Izlaganje sa skupa
Ethnological Research in the City: Problems and Dilemmas
Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin
Sažetak
Croatian cultural-historical ethnology has been based on the hypothesis that its research subject are peasants, that is, the village. Nevertheless, earlier ethnologists and folklorists (from the last century and the turn of this century) collected ethnographic and folklore data from towns (for instance, Valjavec, Strohal and Lang). Our cultural-historical ethnology does not offer a comprehensive theoretical basis for research in general, nor for the research of the city in particular. For this reason, the author has analyzed different contemporary approaches to ethnological research in Croatia and in Yugoslavia, and has proceeded by a discussion of the possibilities of an urban ethnology here. It is requested that ethnologists abandon exclusive approaches - that is, that urban culture should be investigated along with the rural, changes along with the continuity in culture, and economic processes along with symbolic behavior and different types of symbolization; it is also emphasized that ethnological research should not be limited to a small group - rather, the group's interactions with general social and cultural currents should be taken into account and individual phenomena should be viewed within the entire process of communication; that what is common and ordinary in everyday life we should investigate along with the complex of ritual and ceremonial behavior; objects and phenomena should always be related to their subjects - to actual people. The author proceeds with proposals for several research projects of the city and in the city. Applying the ethnological fieldwork method, some standard ethnological themes could be investigated in the city, such as: man's shaping of the environment, dwellings, decoration and the contemporary handicrafts, urban rituals (including those of the family and work circles, as well as festivities), family and kinship relations, and, aspecially, folklore in the urban environment. The author holds that there is no scientific dilemma whether ethnology should investigate the village or the city, or whether there should be one „urbanu and one „rural" ethnology. The problems which we encounter in the city today might appear in the village tomorrow, if they already are not there. Thus, we deal with a single, complex ethnology.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
80093
URI
Datum izdavanja:
1.12.1980.
Posjeta: 1.455 *