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- Convenors:
-
Konrad Kuhn
(University of Innsbruck)
Eija Stark (Finnish Literature Society)
Indrek Jääts (Estonian National Museum)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTIONS
- Location:
- Room H-208
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 14 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel aims at re-reading the history of the field of ethnology/folklore studies: Whose knowledge and deployment of folk construct was considered valid? In what way was this linked to the interpretation of the "political"? A special focus lies on intertwinements with totalitarian regimes.
Long Abstract:
In ethnology and folklore studies, research aims and paradigms have been developing in close interconnection with the formation and changes in ideologies of modernity, such as nationalism, democracy, as well as totalitarian regimes like fascism, socialism and communism. Building on the history of knowledge making, this panel seeks to re-examine our discipline practices in the 20th century context of social and political conditions in Europe and the US.
We do this by asking exactly how and in what way "politics" played a multifaceted role in the history of our discipline. In doing so, we assume that we are questioning "a blind spot" in ethnological knowledge production that has always been (and still is) often implicit, sometimes explicit.
On the one hand, we are interested in papers dealing with individual scholars and their relations with different political authorities or (domestic and foreign) regimes. What (often creative) forms did their resistance and/or collaboration take? On the other hand, we focus on the different ways "politics" has been thought about as a topic, explanatory value, interpretation or concept in the analysis of empirical material from the field. We do not have temporal or geographical limitations, but we do ask about the professional development since the epistemologization of folklore studies and ethnology, putting a focus on the 20th century.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 14 June, 2022, -Eglė Aleknaitė (Vilnius University)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation aims to show the complexity of the attempts to reassess the recent history of Lithuanian ethnology and folklore studies and the use of the reassessment to claim power in contemporary politics of identity and religion.
Paper long abstract:
Ethnology and folklore studies were considered as a field that contributed to the national awakening in the Soviet Lithuania after the country regained its independence in 1990, and the relationship of the disciplines with nationalism is still one of the main aspects defining their self-identity in the post-Soviet period. With the development of Sovietology and post-soviet identity politics, recently the reassessment of the disciplines started, and the motivation and arguments related to religion often play a key role in the emergent discourse.
Indeed, Lithuanian ethnographers and folklorists followed interpretations allowed by the Soviet regime and developed discourse that was often suitable for the purposes of the regime, including its anti-religious policy. This allows critics to claim the disciplines being basically tools for sovietisation and atheisation of the Lithuanian society.
However, critics’ motivation and involvement in post-Soviet identity and religion politics should also be taken into account: much of the critique is bound with the attempts to establish the image of the Catholic Church as the only actor that contributed to the regaining the Lithuanian statehood and to establish the Lithuanian national identity based on Catholicism.
In addition to the discussion of the conspicuous contribution of Lithuanian ethnologists and folklorists to projects of the Soviet regime, the presentation aims to show the complexity of the attempts to reassess the recent history of Lithuanian ethnology and folklore studies and the use of the reassessment to claim power in contemporary politics of identity and religion.
Marleen Metslaid (Estonian National Museum)
Paper short abstract:
The paper deals with the question of continuity of a national Estonian ethnology in exile and the interaction between refugee and Soviet Estonian scholars in developing the discipline after the Second World War.
Paper long abstract:
After the Second World War, many Estonian ethnologists found themselves as refugees in Sweden. They had been representatives of national sciences in the independent republic of Estonia and had tried to continue their course during the war. Despite the need to adjust to new political, cultural, and academic circumstances, scholars initially considered it necessary to develop their discipline as national one even when in exile. What kind of opportunities and obstacles did they encounter due to the policies of the host country, the capabilities of refugee community, and the availability of research sources? How did they find balance between academic ambitions and the desire to support the national policy of the refugee community? Did this kind of initiative lasted for decades until the end of the Cold War or was it just a false hope that gradually disappeared? Did they reconsider their role over the years?
Although some scholars declared that the proper academic work is done only in exile, then most of the ethnologists intensively kept track of the publications published in the Soviet homeland and wrote reviews of those for the refugee press and Western academic journals. How did they perceive domestic disciplines? Refugee ethnologists were removed from the official historiography of Soviet Estonian scholarship, but the correspondence between colleagues revived in the 1960s at the latest. What was the role of communication for the ethnologists from both side of the Iron Curtain?
Indrek Jääts (Estonian National Museum)
Paper short abstract:
Estonian ethnologists made two expeditions to the Votians in Ingria during the Second World War. Why, how and with what results? Was it collaboration with the Nazis or just exploiting their help to study a minority closely related to the Estonians?
Paper long abstract:
In 1942-1943, when Estonia and bigger part of Ingria were occupied by the Nazi Germany, a group of Estonian ethnologists carried out two expeditions to the Votians, an ethnic minority group closely related to the Estonians in linguistic terms. Ingria, or the western part of Leningrad Oblast, formed the rear of German forces besieging Leningrad back then and was administered by the army. These two expeditions, possible only with permission and support of the Nazi authorities, are an intriguing chapter in the history of Estonian ethnology and bring up many questions. Who initiated these fieldworks and why? Pre-war Estonian ethnology was considered an important branch of Estonian studies and Estonian ethnologists tended to be patriots. They were opposing the Nazi occupation. What was their motivation to visit Ingria in the war-time? Did the Nazi ideology and propaganda influence them somehow? What about their fieldwork practices and relationship with the locals? What kind of academic results did these expeditions have? I try to answer these questions using fieldwork diaries, archive documents, newspaper articles of the time, and academic texts. There are ethical questions, of course, but I do not hurry to condemn my former colleagues. I try to understand.
Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia)
Paper short abstract:
The focus of paper is to look at Soviet Latvian textbooks in the 1920s-1930s. The use of folklore in teaching is ambivalent: on the one hand, they help to maintain Latvian identity, on the other, the use of folklore becomes an ideological tool in a totalitarian system.
Paper long abstract:
In 1918 the independent state of Latvia was founded, but not all Latvians chose to live in the newly established state. Approximately 180 000 Latvians lived in the USSR in the 1920s-1930s: they were a diaspora that, for political and ideological reasons, did not have close ties with the Latvian population, however, they were one of the nationalities in the multinational USSR that tried to preserve their Latvian identity. Latvians in the USSR had their own network of schools, Latvian higher education institutions, periodicals, books and literature, theaters, and amateur circles for both adults and children. One of the ways of preserving "Latvianness" was to develop appropriate educational content, but on the other hand, there was the pressure of the totalitarian regime, which was especially intensified in the 1930s. The focus of my paper is to look at Soviet Latvian textbooks in the 1920s-1930s, focusing on how folklore was taught. All teaching materials integrated folklore texts - folk songs, fairy tales, fables, riddles, proverbs, etc. On the one hand, teaching Latvian folklore could be seen as an attempt to construct a Latvian identity through it, on the other hand, these textbooks use folklore materials and (especially) paratexts as an ideological tool to construct an interpretation of certain texts. As a result, the use of folklore in teaching and the parallel texts are ambivalent: on the one hand, they help to maintain Latvian identity, on the other, the use of folklore becomes an ideological tool in a totalitarian system.
Kristin Kuutma (University of Tartu)
Paper short abstract:
We should readdress the Cold War implications in ethnographic studies, the analytical silences or induced political manipulation, in order to understand how particular imaginaries and practices in the Soviet (metaphoric) borderland settings became to prevail with reverberations to this day.
Paper long abstract:
The recent re-polarization of the world in more ways than one should re-kindle our analytical interest to readdress the Cold War conditions and implications in the field of ethnographic studies with a fresh eye, taking particularly under examination the Cold War oppositional frameworks on the ground. These investigations could help us to understand better how particular imaginaries and practices became to prevail with possible reverberations to this day. The proposed presentation will take a closer look at how the bipolar division of the Soviet and the US political superpowers impacted the disciplines of ethnology and folklore studies in the Soviet borderland regions, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.
Social engineering agendas and the Iron Curtain circumscribed the practice of knowledge production or consumption, for that matter, while implicit and explicit ideological restrictions limited what ethnographic information could be collected and analyzed. Such circumstance generated consequently particular ethnographic and analytical silences, or induced political manipulation of disciplinary knowledge.
In a similar vein, the term borderland may appear epistemologically productive in the Cold War setting: borderlands may be both geographical and structural, including likewise academic positioning. At the same time, borderland provides a grey zone for alternatives and counter-culture: imaginaries defined by the past and possibilities for substitute identities. Thus this presentation sheds light also on the emergent reactions to the delimitng socio-political conditions and the emanating contested positions.