Ethnology, Myth and Politics: Anthrpologizing Croatian Ethnology by Dubja Rihtman-Augustin FROM THE PUBLISHER
The book offers a critical overview of Croatian ethnology written by the most prominent Croatian ethnologist/ anthropologist in the second half of the 20th century - Dunja Rihtman-Augustin (recently deceased). She was the first Croatian ethnologist to break up with the long established tradition of diffusionist (culture area) studies of her contemporaries and start to anthropologize Croatian ethnology. This book, compiled and completed by Jasna Capo Zmegac, highlights some crucial remarks with regards to the relationship between ethnology and politics. They are formulated as a series of research questions and problems, including: the role of folk culture as mythomoteur, cannonization of the folk culture, nationalization of the peasants in the 19th century and the role of ethnology. This vividly written text offers an exceptional insight into Croatian ethnological developments in the past century, as well as into crucial ruptures in Croatian society which have had important repercussions on ethnological discipline.
Contents: Between ethnicity and nation
Vuk Karad�ic: past and present or on the history of folk culture
The Zadruga between real and imagined order
Antun Radic: peasants into Croats
Distancing ethnology from politics
Ethnology during socialism and after
Ethnology and the ethnomyth
Anthropologizing ethnology
The ethno-anthropologist in his native field: to observe or to witness?
The ICTY in The Hague and anthropological expertise?
Bibliography
Index.
Author Biography: Dunja Rihtman-Augustin, Professor, originally a journalist, was the head of the Institute of Folk Art in Zagreb from 1972-1986 and President of the Croatian Ethnological Society.
SYNOPSIS
The late author has played a major role in the reformulation of Croatian ethnology since the 1970s through her work at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research. She broke with the diffusionist paradigm of earlier ethnologists concerned with the diffusion of cultural practices in the past in order to concentrate on "the influence of politics on cultural processes and phenomena and the analysis of political symbols, myths and rituals." It is in this context that she here explores the politics of the field of ethnology itself with essays on the participation of ethnology in the construction of the national myth, the conversion of the peasants into political Croats, research choices during the socialist era, and other questions of the politics of Croatian ethnology. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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