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Paper short abstract

At the beginning of the 1990s, traditional Estonian ethnography, which had contributed to nation-building and the strengthening of Estonian identity, was changed into a Western-style ethnology (close to anthropology), which takes a critical view of nationalism and contributes to its deconstruction.

Paper long abstract

A discipline studying peoples and their culture started in Estonia in the 19th century. At that time, Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, and local ethnography developed along Russian (but also German and Finnish) lines. From the outset, the most common name for the discipline in Estonia was "etnograafia". This remained the case in the 1920s and 1930s, when Estonia was an independent country, and also after World War II, when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. (In Russia, it was also called "etnografiya" until the end of the Soviet period.) In the early 1990s, when Estonia regained its independence, "etnograafia" was renamed "etnoloogia". The reason for this was a desire to distance itself from the Soviet legacy, to join the West, and make itself understandable in the English-speaking world. The central object of study in earlier ethnography had been peoples and their culture (Estonians first of all, but also other Finno-Ugrians). Now, this focus began to disappear, and ethnology moved closer to cultural and social anthropology, which were also imported to Estonia. The range of topics studied expanded dramatically, but at the same time, the disciplinary identity of ethnology began to fade. The relationship between the discipline and nationalism also changed. Whereas previously, including most of the Soviet period, ethnography had contributed to the nation-building and the strengthening of Estonian identity, the new ethnology became more of a critic and de-constructor of nationalism.