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The first fifty years of ethnological thought at the Institute
Dunja Rihtman-Augustin and Aleksandra
Muraj
(Narodna umjetnost, 35/1, 1998, pp 11-135)
The authors present the theoretical approaches along
with the practice and results of ethnologists who have been active at
the Institute over the past decades. During that period, ethnological
output constantly grew and opened up new questions, changing both the
theoretical approaches to the subject, and the subject itself. One of
the trends of those ethnological efforts defined its attitude towards
history in a new way, and the other drew nearer to epistemological research
and the postmodern questionability of the very essence of ethnological
scholarship - its text and writing.
Keywords: ethnology, history of Croatian ethnology, Institute of Ethnology
and Folklore Research, Zagreb
In the politically eventful year of 1948 when the Institute for Folk Art
was founded (on February 6), cultural policy in Croatia - as well as in
all of the former Yugoslavia - maintained an ambivalent stance towards
folklore and popular culture. The ruling ideology had used folklore during
World War II as a means of mobilisation and propaganda, while almost at
the same time coming down hard on tradition which was conceived as being
rural, backward, possibly even nationalistic, and bound up with religion.
On the other hand, at that time and later, the Yugoslav state followed
Soviet cultural policy models, and started to found institutions which
would present the country and its multicultural nature. In any case, perhaps
the establishment of the Institute in Zagreb grew out of the idea that
a state scientific institute should gradually replace some functions of
Seljacka sloga [Peasant Harmony], the peasant cultural organisation
which had been founded by the very influential Croatian Peasant Party
before WW2. It was natural that this organisation was increasingly regarded
as inappropriate in the ruling scheme of things after the war. However,
whether the Institute for Folk Art was founded in such an environment
or some other is not now of particular importance. What is significant
is that the Institute's stated objective at its foundation was the collection
of folklore material - primarily music - as a testimony to the richness
of the folk heritage. The focus in the concept was set more on folklore
than on popular culture; ethnology was not yet featured in the Institute's
documents. Today, one can only ask oneself if one of the reasons for the
omission of ethnology lay in the dogmatic Marxist viewpoint about the
superfluousness of a theoretically based ethnological science.
Be that as it may, the first of the Institute's major projects research
into the folk traditions of Istria, which only became part of Croatia
and/or Yugoslavia in 1945 - was conducted without ethnologists. Ivan Ivancan
participated in the research project as an ethnochoreologist. He dealt
with popular culture only in those aspects linked to dance.
Pre-conditions for ethnology
Efforts today to review and evaluate the development of ethnological research
at the Institute first show that from its foundation, notwithstanding
the initial motives, the Institute was permeated with the ambition that
research be scientifically founded and that new avenues be constantly
opened up. At the very beginning, the Institute's director, musicologist
Dr. Vinko Zganec, employed Olinko Delorko - providing him with a kind
of political asylum. Delorko's job was to note down the texts of the folk
songs whose melodies Zganec collected. However, the presence of Delorko,
an expert on Benedetto Croceo's aesthetics, augured a farewell to the
entrenched Romantic approach to folklore. This poet-
-novelist collected, compiled and published collections of Croatian folk
poetry guided by his refined literary sensibility. Until then represented
almost exclusively by decasyllabic verse and with heroic motifs, Delorko's
selection of folk poetry brought to the surface a poetic worth equal to
the greatest attainments of Croatian writers. Folk poetry ceased to exist
as the poetry of Others, who were primitive and always at war.
Delorko deserves the credit that such poetry was accepted by literary
criticism and finally found a sure place in the body of Croatian literature.
However, the final turnabout towards conscious scientific approaches and
towards entry into the dominant currents of the European scholarly discourse
in and about ethnology and folkloristics was given by Maja Bosković-Stulli.
Although the debut of the new paradigm was not announced, nor even
raised to awareness in the texts - - and who did that in ethnology or
folkloristics at that time? - the new approach started to influence research
- and texts - in all the disciplines which would later be given a home
by the Institute, and which would, from time to time, alternate the emphases
in scholarly output.
Still, in the first issue of the journal Narodna umjetnost [since
1995, published in English as The Croatian Journal of Folklore Research]
published in 1962 i.e. in the fifteenth year of the Institute's activities,
the articles on ethnology were written by external contributors; there
still being no in-house ethnologist on the Institute's staff. This was
the case with the following three issues. It should be borne in mind that
at that time, apart from the Zagreb-based Yugoslav Academy of Science
and Art's fairly irregular publication of the Zbornik za narodni æivot
i obicaje juænih slavena [Review of the Folk Life and Customs
of the Southern Slavs], there was not even one regular ethnological publication
in Croatia (there being only the Etnoloski pregled [Ethnological
Review] at the Yugoslavian level). In those first issues, the articles
on ethnology by contributors to Narodna umjetnost dealt with phenomena
from so-called material culture (Gabrić 1962:53-65) or customs (Culinović-Konstantinović
1963:73-96) or even folk art in the context of customs (Benc-Bosković
1962:81-91). The articles were compiled using the classic cultural-historical
method, with a description of the phenomenon and data about its diffusion,
and with efforts to reveal its origins. It is interesting to note, although
not at all unexpected, that the contributions by field researchers who
were not trained ethnologists differed somewhat from this norm. For example,
Zvonko Lovrencević described a specific wedding with all the details.
Such a description differed from the customary canonised models used in
relation to folk culture until that time (1963:176-191). On another occasion
Lovrencević tried to set the chronological position of the researched
phenomena which was regularly absent in the ethnological papers of that
period (1969/70:71-100).
The column called Prikazi [Surveys], featured from the very first
issue, was carefully edited by Maja Bosković-Stulli - in fact, she set
the tone of the yearly publication - and gave up-to-date reports about
domestic output and recent ethnological output abroad. This initiated
- - or, if one recalls A. Radić and his surveys in the Zbornik za narodni
æivot i obicaje, reinstated - the practice of ensuring a flow
of information about actual tendencies in ethnological research and made
possible their reception. It was that direct connection with ethnological
thought, primarily from Germany, but also from the Scandinavian countries,
France and the United States of America, which would have considerable
influence on the work of ethnologists who would be active as full-time
members of staff at the Institute from the mid-1960s.
Towards radical criticism of ethnology
Josip Milicević worked in the Department for Customs which was
established at that time. (Prior to Milicević, research into customs had
been the assignment of the folklorist, the late Miko (Nikola) Bonifacić
Roæin. However, he had much more of an ear for popular drama, and
then took over that field of study.) The name of the department speaks
for itself i.e. it indicates that ethnological work at the Institute was
conceived mainly as research into the context of folklore phenomena. Still,
from its institutionalised very beginnings, ethnological research could
not be limited in that way. Milicević started to work on one topic which
had been considered rarely in Croatian ethnology until that time - customs
and beliefs connected with the economic life of peasant communities (1966:191-207).
Later, his interest widened to include other customs, but also traditional
economy (1967/68:433-513; 1974/75:399-462). He shifted away from cultural-historical
methodology, was not interested in diffusion and origins, and barely inclined
to canonisation of customs. He noted down and used what was an almost
biographical approach, visited his informants on more than one occasion,
and looked for them in their new locations when they moved. In addition,
providing a parallel view of the local culture, he made extensive use
of the works of writers describing the life of the communities which he
himself was investigating.
A new ethnological question was opened up in 1969 in the 7th issue of
Narodna umjetnost, in a survey by Nives Ritig-Beljak (1969:17-25).
She commented on the debate about folklore and folklorism which had just
been published in the Zeitschrift für Volkskunde. Although, from
today's perspective, one can see the flaws in the theory of H. Moser and
H. Bausinger, primarily because of the tacit assumption on the stability
of the initial state of folklore, information about the theory drew attention
both to the life of folklore in the contemporary, consumer and media society
and the responsibility of scholars in the application, representation
and use of contemporary folklore. As a result, in contrast to the ethnological
dogmas entrenched until that time, which asserted that traditional culture
and folklore disappeared in contact with urban civilisation, so that ethnology
should not pay it any attention, at the beginning of the 1970s we started
thinking about the position of traditional culture in contemporary society
(Rihtman-Augustin 1971:3-
-17). A different approach in ethnology was sought, which much later (1984,
1988) would be called the new paradigm, although, in fact, no new
paradigm was being firmly conceived. It was still a matter of radical
criticism of cultural-historical ethnology. That is why it is difficult
- and even impossible - to decide where the turning-points came about
in evolving theory and in concrete research and field work. They occurred
gradually both through criticism of the old ethnology and its canons
and in perceptions which grew out of direct contact with everyday life
in empirical research. This can also be clearly seen, for example, in
two reviews of a bibliography prepared by Ingeborg Weber Kellermann (Gavazzi
& Rihtman-Augustin 1973:379-382). M. Gavazzi could not conceal his
surprise that this classification of customs included papers on the way
of life and customs of Gastarbeiters, about merchant customs, about
food and nutrition, and the like. This new classification of the literature
on customs and rituals - together with I. Weber Kellermann's introduction,
which saw customs as the markers of the behaviour codes of social groups
- opened up new possibilities to D. Rihtman-Augustin to study one of the
central themes of the old ethnology. Firstly, customs were observed in
the changing social context including the social dynamics of human groups
in which customs denote relationships. Within the Institute, customs and
festivities were perceived as the loci of folklore, so that their
study and the study of beliefs was approached as the basis for understanding
individual folklore phenomena. In her article Narodni obicaji okolice
Donje Stubice [Folk Customs in the Surroundings of Donja Stubica]
(1973:152.216), Zorica Rajković Vitez took a critical view of the previous
practice in the research of customs. In contrast to looking for the authenticity
of customs, the favoured aim of numerous Croatian ethnologists, she directed
her view at the contemporary state and status of the customs and rituals.
She observed customs as part of a process and expressed marked resistance
to the then-current timeless understanding of all folklore phenomena.
As a skilful field researcher, she drew attention in her article Obiljeæja
etnografske gradje i metode njezina terenskog istraæivanja [The
Characteristics of Ethnographic Material and the Methods for Its Field
Research] (1974:129-134) to the clash which exists between the ethnological
canonisation of customs and their individual realisation. Through very
pedantic criticism of sources, she proved the existence of one more mistaken
ethnological notion - not exclusive to Croatian ethnology - i.e. the one
about the ostensible trial marriage (1975). She showed how both
the notion of the trial marriage and the literature which described it
partly followed the miscomprehension of the functioning and symbolics
of the traditional communities, demystifying in that way the phenomenon
which some ethnologists regarded as being one of the Balkan specifics.
Somewhat later, Aleksandra Muraj investigated the culture of habitation
and life in the suburban village of Jalsevac in a way not used before,
introducing what was for that time unconventional material into her monographic
article: personal letters and family documents along with statistical
and demographic data, evaluation of the relationships between village
and town both from the aspect of their destructiveness regarding traditional
culture, but also identification of the stimulus provided to traditional
culture which emerged in those relationships (1977:95-149).
If the research into customs and the culture of habitation started out
from the traditional ethnological subject and attacked its canons, research
into the transformation of traditional culture set out on a search for
a new or at least different subject.
The search for new approaches
As early as the 1960s, in addition to collecting material in the villages,
social reality called for ethnologists to make the trip to town, following
their peasants who were leaving rural communities in increasing numbers.
In essence, the interdisciplinary project on transformation of folklore
traditions was set in motion by Maja Bosković-Stulli, and she had considerable
difficulties with funding. Branimir Bratanić, professor of ethnology at
Zagreb University and chairperson of a commission of the Fund for Scientific
Work, at that time the body which authorised ethnological projects, asked
for a progress report after the end of the first year, although that had
not formerly been the practice. We did not produce a report for him because
we were still in the research stage, doing something which had never been
seen in Croatian ethnology, nor, for that matter, in many other ethnologies.
We prepared ourselves for research through theory. Many very brisk discussions
were held at the Institute on a series of individual theoretical questions.
Ethnologists and folklorists took part on an equal footing. Dunja Rihtman-Augustin
recalls the lively debate about her introductory text (1976:1-25), and
has remained grateful until today to all the participants for their very
critical and very stimulating comments. The original contributions by
Olga Supek, Milivoj Vodopija, Zorica Rajković Vitez and Aleksandra Muraj,
still an external associate at that time, were also discussed in detail.
Those papers really coloured both the Institute's work and Croatian ethnology,
and evoked attention in the ethnologies of other centres in the former
Yugoslavia.
The project which commenced as research into the transformation of
folklore traditions in contemporary culture (the results of which
were published in Narodna umjetnost, Issues Nos. 13/1976, 14/1977
and 15/1978) was soon to correct its own starting points. Today it is
regarded as a commonplace that traditions constantly circulate, not only
during historical periods or through geographical regions, but also among
the social strata. During that process they change. The stimuli for their
circulation and change come from the so-called upper social classes and
are directed towards the lower, but stimuli also exert their influence
from below. The traditions of past generations inspire the new, and they
accept, interpret and change them. All this sounds self-evident today
but at the mid-1970s it was still necessary to struggle for the acceptance
of the ethnological relevancy of certain ostensibly banal phenomena such
as everyday urban narratives (Bosković-Stulli 1978:11-35); high school
graduation celebrations and processions (Vodopija 1976:77-92); children's
games, those played on asphalt, which was a newly-opened theme in European
ethnology as a whole (Rajković Vitez 1978:37-96); numerous, seemingly
trivial newspaper death notices (Rihtman-Augustin 1978:117-175); or the
symbols of death in road accidents (Rajković Vitez 1976:27-56). These
latter themes were associated with death, a taboo in modern middle-class
society and, it seems, even more so in socialist society. The project's
objective could only be achieved through thorough re-thinking of ethnological
approaches and interpretations. To a certain extent this meant production
of texts which in some way transformed everyday life and its trivia into
something strange and wonderful, as I. Prica interpreted it (1996) - but
we would also venture to say, even more than that.
In this sense, the project's focus of interest was re-directed away from
transformation towards research into the interaction of folklore
traditions and contemporary culture. The change of the title in
mid-
-stream speaks for the creative climate of the multi-disciplinary
Institute team at that time when the firm boundaries of the discipline
were becoming less clearly marked. It was explained in this way in Narodna
umjetnost Issue No. 16/1979:
In other words, it has become evident that the transformation process
is always present in cultural phenomena which we regard as folklore and
that they should always be studied in respect of past as well as current
changes. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied with the identification of
this or that transformation, but must try to uncover the trend of historical
changes and their meaning. In addition, on the one hand there is also
the significant issue of the current, contemporary interaction between
traditional creativity in the narrower sense and folklore creativity in
the broader sense, and trends and phenomena of contemporary culture on
the other. Therefore the title of the project was changed after the first
stage... (p 179).
It is obvious that the perception of both the entertainment industry,
being talked about by Bausinger at that time, and the influence of the
media which would later essentially change popular culture, folklore and
our scholarly perceptions had also crept into the project.
Parallely with the efforts to set frameworks for research of the relationship
between popular culture and folklore tradition on the one hand, and contemporary
culture considerably marked out by the market economy and the media on
the other, ethnological thought at the Institute was oriented towards
radical criticism of the general hypotethes of cultural-historical ethnology
and something which we could call the deconstruction of its canons. This
related to the fundamental concepts such as, for example, folk, the extended
family (the zadruga). This also meant the introduction of theoretical
approaches offered at that time by the structuralism of C. Lévi Strauss
and the post-structuralism of E. Leach, written about by M. Vodopija (1973:385-387);
or the theory of practice in its anthropological version: from theory
to practice and back, in the programmatic article of Olga Supek (1976:57-76),
very much in step with then-current European ethnological thought. It
was in this aura that D. Rihtman-Augustin's Struktura tradicijskog
misljenja [The Structure of Traditional Thinking] (1984) was written.
In the book, the author relied on two assumptions of Lévi Strauss' structuralism.
On the one hand, she identified structural relationships in the material
on Croatian traditional culture, including extended families. On the other,
she insisted on the differentiation and inter-relation between the ordre
conçu and ordre vecu in the interpretation of the traditional
ways of thinking. Through critical perusal of monographs about folk life,
she in fact rehabilitated the value of the material itself for that ethnology
which would be joining historical research in a new manner. However, interest
in the structure of traditional thinking does not belong solely to history
because tradition is approached from the present, from everyday culture,
and this type of research was to be joined by numerous ethnological studies
at the Institute.
Regional and thematic monographs - compensation
for ethnological arrears
However, theoretical postulates are never implemented in the way they
are conceived or in the way that their promoters preach, while scholarly
work takes places in the fissures of the given conditions of life and
in diverse combinations of former and current paradigms.
The Institute's ethnology felt that it had an obligation to pay off
some of the debts and arrears from the past of its profession. It is a
known fact that, right up until the middle of the 20th century, Croatian
ethnology had not done even the most essential positivistic work i.e.
no regional nor thematic ethnological monographs had been published. In
Central European ethnologies, this task had been performed if in no other
aspect at least with the help of research within the national or regional
ethnological atlases, and the publication of the corresponding maps and
studies. At that time, European ethnologies were working on community
studies. As the results of Croatian and Yugoslav research in ethnological
atlases were not being published, the void was even greater.
Consequently, the Institute included the compilation of monographs of
the individual regions in its programme. The first stimuli were fairly
traditional, because it was believed that models - and perhaps the canons?
- of the regional characteristics of popular culture had to be determined.
However, research experience indicated that no regional models of popular
culture exist but rather that diversity reigns and that phenomena have
to be treated individually. At the time it seemed that this type of research
could only be conducted in precisely defined, small communities. Monographs
about individual local communities were prepared through team work and
a multi-disciplinary approach, with contributions being made by historians,
folklorists specialised in literature, music and dance, and ethnologists
who no longer limited themselves to the study of customs. These monographs
included Studije i gradja o Sinjskoj krajini [Studies and Material
about the Sinj Region] (Narodna umjetnost 5-6/1967-68), Folklor
Gupceva zavicaja [The Folklore of Gubec's Countryside] (Narodna
umjetnost 10/1973), Folklor otoka Braca [The Folklore of the
Island of Brac] (Narodna umjetnost 11--12/1974-75), Povijest
i tradicije otoka Zlarina [The History and Traditions of the Island
of Zlarin] (Narodna umjetnost 17/1980; Narodna umjetnost
18/1981). There was an obvious move away from ethnographic inventories
and descriptions (Gamulin & Vidović 1967-68:95-105; the same authors
1974-75:463-496) to innovation in conception and interpretation, particularly
of material culture, folk costume, and everyday life (Muraj 1981a:159-220;
1981b:257-320).
It was only in the first half of the 1990s that the second part of the
debt was paid off. In a different historical time, but also in
a different theoretical climate, monographs were prepared and published
about two of the most significant cycles of customs in Croatian popular
culture i.e. those accompanying Christmas and those accompanying Easter.
Fully aware of the criticism directed at the concept of custom, the subject
of a conference organised by the Institute in 1986 - the papers presented
being published in Narodna umjetnost 24/1987 - but also of ethnological
practice in the research of customs (Prica 1991:243-267), Dunja Rihtman-Augustin
(1992b) and Jasna Capo Zmegac (1997b), each in their own way tried to
fill the void in the study and publication of the ethnography of customs.
Presenting Christmas and Christmas customs, D. Rihtman-Augustin drew in
equal measure from material published by Croatian ethnologists and folklorists
from the beginning of the 20th century until the present day, and from
existing ethnological and historical literature about Christmas customs
(Weber-Kellermann, Blaumeiser-Blimlinger, Burke, Bogatyrev, Gajek, Sklevicky,
Miller). She tried to step outside the traditional ethnological frameworks
for approaching customs which located them solely in the village and not
in the town, solely in peasant and not in urban communities, solely in
the past and not in the present. She took into account the influence of
the changeable power relations on the formation of religious and popular
traditions and even on popular piety itself. In her monograph about Easter
and Easter customs mainly in the first half of the 20th century, Jasna
Capo Zmegac utilised the significant body of ethnological theory on customs
(Weber-Kellermann, Scharfe, H. Moser, Johler, Haringer, van Gennep) and
structured a hypothesis which abandons the dichotomy of the pre-Christian/Christian
in customs. She supported a much more well--founded approach which encompassed
the interaction of religion, religious teaching and religious ritual with
popular comprehension of religious teaching and with the numerous and
diverse popular interpretations of the sacred with the corresponding practice
of piety. Following previous discussions on research of customs at the
Institute, she paid particular attention to the analysis of customs in
the changing social context, reading off their meaning in communication
and social integration.
Here, we should mention another significant book which joined in the above-mentioned
payment of debts. Ivan Lozica's Hrvatski karnevali [Croatian
Carnivals] (1997), was the first synthesised presentation of carnival
customs to appear in Croatian ethnology and folkloristics. Lozica treats
the carnival in the light of the concepts of time and customs, speaking
of the power and attractiveness of carnival customs, presenting them in
all their known historical and contemporary forms, which he frequently
researched in his own field work. As the author is a folklorist, the book
is spoken of in more detail in the article herein on folkloristics.
Finally, the third repayment of Croatian ethnology's debt is being made
precisely in the Institute's fiftieth year with the publication of a manual
of Croatian ethnology. Although it is hard to believe that we did not
until now have an appropriate handbook, the book Etnografija. Svagdan
i blagdan hrvatskoga puka [Ethnography. The Every Day and the Festive
Day of the Croatian People] is the first attempt to examine in ethnological
terms the complex of popular culture in Croatia as a whole. The authors
are aware that the book's publication is well overdue and taking place
at a time in which one finds in Croatian ethnology three diverse and often
opposed approaches to tradition. One is radical criticism which finds
flaws in the construction and intention of traditions. The second is traditionalist
tendency which continues to petrify material in its timelessness. Finally,
there are various modifications of the cultural-historical approach. The
titles of the main chapters in the book (Elementi hrvatske seljacke
kulture u prostoru i vremenu. Osnovni pojmovi i polazista. Kritika gradje
[Elements of Croatian Peasant Culture in Time and Place. Basic Concepts
and Starting-Points. A Critique of the Material] by J. Capo Zmegac; Obrisi
svakidasnjeg æivota [Contours of Everyday Life] by A. Muraj;
Iskorak iz svakidasnjice [A Step out of Everyday Life] by Z. Vitez
with R. Senjković, G. Marosević, T. Zebec, and I. Lozica; Seoska drustvenost
[Village Sociability] by J. Capo Zmegac; and, Predodæbe o æivotu
i svijetu [Conceptions about Life and the World] by J. Grbić), mark
the new approach undertaken by the authors, dealing with the known, but
actually insufficiently articulated material on Croatian popular culture.
An additional and useful contribution is found in the chapter called Povijest
etnoloske misli u Hrvata [The History of Ethnological Thought among
the Croats] by V. Belaj, the only author who is not a member of the Institute's
staff.
From research of custom to the diversified cultural-anthropological
approaches
As has been seen, the ethnological approaches in the function of researching
the context of folklore utilised the advantages provided by close multi-disciplinary
co-operation with the professionals active in other disciplines at the
Institute. Still, that co-operation to an extent hampered and narrowed
the ethnological perspectives because it allowed them to range only in
the set frameworks of the customs concept. It was only in 1991 that the
name of the Department for Customs was changed in the documents
of the Institute into the Ethnological Department.
However, the openness towards the flow of cultural-anthropology and the
radical criticism of the subject referred to above imposed a question
on the folklorists - and the ethnologists - at the Institute: that of
the meaning of the communication processes. The contributions of non--Croatian
and Croatian authors to the book which was often quoted later - Folklor
i usmena komunikacija [Folklore and Oral Communication] (1982, edited
by Maja Bosković-Stulli) - drew attention to the meaning of research into
the communication processes in everyday life and to the dynamics of the
social groups, whose culture belongs to this field. In a discussion about
that book held on the Institute's 35th anniversary, November 22, 1983
(published in Narodna umjetnost 21/1984:35-50) the somewhat radical
rejection of the folk concept was re-examined, expressing awareness
of its various dimensions, thus emphasising the need to research ethnicity
and the interrelationship between cultural and ethnic processes.
Contributions in the Institute's documentation still speak of team projects
in the collection of folklore and ethnographic material, also from nationally
diverse Croatian environments (for example, Serbian Sjenicak in the Kordun
region) and the old Croatian Diaspora such as the Austrian Burgenland
Croatians and/or those in Slovakia. Still, there was a gradual falling-off
in the complex field research of folklore and folk culture aimed at collecting
material. Olga Supek, the author of an individual study with participant
observation in Sveta Jana, following in the footsteps of Roæić's
Prigorje monograph published in 1907, built in to her doctoral dissertation
the approach to symbolic anthropology (1982). Identifying as early as
1976 the ethnological relevance of ostensibly banal phenomena such as
the marking of death in traffic accidents, Zorica Rajković Vitez expanded
her research to cover the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia. In
her book Znamenja smrti [Memorials to Death] (1988), she analysed
the sense and meaning in general of memorials to sudden death, the socio-cultural
context which surrounds them and the non-
-verbal message which they emit. At almost the same time, Aleksandra Muraj
also carried out participant observation in Sosice in the Zumberak hills
(1989), critically examining both Radić's and Gavazzi's approach to material
culture. Consequently, she no longer speaks of folk architecture but of
the people who live in the houses in question, and about the symbolic
world connected with their home and place of residence: in a word, about
the culture of habitation.
Abandoning team work in local and regional research, the Institute's staff
- both ethnologists and folklorists - still came together around one thematic
research project, throwing light on various aspects of Carnival customs
and rituals which were long-lived and showed enduring vitality (Zecević
1985:15-30; 1988:115.122, Lozica 1985:31-57; 1988:87-113; Rajković Vitez
1985:59-97, Ritig-Beljak 1985:99-117, Povrzanović 1988:15-66; Supek 1988:67-86;
Sremac 1988:137-174; Galin 1988:175.204). Pokladna dogadjanja [Carnival
Events] - as was mentioned in the introduction to Narodna umjetnost
25/1988:
are interpreted as a highly valued symbol of cultural identity, as an
expression of the relationship of the village to the global society, as
a shift from earlier manipulation of Nature to a symbolic manipulation
of people, as a symbolic expression of order and disorder (and/or solidarity
and conflict in the social sense and tradition and changes in the cultural
sense), as a rite of passage which includes the symbolic act of sacrifice,
as a remnant of fertility cults which contain polysemic conventional and
standardised symbols and exist beyond the life of their forgotten messages
and meanings.
Ethnological thought at the Institute does not tend towards a school of
thought nor it is guided by any particular theoretical school. Since the
1980s, the number of ethnologists at the Institute has grown; ethnology
has been manifesting a diversification of themes and theoretic approaches
and, of course, more profuse output.
In Ethnologija nase svakodnevice [The Ethnology of Our Everyday
Life] D. Rihtman-Augustin presented a hypothesis for researching folk
culture as the culture of everyday life. In a situation in which ethnology
is constantly questioning its own meaning in the contemporary world, the
author was inspired by the current trends in the profession, and offered
an open system of research hypotheses: "a conceptional framework
based on the structural and communicational definitions of culture which,
however, is set once again in each concrete research project" (1988:38).
Snjeæana Zorić made an effort to settle custom in the space between
ethnology, theology and philosophy (1991). Relying on her field experience,
Maja Povrzanović questioned to a certain extent the folklore--folklorism
model and showed how the media maintain and shape folklore (1988:15-66).
Somewhat later, in 1995, Zoran Cica carried out a theoretical examination
of Croatian research into witches and drew attention to the representations
of witches and fairies in Croatian folklore.
Several new, until then completely wanting, and, in fact, non-
-existent areas of ethnological scholarly interest were opened up. Jasna
Capo Zmegac dealt in a qualified manner with historical demographic research
and focused her attention on an unusual, and almost unsuitable
ethnological field for that time - a landed estate (1991a). Through historical
demography, she showed certain ethnological phenomena -
- the extended family, for example - in a different light. J. Capo Zmegac
asked why Croatian ethnology had dealt to such an extent with the extended
family, or zadruga, and not at all with the nuclear family, when
in reality such an insignificant number of village families were organised
on the zadruga principle (1996:375-398). Other under-
-researched fields - ethnicity, etnhic identity, the relationship between
language and ethnic identity - became the focus of Jadranka Grbić's papers
(1994). She did research, both theoretical and empirical, into the issues
of identity, ethnicity and inter-ethnic permeation in the region of South
Eastern Europe, particularly among Croatians living outside of Croatia.
In her papers she analysed the dynamics of the identification process
on the basis of linguistic and other cultural determinants, emphasising
the importance of creating a model of community in multi-
-ethnic and multi-confessional environments (1997a:7-23). Her interest
also focused on the phenomenon of multiple identity, which she established
and interpreted in history and politics (1997b:317-329).
Ethnology, war and transition
Oriented towards everyday life, ethnology at the Institute was sensitive
to political changes such as the fall of Socialism and the establishment
of the Croatian State, which changed human destinies. Suddenly, the phenomena
with which we had been dealing opened up new perspectives; suddenly, we
identified cultural phenomena in everyday life with which we had not dealt
for various reasons in the time of Socialism. The political changes in
government bombarded us with the change of symbols, new national
awareness and nationalism, ethnic conflicts and, finally, with war. Powerless,
living with our own personal fear of war and its consequences, while still
desirous of contributing to new interpretations of the new reality, but
also of own identity, our ethnological approaches moved in two directions.
In the first years of the 1990s, part of Croatia was occupied, people
were forced out of their homes; houses, villages and habitats were devastated.
Traditional popular culture was irreversibly destroyed. One group of the
Institute's ethnologists and folklorists turned to its field material
collected over decades, and tried to document, publish and interpret folklore
and ethnological material from the occupied regions: the Dubrovnik hinterland,
Banija and parts of Slavonia (Perić-Polonijo 1992:121-153; Dukat 1992:155-167;
Cale Feldman 1992a:169-184; Muraj 1992:185.218; Jambresić 1992:219-252;
Simunović 1992:253-274; Grbić 1992:275-295; Ceribasić 1992:297-322). Although
criticism is heard of the insistence on the memories of people who have
lost their homes because of the war, because such a discourse maintains
their status as victims (Greverus 1996:285), it has to be said that each
human community has its places of memory - lieux de memoire - and
that the ethnology of a country which really has undergone intense devastation,
cannot, nor is it able, to abandon such places.
The second group of ethnologists and folklorists turned directly to the
war, the poetics of resistance and political rituals, warrior symbolics,
everyday life in war-time, death in war and posthumous rituals, refugees
and their narratives, the fear experienced by ordinary people in the whirlwind
of war (Rihtman-Augustin 1992a:25-43; Cale Feldman, Senjković and Prica
1992b:45-105; Ritig-Beljak 1992:107-118). Possibilities for interpretation
of certain sub-ethnic and inter-ethnic relations and conflicts were drawn
from older material, particularly from its almost informal data (Jambresić
1992:219-252).
Differences in approach were not manifested only in the selection of themes
but also in methodology. While the former group persisted in the research
pattern which grew from the criticism of cultural-historical ethnology,
the latter drew its inspiration from the postmodern criticism of ethnology
and ethnographic writing. It happened that this very approach to deconstruction
was identical with something which war imposed on us: the destruction
of our conceptions about life and of life itself. The joint issue of Narodna
umjetnost 29/1992 which resulted from the efforts of both groups in
articles of postmodern sensibility which were re-edited and translated
into English, made up the book Fear, Death and Resistance (1993,
edited by L. Cale Feldman, I. Prica, and R. Senjković). This book created
quite a stir among the scholarly public in Croatia, and, more particularly,
abroad.
Yet another of the Institute's significant ethnological projects dealing
with refugees/internally displaced persons and war was realised firstly
by an international conference on the subject, and then by the book War,
Exile, Everyday Life. Cultural Perspectives (1996, edited by Renata
Jambresić Kirin and Maja Povrzanović). The book critically examined the
practice and strategy of help given to refugees. The authors dealt with
the narratives of war-time experiences, memory and recollections of the
war. They paid particular interest to art as part of the displaced person's
experience and the function of the arts - music, drama - in overcoming
the desperation and identity crises of refugees. Finally, they considered
the ethnological and/or anthropological challenges offered or imposed
in the research of war and refugees of war, along with the accountability
of ethnology in researching refugee destinies and/or in interpretation
of war, its causes and consequences.
A particular contribution to the ethnology of war was made by Maja Povrzanović's
doctoral dissertation Kultura i stah: ratna svakodnevica u Hrvatskoj
1991/92 [Culture and Fear: Everyday Life in War-Time in Croatia 1991/92]
(1997). The author examines the multiple causes and consequences of fear.
In its ethnographic aspect, the thesis uncovers the cultural processes
in everyday life: new, fear-motivated behaviour, as well as that which
is untouched by fear, allowing the continuance of everyday life. In its
analytical aspect, the thesis is devoted to fear as a cultural experience
and/or to the cultural consequences of fear among the civilian population.
One chapter from the dissertation was published in the journal Dubrovnik
1(IX), 1998:118-140, which is - with some other papers written by the
authors from the Institute - completely dedicated to the folklore and
literary heritage of Konavle.
At the end of the century: deconstruction of Croatian ethnology
It could be asked whether ethnology at the Institute over the fifty years
of its work shared the crisis destiny which has been a constant subject
in contemporary ethnology and anthropology. This question could be answered
both negatively and positively. It seems to us that ethnological output
at the Institute has continually grown during these years, and continually
been open to new questions, as we have attempted to present in this review.
In answer to these questions: both the theoretical approach and the subject
itself were gradually changed. In this process, one orientation in these
ethnological undertakings defined in a new way its attitude towards history,
while the other orientation separated itself from essentially historical
questions and drew nearer to epistemological research and the postmodern
questionability of the very marrow of ethnological scholarship - its text
and its writing.
However, the influence of the postmodern discourse on the crisis of ethnology
can be felt in the majority of the ethnological papers which have issued
from the Institute's workshops over the last decade. This is most evident
in the growing number of papers about Croatian ethnology itself. The most
wide-reaching paper in this field is definitely Ines Prica's doctoral
dissertation, Odlike etnografskog pisma u modernoj hrvatskoj etnologiji:
Kulturni i znanstveni dijalog u diskurzu etnologije suvremenosti [Distinguishing
Features of Ethnographic Writing in Modern Croatian Ethnology: The Cultural
and Scholarly Dialogue in the Ethnology of Contemporary Times] (1996a).
The position of Croatian ethnology is examined within the frameworks of
the demands for its historical reconstruction and the establishment of
its place in the European horizons of the discipline. I. Prica approaches
Croatian ethnological tradition from the standpoint of the theory of the
ethnographic discourse as the post-critical viewpoint. She does not draw
back from diagnosis of its state of crisis, but observes it in the light
of postmodern deconstruction, in the movement towards the interdisciplinary,
the fragment, autobiographisation, and finally to the founding of own
scientific identity (1996b; 1996c).
In fact, the influences of the postmodern commenced as early as 1989 with
a survey conducted by Lydija Sklevicky about the status of Croatian ethnology
as a profession, and the author's brilliant comments on the responses
to the survey (1991:45-67). A significant contribution to the examination
of ethnological approaches was given by Jasna Capo Zmegac who showed the
changeable positions of the concepts of culture and people
as the focal points of Croatian ethnology (1991b:7-15), and also the differences
between Radić's and Gavazzi's ethnological approaches (1995:25-38; 1997a:9-33).
With her paper on J. Matasović and the journal Narodna starina
[Popular Antiquities], Aleksandra Muraj drew attention to the multiple
ethnological voices in the period between the wars, which we thought of
as speaking in unison (1993:11-
-34), and to the process of canonisation of popular culture that was confirmed
by Vjera Bonifacić in her interpretation of Croatian traditional textiles
(1996:239-263). Asking what was it that we did not research during
Socialism, pointing out the political context of Radić's ethnology
and endeavouring to explain Gavazzi's distancing himself from politics
- despite his engagement during the 1930s in organising the Folklore
Festivals, which were politically motivated - D. Rihtman-
-Augustin added an aspect to deconstruction which opened up the opportunity
for researching power relations from the ethnoanthropological viewpoint
(1995:107-122; 1996:54-61). This tendency which examined the alterations
in the meaning of New Year rituals under Socialism (1988:59-72) was anticipated
by L. Sklevicky in her article on the new New Year (Sklevicky 1990). On
their part, Reana Senjković's papers radically changed the very paradigm
of folklore art with the premise that such folk art "... adds the
artistic output produced for the masses to the innumerable host of individual
art creations which, inspired by differing reasons and for differing purposes,
were created by individuals who were not trained for such [work] nor professionally
engaged in it" (1996:4; 1996a:41-57; 1997:95-132).
What and how in the years to come?
In the Institute's fiftieth year, the staff includes a team of new recruits
to ethnology, so that there are now thirteen female and male ethnologists
doing research. A larger number of associates allows for a broader encompassing
of themes. For example, after the tragically early death of Lydija Sklevicky,
research is being renewed in the framework of anthropology of gender (Tea
Skokić). Historical ethnoanthropological research is being broadened (Valentina
Gulin); research is being done into youth culture (Sanja Kalapos); while
an absolute innovation at the Institute is research being done into visual
anthropology (Sanja Puljar) and economic anthropology (Goran Santek).
Consequently, it is evident that approaches will continue to change and
to broaden. Will the old paradigm and old material be set aside completely
in the coming decades, or will some new modes of coexistence between the
diverse approaches to folk culture alias everyday culture alias
something else be found? They will, surely. What will remain will be both
the scholarly and moral obligation of ethnologist-researchers. And this
is where the chances for the Institute's ethnology will lie in the years
to come.
(Translated by Nina H. Antoljak)
references cited
In the politically eventful year of 1948 when the Institute for Folk Art
was founded (on February 6), cultural policy in Croatia - as well as in
all of the former Yugoslavia - maintained an ambivalent stance towards
folklore and popular culture. The ruling ideology had used folklore during
World War II as a means of mobilisation and propaganda, while almost at
the same time coming down hard on tradition which was conceived as being
rural, backward, possibly even nationalistic, and bound up with religion.
On the other hand, at that time and later, the Yugoslav state followed
Soviet cultural policy models, and started to found institutions which
would present the country and its multicultural nature. In any case, perhaps
the establishment of the Institute in Zagreb grew out of the idea that
a state scientific institute should gradually replace some functions of
Seljacka sloga [Peasant Harmony], the peasant cultural organisation
which had been founded by the very influential Croatian Peasant Party
before WW2. It was natural that this organisation was increasingly regarded
as inappropriate in the ruling scheme of things after the war. However,
whether the Institute for Folk Art was founded in such an environment
or some other is not now of particular importance. What is significant
is that the Institute's stated objective at its foundation was the collection
of folklore material -
- primarily music - as a testimony to the richness of the folk heritage.
The focus in the concept was set more on folklore than on popular culture;
ethnology was not yet featured in the Institute's documents. Today, one
can only ask oneself if one of the reasons for the omission of ethnology
lay in the dogmatic Marxist viewpoint about the superfluousness of a theoretically
based ethnological science.
Be that as it may, the first of the Institute's major projects -
- research into the folk traditions of Istria, which only became part
of Croatia and/or Yugoslavia in 1945 - was conducted without ethnologists.
Ivan Ivancan participated in the research project as an ethnochoreologist.
He dealt with popular culture only in those aspects linked to dance.
Pre-conditions for ethnology
Efforts today to review and evaluate the development of ethnological research
at the Institute first show that from its foundation, notwithstanding
the initial motives, the Institute was permeated with the ambition that
research be scientifically founded and that new avenues be constantly
opened up. At the very beginning, the Institute's director, musicologist
Dr. Vinko Zganec, employed Olinko Delorko - providing him with a kind
of political asylum. Delorko's job was to note down the texts of the folk
songs whose melodies Zganec collected. However, the presence of Delorko,
an expert on Benedetto Croceo's aesthetics, augured a farewell to the
entrenched Romantic approach to folklore. This poet-
-novelist collected, compiled and published collections of Croatian folk
poetry guided by his refined literary sensibility. Until then represented
almost exclusively by decasyllabic verse and with heroic motifs, Delorko's
selection of folk poetry brought to the surface a poetic worth equal to
the greatest attainments of Croatian writers. Folk poetry ceased to exist
as the poetry of Others, who were primitive and always at war.
Delorko deserves the credit that such poetry was accepted by literary
criticism and finally found a sure place in the body of Croatian literature.
However, the final turnabout towards conscious scientific approaches and
towards entry into the dominant currents of the European scholarly discourse
in and about ethnology and folkloristics was given by Maja Bosković-Stulli.
Although the debut of the new paradigm was not announced, nor even
raised to awareness in the texts - - and who did that in ethnology or
folkloristics at that time? - the new approach started to influence research
- and texts - in all the disciplines which would later be given a home
by the Institute, and which would, from time to time, alternate the emphases
in scholarly output.
Still, in the first issue of the journal Narodna umjetnost [since
1995, published in English as The Croatian Journal of Folklore Research]
published in 1962 i.e. in the fifteenth year of the Institute's activities,
the articles on ethnology were written by external contributors; there
still being no in-house ethnologist on the Institute's staff. This was
the case with the following three issues. It should be borne in mind that
at that time, apart from the Zagreb-based Yugoslav Academy of Science
and Art's fairly irregular publication of the Zbornik za narodni æivot
i obicaje juænih slavena [Review of the Folk Life and Customs
of the Southern Slavs], there was not even one regular ethnological publication
in Croatia (there being only the Etnoloski pregled [Ethnological
Review] at the Yugoslavian level). In those first issues, the articles
on ethnology by contributors to Narodna umjetnost dealt with phenomena
from so-called material culture (Gabrić 1962:53-65) or customs (Culinović-Konstantinović
1963:73-96) or even folk art in the context of customs (Benc-Bosković
1962:81-91). The articles were compiled using the classic cultural-historical
method, with a description of the phenomenon and data about its diffusion,
and with efforts to reveal its origins. It is interesting to note, although
not at all unexpected, that the contributions by field researchers who
were not trained ethnologists differed somewhat from this norm. For example,
Zvonko Lovrencević described a specific wedding with all the details.
Such a description differed from the customary canonised models used in
relation to folk culture until that time (1963:176-191). On another occasion
Lovrencević tried to set the chronological position of the researched
phenomena which was regularly absent in the ethnological papers of that
period (1969/70:71-100).
The column called Prikazi [Surveys], featured from the very first
issue, was carefully edited by Maja Bosković-Stulli - in fact, she set
the tone of the yearly publication - and gave up-to-date reports about
domestic output and recent ethnological output abroad. This initiated
- - or, if one recalls A. Radić and his surveys in the Zbornik za narodni
æivot i obicaje, reinstated - the practice of ensuring a flow
of information about actual tendencies in ethnological research and made
possible their reception. It was that direct connection with ethnological
thought, primarily from Germany, but also from the Scandinavian countries,
France and the United States of America, which would have considerable
influence on the work of ethnologists who would be active as full-time
members of staff at the Institute from the mid-1960s.
Towards radical criticism of ethnology
Josip Milicević worked in the Department for Customs which was
established at that time. (Prior to Milicević, research into customs had
been the assignment of the folklorist, the late Miko (Nikola) Bonifacić
Roæin. However, he had much more of an ear for popular drama, and
then took over that field of study.) The name of the department speaks
for itself i.e. it indicates that ethnological work at the Institute was
conceived mainly as research into the context of folklore phenomena. Still,
from its institutionalised very beginnings, ethnological research could
not be limited in that way. Milicević started to work on one topic which
had been considered rarely in Croatian ethnology until that time - customs
and beliefs connected with the economic life of peasant communities (1966:191-207).
Later, his interest widened to include other customs, but also traditional
economy (1967/68:433-513; 1974/75:399-
-462). He shifted away from cultural-historical methodology, was not interested
in diffusion and origins, and barely inclined to canonisation of customs.
He noted down and used what was an almost biographical approach, visited
his informants on more than one occasion, and looked for them in their
new locations when they moved. In addition, providing a parallel view
of the local culture, he made extensive use of the works of writers describing
the life of the communities which he himself was investigating.
A new ethnological question was opened up in 1969 in the 7th issue of
Narodna umjetnost, in a survey by Nives Ritig-Beljak (1969:17-25).
She commented on the debate about folklore and folklorism which had just
been published in the Zeitschrift für Volkskunde. Although, from
today's perspective, one can see the flaws in the theory of H. Moser and
H. Bausinger, primarily because of the tacit assumption on the stability
of the initial state of folklore, information about the theory drew attention
both to the life of folklore in the contemporary, consumer and media society
and the responsibility of scholars in the application, representation
and use of contemporary folklore. As a result, in contrast to the ethnological
dogmas entrenched until that time, which asserted that traditional culture
and folklore disappeared in contact with urban civilisation, so that ethnology
should not pay it any attention, at the beginning of the 1970s we started
thinking about the position of traditional culture in contemporary society
(Rihtman-Augustin 1971:3-
-17). A different approach in ethnology was sought, which much later (1984,
1988) would be called the new paradigm, although, in fact, no new
paradigm was being firmly conceived. It was still a matter of radical
criticism of cultural-historical ethnology. That is why it is difficult
- and even impossible - to decide where the turning-points came about
in evolving theory and in concrete research and field work. They occurred
gradually both through criticism of the old ethnology and its canons
and in perceptions which grew out of direct contact with everyday life
in empirical research. This can also be clearly seen, for example, in
two reviews of a bibliography prepared by Ingeborg Weber Kellermann (Gavazzi
& Rihtman-Augustin 1973:379-382). M. Gavazzi could not conceal his
surprise that this classification of customs included papers on the way
of life and customs of Gastarbeiters, about merchant customs, about
food and nutrition, and the like. This new classification of the literature
on customs and rituals - together with I. Weber Kellermann's introduction,
which saw customs as the markers of the behaviour codes of social groups
- opened up new possibilities to D. Rihtman-Augustin to study one of the
central themes of the old ethnology. Firstly, customs were observed in
the changing social context including the social dynamics of human groups
in which customs denote relationships. Within the Institute, customs and
festivities were perceived as the loci of folklore, so that their
study and the study of beliefs was approached as the basis for understanding
individual folklore phenomena. In her article Narodni obicaji okolice
Donje Stubice [Folk Customs in the Surroundings of Donja Stubica]
(1973:152.216), Zorica Rajković Vitez took a critical view of the previous
practice in the research of customs. In contrast to looking for the authenticity
of customs, the favoured aim of numerous Croatian ethnologists, she directed
her view at the contemporary state and status of the customs and rituals.
She observed customs as part of a process and expressed marked resistance
to the then-current timeless understanding of all folklore phenomena.
As a skilful field researcher, she drew attention in her article Obiljeæja
etnografske gradje i metode njezina terenskog istraæivanja [The
Characteristics of Ethnographic Material and the Methods for Its Field
Research] (1974:129-134) to the clash which exists between the ethnological
canonisation of customs and their individual realisation. Through very
pedantic criticism of sources, she proved the existence of one more mistaken
ethnological notion - not exclusive to Croatian ethnology - i.e. the one
about the ostensible trial marriage (1975). She showed how both
the notion of the trial marriage and the literature which described it
partly followed the miscomprehension of the functioning and symbolics
of the traditional communities, demystifying in that way the phenomenon
which some ethnologists regarded as being one of the Balkan specifics.
Somewhat later, Aleksandra Muraj investigated the culture of habitation
and life in the suburban village of Jalsevac in a way not used before,
introducing what was for that time unconventional material into her monographic
article: personal letters and family documents along with statistical
and demographic data, evaluation of the relationships between village
and town both from the aspect of their destructiveness regarding traditional
culture, but also identification of the stimulus provided to traditional
culture which emerged in those relationships (1977:95-149).
If the research into customs and the culture of habitation started out
from the traditional ethnological subject and attacked its canons, research
into the transformation of traditional culture set out on a search for
a new or at least different subject.
The search for new approaches
As early as the 1960s, in addition to collecting material in the villages,
social reality called for ethnologists to make the trip to town, following
their peasants who were leaving rural communities in increasing numbers.
In essence, the interdisciplinary project on transformation of folklore
traditions was set in motion by Maja Bosković-Stulli, and she had considerable
difficulties with funding. Branimir Bratanić, professor of ethnology at
Zagreb University and chairperson of a commission of the Fund for Scientific
Work, at that time the body which authorised ethnological projects, asked
for a progress report after the end of the first year, although that had
not formerly been the practice. We did not produce a report for him because
we were still in the research stage, doing something which had never been
seen in Croatian ethnology, nor, for that matter, in many other ethnologies.
We prepared ourselves for research through theory. Many very brisk discussions
were held at the Institute on a series of individual theoretical questions.
Ethnologists and folklorists took part on an equal footing. Dunja Rihtman-Augustin
recalls the lively debate about her introductory text (1976:1-25), and
has remained grateful until today to all the participants for their very
critical and very stimulating comments. The original contributions by
Olga Supek, Milivoj Vodopija, Zorica Rajković Vitez and Aleksandra Muraj,
still an external associate at that time, were also discussed in detail.
Those papers really coloured both the Institute's work and Croatian ethnology,
and evoked attention in the ethnologies of other centres in the former
Yugoslavia.
The project which commenced as research into the transformation of
folklore traditions in contemporary culture (the results of which
were published in Narodna umjetnost, Issues Nos. 13/1976, 14/1977
and 15/1978) was soon to correct its own starting points. Today it is
regarded as a commonplace that traditions constantly circulate, not only
during historical periods or through geographical regions, but also among
the social strata. During that process they change. The stimuli for their
circulation and change come from the so-called upper social classes and
are directed towards the lower, but stimuli also exert their influence
from below. The traditions of past generations inspire the new, and they
accept, interpret and change them. All this sounds self-evident today
but at the mid-1970s it was still necessary to struggle for the acceptance
of the ethnological relevancy of certain ostensibly banal phenomena such
as everyday urban narratives (Bosković-Stulli 1978:11-35); high school
graduation celebrations and processions (Vodopija 1976:77-92); children's
games, those played on asphalt, which was a newly-opened theme in European
ethnology as a whole (Rajković Vitez 1978:37-96); numerous, seemingly
trivial newspaper death notices (Rihtman-Augustin 1978:117-175); or the
symbols of death in road accidents (Rajković Vitez 1976:27-56). These
latter themes were associated with death, a taboo in modern middle-class
society and, it seems, even more so in socialist society. The project's
objective could only be achieved through thorough re-thinking of ethnological
approaches and interpretations. To a certain extent this meant production
of texts which in some way transformed everyday life and its trivia into
something strange and wonderful, as I. Prica interpreted it (1996) - but
we would also venture to say, even more than that.
In this sense, the project's focus of interest was re-directed away from
transformation towards research into the interaction of folklore
traditions and contemporary culture. The change of the title in
mid-
-stream speaks for the creative climate of the multi-disciplinary
Institute team at that time when the firm boundaries of the discipline
were becoming less clearly marked. It was explained in this way in Narodna
umjetnost Issue No. 16/1979:
In other words, it has become evident that the transformation process
is always present in cultural phenomena which we regard as folklore and
that they should always be studied in respect of past as well as current
changes. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied with the identification of
this or that transformation, but must try to uncover the trend of historical
changes and their meaning. In addition, on the one hand there is also
the significant issue of the current, contemporary interaction between
traditional creativity in the narrower sense and folklore creativity in
the broader sense, and trends and phenomena of contemporary culture on
the other. Therefore the title of the project was changed after the first
stage... (p 179).
It is obvious that the perception of both the entertainment industry,
being talked about by Bausinger at that time, and the influence of the
media which would later essentially change popular culture, folklore and
our scholarly perceptions had also crept into the project.
Parallely with the efforts to set frameworks for research of the relationship
between popular culture and folklore tradition on the one hand, and contemporary
culture considerably marked out by the market economy and the media on
the other, ethnological thought at the Institute was oriented towards
radical criticism of the general hypotethes of cultural-historical ethnology
and something which we could call the deconstruction of its canons. This
related to the fundamental concepts such as, for example, folk, the extended
family (the zadruga). This also meant the introduction of theoretical
approaches offered at that time by the structuralism of C. Lévi Strauss
and the post-structuralism of E. Leach, written about by M. Vodopija (1973:385-387);
or the theory of practice in its anthropological version: from theory
to practice and back, in the programmatic article of Olga Supek (1976:57-76),
very much in step with then-current European ethnological thought. It
was in this aura that D. Rihtman-Augustin's Struktura tradicijskog
misljenja [The Structure of Traditional Thinking] (1984) was written.
In the book, the author relied on two assumptions of Lévi Strauss' structuralism.
On the one hand, she identified structural relationships in the material
on Croatian traditional culture, including extended families. On the other,
she insisted on the differentiation and inter-relation between the ordre
conçu and ordre vecu in the interpretation of the traditional
ways of thinking. Through critical perusal of monographs about folk life,
she in fact rehabilitated the value of the material itself for that ethnology
which would be joining historical research in a new manner. However, interest
in the structure of traditional thinking does not belong solely to history
because tradition is approached from the present, from everyday culture,
and this type of research was to be joined by numerous ethnological studies
at the Institute.
Regional and thematic monographs - compensation
for ethnological arrears
However, theoretical postulates are never implemented in the way they
are conceived or in the way that their promoters preach, while scholarly
work takes places in the fissures of the given conditions of life and
in diverse combinations of former and current paradigms.
The Institute's ethnology felt that it had an obligation to pay off
some of the debts and arrears from the past of its profession. It is a
known fact that, right up until the middle of the 20th century, Croatian
ethnology had not done even the most essential positivistic work i.e.
no regional nor thematic ethnological monographs had been published. In
Central European ethnologies, this task had been performed if in no other
aspect at least with the help of research within the national or regional
ethnological atlases, and the publication of the corresponding maps and
studies. At that time, European ethnologies were working on community
studies. As the results of Croatian and Yugoslav research in ethnological
atlases were not being published, the void was even greater.
Consequently, the Institute included the compilation of monographs of
the individual regions in its programme. The first stimuli were fairly
traditional, because it was believed that models - and perhaps the canons?
- of the regional characteristics of popular culture had to be determined.
However, research experience indicated that no regional models of popular
culture exist but rather that diversity reigns and that phenomena have
to be treated individually. At the time it seemed that this type of research
could only be conducted in precisely defined, small communities. Monographs
about individual local communities were prepared through team work and
a multi-disciplinary approach, with contributions being made by historians,
folklorists specialised in literature, music and dance, and ethnologists
who no longer limited themselves to the study of customs. These monographs
included Studije i gradja o Sinjskoj krajini [Studies and Material
about the Sinj Region] (Narodna umjetnost 5-6/1967-68), Folklor
Gupceva zavicaja [The Folklore of Gubec's Countryside] (Narodna
umjetnost 10/1973), Folklor otoka Braca [The Folklore of the
Island of Brac] (Narodna umjetnost 11--12/1974-75), Povijest
i tradicije otoka Zlarina [The History and Traditions of the Island
of Zlarin] (Narodna umjetnost 17/1980; Narodna umjetnost
18/1981). There was an obvious move away from ethnographic inventories
and descriptions (Gamulin & Vidović 1967-68:95-105; the same authors
1974-75:463-496) to innovation in conception and interpretation, particularly
of material culture, folk costume, and everyday life (Muraj 1981a:159-220;
1981b:257-320).
It was only in the first half of the 1990s that the second part of the
debt was paid off. In a different historical time, but also in
a different theoretical climate, monographs were prepared and published
about two of the most significant cycles of customs in Croatian popular
culture i.e. those accompanying Christmas and those accompanying Easter.
Fully aware of the criticism directed at the concept of custom, the subject
of a conference organised by the Institute in 1986 - the papers presented
being published in Narodna umjetnost 24/1987 - but also of ethnological
practice in the research of customs (Prica 1991:243-267), Dunja Rihtman-Augustin
(1992b) and Jasna Capo Zmegac (1997b), each in their own way tried to
fill the void in the study and publication of the ethnography of customs.
Presenting Christmas and Christmas customs, D. Rihtman-Augustin drew in
equal measure from material published by Croatian ethnologists and folklorists
from the beginning of the 20th century until the present day, and from
existing ethnological and historical literature about Christmas customs
(Weber-Kellermann, Blaumeiser-Blimlinger, Burke, Bogatyrev, Gajek, Sklevicky,
Miller). She tried to step outside the traditional ethnological frameworks
for approaching customs which located them solely in the village and not
in the town, solely in peasant and not in urban communities, solely in
the past and not in the present. She took into account the influence of
the changeable power relations on the formation of religious and popular
traditions and even on popular piety itself. In her monograph about Easter
and Easter customs mainly in the first half of the 20th century, Jasna
Capo Zmegac utilised the significant body of ethnological theory on customs
(Weber-Kellermann, Scharfe, H. Moser, Johler, Haringer, van Gennep) and
structured a hypothesis which abandons the dichotomy of the pre-Christian/Christian
in customs. She supported a much more well--founded approach which encompassed
the interaction of religion, religious teaching and religious ritual with
popular comprehension of religious teaching and with the numerous and
diverse popular interpretations of the sacred with the corresponding practice
of piety. Following previous discussions on research of customs at the
Institute, she paid particular attention to the analysis of customs in
the changing social context, reading off their meaning in communication
and social integration.
Here, we should mention another significant book which joined in the above-mentioned
payment of debts. Ivan Lozica's Hrvatski karnevali [Croatian
Carnivals] (1997), was the first synthesised presentation of carnival
customs to appear in Croatian ethnology and folkloristics. Lozica treats
the carnival in the light of the concepts of time and customs, speaking
of the power and attractiveness of carnival customs, presenting them in
all their known historical and contemporary forms, which he frequently
researched in his own field work. As the author is a folklorist, the book
is spoken of in more detail in the article herein on folkloristics.
Finally, the third repayment of Croatian ethnology's debt is being made
precisely in the Institute's fiftieth year with the publication of a manual
of Croatian ethnology. Although it is hard to believe that we did not
until now have an appropriate handbook, the book Etnografija. Svagdan
i blagdan hrvatskoga puka [Ethnography. The Every Day and the Festive
Day of the Croatian People] is the first attempt to examine in ethnological
terms the complex of popular culture in Croatia as a whole. The authors
are aware that the book's publication is well overdue and taking place
at a time in which one finds in Croatian ethnology three diverse and often
opposed approaches to tradition. One is radical criticism which finds
flaws in the construction and intention of traditions. The second is traditionalist
tendency which continues to petrify material in its timelessness. Finally,
there are various modifications of the cultural-historical approach. The
titles of the main chapters in the book (Elementi hrvatske seljacke
kulture u prostoru i vremenu. Osnovni pojmovi i polazista. Kritika gradje
[Elements of Croatian Peasant Culture in Time and Place. Basic Concepts
and Starting-Points. A Critique of the Material] by J. Capo Zmegac; Obrisi
svakidasnjeg æivota [Contours of Everyday Life] by A. Muraj;
Iskorak iz svakidasnjice [A Step out of Everyday Life] by Z. Vitez
with R. Senjković, G. Marosević, T. Zebec, and I. Lozica; Seoska drustvenost
[Village Sociability] by J. Capo Zmegac; and, Predodæbe o æivotu
i svijetu [Conceptions about Life and the World] by J. Grbić), mark
the new approach undertaken by the authors, dealing with the known, but
actually insufficiently articulated material on Croatian popular culture.
An additional and useful contribution is found in the chapter called Povijest
etnoloske misli u Hrvata [The History of Ethnological Thought among
the Croats] by V. Belaj, the only author who is not a member of the Institute's
staff.
From research of custom to the diversified
cultural-anthropological approaches
As has been seen, the ethnological approaches in the function of researching
the context of folklore utilised the advantages provided by close multi-disciplinary
co-operation with the professionals active in other disciplines at the
Institute. Still, that co-operation to an extent hampered and narrowed
the ethnological perspectives because it allowed them to range only in
the set frameworks of the customs concept. It was only in 1991 that the
name of the Department for Customs was changed in the documents
of the Institute into the Ethnological Department.
However, the openness towards the flow of cultural-anthropology and the
radical criticism of the subject referred to above imposed a question
on the folklorists - and the ethnologists - at the Institute: that of
the meaning of the communication processes. The contributions of non--Croatian
and Croatian authors to the book which was often quoted later - Folklor
i usmena komunikacija [Folklore and Oral Communication] (1982, edited
by Maja Bosković-Stulli) - drew attention to the meaning of research into
the communication processes in everyday life and to the dynamics of the
social groups, whose culture belongs to this field. In a discussion about
that book held on the Institute's 35th anniversary, November 22, 1983
(published in Narodna umjetnost 21/1984:35-50) the somewhat radical
rejection of the folk concept was re-examined, expressing awareness
of its various dimensions, thus emphasising the need to research ethnicity
and the interrelationship between cultural and ethnic processes.
Contributions in the Institute's documentation still speak of team projects
in the collection of folklore and ethnographic material, also from nationally
diverse Croatian environments (for example, Serbian Sjenicak in the Kordun
region) and the old Croatian Diaspora such as the Austrian Burgenland
Croatians and/or those in Slovakia. Still, there was a gradual falling-off
in the complex field research of folklore and folk culture aimed at collecting
material. Olga Supek, the author of an individual study with participant
observation in Sveta Jana, following in the footsteps of Roæić's
Prigorje monograph published in 1907, built in to her doctoral dissertation
the approach to symbolic anthropology (1982). Identifying as early as
1976 the ethnological relevance of ostensibly banal phenomena such as
the marking of death in traffic accidents, Zorica Rajković Vitez expanded
her research to cover the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia. In
her book Znamenja smrti [Memorials to Death] (1988), she analysed
the sense and meaning in general of memorials to sudden death, the socio-cultural
context which surrounds them and the non-
-verbal message which they emit. At almost the same time, Aleksandra Muraj
also carried out participant observation in Sosice in the Zumberak hills
(1989), critically examining both Radić's and Gavazzi's approach to material
culture. Consequently, she no longer speaks of folk architecture but of
the people who live in the houses in question, and about the symbolic
world connected with their home and place of residence: in a word, about
the culture of habitation.
Abandoning team work in local and regional research, the Institute's staff
- both ethnologists and folklorists - still came together around one thematic
research project, throwing light on various aspects of Carnival customs
and rituals which were long-lived and showed enduring vitality (Zecević
1985:15-30; 1988:115.122, Lozica 1985:31-57; 1988:87-113; Rajković Vitez
1985:59-97, Ritig-Beljak 1985:99-117, Povrzanović 1988:15-66; Supek 1988:67-86;
Sremac 1988:137-174; Galin 1988:175.204). Pokladna dogadjanja [Carnival
Events] - as was mentioned in the introduction to Narodna umjetnost
25/1988:
are interpreted as a highly valued symbol of cultural identity, as an
expression of the relationship of the village to the global society, as
a shift from earlier manipulation of Nature to a symbolic manipulation
of people, as a symbolic expression of order and disorder (and/or solidarity
and conflict in the social sense and tradition and changes in the cultural
sense), as a rite of passage which includes the symbolic act of sacrifice,
as a remnant of fertility cults which contain polysemic conventional and
standardised symbols and exist beyond the life of their forgotten messages
and meanings.
Ethnological thought at the Institute does not tend towards a school of
thought nor it is guided by any particular theoretical school. Since the
1980s, the number of ethnologists at the Institute has grown; ethnology
has been manifesting a diversification of themes and theoretic approaches
and, of course, more profuse output.
In Ethnologija nase svakodnevice [The Ethnology of Our Everyday
Life] D. Rihtman-Augustin presented a hypothesis for researching folk
culture as the culture of everyday life. In a situation in which ethnology
is constantly questioning its own meaning in the contemporary world, the
author was inspired by the current trends in the profession, and offered
an open system of research hypotheses: "a conceptional framework
based on the structural and communicational definitions of culture which,
however, is set once again in each concrete research project" (1988:38).
Snjeæana Zorić made an effort to settle custom in the space between
ethnology, theology and philosophy (1991). Relying on her field experience,
Maja Povrzanović questioned to a certain extent the folklore--folklorism
model and showed how the media maintain and shape folklore (1988:15-66).
Somewhat later, in 1995, Zoran Cica carried out a theoretical examination
of Croatian research into witches and drew attention to the representations
of witches and fairies in Croatian folklore.
Several new, until then completely wanting, and, in fact, non-existent
areas of ethnological scholarly interest were opened up. Jasna Capo Zmegac
dealt in a qualified manner with historical demographic research and focused
her attention on an unusual, and almost unsuitable ethnological
field for that time - a landed estate (1991a). Through historical demography,
she showed certain ethnological phenomena -
- the extended family, for example - in a different light. J. Capo Zmegac
asked why Croatian ethnology had dealt to such an extent with the extended
family, or zadruga, and not at all with the nuclear family, when
in reality such an insignificant number of village families were organised
on the zadruga principle (1996:375-398). Other under-
-researched fields - ethnicity, etnhic identity, the relationship between
language and ethnic identity - became the focus of Jadranka Grbić's papers
(1994). She did research, both theoretical and empirical, into the issues
of identity, ethnicity and inter-ethnic permeation in the region of South
Eastern Europe, particularly among Croatians living outside of Croatia.
In her papers she analysed the dynamics of the identification process
on the basis of linguistic and other cultural determinants, emphasising
the importance of creating a model of community in multi-
-ethnic and multi-confessional environments (1997a:7-23). Her interest
also focused on the phenomenon of multiple identity, which she established
and interpreted in history and politics (1997b:317-329).
Ethnology, war and transition
Oriented towards everyday life, ethnology at the Institute was sensitive
to political changes such as the fall of Socialism and the establishment
of the Croatian State, which changed human destinies. Suddenly, the phenomena
with which we had been dealing opened up new perspectives; suddenly, we
identified cultural phenomena in everyday life with which we had not dealt
for various reasons in the time of Socialism. The political changes in
government bombarded us with the change of symbols, new national
awareness and nationalism, ethnic conflicts and, finally, with war. Powerless,
living with our own personal fear of war and its consequences, while still
desirous of contributing to new interpretations of the new reality, but
also of own identity, our ethnological approaches moved in two directions.
In the first years of the 1990s, part of Croatia was occupied, people
were forced out of their homes; houses, villages and habitats were devastated.
Traditional popular culture was irreversibly destroyed. One group of the
Institute's ethnologists and folklorists turned to its field material
collected over decades, and tried to document, publish and interpret folklore
and ethnological material from the occupied regions: the Dubrovnik hinterland,
Banija and parts of Slavonia (Perić-Polonijo 1992:121-153; Dukat 1992:155-167;
Cale Feldman 1992a:169-184; Muraj 1992:185.218; Jambresić 1992:219-252;
Simunović 1992:253-274; Grbić 1992:275-295; Ceribasić 1992:297-322). Although
criticism is heard of the insistence on the memories of people who have
lost their homes because of the war, because such a discourse maintains
their status as victims (Greverus 1996:285), it has to be said that each
human community has its places of memory - lieux de memoire - and
that the ethnology of a country which really has undergone intense devastation,
cannot, nor is it able, to abandon such places.
The second group of ethnologists and folklorists turned directly to the
war, the poetics of resistance and political rituals, warrior symbolics,
everyday life in war-time, death in war and posthumous rituals, refugees
and their narratives, the fear experienced by ordinary people in the whirlwind
of war (Rihtman-Augustin 1992a:25-43; Cale Feldman, Senjković and Prica
1992b:45-105; Ritig-Beljak 1992:107-118). Possibilities for interpretation
of certain sub-ethnic and inter-ethnic relations and conflicts were drawn
from older material, particularly from its almost informal data (Jambresić
1992:219-252).
Differences in approach were not manifested only in the selection of themes
but also in methodology. While the former group persisted in the research
pattern which grew from the criticism of cultural-historical ethnology,
the latter drew its inspiration from the postmodern criticism of ethnology
and ethnographic writing. It happened that this very approach to deconstruction
was identical with something which war imposed on us: the destruction
of our conceptions about life and of life itself. The joint issue of Narodna
umjetnost 29/1992 which resulted from the efforts of both groups in
articles of postmodern sensibility which were re-edited and translated
into English, made up the book Fear, Death and Resistance (1993,
edited by L. Cale Feldman, I. Prica, and R. Senjković). This book created
quite a stir among the scholarly public in Croatia, and, more particularly,
abroad.
Yet another of the Institute's significant ethnological projects dealing
with refugees/internally displaced persons and war was realised firstly
by an international conference on the subject, and then by the book War,
Exile, Everyday Life. Cultural Perspectives (1996, edited by Renata
Jambresić Kirin and Maja Povrzanović). The book critically examined the
practice and strategy of help given to refugees. The authors dealt with
the narratives of war-time experiences, memory and recollections of the
war. They paid particular interest to art as part of the displaced person's
experience and the function of the arts - music, drama - in overcoming
the desperation and identity crises of refugees. Finally, they considered
the ethnological and/or anthropological challenges offered or imposed
in the research of war and refugees of war, along with the accountability
of ethnology in researching refugee destinies and/or in interpretation
of war, its causes and consequences.
A particular contribution to the ethnology of war was made by Maja Povrzanović's
doctoral dissertation Kultura i stah: ratna svakodnevica u Hrvatskoj
1991/92 [Culture and Fear: Everyday Life in War-Time in Croatia 1991/92]
(1997). The author examines the multiple causes and consequences of fear.
In its ethnographic aspect, the thesis uncovers the cultural processes
in everyday life: new, fear-motivated behaviour, as well as that which
is untouched by fear, allowing the continuance of everyday life. In its
analytical aspect, the thesis is devoted to fear as a cultural experience
and/or to the cultural consequences of fear among the civilian population.
One chapter from the dissertation was published in the journal Dubrovnik
1(IX), 1998:118-140, which is - with some other papers written by the
authors from the Institute - completely dedicated to the folklore and
literary heritage of Konavle.
At the end of the century: deconstruction
of Croatian ethnology
It could be asked whether ethnology at the Institute over the fifty years
of its work shared the crisis destiny which has been a constant subject
in contemporary ethnology and anthropology. This question could be answered
both negatively and positively. It seems to us that ethnological output
at the Institute has continually grown during these years, and continually
been open to new questions, as we have attempted to present in this review.
In answer to these questions: both the theoretical approach and the subject
itself were gradually changed. In this process, one orientation in these
ethnological undertakings defined in a new way its attitude towards history,
while the other orientation separated itself from essentially historical
questions and drew nearer to epistemological research and the postmodern
questionability of the very marrow of ethnological scholarship - its text
and its writing.
However, the influence of the postmodern discourse on the crisis of ethnology
can be felt in the majority of the ethnological papers which have issued
from the Institute's workshops over the last decade. This is most evident
in the growing number of papers about Croatian ethnology itself. The most
wide-reaching paper in this field is definitely Ines Prica's doctoral
dissertation, Odlike etnografskog pisma u modernoj hrvatskoj etnologiji:
Kulturni i znanstveni dijalog u diskurzu etnologije suvremenosti [Distinguishing
Features of Ethnographic Writing in Modern Croatian Ethnology: The Cultural
and Scholarly Dialogue in the Ethnology of Contemporary Times] (1996a).
The position of Croatian ethnology is examined within the frameworks of
the demands for its historical reconstruction and the establishment of
its place in the European horizons of the discipline. I. Prica approaches
Croatian ethnological tradition from the standpoint of the theory of the
ethnographic discourse as the post-critical viewpoint. She does not draw
back from diagnosis of its state of crisis, but observes it in the light
of postmodern deconstruction, in the movement towards the interdisciplinary,
the fragment, autobiographisation, and finally to the founding of own
scientific identity (1996b; 1996c).
In fact, the influences of the postmodern commenced as early as 1989 with
a survey conducted by Lydija Sklevicky about the status of Croatian ethnology
as a profession, and the author's brilliant comments on the responses
to the survey (1991:45-67). A significant contribution to the examination
of ethnological approaches was given by Jasna Capo Zmegac who showed the
changeable positions of the concepts of culture and people
as the focal points of Croatian ethnology (1991b:7-15), and also the differences
between Radić's and Gavazzi's ethnological approaches (1995:25-38; 1997a:9-33).
With her paper on J. Matasović and the journal Narodna starina
[Popular Antiquities], Aleksandra Muraj drew attention to the multiple
ethnological voices in the period between the wars, which we thought of
as speaking in unison (1993:11-
-34), and to the process of canonisation of popular culture that was confirmed
by Vjera Bonifacić in her interpretation of Croatian traditional textiles
(1996:239-263). Asking what was it that we did not research during
Socialism, pointing out the political context of Radić's ethnology
and endeavouring to explain Gavazzi's distancing himself from politics
- despite his engagement during the 1930s in organising the Folklore
Festivals, which were politically motivated - D. Rihtman-
-Augustin added an aspect to deconstruction which opened up the opportunity
for researching power relations from the ethnoanthropological viewpoint
(1995:107-122; 1996:54-61). This tendency which examined the alterations
in the meaning of New Year rituals under Socialism (1988:59-72) was anticipated
by L. Sklevicky in her article on the new New Year (Sklevicky 1990). On
their part, Reana Senjković's papers radically changed the very paradigm
of folklore art with the premise that such folk art "... adds the
artistic output produced for the masses to the innumerable host of individual
art creations which, inspired by differing reasons and for differing purposes,
were created by individuals who were not trained for such [work] nor professionally
engaged in it" (1996:4; 1996a:41-57; 1997:95-132).
What and how in the years to come?
In the Institute's fiftieth year, the staff includes a team of new recruits
to ethnology, so that there are now thirteen female and male ethnologists
doing research. A larger number of associates allows for a broader encompassing
of themes. For example, after the tragically early death of Lydija Sklevicky,
research is being renewed in the framework of anthropology of gender (Tea
Skokić). Historical ethnoanthropological research is being broadened (Valentina
Gulin); research is being done into youth culture (Sanja Kalapos); while
an absolute innovation at the Institute is research being done into visual
anthropology (Sanja Puljar) and economic anthropology (Goran Santek).
Consequently, it is evident that approaches will continue to change and
to broaden. Will the old paradigm and old material be set aside completely
in the coming decades, or will some new modes of coexistence between the
diverse approaches to folk culture alias everyday culture alias
something else be found? They will, surely. What will remain will be both
the scholarly and moral obligation of ethnologist-researchers. And this
is where the chances for the Institute's ethnology will lie in the years
to come.
(Translated by Nina H. Antoljak)
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