LOCAL ETHOGRAPHY

1
LOCAL ETHOGRAPHY

• Volkskunde (German) - folklore,
• Rodinovedenie (Russian) native country lore.
• Critique in Tokarev (1978 32)
• developing in its own way from beg. 19th century
  (nat. movement)
• less theoretical thinking to it
• dominated by data gathering, empiricism
• vague romantic admiration

2
French Revolution of 1789 and Romantic Nationalism

• European philosophy and Romantic Nationalism as
  response to the social and political upheavals
  triggered by the French Revolution
• CAUSES
• Resentment of royal absolutism
• Resentment of the seigneurial system by peasants,
  wage-earners, and, to a lesser extent, the
  bourgeoisie
• The rise of enlightenment ideals.
• An unmanageable national debt, both caused by and
  exacerbating the burden of a grossly inequitable
  system of taxation.
• Food scarcity in the months immediately before
  the revolution.
• Resentment at noble privilege and dominance in
  public life by the ambitious professional
  classes.

"Liberty leading the People" by Eugène Delacroix
3
Kulturwissenschaften (cultural studies)
Johann von Herder (1744-1803)

• Human science of modernity
• Poetic philosopher
• Volkgeist (folk spirit)
• Idea of belonging to a nation, i.e. community
• that is made up of kinship, history, social
• solidarity and cultural affinity
• -paved the way to nationalism

4
The Brothers Grimm and their fairy tales
were inspired by von Herders writing to start
collection of folk tales labelled authentically
German
Rupuntzel
Hansel and Gretel
5
Romantic Nationalism

• A form of nationalism which appeals to particular
  manner of practice, the language, race, culture,
  religion and customs
• nation in its primal sense embraces those who
  were born within the culture
• This form of nationalism arose in reaction to
  dynastic or imperial hegemony

6
Zeitgeist (spirit of the age)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770-1831

• Philosophy of Hegel there was a spirit of the
  age which inhabited a particular people at a
  particular time
• That people become the active determiner of
  history, that their cultural and political moment
  came.

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Whom is local ethnography addressed to?

• -local people themselves, younger generations.
  Essential for the self-image and social ethics
  of Native people (Sioui 1992xi)
• political and social message of the local
  projects (writings, museums, exhibitions, etc) is
  also aimed at authorities.

8
Themes in native or local ethnography/anthropology

• Ethnohistory ethnic origin, ethnogenesis,
  ethnonyms, ethnic identity
• Political anthropology Land Claims in North
  America clan lands (obschina) for
  hunting/gathering and reindeer pastures in
  Siberia fishing grounds, aboriginal rights
  (Australia)
• Linguistic anthropology revivalism of native
  languages creation of written systems,
  orthography (e.g. Tlingit language, Yukon)
  thematic dictionaries
• Symbolism, symbolic anthropology spiritual and
  esthetic roots of particular culture or society.
  Folk wisdom, shamanism. Basso (1996 7) on
  symbolic places durable symbols of distant
  events, and indispensable tools for remembering
  and imagining them.

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Can Native people voice/write ethnography better?

• The insight of local anthropologists into the
  process are critical for our understanding, local
  ethnographic knowledge is crucial for translating
  whats going on.
• Applicability and instrumentalism of local
  ethnographic projects (medicinal plant
  collection, dictionaries, recording elders
  stories, folklore). Practice versus Science.
• Sensitivity to dreams, art, and poetry is
  characteristic of many Native ethnographers
  (Balzer 1995 18). Belief versus Pragmatism.
• Anthropological modes of representation (Narayan
  1993). Narration versus Theory. Cf Strathern
  writer versus author.