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Know24


Unwriting academic traditions: folklore studies and ethnography in the long nineteenth century 
Convenors:
Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Gabriele d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara)
Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (Centro di Ricerca MODI - Università di Bologna)
Han F. Vermeulen (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
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Chair:
Daniela Salvucci (Free University of Bolzano-Bozen)
Format:
Panel

Short Abstract:

This panel aims at deconstructing and unwriting academic definitions of folklore studies and ethnography as separate disciplines. We invite papers exploring the connections and changing relations between both fields of inquiry, across national frontiers, during the Long Nineteenth Century.

Long Abstract:

If Unwriting is a call to revisit accepted paradigms and “to reflect on how we have been doing things and how they can be done differently,” it is also a call to deconstruct and reframe well-known academic traditions, exploring new threads that connect actors, theories, practices, and institutions in the production of anthropological knowledge.

Today, folklore studies and ethnography are frequently envisaged as distinct fields of inquiry (e.g. in England, France, Germany). Historical cases, however, signal that this has not always been the case as these disciplines often adopted similar ways of looking at the world, both documenting sociocultural phenomena at home (within the observer’s society) and abroad (in other societies, often overseas). Thus, in London, at the Ethnological Society (1843-1871) ethnography covered exotic as well as European populations. In Italy, Lamberto Loria (1906) reframed folklore studies as Etnografia Italiana. William Thoms’ very notion of “folk-lore” (1846) would later encompass a wide domain of research, ranging from European traditional to extra-European societies (Dorson 1968).

Convergence in research priorities and overlapping scholarly networks call for a renewed exploration of the relations between folklore studies and ethnography. We propose to highlight these connecting threads in the Long Nineteenth Century, focusing on research programs, theories and terminology; observational methodologies and data recording practices; forms of knowledge production; institutions, scholarly networks, and actors involved in empirical research. We invite papers presenting critical cases that bring in perspectives on the changing relations – through time and across national frontiers – between folklore studies and ethnography.

Accepted papers:

Session 1
 
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