Ethnological Knowledges and their Political Contexts Aplenc, Veronica E
Journal of Folklore Research: An International Journal of Folklore and Ethnomusicology,
2010-January, 2010, 2010-00-00, 20100101, Letnik:
47, Številka:
1-2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In her article "Slovenian Folk Culture: Between Academic Knowledge and Public Display," Ingrid Slavec Gradisnik presents an overview of Slovenian folklore research, tracing its historical development ...through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and ending with an epilogue about the post-1991 period of independence. Whether working with a folk group or producing a disciplinary history, North American folklorists today insist on an explicit engagement with political concerns to obtain theoretically valid work. Contrasting what Slavec Gradisnik describes as Slovenian heteroglossic disciplinary history with the practices of North American folklorists suggests questions beyond those of definition (such as, should we broadly conceptualize "the folk" as an accessible community of "we the people," in turn made up of smaller groups, or as a linguistically bound group only open to ethnically defined heirs?). ...specific disciplinary divisions emerged in the Slovenian academic literature and research communities: contemporary lifeways were studied extensively, but research was strictly divided by theoretical approach, topical focus, and discipline of production.
This article examines the construction of North American and Slovenian vernacular architecture studies and points to assumptions that guide researchers, including unofficial political beliefs held by ...scholars. Vernacular architecture studies in North America exhibit a concern for the contemporary everyday, which derives in part from widespread belief in the nation as flexible and incorporative, as well as a concomitant understanding that modernity is fluid and centered in the present. In contrast, Slovenian folkloristics and Slovenian architecture studies insist on "traditional" forms as vernacular architecture, a focus that stems from disciplinary continuities predating the socialist period, from folk myths of the nation that draw on nineteenth-century folkloristic constructions, and from an associated, temporally fixed notion of modernity. The striking differences between views of "folk" architecture in North America and Slovenia underscore the spatio-temporal specificity of modernity, as well as the need to acknowledge situated, not universal, subjectivities and disciplinary concepts.
Pp. xi + 211, list of illustrations, acknowledgments, note on transliteration, photographs, index.) In Villages on Stage: Folklore and Nationalism in the Republic of Moldova, Jennifer Cash explores ...the contemporary construction of national identity through amateur folk dance performances in Moldova, a former Soviet republic and now independent country. The chapter then focuses in detail on folk dance festivals in the 2000s, which are really competitions, exploring the deliberate construction and evaluation of "authentic" folklore, the authorial voice of the folklorist-judge, and the link between the aesthetically authentic and the moral.
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