Global Colleagues: The Slovene Ethnological Society: Research, Professions and Publications

Abstract

In Europe, social anthropology evolved from its roots in folkloric and ethnographic representation to broader comparative ethnological approaches in the second half of the 20th century. In “Anthropologists and Native Ethnographers in Central European Villages” (Current Anthropology Vol 9:311‐15), Thomas Hofer compared North American and Western European ethnologists with Eastern European ethnologists. He concluded that the former often view Eastern European ethnologists as “underdeveloped anthropologists,” while the latter are amazed at the willingness of American and Western European anthropologists to investigate themes too familiar to merit investigation. The distinction between ethnographers and ethnologists still is more likely to be found in Eastern Europe than in the West, where ethnography is merged as a stage in the production of ethnological comparisons and theory. When the two become institutionalized as separate disciplines, there can develop a hostile battlefield in which the complementarity of ethnographic research is submerged or even lost in ethnological theory. This evolution can be seen in the Slovene case, described here by Mojca Ramšk. —June Nash (CUNY), Global Colleagues Contributing Editor