Dunja Rihtman-Augustin - Ethnology, Myth and Politics: Anthropologizing Croatian Ethnology

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ETHNOLOGY, MYTH AND POLITICS

First published 2004 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Dunja Rihtman-Augutin and Jasna apo mega

Jasna apo mega has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Rihtman-Augutin Dunja
Ethnology, myth and politics : anthropologizing Croatian
ethnology. -- (Progress in European ethnology)
1. Ethnology - Croatia
2. Croatia - Ethnic relations
3. Croatia - Social life and customs
I. Title II. apo mega, Jasna
305.80094972

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rihtman-Augutin Dunja.
Ethnology, myth and politics-anthropologizing Croatian ethnology / by Dunja
Rihtman-Augutin ; Jasna apo mega, editor.
p. cm. - (Progress in European ethnology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-4039-6
1. Ethnology-Croatia. 2. Croatia-Politics and government. I. Capo, Jasna. II. Title. III.
Series.

DR1523.R54 2004
305.80094972-dc22

2003062846

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-4039-4 (hbk)

Contents

Editors Preface

Authors Preface

Editors Preface
From the Science of Peopleto Contemporary Ethno-Anthropology

There are scholars whose works do not require the addition of Introductions or Epilogues for their interpretation, since they themselves are best at clearly expounding their ideas. Dunja Rihtman-Augutin is such a scholar. However, when a book or work by a Croatian ethnologist/anthropologist1 is entirely translated for the first time into English, even when the writer is relatively well known to the international scholarly public as is the case with Rihtman-Augutin both the author and Croatian ethnology/anthropology are being presented to the English-reading public. That fact demands a few introductory words. Since Dunja Rihtman-Augutin has taken the history of Croatian ethnology as her theme in this selection of texts, particularly ethnologys relation with politics and power structures, an introductory text would seem even more necessary, as what is presented is a relatively unknown ethnology from the European South-East, which, in addition, has unfolded during a good part of the 20th century under the Socialist state system.

Therefore, I shall try in this preface to inform the reader on the scholarly context of 20th century Croatian ethnology, within which the work of Dunja Rihtman-Augutin (1926-2002) was not only present over the last four decades, but which was also defined to a considerable extent by her activity.

The Paradoxes of Croatian Ethnology

On an earlier occasion I described the development of Croatian ethnology within the framework of three paradoxes: We are speaking of a very small scholarly community that has, nevertheless, throughout its almost one hundred year history, been present in the international ethnological/anthropological community, especially that of Europe. Furthermore, it is potentially a socially important and applicable field of scholarship, although its potential and activities in that sense have barely been utilized. Finally, this is a science that is defined although not in consensus among all ethnologists as the social-humanistic science of culture in the past and in the present, while among the lay public it is generally recognized as research into so-called folk costumes, customs, music and dance. The latter understanding is quite outdated: at the end of the 19th century the founder of Croatian ethnology, Antun Radi, was already ironical about comprehension and practice of ethnology as research into some sort of old-womanish spell-casting. Let us see how those paradoxes were being solved at the end of the 20th century!

Ethnology as the Science of People

The above-mentioned Antun Radi, the ideologue of the Croatian Peasant Party and the founder of Croatian ethnology, engaged in ethnology at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century within the framework of what was then the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences in Zagreb. Radis theoretical model, inspired by the work of Jules Michelet among other authors, was based on the hypothesis that rural culture provides the basic characteristics of folk/national culture. So it was that, from Radis time, the subject of ethnological research was called folk culture, Volkskultur in German. Radi used the coined word narodoznanstvo, or the science of people, (a literal translation of the German Volkskunde) which did not, however, establish itself later as the pre-eminent designation for the science of rural culture in Croatia. Unlike in the countries of the German-speaking regions, the term ethnology retained its connotation in Croatia and in the former Yugoslavia as a field of scholarship that dealt with ones own culture and the culture of other peoples (the German Volkskunde as opposed to Vlkerkunde).

In Radis era Croatian ethnology was a science about contemporary rural culture. Radi created an exhaustive research questionnaire on the customs and habits of the peasants (Osnova za sabiranje gradje o narodnom zivotu, The Basics for the Collection of Material on Folk Life, Radi, 1936a), by which he laid the foundation for systematic research into folk life and customs. Based on Radi questionnaire, research within the village parishes and broader regions was presented by the monographic method. In the opinion of Rihtman-Augutin those monographs about folk life, compiled at the dawn of the 20th century, the majority of which remained in manuscript form, represent exceptional material for research into the village micro-cultures at the transition of the centuries, material for which many renowned European ethnologies could well envy Croatian ethnologists (Rihtman-Augutin 1999). Critical evaluation of that material commenced around the middle of the 1970s.

During the 1930s, Radi aspirations towards holistic, monographic accounts of folk culture2 were replaced by the alternative approaches of two trained ethnologists: Milovan Gavazzi (1895-1992) and Branimir Bratanic (1910-1986).

Diffusionist Approaches

Both of the above are key personalities in Croatian and also in Yugoslav ethnology, in which they were active for almost half a century, from the 1930s until the 1980s. Gavazzi, the first professor of Ethnology at the University of Zagreb from the 1920s onwards, was trained in the Slavic ethnology of Lubor Niederle, his professor, and of Kazimierz Moszynski. Bratanic, although Gavazzis student, was an original thinker more oriented towards theory, with such diverse role models as the German diffusionist, Fritz Graebner, and the American cultural particularist, Alfred Kroeber (see Belaj, 1995-1996 and 1998).

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