructedness and representational contingencies of the writing of life history. Such analysis of life writing includes an insight into the politics of remembering occurring in public or private contexts, and the positionality of the writers, in order to disclose the discursive aspects of the production and circulation of images, metaphors and narratives that finally constitute our knowledge about historical figures, which also largely
defines their reception from the past to the present.
This is the second volume of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics special issue, presenting a selection of articles arising from two interrelated scholarly events held at the University of ...Tartu, Estonia, in the summer of 2009. One of them, an interdisciplinary international network and training course entitled “Local Knowledge and Open Borders: Creativity and Heritage”, comprised a session of lectures and seminars covering various perspectives and methodological approaches within heritage studies. This session
included the maintenance, celebration and manipulation of cultural heritage in its role of negotiating between creativity and conservation, and featured contributions from both senior and junior scholars from various parts of Europe.
In the following I discuss vernacular religion as a tool for conesting and manifesting identities in Estonia. The stud takes a look at an overwhelming impact of the Soviet system of state atheism ...combined with constraining sociopolitical norms and oppression of cultural individuality on the religious ideology that emerged in the modern, secularised Estonian society under the Soviet rule. In such a context vernacular forms of religiosity were perceived and practised in Estonia with obvious political connotations. Afther regaining idependence on August 20, 1991 this ideology of opposition had not ceased, but carried on up to the present-day. This analysis of interdisciplinary approach will focus on the historical overview of the emergence of particular religious movements, though the main emphasis will be placed on developments in the 1990s. The given examination draws mostly on published material and documented manifestations available in print, as well as on ethnographic observation of social interaction, although no individual or detailed interviews were carried out by the author. The aim of this contribution is therefore a general mapping of a particular situation under the circumstances of the most turbulent transitional phase in recent Estonian history, while focusing on the social visibility of those religious identities and the image projected to the general public.
Heritage is today actively implemented in policies globally, and yet the categorisation and instrumentalisation of the realm of cultural heritage entails rather contradictory aspects. In the ...discourse of culture, heritage is an abstraction, and what it signifies is subject to interpretation. This contribution gives a brief overview of the contemporary discussion of the epistemological and ontological premises of cultural heritage. It has been stated that heritage is a social construction, and a mode of cultural production that emanates from a metacultural relationship. The critical assessment and theorisation of heritage includes an enquiry into tangible and intangible heritagisation, knowledge production, heritage politics, and the question of ownership.
The current special issue of JEF presents a selection of articles that were written as a result of two interrelated scholarly events arranged at the University of Tartu, Estonia in the summer of ...2009. One of them, an interdisciplinary international network and training course entitled “Local Knowledge and Open Borders: Creativity and Heritage” comprised a session of lectures and seminars that discussed various perspectives and methodological approaches in heritage studies. At the same time this event introduced
an overview of the maintenance, celebration and manipulation of cultural heritage in its role of negotiating between creativity and conservation, with both senior and junior scholars from various parts of Europe contributing. Cultural heritage is a value-laden term that implies locality, and yet its categorisation or political implementation is embedded in the globalised world. The other interlinked session convened the SIEF (Société Internationale d´Ethnologie et de Folklore) Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Property. This academic network proposes to analyse the position and meanings of cultural heritage and cultural property at different societal levels in the modern world and its individual nation states, to examine the repercussions of heritage politics or the concurrent influence of tourism on existing practices and to investigate the negotiated or contested relationships between tangible and intangible heritage from the perspective of the transnational organisations of cultural politics. The lectures, seminars and conference sessions at the University of Tartu were hosted by the Institute of Cultural Research and Fine Arts, the Open University, and the Centre of Excellence on Cultural Theory. Financial support was provided by UNESCO via their Partnership Programme, by the EU through the European Regional Development Fund, and by the Estonian Science Foundation, Grant No. 7795.
Kristin Kuutma
Guest editor
This contribution analyzes the interplay of ethnographic and poetic agendas, the negotiation of synergetic or conflicting objectives in the production and editing of a seminal representation of the ...Sámi, Muitalus sámiid birra. My main focus is on the collaborative effort of the publication process, to investigate the emergence and negotiation of representational authority, of cultural poetics, of social and cultural critique, in order to defy the preconception of a passive informant of a cultural experience. The Sámi narrator Johan Turi is discussed, instead, as an active agent in providing a voice to the Sámi people in the collaborative process of ethnography writing. My approach is interdisciplinary, being inspired by different inquiries in anthropology and cultural history, while adding a subjective interpretation in discerning the production of a multifaceted ethnographic representation, both by the cultural insider and the inquisitive outsider.
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