National schools of European ethnology and the question of latent ethnicity

In 1984, French and German ethnologists convened in Bad Homburg, to discuss the specilicities ofiheir research traditions. They came to the insight that beneath the level of differences in the scientific discourse, there are wast domains of cultural differences, diverging habits and emotional dispositions. These arc �ummed up by the author as "latent ethnicity". We might point out differences among national ethnologies on the level of "intellectual style" (different ways of theory-formation and argumentation, di­ verse routines and ethics of scientific discourse etc. ) fand on the level of conceptu­ alization and terminology. For the latter, Norbert Elias' explication ofthe different social background and significance of French civilisation and German Kultur is a classic example. A third kind of differences are caused by different pasts, and the diverging working up of the past. To avoid misunderstanding among ethnologists, a careful examination of cultural backgrounds, positions and intentions is suggested. European ethnology of the future can be imagined as a "network of perspectives", in which every national or regional group can make conscious use of its cultural specificity.

In 1984, French and German ethnologists convened in Bad Homburg, to discuss the specilicities ofiheir research traditions. They came to the insight that beneath the level of differences in the scientific discourse, there are wast domains of cultural differences, diverging habits and emotional dispositions. These arc �ummed up by the author as "latent ethnicity". We might point out differences among national ethnologies on the level of "intellectual style" (different ways of theory-formation and argumentation, di verse routines and ethics of scientific discourse etc.) fand on the level of conceptu alization and terminology. For the latter, Norbert Elias' explication ofthe different social background and significance of French civilisation and German Kultur is a classic example. A third kind of differences are caused by different pasts, and the diverging working up of the past. To avoid misunderstanding among ethnologists, a careful examination of cultural backgrounds, positions and intentions is suggested. European ethnology of the fu ture can be imagined as a "network of perspectives", in which every national or regional group can make conscious use of its cultural specificity.  (Chiva & Jeggle eds 1987a, 1987b. In the Ger man volume, UtzJeggle summed up the lessons of the meeting in retrospect in the fo llowing way: "Two strangers met. They did not remove their veil (cover, wrapping = Hiille), they re mained strangers, but now they are aware of their mutual strangeness and that is the begin ning of trust" (Chiva & Jeggle 1987a: ll). Jeg gle's statement indicates that beneath the level of scientific discourse, he noticed the existence of a vast domain of cultural differences, diver ging habits and emotional dispositions. During the debates, these "rear territories" or deep layers could have been only partially explored.
For example French and German ethnologists established that the line between "rational" and "irrational", conscious and subconscious, is drawn differently in France and in Germany but they could not go fu rther. Jeggle seems to assume the existence of tw o disparate ''i:;ubcon scious" in th e French and German eth nologi cal thinking. This allu sion is expressed on the cover ofthe German book by a reproducti on of a painting by Magritte (Les amants), clearly a projection of a childhood trauma of the arti st.
What Joggle cal ls mutual strangeness in French and German scholars is labelled by me as "latent ethnicity". 1 used the term in the sense of Michael Fischer: "Ethnicity is a part of the self that is often quite puzzling to the individual, something over which he or she is not in control" (Fischer 1986:173 author was impressed by thc fact that Germans should �:�ee the past of' their own disc i pl ine so diflerently fr om the way it would appear to be from Paris. German�:� perceived certain endeav ours to be leadi n g towards a fatal misdeed (national socialism) ofthe recent past, while the analogous initiatives in France had developed into productive approaches of the social scienc es.
There is no doubt that the Bad Homburg conference was a big step fo rward, perhaps a

Intellectual styles, languages, words and concepts
The Bad Homburg conference offe rs at least three levels on which disparity between French and German opinions and attitudes could be assessed. One level is given (using a fe licitous expression of Johan Galtung) in the dissimilar "intellectual style" of the two groups. The divergent historical development of French and German societies underlies this phenomenon. The special role of the word "civ ilization" in France was connected to the care ful elaboration ofthe fo rms of social intercourse and behaviour. The royal court exerted its influ ence not only on the aristocracy but on the middle layers of society as well. "Both the court ly bourgeoisie and the courtly aristocracy spoke the same language, read the same books, and had, with particular gradations, the same man ners. And when the social and economic dis pro-portionalities burst the institutional framework of the ancien regime, when the bourgeoisie became a nation, much of what had been the specific and distinctive social character of the courtly aristocracy and then also of the courily bourgeois groups, in an ever-widening move ment and doubtless with some modification, became the national character. Stylistic con ventions, the fo rms of social intercourse, affe ct molding, esteem for courtesy, the importance of good speech and conversation, articulateness of language and much else -all this is first fo rmed in France within courtly society, then slowly changed, in a continuous diffusion, fr om a so cial into a national character" (Elias 1978:36-37).
The situation was different in Germany. The middle layers of society had no opportunity to learn courtly manners or to get close to power.
In Germany there was no aristocracy and court cultivating the domestic German culture: the courts ofkings, princes and aristocrats fo llowed French models. This is how German anti-French national fe elings, which referred to German virtues as against fo reign "artificiality" and "superficiality", may have developed. In Ger many the attributes and moral values of the "inner person" were stressed as opposed to sophisticated outward-oriented politesse.
According to Elias, it was the middle layers aspiring to ascend, the bourgeoisie, that elabo rated the notion of civilization in France and the concept of Kultur in Germany. The initial social overtone of the Kultur-concept in Germ a ny was intended against the courtly aristocracy living in a French-style civilization, and later it got a more and more national significance. In In every case of translating a text fr om one 92 language into another, there is a danger or "A structural misunderstanding". We migh t huve the impression that this danger is especially great in the case of some authors whose texts are firmly embedded into their linguistic and cultural background. This seems to be the case with Pierre Bourdieu. He is acutely aware ofhis Frenchness and tries to avoid with excepti onal care any misunderstanding when he is speak ing or presenting a text to a fo reign audience (e.g. Bourdieu 1990:VII-IX, 106-11 9, Wacquant 1993. "Texts, as we know, circulate without their contexts, that is, without the benefit of being accompanied by everything they owe to the social space within which they have been produced or, more precisely, to the space of possibilities (in this case, scientific) in relation to which they constructed themselves. It fol lows that the categories of perception and inter pretation that readers apply to them, being themselves linked to a field of production sub ject to different traditions, have every chance of being more or less inadequate" (Bourdieu 1993:263).
The attempt to protect a text fr om being misunderstood, or in Bourdieu's case, fr om be ing "peculiarly French" may have the effe ct that "the desire to 'twist the stick in the other direc tion' " drives one into exaggerations, and the text "can be negatively 'influenced', influenced a contrario, if we may say, and bear the marks ofwhat one fights against" (Bourdieu 1990:106).
Bourdieu mentions elsewhere (Bourdieu 1993:269) that he took over the metaphor "twist the stick in the other direction" fr om Mao. in the sphere of ideology, that is to say according to his terminology, in the "core" of the culture (Dumont 1989(Dumont , 1994. The philosophers com peted in intellectual excellence. In an era when demystification and criticism are the main trends, the same spirit of competition and Steigerung might stimulate German thinkers to stress self-criticism and guilt-feeling.

Praise of diversity
What is then the lesson of the diversity of of atonement for a world destroyed" -it might be put into relation to his Jewish origin (Fischer 1986: 175-176, cf. Damrosch 1995. According to Fischer, there is an advantage on the side of researchers in a minority position (or with the memory of ancestors in minority status). "It has been noted that many of the nineteenth-centu ry Western scholars of Islam were Jews using Islam as a proxy in working out their own 94 dilem mas vis-a-vi s Christi anity" (Fischer 1986:175  propensity to project itself everywhere it looks" (Wacquant 1993:251).
The aim of this paper was to call attention to a relatively neglected problem-area. Through systematic exploration of the "ethnic" or "na tional" differences of European ethnologies it seems to be possible to proceed toward a new comparative history of science and toward a kind of comparative epistemology, comparative hermeneutics. European ethnology of the fu ture can perhaps be imagined as a "network of perspectives" (cf. Hannerz 1992:62-99) in which every national, regional group can make con scious use of its cultural specificity. The French and the German ethnologists wanted to use each other's "strangeness" as a mirror for a better self-understanding. Of course, this is not a specifically German and French issue. Rath er, members of other "ethnic" scientific commu nities can also use comparison with fo reign communities to improve their self-understand ing.
Notes 1. It is appropriate to call to mind here that the Ethnologia Europaea Conference in 1983, in Matrafiired discussed the conceptual problems related to popul ar culture as well as the relation between historical anthropology and ethnology (cf. Burke 1984, Bruckner 1984, Kostlin 1984, fu rther: Hofer 1994).
2. There is no place here to enter into details about the recent history of German ethnology. The school associated with Tiibingen developped a new field of research called "empirical cultural studies" (em pirische Kulturforschung). Many brilliant critical studies were published, and a host of phen omena of contempory social and cultural life were newly thematized. When in the 1970's traditional ethnol ogy in many parts of Europe moved closer to the social sc iences and established new contacts with (mostly English speaking) anthropologists, the German ethnologists were already immersed into their own critical revolution and were construct ing their own new theoretical research frame, mostly of home-made materials. The origi n al im petus fo r the German reform (or revolution) in ethnology came from a negation of German na tionalism. Because of the succes of the reform movement, however, contemporary "new ethnolo gy" in Germany is making less use of"internation al" anthropological inspirations than most other European countries.
(In 1991, an international conference was held in Hohentiibingen castle, to celebrate the 30th anni versary of the publication of Bausinger·s "Volks kultur in der technischen Welt" in 1961, an impor tant manifesto ofthe new trend in German ethnol ogy. I lectured on the specific "Germanness" ofthe work of Hermann Bausinger. My text acknowl edged the moral and scientific courage manifest in the critical break with the German past -on the other hand, it pointed out difficulties of non-Ger mans in fo llowing Bausinger's trains of thought.) 3. The most recent addition to the series (Stocking 1996) is especially close to our theme: it analyses the upbringing and personality of Franz Boas, including the influence of his German family, and the role of the Kul tur and Vo l ksgeist ideology of Bismarckian Germany.