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Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the example of (Ingrian-)Finnish cultural self-government, I analyse how Estonia’s dysfunctional National Minorities Cultural Autonomy Act serves the interests of the state and shifts the responsibility for the usability of the law to minorities, transforming its very purpose.

Paper long abstract:

When Estonia restored its independence in 1991, it claimed to be picking up from where it had been forced to leave off in 1940. Some of the key laws passed by the young-old state were modelled after regulations that had been in force in the interwar Republic of Estonia. Thus, the 1993 National Minorities Cultural Autonomy Act followed the example of the 1925 Law on Cultural Self-Government for National Minorities. During the past thirty years, only two minorities – Finns (2004) and Swedes (2007) – have used the opportunity to organise themselves based on this act and they both struggle to sustain their hard-won cultural self-governments.

Drawing on interviews with representatives of Ingrian-Finnish and Finnish cultural associations in Estonia as well as on an analysis of media and policy texts, this presentation explores the purposes and shortcomings of the National Minorities Cultural Autonomy Act. Besides discussing how the broken regulation serves the interests of the state, the paper asks how it shifts the responsibility for the usability of the law to minorities’ cultural organisations and eventually to individuals identifying as Ingrian Finns. Consequently, the very purpose of the law to support minority cultures and identities seems to be transforming into something else. This raises further questions about minorities’ reasons for preferring cultural self-governance to other, more mundane forms of self-organisation.

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Paper short abstract:

Last year Karelian activists accused the project Laments in Contemporary Finland of cultural appropriation. The case of this lament tradition is more complex than it first looks. I discuss the lines of the continuum of Karelian lament tradition and the frames where laments are seen.

Paper long abstract:

Last year young Karelian activists accused a project that study laments in contemporary Finland of cultural appropriation. The lament tradition known in contemporary Finnish society comes from the Karelian and Ingrian lament traditions, which both have a ritual background. In contemporary Finland, laments are performed by professional musicians in concerts, lamenting is taught in courses and applied for various purposes. The language of laments in contemporary Finland is often based in Finnish - not Karelian. There is no definite evidence that Finns (Finnish speaking people) have lamented in the past. However, from the point of cultural appropriation the situation is not as simple as it looks here.

The questions of appropriation are political and about the harms that the appropriation may cause in this case to Karelians. But: 1) The question of who is Karelian is not either-or. Many of Finnish speaking Finns have Karelian speaking Karelian ancestry, and one's identity can include these both. 2) The lines of the development of the lament tradition vary. In general, the tradition has changed along with changing sociocultural contexts. During the last century, the meanings laments have assigned and frames they are set, have varied.

In this paper, I present the continuum from the ritual Karelian lamenting to the various contemporary lament performances in Finland and ask, who are allowed to lament or study laments, who are the authority to rule it - and are there answers to these questions.

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Paper short abstract:

In my presentation, I would like to examine the possibilities of scholars in an anti-scholar and suppressive regime. I will present the lives and careers of five persons who were born as Hungarians in nationalist Romania and whose scientific work was closely connected to Ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation, I would like to examine the possibilities of scholars in an anti-scholar and suppressive regime. I will present the lives and careers of five persons who were born as Hungarians in nationalist Romania and whose scientific work was closely connected to ethnography. I would like to show how one of them is remembered today as a scholar of honesty and unwavering morals, how another one of them is believed to have possibly worked undercover for the government, and how others' work was hindered and blocked by the regime that eventually caused their death. I would also like to examine the role ethnography played in the scholarly scene, and how it affected the research path of scholars.

In order to be able to present the history of science in not a purely linear manner, but also to be able to respond to more complex questions, we would primarily have to examine ego-documents (correspondances, journals, memoirs). In a dictatorship, however, these are rather more scarce and often written with self-censorship. Additionally - and this reflects both on Transylvanian Hungarian research strategy and on how critically ethnography as a discipline regards itself - these documents were never placed into public collections. Therefore, the research of this topic necessitates both tracing these primary sources and placing them into public collections.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper follows the making of a Danish UNESCO ICH nomination file. It shows how heritagisation in the form of applying to a UNESCO list is a matter of translating cultural practices into a convincing nomination file able to travel and gather allies on its way to UNESCO inscription.

Paper long abstract:

Since the adoption of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003, a total of 629 elements consisting of cultural and social practices, oral traditions, skills, etc. from 139 different countries have been inscribed on the two lists and one register associated with the convention. However, my experiences from fieldwork (2018-), where I ethnographically follow the work that goes into producing a UNESCO nomination file, are in stark contrast to the exuberant and lively display of “human creativity” and “cultural diversity” at the UNESCO website. Rather than dealing with boys’ choir soundscapes, folk high schools or clinker boat traditions, the nomination processes concern themselves, first and foremost, with pile upon pile of paper.

In this presentation, I will follow the nomination file of the European Boys’ Choir Tradition as it slowly takes shape over the course of several meetings in the spring of 2020. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s work on the making of French administrative law and his science and technology studies, I argue that heritagisation, in this particular UNESCO-ICH version, is a question of translation. While negotiating which boxes to tick and filling out forms, communities, groups and individuals turn their cultural practices into immutable mobile files hopefully capable of securing the sought-after UNESCO recognition. In the end, it is these files or inscriptions of cultural practices that are the ones being inscribed on the UNESCO lists of intangible cultural heritage.