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ABSTRACT: In its current form of "European ethnology," Volkskunde is increasingly conceptualized as a Europe-oriented study of the present. As a result, historical research is often limited to those periods considered part of the European "modern," and may be restricted to uses that illuminate the present. In contrast, this article advocates an open approach to cultural anthropology, particularly with respect to historical research. It outlines ways in which the new focus perpetuates old fault lines within the discipline and ways in which they may be bridged. It discusses ways in which the themes of "micro," "macro," and "agency" have played out in the author's own work, but it also highlights the real differences between works focused on the present and the past.
Translated by John Bendix
VOLKSKUNDE, which in its mutation over time has gone by many names, has renewed, if not recast, itself as European ethnology, at least in German-speaking Europe. This change has been influenced in particular by discussions in American cultural and social anthropology, as well as through debates with British cultural studies, and the discipline is now defined as the study of the present "with an extension into the past" (Lindner 2004:165). The historical horizon of that present encompasses the "European modern" (Niedermüller 2004:96), which in effect means the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The discipline distinguishes itself from non-European ethnology by continuing to see itself as the "study of the familiar [one's own]" (Johler 2004:64), meaning its research concentrates on Europe itself.
In practice, much recent scholarship has focused on matters of current political relevance, including transnational Frankfurt (Bergmann and Römhild 2003), migration (Becker 2001, Hellermann 2005), women who start businesses in Andalusia (Zöckler 2005), or everyday knowledge of human genetics (Beck 2005). Much of the empirical research currently done in the discipline can be characterized as "micro, macro, agency." Micro refers to the immediate, or small-scale, field of research, while macro refers to the embedding of such immediate fields within larger regional contexts as well as within overarching knowledge interests in cultural anthropology. Agency refers to cultural practices and actors (and their communication) that now stand at the center of disciplinary interest. Ethnography is a key scholarly research method, and refers to both the field of research itself and...