Paper short abstract:

The presentation will give a brief introduction to the history of ethnology and anthropology as academic disciplines in Slovenia, focusing on the efforts of the last decades to impart ethnological and anthropological knowledge outside the academic education system.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnology and cultural anthropology in Slovenia: Discipline at and beyond the academia

Ethnology as an academic discipline in Slovenia will celebrate its 85th anniversary in 2025. Ethnology has been intertwined with anthropology since the last decades of the 20th century, which was also the time when topics and approaches of both disciplines were introduced into primary and secondary education. The presentation will give a brief introduction to the history of ethnology and anthropology as academic disciplines in Slovenia, while it will focus mostly on the efforts of the last decades to introduce ethnological and anthropological knowledge outside the Slovenian academic education system. Therefore, the curricula of some primary and secondary school courses that include ethnological and anthropological topics are presented and analysed. It turns out that, on the one hand, heritage, local and regional traditions are strongly emphasised, while their commodification, entrepreneurial application and community and identity building are seen as the ultimate goals of education. On the other hand, minorities, diversity, tolerance, human rights and similar social or power-related issues have also recently received some attention in the curricula. The presentation will also illustrate how museum education has gradually been introduced in both national and regional museums with their ethnology departments. And as the analysis will show, all these processes have not been accompanied by a systematic reflection at the academic level, as the study of ethnology and cultural anthropology will not offer a specialisation in the anthropology of education until 2024.