Gyr, Ueli

Leimgruber, Walter

English

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SI EFN EW SSIEF is an international scholarly organization founded in 1964. The major purpose of the SIEF-organization is tofacilitate cooperation among scholars working within European Ethnology, Folklore Studies and adjoining fields.International Society for Ethnology and FolkloreSociété Internationale d’E thnologie et de FolkloreInternationale Gesellschaft für Ethnologie und FolkloreN O V E M B E R 2 0 0 9 V O L . 7   N O . 2L E T T E RCONTENTS1 Letter from the President  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Call for Panels! People Make Places: 10th SIEF Congress, Lisbon 2011  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Supercooled in the Desert: SIEF as NGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 National Ethnology Reports  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Croatia  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Estonia  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Latvia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Slovakia  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Working Group Ethnology of Religion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Working Group Place Wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Ballad Commission / Kommission für Volksdichtung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Mixed News & Reports  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 New Publications of Members  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3510 Journals: Calls for Papers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38DEAR SIEF MEMBERS,The year 2010 has nearly arrived and this means thatLisbon 2011 – People Make Places – will than only be ayear or so away. Therefore you will find in this newslet-ter (and on SIEF’s website) the call for panels and work-shops on the central themes of SIEF’s jubilee congress.The Program Committee of the board and the organisa-tion in Portugal have been creative in setting up an inter-esting thematical focus which will be appealing to SIEFmembers and others and will hopefully incites us all tosend in kindling proposals for the organisation of panels.E D I T O R I A LCall  for Panels!for the 10th SIEF Congress, Lisbon 2011N EW S nov 2009  vol.7  no.2SI      EF20 N AT I O N A L E T H N O L O GY R E P O R T SIdentity studies in SlovakiaAs Zygmunt Bauman has pointed out, research on iden-tity was such a productive field in the last decades of the20th century that ‘the traditional issues of social scienceswere modified in order to fit into the main discourseturning on the axes of identity.’ On the one hand identi-ty studies resulted from the paradigm change in scientif-ic discourse in Slovakia since 1989. On the other handthe boom in research wasa response to empiricalstudies on political, socialand cultural processes inthe newly independentstate, where the identityquestion became the cen-tral issue in public andacademic discussions. The development led to the project Centre of Excellenceof the Slovak Academy of Sciences: Collective Identitiesin Modern Societies. Central European Region (seehttp://www.uet.sav.sk/download/Centre_of_Excellence_report.pdf ). In this interdisciplinary project collectiveidentity was defined very broadly at first as the sharedawareness of ‘we’, distinguishing ‘us’ from the ‘others’.The main attention was turned to groups, but individu-als were also at the centre of the research as actors ofgroup construction or group termination. The studiesfocused on nations, ethnic minorities, religious groups ordenominations, language groups, and gender groups inCentral Europe. Collective identities were understood as‘products’ of the processes of identity building and thetransformation of historical (economic, social, ideologi-cal and cultural) contexts in particular. But at the sametime the team also studied representations of identities.The results brought in detailed and complex informationabout collective identity constructions in the particularhistorical context of Slovakia and Central Europe as amulti-ethnic and multi-cultural space from the 16th cen-tury till the present time.ConclusionRegarding the changes in ethnological research inSlovakia since 1989 it could be stated that the academicdiscourse has been divided into two main orientations.On the one hand, researchers have inclined towards thehistorical study of cultural phenomena. They have con-centrated on cultural traditions, cultural heritage inlonger periods, for example in the 19th and 20th cen-turies. In this case they have used methods such as oralhistory interviews, have conducted archive surveys, madecollections of data from print and other media etc. Thesecond tendency has focused on current research intosocial and cultural changes in the region. Scholars haveoften followed the mainstream discourse of social andcultural anthropology or the social sciences in general.The research methods are based on more extensive field-work, participant observations and interviews. However,the chosen field sites are mostly in Slovakia. Field worksin other European or non-European countries are ratherrare. In the last two decades the interdisciplinary dia-logue among social sciences and humanities in Slovakiahas evolved considerably as I illustrated with the exampleof the research in one of the Centre of Excellence in theSlovak Academy of Sciences. Such initiatives make it pos-sible to approach common concepts from different per-spectives and thus challenge methodological frameworksin ethnology.Gabriela Kiliánová, BratislavaAs in the entire German-speaking world, the disciplinethat once went by the name of ‘Volkskunde’ now goes bymany names. In Basel University, the institute is named‘Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und EuropäischeEthnologie’ (Department of Cultural Anthropology andEuropean Ethnology; www.unibas.ch/kulturwis-senschaft), and ‘Institut für Populäre Kulturen’ (Institutefor Popular Cultures; www.ipk.uzh.ch) in Zurich. Thisreflects the long discussions on the naming and orienta-tion of the discipline and on local particularities. Thereare only two university institutes in Switzerland, prima-rily due to the fact that in French- and Italian-speakingSwitzerland, just like in practically the whole Romance-speaking world, no difference is made between the gen-4.5  RESEARCHING CULTURE: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR CULTURE RESEARCHIN SWITZERLAND21N EW Snov 2009  vol.7  no.2 SI      EFN AT I O N A L E T H N O L O GY R E P O R T Seral anthropology, previously known as ‘Völkerkunde’ or‘ethnology’, and European ethnology. These institutionscall themselves ethnological institutes and also doresearch on Europe. The relationships between the lin-guistic regions vary in their intensity, and at present theyare expanding. The department in Basel, for example,participates in the Swiss Graduate School ofAnthropology that has been running for the past fewyears. At the same time, a larger research project onintangible heritage is under way, in which anthropolo-gists, linguists and people from museums in Neuchâteland Lausanne participate alongside the Basel institute.History of the discipline in SwitzerlandLet us first have a look at the history of the discipline. Itis closely related to the Schweizerische Gesellschaft fürVolkskunde (SGV; www.volkskunde.ch/). EduardHoffmann-Krayer founded it in 1897 with the aim ofproviding a forum for the new field of research. Themembers of the discipline, which had not yet beeninstalled in the university, were approached for inter-views and research work, and the ‘Schweizerische Archivfür Volkskunde’ served as a medium for discussion andpublication. Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer is considered asthe founding father of the discipline in Switzerland. Hegraduated in German Language and Literature fromZurich University, was an editor with Idiotikon, theSwiss-German dictionary, and in 1900 for the first timetaught folklore topics in Basel, where he was the firstSwiss to become full professor of German language andliterature in 1912. He also established the Europeandepartment of the Museum für Völkerkunde (todayMuseum der Kulturen Basel/ Museum of Cultures Basel)from a comparative perspective. With his theoreticalworks, a collection and research perspective that had anextensive European orientation, and his participation inlarge projects like, for instance, the Handwörterbuch desdeutschen Aberglaubens, he laid the foundation for anapproach that reached far beyond Switzerland. In the1930s and 1940s, the SGV increasingly focused on theAtlas der schweizerischen Volkskunde, the publication ofwhich was completed only in the mid-1990s.Teaching of the discipline at Basel University, still with-out its own institute, was for a long time primarily occu-pied with historical topics. Adjunct lecturers were KarlMeuli, who mainly dealt with antiquity and its tradition,Hans-Georg Wackernagel, with main focus on theMiddle Ages and early modern times, Paul Geiger andHans Trümpy, originally a classical philologist who hadqualified in Basel as a folklorist in 1956. The institutewas established only in 1961, with Hans Trümpyappointed as a full professor in 1965. His successor wasChristine Burckhardt-Seebass, who was conferred emeri-tus status in 2001. The Zurich institute was founded in 1951. Its professor-ship was with Richard Weiss since 1946 and he hadacquired renown particularly as a researcher of Alpineculture. After World War II, his functionalist approach,applied in works like Volkskunde der Schweiz (1946) orHäuser und Landschaften der Schweiz (1959), showed anew way to the German-speaking ethnology that had suf-fered an existential crisis due to its appropriation byNational Socialism. This approach was consistently con-tinued by his successor Arnold Niederer, who on the onehand gave new impulses to Alpine research and on theother, innovatively turned to migration and integrationresearch. He advocated a presence-oriented and Pan-European perspective and actively participated in theN EW S nov 2009  vol.7  no.2SI      EF22foundation of the Ethnologia Europaea. The SIEFCongress that took place in Zurich in 1987 was the cul-mination of these efforts. His successor Paul Huggerincreasingly devoted his time to visual topics and amongother things published in 1992 the Handbuch derschweizerischen Volkskultur. Rudolf Schenda, who hadthe professorship for European folk literature and wasMax Lüthi's successor, strengthened the study of popularliterature, which attracted international attention.The university institutesThe Institut für Populäre Kulturen of Zurich University,headed by Ueli Gyr since 1995, is divided into two divi-sions. The first one is dedicated to the study of popularcultures with various foci, for instance mobility, everydaycommunication and everyday symbolism, folklorisation,tourism, biography, childhood and youth, urban cul-tures, food, lifestyles and consumption styles, everydayaesthetics and many others. The researches show a ten-dency to strongly orient themselves on the present andare often bound to an everyday ethnography of the lived-in world. Since the late 1980s, some projects have alsobeen financed by third-party funds. The second division,managed by Ingrid Tomkowiak, includes the field ofpopular media and literatures and works on topics likemedial transfer, multimedia, children and youth litera-ture, adventure literature, science fiction, bestsellers, gen-der aspects in popular literatures and media, narration indaily life and lived-in world, historical media and readingmaterials as well as modern entertainment culture. TheZurich institute edits two book series, Zürcher Beiträgezur Alltagskultur (since 1996, 17 volumes so far) andPopuläre Literaturen und Medien (since 2008, 2 vol-umes so far), where the research of the two divisions ispublished. The editorial office of the journalSchweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde (2 magazinesannually) published by Schweizerische Gesellschaft fürVolkskunde is housed in the Zurich institute since 1983.The institute in Basel sets its main foci in the fields ofvisual and material culture, questions on integration andexclusion in the society and migration/transculturalism.The department has approximately a dozen PhD stu-dents who mostly work in the scope of research projects,financed by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SwissNational Science Foundation) and other foundations.The majority of the projects, but not exclusively, arefieldwork based and focus on contemporary questionsand popular issues, but there is also space for major the-oretical deliberations. Sabine Eggmann, forinstance, who at present works as a researchassistant with SGV, wrote a discourse-analyticaldissertation on the concept of culture, asapplied by this discipline in the German-speak-ing world in the 1990s. Indeed, several addi-tional projects deal with questions of how con-cepts and theories of culture are connected topolitical and social developments. This appliesfor instance to the project, ‘Culture and Policy.‘Folk culture’ between science, cultural practiceand (cultural) political promotion’, or theplanned project on intangible heritage. Topicslike the change of daily life in the alpine regionare linked to ethnographical film projects.Additional projects deal with questions on theuse of space and time, e.g. in suburbs, or bypupils and questions of social change.The Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (SGV)The Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, witharound 1000 members today, has its office in the samebuilding as the Basel department. Its library is also thedepartment library. The SGV is in charge of a number oflong-term projects. It publishes, for instance, the vol-umes Bauernhäuser der Schweiz (Farmhouses ofSwitzerland), several book series, oversees theN AT I O N A L E T H N O L O GY R E P O R T STHE MARCHLER TRACHTELUT TROUPE FROM SWITZERLAND, AT THEPRAGUE FOLKLORE FESTIVAL, 1 AUGUST 200723N EW Snov 2009  vol.7  no.2 SI      EFSchweizerische Volksliedarchiv (head: Karoline Oehme)and a collection of archive materials, e.g. the estate of thephotographer Ernst Brunner, or photographs of ex-votopanels in Switzerland. Since 2008, the SGV also releasesthe new book series Culture. Schweizer Beiträge zurKulturwissenschaft.A joint field of work by SGV and the two institutes is theethnographic film. Since the 1940s, the SGV’s filmdepartment produces ethnographic films. Its produc-tions, mainly from the 1960s, when young Swiss film-makers applied innovative concepts, also garnered inter-national acclaim. Video technology enabled a conceptadaptation. It’s no longer the filmmakers but theresearchers themselves who make films now. The rele-vant courses are offered both in Zurich and Basel and thelecturers are either the filmmaker Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf,head of the SGV’s film department for almost 30 yearsor his students, who in the meantime have themselvesbecome filmmakers and researchers making films. Atpresent, a project financed by the Schweizerischer Natio-nalfonds takes place at the Basel institute, which studiesthe history of ethnographic film in Switzerland. One ofits goals is to digitalise the older films to make themmore easily accessible for research and to the public.NetworksThe collaboration with various museums and exhibitinginstitutions is important, from large organisations likethe Museum der Kulturen Basel (Museum of CulturesBasel; www.mkb.ch) through Schweizerisches Freilicht-museum Ballenberg (Swiss Open-Air MuseumBallenberg; www.ballenberg.ch) up to many smaller can-tonal, regional and local museums. Students do practicalstudy in the professional field that is important for them,and conversely lecturers from this field also bring theirpractical knowledge into teaching and education and can,on their part, get research work done, which they couldotherwise hardly finance. In this way, students from theBasel institute have organised an exhibition on the topicof popular forms of faith in the region of CentralSwitzerland in the framework of the programme ‘echos –Volkskultur für morgen’ (echos – popular culture fortomorrow) financed by the Swiss cultural foundationPro Helvetia. They also have collaborated in variousexhibitions and museum institutions, e.g. for theMuseum der Schweizer Garde in Naters (Papal SwissGuards Museum in Naters). The exhibition ‘Macht derBilder’ (The Power of Images) that had been conceptu-alised and implemented in a university course receivedthe Swiss Transdisciplinary Award of the SwissAcademies of Sciences and of Humanities and SocialSciences in 2006.A whole range of professional experts works in regionaland cantonal organisations, and there exist close relationswith researchers, museums and cultural institutions inWallis/Valais, Graubünden/Grisons, Appenzell, andAargau. A close collaboration with the office of integra-tion of the Basel City canton results in the regular teach-ing of questions of integration in courses and studentsare able to do practical trainings in this field that increas-ingly gains in significance. The Italian-speakingTessin/Ticino has done an exemplary job by pooling itsactivities in the field of cultural research and concentrat-ed them in the Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia.Studies on language and dialects, the supervision ofmuseums and other activities are centralised here, andthanks to efficient structures and excellent work, achievea large public feedback. Especially, the publications inlanguage and dialect research have an outstanding repu-tation.DevelopmentsThe situation of the discipline is quite positive. Both uni-versity institutions have multiplied the number of stu-dents in recent years; around 600 people now study inZurich, 170 in Basel. For this reason, the second profes-sorship in Zurich that had been vacant for a long time issoon to be filled again, and Basel will get a second pro-fessorship for the first time. Both institutes have intro-duced BA and MA degree courses in recent years. It isstill too early to judge the professional consequences ofthis reform, but it has already become obvious that theadditional administrative effort and costs are enormous.At present the universities also work on the establish-ment of structured post-graduate courses. As both pro-fessorships will be newly appointed in Zurich in the com-ing years, not much can be said about the foci in thefuture. The current direction in Basel will remain thesame, with an increased emphasis on the fields of visualculture, migration and transcultural research.Walter Leimgruber and Ueli Gyr, Basel and ZurichN AT I O N A L E T H N O L O GY R E P O R T S

Researching Culture: Cultural Anthropology and Popular Culture Research in Switzerland

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Researching Culture: Cultural Anthropology and Popular Culture Research in Switzerland

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