'Ethnologia Nationum, Or the World as We See it: "strange, but interesting"'

Abstract

eThnologia euroPaea 47:1 What actually constitutes an academic discipline? Being incorporated by academic institutions, described by journals and handbooks, delineated through historiography and reputation? Most importantly, I think, a scholarly field is represented via its practitioners – the active community of scholars themselves. They shape the field, renew it and eventually pass the scientific baton on to younger generations by enthusing and inspiring students. They should create the “charisma” of a discipline that draws students into the field of study. It was in the late 1990s, as a historian, that I first heard about “European ethnology”. I had started working at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam in the department of Volkskunde (Folkloristics). In 1998 – rather late in the European context – this department was renamed Nederlandse Etnologie (Dutch Ethnology). I was still puzzled. What did that imply? Was it a specifically Dutch version of ethnology? If so, how did it relate to the international discipline of European ethnology? I was determined to understand this better. My colleagues made the practical suggestion that, for an initial immersion into that renamed field, I check the few handbooks available and browse through the many volumes of a journal that was being published in Copenhagen. I was told that the journal started due to an old scholarly feud between folklorists and ethnologists within the then Commission internationale des Arts et Traditions Populaires at Unesco. Comprised mostly of Scandinavians (the name of Sigurd Erixon, the leading ethnologist of the time, was mentioned in that context), the publication continued after the schism as a journal for the ethnology following; most of the folklorists regrouped as the international society SIEF in Athens in 1964. That they had split up, I was told again, was not all that surprising, as Nordic ethnology was known for its modern views and approaches after having reinvented itself by breaking the chains of traditionalist “folkloristic stances”. However, the volumes on the shelf displayed an archaic Latin name as an equivalent for the field of European ethnology: Ethnologia Europaea. And again, I thought, what does that mean? I took the first volume from 1967 off the shelf and looked at the first page. To my surprise, the very first lines mentioned a short historiographical contribution by the Dutch professor August Bernet Kempers, dealing with the Volkskunde in the Netherlands. As it was published in this very first volume, it felt reassuring that research done in the Netherlands was indeed a part of European ethnology. This was confirmed by the fact that Bernet Kempers later became a professor of European ethnology himself. The browned pages of the first journal volumes also made clear that those issues dated back many years. The various historiographical and discipline-focused contributions, relevant in a time frame of establishing, defining, and distinguishing European ethnology as a reinvented discipline, had lost the topicality of their time. I continued my perusal of the numerous volumes in the library, and volume 19 drew my attention. It showed the date 1989 on its back, the extraordinary year in which the Berlin Wall was torn down ETHNOLOGIA NATIONUM Or, The World as We See It: “strange, but interesting”