A N ational Ethnology, its Concepts and its Ethnologists

Ethnologica l concepts and research traditions in Croatia are viewed from the experience of the ethnologists , testimon ies to the war and transition. Postmode rn approach and rhetorics in describing/writing about the war i s analyzed along with the recent usc of thc traditional ethnographic and folklore archive material . The po l itical bias in ethnology is questioned and the necessity of a critical dialogue with the bearers of power is emphasized.

Ethnological concepts and research traditions in Croatia are viewed fr om the experience of the ethnologists, testimonies to the war and transition. Postmodern approach and rhetorics in describing/writing about the war is analyzed along with the recent usc of thc traditional ethnographic and fo lklore archive material. The poli ti cal bias in ethnology is questioned and the necessity of a critical dialogue with the bearers of power is emphasized. The critique of the romantic concept was met with some mistrust in Croatia, not only because it advocated a radical change of the research paradigm but because it somehow implied the critique of the syntagma Croatian nation. By some ethnologists it was misunderstood as a variation of the official rhetorics and the com munist critique of the Croatian nationalism.
One could dwell upon the fate of the crucial concept and of its critique. In both Croatian language and ethnology it was conceived as the Volk I fo lk I narod, and not the people I puk. I do agree with Tamas Hofer (1995) that "the two concepts are connected to separate differentia tions between 'upper' and 'lower' levels of cul ture, both imply different relations between culture and society and produce different nar ratives in cultural-historical research". I could add that the two translations or interpretations of the main concept in a certain degree denote the political dimension of the research as well.
It cannot be fo rgotten that to the concept of Volk, all of us in Centraleurope and in the Slavic countries owe the starting incentive to the de velopment of our science. That development did not happen in a historical vacuum but in the course of a well-known political process ... Reflecting on what we as ethnologists did not research in Croatia during socialism", I came to the conclusion that, as surprising as it might be, the crucial concepts ethnicity, ethnic relations and ethnic identity have been omitted.

Political bias in ethnology
Again I wish to clarify that I am not pleading for the resurrection of the romantic paradigm5, thus con f(,rming to the national and nationalis tic political conjectures. My aim is to raise the fo llowing question: How to approach the polit ical bias which for about fifty years Croatian ethnolOb')' pretended to ignore?
The problem does not concern ethnology or/ and anthropology merely in my country. Dis cussing moral models in anthropology Roy The life in all those regions will never be as it was. The identity of the population which will return or settle in these regions will undergo a long process of readaptation. New identities will be constructed. Considering the hatred and the lack of an ideology of coexistence in politics I sometimes fe el prone to reconsider, even to somehow evoke the romantic concepts I used to criticize so often ...

A final remark
Ve sna Pusic, a well-known Zagreb sociologist suggests that the gap produced by the downfall of the ideology in my country has been occupied by nationalism (Pusic 1995a). She considers that nationalism has two substantially differ ent fa ces. "The first is cultural nationalism, which is xenophobic, authoritarian, demands uniformity in the state and religion, and advo cates a closed society ... The other fa ce of nation alism is liberal nationalism. The main distinc tive fe ature in comparison with cultural nation alism is the fa ct that it is based on the category of fr ee human will and rational choice, i.e. on ethical individualism. This type of nationalism values every nation, and the national identity of every other nation is as important to it as its own" (Pusic 1995b:45,46). The actual political struggle in Croatia, according to this author, is culminating in the conflict between the liberal nationalism and the radical, fa scist one.
The ethnoanthropologist, who is not a polit ical scientist, is confronted with a quasi insur mountable problem: how to get through the immense flow of information attacking our knowledge and our emotions. How to discern various fo rms of political pressure hidden be hind the discourse on patriotism and national ism? How to get different information, the in fo rmation about the Others which at the mo ment are not only Serbs in Croatia, but all the people who do not th ink the same a:; the ruling elite docs? Destroyed tow n :; , vi llage:; and house:;, refu gee:; and di:.; placed person:;, fa milies to rn apart, faces of the young people who l ook <:�t me from the newspapers obituaries after the victory are Others among Us. A painstaking, time-consum ing endeavour is needed to understand, to ac cept some fa cts and to be cri tical . Because the ethnologist (myself) cannot be a passionless observer. Wi lly-nilly he/she is a tcstimony.R Ethnologist:; in the fo rmer socialist cou n tries educated in cultural history now arc turn ing to anthropology in search of new concepts and new fields of research . In Croatia the shift has been partly accomplished before; now the postmodern critique is at stake. ! am not sure if the new concepts and orientations perceive the inadequate treatment of power in the cultural ordering.
In fact pure "autorcflcction and constant skepticism without a critical dialogue with the bearers of power" will not make ethnology rec ognized as a socially relevant science, just to quote my fr iend, the late Croatian ethnologist Lydia Sklevicky (199 1:58).
Notes 1. However, at that time the critique of Vo lk I narod as the main concept of cultural-historical ethnolo gy was not accepted and applied in the eastern ethnological traditions of the fo rmer Yugoslavia. In Serbia as well as in Bosnia and Macedonia the bulk of the ethnologists was coming fr om the Belgrade University. The criticism of the main concepts was not promoted by the senior genera tion of the Serbian ethnologists teaching at that university. Modern methodology and the discourse such as Turner's theories on ritual, introduced in the seventies by a new generation of Belgrade ethnologists and anthropologists did not deal with the concept fol k. 2. Of course, political pressure in ethnology as it was practised in the fo rmer Soviet Union has been more drastic, including the persecution of ethnol ogists, their emigration (e.g. Shirokogoroffi and ideological limitations to the theoretical develop ment. I will quote only one example. As contempo rary soviet ethnologists do report, in 1951 in the "Atlas narodov myra" (Atlas of the peoples of the world) they have not been allowed to mention the repressed populati ons, such as t.he Chechens or Uw German ethnic group in Russia. Add it. ionally, in 1961 they have been reque�t.ed Lo just. i( y the map presenting the Crimean Tatars (which have been deported from Crimea) in front. oft .he presi dent of" the Praesidium of" the Su p rem e Sov iet Ana�t.as Mikoj an (V. A.Tishkov 1995:94,95). 3. I expressed these ideas in a paper read at. the annual meeting of" the Croatian Ethnological Soci ety in 1990 and published in 1992. 4. Et.hnologi�t.s and lingui�t.:; often avoided Lo m en Lion the name of the Croatian nation. They used to speak about our language and our customs and rituals. !i. Nowadays when promoting national val ues, cul ture or language the native Croatian eihnulogi�tis often met with disagreement by some ofhis fo reign (American, European) colleagues and labeled as nationalist. 6. Th ey have not. been directly expelled, but the actual Croat authorities did hardly hide their satisfaction with this result of the oflimsive. In fact Croat. government. inhibited their return. The out come was a kind of sof" t ethnic cleansing. 7. "The anthropology that most Cape Town Xhosa, Ve nda, Zulu, Afrikaner and Moslem students want is not the anthropology of deconstruction and the social imaginary but the anthropology oft he really real, in which the stakes are high, values are certain, and ethnicity (if not essentialized) is cer tainly essential" (Scheper-Hughes 1995:41 7). 8. Nancy Scheper-Hughes argues: "Ifit is to be in the nature of an ethical project, the work of anthropol ogy requires a different set of relationships. In minimalist terms this might be described as the difference between the anthropologist as "specta tor" and the anthropologist as "witness" (Scheper Hughes 1995:419).