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- Convenors:
-
Nikola Balaš
(Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Kaisa Langer (TU Dresden)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Historical Approaches
- Location:
- B2.41
- Sessions:
- Thursday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
This panel proposes to question methodological issues which are connected to the Cold War history of European (Eastern Bloc) ethnology and folkloristics, especially in regard to research ethics.
Long Abstract:
The Cold War history of Eastern Bloc ethnology and folkloristics poses many pressing methodological questions related to the range of fundamental uncertainties that arise when discussing the socialist past. How to study people and institutions that have also shaped the career of the researcher? What uncertainties are there when one does not have all the relevant archives fully available? What kind of source criticism is needed when working with the documents produced under socialist power structure? How to deal with apparent lacunae? How to approach interlocutors' narratives? How to write about the past and protect one's interlocutors given their involvement in the "problematic past" by supporting the Communist Party policies or by cooperating with secret police? Even without GDPR and other legislative tools designed to protect privacy, there are issues which can cause contention and controversy even more than 30 years after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. How to deal with other issues such as plagiarism of accomplished scholars? What is it like to write about skeletons in the closet, or elephants in the room? Our panel would like to bring together those who write on the history of European socialist ethnology and folkloristics and are concerned with all these uncertainties. We also welcome scholars studying European ethnology and folkloristics outside of the Eastern Europe who deal with similar issues to discuss their methodological framework to find a nuanced and ethical way for describing the ever uncertain past.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 8 June, 2023, -Monika Golonka-Czajkowska (Jagiellonian University)
Paper short abstract:
The archives collected in the IPN by the 'Bezpieka' (the secret police) during the People's Republic of Poland open up new areas of research into the culture and society of that time. What possibilities and limitations are associated with the study of such documentation by anthropologists today?
Paper long abstract:
The anthropology of the 'Bezpieka' (the Department of Security and the Security Service) is one of the newest anthropological sub-disciplines in Poland, which began to develop after the Institute of National Remembrance (Polish: IPN) opened in 1999 the archival resources of the secret police to researchers. The subject of its interest are the detailed, multidimensional studies of the activities of the 'Bezpieka' as an agency of power directly responsible in the field, first for carrying out the revolution (1945-1947), and then, during the People's Republic of Poland (Polish: PRL), keeping an eye on the realisation of current political goals in line with the interests of the ruling communist party. The security apparatus was intended to be, to use Foucault's terminology, an efficient total disciplinary institution based on relations of rule and obedience. In reality, it became a complex socio-cultural universe, full of paradoxes. Its functionaries modified existing procedures and patterns of operations, and made hot-button decisions that changed the course of ongoing operations. It is therefore no coincidence that the broadly defined project of anthropology of the 'Bezpieka' points to processes and phenomena often situated on the periphery or in the liminal zones of the official life of this institution, including the problems of complex relations between the individual and the system. In my presentation, I will try to indicate what epistemological, methodological and ethical possibilities and limitations are associated with the study of this type of documentation by anthropologists today.
Anna Szakál (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper I explore the controversial career of József Faragó, a leading Hungarian folklorist in Romania in the Socialist era.
Paper long abstract:
In my paper I examine the controversial career of József Faragó (Brasov, 1922 – Cluj, 2004), a Hungarian folklorist in Romania, mainly through his manuscripts, printed works, ego-documents, interviews, and secret police files preserved in public archives. After the Second World War, hardly any Hungarian ethnographers remained in Transylvania, and for political reasons, the supply of experts in the study of Hungarian folk culture was completely cut off for a long time. As a consequence, for decades one person represented folklore studies in Transylvania in an almost completely dominant way. His perception is controversial both in Transylvania and in Hungary. He published many articles and volumes and did a great deal for folklore research, yet, many of his contemporaries felt that he did so in a way that he suppressed them. He could not be criticized, nor did anyone try to, because in many cases the archives were not accessible to other potential researchers only for him, therefore his data and professional claims could not be verified until the change of regime. In my paper, I will also briefly show how Faragó's oeuvre fits into broader tendencies, and how Hungarian folkloristics in Transylvania has been able to emerge from his shadow.
Leonia Brzozowska (Doctoral School in the Humanities of Jagiellonian University, Ethnographic Museum in Krakow)
Paper short abstract:
To what extent are we entitled to talk about the political past of our interlocutors? What a picture of socialist authorities emerge from their narratives? I try to answer these and other questions in relation to memory research on the example of folk art community of Zalipie (Lesser Poland).
Paper long abstract:
The paper discusses the issues of memory research on the political entanglement of folk art in the People's Republic of Poland (PRL) on the example of Zalipie (Lesser Poland), a village world famous for painting floral ornaments.
Starting from the 1940s, the phenomenon was influenced by researchers directly or indirectly cooperating with the socialist authorities. Those activities were closely related to the official cultural policy of the PRL and have a direct impact on Zalipie artists at that time. Folk art activities brought measurable economic benefits. Female painters could sell their handicrafts and had the opportunity to travel abroad.
The turning point in the history of Zalipie was the political transformation (1989) and its consequences for Polish folk artists. The rejecting the policy of caring about folk culture and the deep economic crisis of the 1990s make up ‘the trauma of great change’ (Sztompka 2000).
In the contemporary research in Zalipie, references to the PRL are constantly appearing. That memory turns out to be troublesome, and evoke opinions inconsistent with the dominant narrative of criticism of the socialist authorities.
Research in the field of anthropology of memory in relation to the socialist past of folk art is a source of methodological dilemmas. To what extent are we entitled to talk about the political past of our interlocutors? What a picture of the PRL emerge from their narratives? How to read them in relation to archives and other existing sources? Finally: what mark has the transformation left on these stories?