Original scientific paper
THE CHALLENGES OF APPLIED FOLKLORE STUDIES AND ETHNOLOGY
Tvrtko Zebec
orcid.org/0000-0002-9222-5340
; Intitute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The appearance and the positive and the negative reception of the staged performance of a
contemporary church feast by the profession and the TV, as a public medium, have enticed
the rethinking of the ways of evaluation and the authorities which decide on the
representativeness of certain folklore performances. The text discusses the questions of the
folk art, especially folk dance, song, costume, their stage presentation, and the questions
— what is these days considered authentic in this field of cultural activity and evaluation,
what is considered representative, who creates contemporary folklore, who evaluates and
interprets it and how, what is the current state of this field in Croatia, and how public
opinion on this matter is created and shaped. These questions do not refer exclusively to
the field of ethnochoreology, but also to ethnology and folklore studies as a whole. By
analyzing and interpreting the staged performance of a contemporary church feast and
partly the situation with the current folklore festival paradigms, the author answers the
questions about himself and his ethnologist and folklorist coprofessionals, i.e. about the
current state of the profession in Croatia. His intent is to show various perspectives by
which complex social relations in a part of contemporary Croatian community are
revealed.
Keywords
folklore; folklore festivals; authenticity
Hrčak ID:
33130
URI
Publication date:
2.12.2002.
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