Original scientific paper

VID VULETIĆ VUKASOVIĆ AND SALVATION ETHNOLOGY

Sanja Potkonjak orcid.org/0000-0003-1528-0765 ; Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Univrsity of Zagreb

Abstract

This article is the contribution to better understanding of the ethnographic
work of Vid Vuletić Vukasović. Firstly, this article puts Vukasović within
the framework of dominant ethnological theories of the end of the 19th and
the beginning of the 20th century, which marked the beginnings of European
and Croatian ethnology. This text is trying to analyse the idea of salvation
ethnology and its impact on the rhetorics of Þrst Croatian ethnologists, as well
as to argument its universal rhetorical value in Anglo-Saxon anthropology
and European ethnology. The article is following the development of
institutionalisation of ethnology/anthropology in Croatia and abroad, and
points to the related methodological directions towards the preservation of
material and non-material culture of native peoples, and to the continual
conceptual attempts towards the creation of an organic cultural identiÞcation of
the investigated cultures. The article emphasises the long-term existence of the
literary notion of salvation in ethnology/anthropology, and, as a consequence
of that, the insistence on the strength and importance of the reconstruction
of 'authenticity' of the cultures under research. In the same time, the text
outlines the concept of ethnological utopias, and searches for the common
name for the static perception of the culture life, which was dominant in
the early ethnographic discourse. Special attention is given to the work of
Vid Vuletić Vukasović, a Croatian ethnologist, whose institutional links with
the Academy of Science and Art, Zagreb, were reconstructed through his correspondence with the members of the editorial board of Zbornik za narodni
ivot i občiaje (Journal of folk life and customs). The article is also trying to
establish to what extent did the conßict between Vukasović and Antun Radić,
who was then the president of the editorial board of the Journal of folk life
and customs, inßuence the bleak reception Vuletić had in early overviews of
Croatian ethnology, and his professional orientation to different ethnological
institutions and publishers in other South Slavic countries.

Keywords

salvation ethnology; beginnings of ethnology in Croatia; board of the Journal of folk life and customs; professionalisation of ethnology; ethnological utopias

Hrčak ID:

40878

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/40878

Publication date:

15.12.2004.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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