Historizing the Present? Construction and Deconstruction of the Past

The n i m� o r t h iH contri bution arc fi rst to give a short review of the condition::; of development of the ethnograph ic disc i pl ines especial ly of the German vari ant "Volkskunde" and of their shaping as historical sciences. Second, it's an attem pt to ba l ance the new orientations of historical research as they have crystalli r.ed i n t h e last two decades. Thi rd , the present role of a "cultural history" is discussed wh ich ;;ccms to be ambivalent: on the one hand it is characterized by growing public attention to the ethnological interpretation ofthe cultural and the historical process; on the other, it is characteri<�ed by problems of the current scientific as well as sociopolitical position finding. Tn an ethnological understanding "Historiz ing the Present" should mean to reconstruct that specific "ethnic paradigm" which influenced social as well as scientific self-images in past and present and to deconstruct the ethnic di scourse as a phenomenon of "politics of identity".

The title of my paper indicates that the fo llow ing reflections will not only deal with the field of history itself, but will also look at its signifi cance concerning the scientific as well as social orientations at the present time: How do we use and make use of the horizon line of history?
What special kinds of tasks can the "ethnolo gical viewpoint" take on in this process?
The search for answers fo llows three steps. tion. This may be connected with a generally growing fixation in human-scientific discours es on topicality and novelty. Perhaps this view also results fr om the view transmitted to us in a "post modern" way that not even history offers a fixed and secure platform for looking at the present and the fu ture. Running counter to the usual thinking in historical lines of develop ment today is the perception of a fr agmented present that appears to be in conceptual disin tegration, and obviously no longer arouses any curiosity about its prehistory.
For my generation, however, the subjects assembling around the "flag" of European eth nology are still in origin all historical disci-pline::; . Vo lk::;kunde, lillkloristic�:�, eth nography and other national ::;ubjeci indicators developed as historically operating p hi l ologies and cultur al sciences which assumed a special role in the 19th century, marked as it was by great political and social transformations. Th is was to protect the consciousness of the past, the "cultural heritage" of European ethnic groupi n gs , na tions and ref:,'ions. To throw fresh light on the ideological role-seeking and so amend histori cal images is amongst the most essential tasks of European ethnology. For me, therefore, it must maintain its character of a historically orientated cultural science in the fu turo also.
It is, of course, not only the interest in th e subject matter of the past itsel f and in the design of new images which consideration of the field of history suggests to us. It is much more recognition of the fa ct that essential con cepts and methods had been developed for our subject in this special 19th century context, and that they bear this stamp still and hence can be grasped by us securely in the knowledge of the historical traces in their use; for ethnography and ethnology emerged as institutions of a historical "mental fo undation", whose fu nction was to preserve collective traditions and to group them in terms of pictures of national origins and fu tures. In this process the different European countries took very different paths according to the national-state situation and the colonial-political clustering. Orvar LOfgren has thoroughly elaborated this point here in his contribution. But the basic tendency remained a common one: to outline social portraits which were ethnically coloured, impregnated with tra dition and provided with national and state fe atures. To reconstruct the "own" with an eye to language, origin, customs and the "popular mind" (Volksgeist), to differentiate it internally and externally fr om the "other", and thereby to document historical continuity and authentici ty -this was the mission of earlier scholars.And it was this mission that laid the fo undation stone for the fa ct that out of the reconstruction of history there often developed something dif fe rent, specifically the construction of myths of cultural unity and ethnic-national community.
The example of German Vo lkskunde makes this especially clear. Before the national-state 124 unification of the Empire in 1871 , whut was dominant wa�; the internal identity sea rc h for "Germanic" derivation and archaic originR, for historical continuity and contingency in the thi nking about and fe eling for the "German popular spirit", fo r national undertone�; in dis parate regional cultures. Then, with the estab lishment of Germany as a European superpow er and with the growth in imperial and colonial ambitions, it came about that within Vo lkskunde too, external hori zons and questions of cultural differentiation became tho focus of attention.
The comparison ofEuropean cultures and men talities turned into an international competi tion in levelsofcivilization and status.And with the natural-science based expeditions to Asia and Africa, the booty fr om which was presented by the "animal and peoples' shows" of Carl Hagenbeck to wondering audiences at home, physical anthropology and research into cultur al regions also became popular and promoted branches of investigation.
These few examples again emphasize the extent to which the early developments of our scientific traditions flow fr om period-related social orientations and political interests and show why in this process the working field of "history" had initially been the main point.
Historical research had to be the point of depar ture for ethnographic studies because history was considered the underlay and fo il of culture.
On the one hand the field of history embodies the central research area in which the develop ment and character of culture was to be recon structed (by culture being understood mainly handed-down systems of experience and inter pretation or group and community practices respectively). On the other hand the present embodied to a certain extent the field of activity of history. Lines of continuity as well as rup tures could apparently be read fr om the time table which "aimed" at the present, and conse quently the past was declared the prehistory of the present. Onto the difference between tradi tion and modernity there could be fixed -ac cording to one's position -"cultural loss" or "social progress".
That European ethnology here attached par ticular importance to the idea of tradition and continuity and turned its fa ce somewhat away fr om cultural innovations and social transfor mations indicates again its particular sociopo litical role as a "science oflegitimation" of con servative values. For long, it cou ld not, and did not want to separate itsel f' from this role. The coinciding of the th ematic and methodical can ons gave fi rm encouragement to this fixed ori entation. Research fields like dialect and lan guage, traditional costumes and fo lklore, popu lar superstitions and material culture gave greater emphasis to the "solid" than to the "fluid" component parts of culture. Methodolo gical approaches like the participant observer or interviews with key in f(mnants had been used in such a way that they opened out above all local , static and th erefore rather narrow social horizons as transformation processes ef fe ctive fo r all society. The gl ance at local worlds and mental statements of the "people's spirit" again underlined the supposed community pro viding the fu ndamental motives of culture and tradition. Besides, it cannot of course be ignored that one of the strengths of the subject was estab lished by this concentration on narrower the matic as well as spatial segments of society, and by its ability, to make an empirically saturated analysis of detail, to turn to experience systems of everyday life, to be interested in deciphering symbolic activities and symbolic meanings. As in a prism, there are reflected in so many of the "classic" research fields, fr om play to ritual, fr om symbol to myth, those historical orders of value which we consider in present day discus sions ofhuman sciences to be basic structuring principles of social relations and cultural prac tices, namely, principles of social recognition, respect, justice, legitimacy. It is a matter of anthropogenic ideas of social identity and mor al integrity which continue to crop up in popu lar patterns of culture in pre-modern as well as in modern societies. The Berlin sociologist Axel Honneth speaks in reference to this of "intui tively given ideas of justice" which characterize human activity throughout history and were always connected with the "gaining of social recognition": "individuals meet each other in the horizon of reciprocal expectations, as moral persons and to find recognition for their social attainments" (Honneth 1994, 86). In fact the canon orthe old-style Vo lkskunde lay very much in the area ofthese cultural meetings and the striving for social recognition.
But the ability to keep on analyzing details and symbols remained epistemologically and methodologically very much underdeveloped.
This was because it tended to serve an affirm ative and static cultural concept as a tool and was rarely employed in a critical and process First of all it seems to me a vital point that it was primarily scientific and sociopolitical pro-ccsscs outside the ::;ubjcct that heralded the "Abschied": the lute but intensive social con fro ntation with the epoch of national socialism, for instance, that "feeling of unease fo r culture" well as about such styles of nomenclature and evaluation. I should also like to do so here -but only briefly and in broad outline. In fa ct it seems to me that this level of discussion on catchwords and labels for a historical orienta tion of the discipline is not particularly illumi nating. As a result, complex social processes with which the science had also been involved, 126 in spite of itself, arc reduced to narrow s ubj ect discus::;ions -as if science could ever be inde pendent ofits sociopolitical and epistemologi cal options. Whoever thinks of science as be i ng so "free", thinks naively. The "Abschied" of that time was really determined to a great degree fr om outside. But the associated circumscrip tion of the ''Vol kskunde" image of society and history to social-and cultural-scientific back grounds was overdue. It was really this that created the conditions whereby, instead of the old faith in the familiar language of objects and fa cts, there came in a new setting of problems concerning "the understanding", that questions relating to social practices and points of view in history have been fr eshly and more sharply fo rmulated and that today we too can finally consider new research subjects and perspec tives without prejudices, and self-critically.
Whether through this "revision of the sub ject" too much or too little has gone by the board is another question, the clarification of which must be left for a careful and critical retrospec tive evaluation. However, there appears to be no nostalgia for a "paradise lost" of the old Vo lkskunde -ifthere were, the subject would be led back to the fo rmer sidings.
The "Abschied" gradually opened up new perspectives for the subject, without totally losing sight, thematically and methodically, of the old shores. And this seems to me character istic for European ethnology to this day: its oscillation between historical and present-day orientations without finding a final and fixed balance, its scepticism towards the traditions of our discipline which have been fr equently chal lenged but not entirely got rid of, its permanent search for possible methods of approaching the horizons of everyday life which always orien tate themselves afresh in an interdisciplinary way and get lost occasionally in this process.
However, security in theme and method have not yet arrived, but rather questioning and uncertainty. At all events -so it seems to me it is a thoroughly "productive uncertainty", that has kept the subject under constant tension and movement, perhaps preventing repeated can onization and encrustations. And this seems decisive to me as the "hand of write" and im print of the subject, namely the capacity for change and fo r a critical sell� reflection, just at a time when not only o;oci ety is involved in serious transformation processes but science itself has to be capable of being transformed.
For all that, this widening of the horizons in many of our historical research fields, however, has not only opened up prospects of an "unclear" historical expanse, but has also provided quite concrete, positive research balances, and views of what is in many respects really "new history" Such examples make it clear that many areas of ethnological research cannot be seen, and have not been seen for long, as "own" territories. An interdisciplinary opening up of the spectrum of topics, and also the theoretical and methodological approaches which in isolat ed cases can hardly be distinguished fr om those of history, sociology or historical demography, are much more characteristic. Here and there one is working with methods that fo cus on micro-historical approaches, on case study con cepts, on hermeneutic procedures of source in terpretation, through which the research pro cess can be comprehended as "interaction with the field".
This interdisciplinary widening out is stim ulating, and quite indispensable for an intelli gent elaboration of historical themes. And it still has not -although this is a basic argument ofthe critics of the "Abschied" -led to the loss of a perspective of its own, its own "hand of write" of the discipline. I need not here prove this argument theoretically or methodological-ly, although this could also be possible by look ing at a style of questions that were character istic after as well as before, as also at attempts at approaches. A sufficiently clear indication of the before and after identity of the discipline seems to me to be marked even more by the increasing interest of the public in this particu lar "ethnological view". Our way of looking at history and culture has become much taken into account and very marketable in the mean time. It is present in museums, the mass media and publications, exactly because it illustrates, presents and analyses "in a different way" past worlds in the eyes of the public, just as it is doing, for instance, for historical science or the history of art. This is certainly not yet a proof of quality as far as the content is concerned and one may value its success, or not. But at least it shows that the identity of the discipline has changed and in doing so has not become weaker but rather stronger.
A personal anecdote can be used as an illus tration: in the mid-80s I worked at the Tiibin gen Ludwig-Uhland-Institute, sited, as is well known in a real castle. This castle is also a source of attraction for Tiibingen citizens and tourists. One Sunday morning somebody knocked at the Institute door, I opened it, and a man was there saying a fr iendly "hello", and The question proved to me that the "cognitive identity" of the fo rmer Vo lkskunde had changed and that this was to be seen "outside" -even if perhaps not yet completely understood. Our analytical view must lead into the deeper cultural strata of meaning and historical logic, and must elaborate above all "the particular" through micro-historical studies and case anal yses of the "life" world, in order to illuminate "the general".

Thus European ethnology makes history
"subje ctive" in a double sense. On the one hand it asks what meaning the members ofhistorical "life worlds" attached to their own activity and in what symbolic patterns they expressed the "sense of life". History and culture appear con sequently as a process shaped by "historical subjects" whose rules within the historical here and now had always been newly negotiated and determined and whose logic can only be ex plored from inside as the "ernie" version of the sources. On the other hand it does not accept any simple fa ctuality of data and issues whose historical meaning is already "objectively" de termined, but is rather based on competing interpretations and explanations in history it self. Every historical "life world" can thus be understood as an area for discourse, in which the power of interpretation and definition is 128 unequally spread and in which diflcrent sys tems or argumentation and evaluation con:;e quently stand opposite each other. This poly phony, this multitude of voices ofhistory, has to be wrung fr om the sources.
3. The practitioners of our subject have reached an agreement -at least I hope sothat its glancing into history should always contain a comparative perspective. It assumes that we are the ones who fo rmulate the questions directed at history, and that in this way we consequently draft historical imag-es and interpretations of society based on the findings of knowledge of the present. So we are "strangers" in a historical world and this "strangeness" has to be turned into methodo logical reflections. It is, therefore, a problem of how to reveal those points of view and interpre tations which influence and lead our view to the sources. Th is includes the problem of the textu alization of our research; the demand for a new transparency in our scientific text production, which is now as much discussed that I shall not refer to it any more. To bring such self-reflexive considerations into the dialogue with history on a standing basis is one of the most important demands which should be fo rmulated for an "ethnological view" of the past.
These standpoints embody for me the essential basis and steps fo rward in our ethnological research; they mark a conception of "cultural science", which seeks to make historical sub jects, their internal meaning, their innerworlds, especially their cultural "practice", come alive and speak.
At all events I am quite sure that our subject has not only gained new opportunities and claims for attention since the "Abschied" fr om the ''Volkskunde" niche, but also fa ces com pletely new problems and risks. With the simul taneous scientific rediscovery and the political revaluation of culture, the danger of the imme diate harnessing of cultural knowledge for po litical reasons has also increased. Like "na tion", "popular culture" and "tradition" earlier, today concepts like "region", "multiculture", "authenticity" have again become catchwords in political discussions, which to a great extent are outside our possibilities of control and influ ence or which we often observe from a distance. which together have contributed to an immense "cu l tural change" in the concept of history.
The development begu n in the 1970s with either a rejection or u criti cal revision, imple mented by young historians and ethnologists, of the dominant historical concepts at that time. Th ere flowed from th is three directions in pa rt i cul a r: first, the "classic" policy and institu tional history, which considered history to be structured according to "events" and according The problem clearly lies at a completely different level. It is our topical questions relat ing to history and our cultural understanding which are in a manner of speaking orientated "further fr om politics". Our level of interest in historical knowledge has changed. With the subjects, "life worlds", modes of thinking, with a "changeable" and "interpretable" conception ofhistory, the area of the past occupied another place in the understanding of our present. His tory is increasingly "incorporated" into our present, it is at the same time both strange and close to us, like an often-visited holiday country.
With this the shaping of its image is more than ever subordinated to the ideas of the present.
And this is a present whose participants, in relation to global relation systems, confusing layers of problems and complex information worlds seem to increasingly withdraw them selves into "eventful" and "lively" niche worlds (cf. Schulze 1993). History is then taken along, into the niches. Its images should be "unprob lematic" and should be "compatible" with the images of our present, for which, increasingly, a "politics left out" principle is valid.
If this observation is right, then the disinte gration of critical, political historical images would be a symptom of the present-day renun-ciation or that historica l horizon which has fo rmerly always marked a decisive bound ary line. Accord ingly, "historical rea lity" then ceas es to exist, beca u�:�e the ambiguity oflhe texts as fu lly arbitra ry versions is misunderstood, and beca use the method of decon struction fr om manufactured historical images to the tech nique of in tentional indefiniteness of the past has been chanced upon. Then at least history would be no longer a "compatible" part of the present but an extra-territorial terrain, a use less no-man's land, "no place".
Of course this cannot be followed by a plea for a return to the simple policy and the base superstructure-models ofthe old fo rm ofhistor ical writing. I also personally support rather categorically the standpoint of "the culture" as a decisive source of benefit to our knowledge.
But if questions concerning domination and social inequality also have to have their system atic place within our "culturally" understood concept of history, then this can only mean the demand for a more decisive conceptualization of the cultural explanations for social seeds of Ethno-logy: a late "coming out"?
To these reflections we can straightaway add the second question, on the present-day politi cal interest in using of the historical-ethnolog ical research. I also want to refer to this only in one point, which is, as it were, imposed on us like a pseudo-programme. European ethnology finally has to argue more decisively under its own "label", that is, to make explanations with its own historical basic concepts of ethnos and ethnicity. For today its leading concept of the 132 ethnic again serves in public discussion as a pointer to an alleged historical assurance of common origin, of common cultural tradition, of a sense of community. A historical idea that seemed to be under scientific control has in this way acquired new political relevance in recent years.
In the field of political discourse the concept of "ethnic identity" has long since become an Thus far Durando, who is still garnishing his identity model with variants of regional spatial orientations and cross-border cooperation, but keeps insisting on its ethnic core. With this fo rm of argumentation he and other scienti::;ts again bring into play that concept of ethnic identity, whose description and justification should have been very fa miliar to us. Indeed the old biological variant of the "blood relationship" is no longer given special emphasis (which i::; already appearing again in the fashionable wrappings of "biopolitical discourse"), and the main discussion is with the "more serious" di mension of history and culture. But this goes along with a concept according to which in this historical process there always had been devel oped a quasi natural model of an ethnic con sciousness of community on the homogenizing and integrating effect of which every "socializa tion" would have built and must also be built in the fu ture.
Here it is not taken into account either th at this identification of the concept of "ethnicity" with the historical image of "ethnic communi ty" has long since been decoded as a scientific and political creation of the 19th century. Nor are there reflected the particular historical cir cumstances and consequences of this "far-reach ing invention". The ethnic argument has nearly always proved to be in history an extremely aggressive identity concept, because it could be strategically fitted into any racist, nationalist or hegemonic objective. These things are so fa miliar to us, that I can leave it at this outline (cf. Gellner).
We could, of course, console ourselves with the thought that Durando and his colleagues have not read the "right" enlightened ethnolog ical literature (and his literature list supports this impression). But this would be too simple or too convenient. If we take the view that ethnicity as a concept of identity might be a ure, which in everyday life i:-; opposed io u pop ulur"principul orlif'c", which u nconcerned ly appea l s io ethnic feeling�; of com munity, de�;piie all :-;cienii1ic warnin g�; . It i�; �;u rely nut by chance thai in th e face of such counter-arguments we mostly concede immediately the gen era l neces sity and legiii mucy of group identi ties :.to being indispensable for stability and orientation in a "world in transition". How such idea of identity will look then, without ethnic components and con�;iruciion�; of diH'crences, is in general not fu rther detailed by us .
A part of this insecurity certainly derives fr om the fa ct thai the social and cultural scienc es fi nd the loaded idea of"community" difficult anyway. This has good socio-and scientific historical reasons even in a subject whose Ger man precursor once first of all declared the "village community" and then the "popular com munity" to be historically leading social models.
Only with the socio-scieniific opening up did the change of paradigms fr om "community" to "society" become finally possible. But clearly it was in fa ct more a quick change of the concept than a careful revision of it. The question ofhow social relationships within society are also de veloping symbolically and emotionally has been investigated almost only within the close rela tional figures of the fa mily, the relatives and the social group, but hardly at the level of bigger social formations. This problem was fr equently avoided on the ground that it was a question of the criticism of ideology. Now the boomerang returns to a certain extent, striking the centre of the identity of the subject. The question of how to deal with an "ethnos", placed not far fr om history but in the midst of the present, cannot be absolutely avoid ed by an ethnology. Therefore we ask again with Durando: how shall we interpret such "process es of ethnification" today? As a conscious strat egy of the generation of conflicts through cul tural arguments, or as a major route towards a collective finding of identity that has to be fo llowed with confidence fr om the historical point of view, but in the fa ce of cultural tenden cies of globalization and uniformisation?
In an essay entitled "Hereditary Loyalties, Prevailing Unities" Cliffo rd Geertz was also looking recently for a way out of the dilemma.

134
There he also stresses the necessity filr the "f(Jrmaiion and maintenance of co llecti ve �;elf images" occurring always over "the incl usion and exclusion of the social 'We' ". Mostly -ac cording to his summing up in a survey of inter national postwar development -these images of integration and difference assumed the form of ethnic conflicts. "The immediate motive fo r the intense general interest in such conflicts is naturally the outbreak of violence and the threat of violence around the phenomena of collective identity and its demands -fo r recognition, au tonomy and for the different kinds of domi nance and material advantages" (Geertz 1994, 392). This is how he described the maelstrom effect. Now he tries on his side to escape this "ethnic principle" by dispersing it in a system of diffe rent loyalty commitments which are only sup plied fr om outside with the unifying mark, "ethnic". The actors themselves move within very different ideas of social affiliation and commitment, which are of course "essential" in its core and consequently are not challenged as "accustomed loyalties". But only a small number of these ideas of loyalty are really based on "ethnic" agreements. The other level on which politicians and the media operate with the catchword of "ethnic unity" is considered by Geertz on the other hand as a strategic fo rm of the policy of identity, which has to be clearly distinguished fr om loyalty consciousness. He sees the advantage ofthis divided concept which should break open the apparent plausibility of nationally and ethnically "coded" discourses, as lying in the possibility "of discovering" through it the constructed "essence of social unities and to break them down into the disparate compo nents of which they are structured" (Geertz 1994, 395). Thus above all the specific ability of ethnology to observe and interpret micro-social processes and symbolic practices could come to a useful application.
This position is certainly not new, except fo r the attempt to introduce into the debate new so to speak "consciousness sharpening" concepts.
But the article again indicates in a compact fo rm a-as it seems to me -reasonable way out of the self-built trap of the "ethnic paradigm".
Geertz also pleads for an ethnological term of reference, which undertakes the decoding of the argu ment ofcthnicity as its most important purpose. He votes for the support of a policy which doei:i not bai:ie iti:ielf upon a "primordial consensus" but upon "respect fo r the opponent".
And this is in th e hope that "anth ropology with its sense of the particularity, the detail, the specific fe ature" can play "perhaps a helpful part" in this project (p. 403).
However, this cannot mean intervening in the ethnically based conflict scenarios of the present time by making cllorti:i at negotiation and explanation. That surely is also one of our tasks, although with the chance of an extremely limited result. It seems to me almost to a great er degree -maybe in contrast to Geertz -that there is here also a central task for our histor ical research, for the ethnicity argument is not in the last analysis as effective today because it comes along with the patina of historicity and the demand for authenticity, and because the "construction" of the ethnic in the area ofhisto ry seems to have become an irrefutable "reali ty". Therefore, the attempt at deconstruction has to begin there not on the excrescence but on its roots.
If ethnicity is a question of the "passions of the collective identity" (Geertz), then European ethnology has to try to show how this passion has been learned in Europe and what deep, often inextinguishable traces it has left (and not only here). Contrariwise it is necessary to elucidate how other, less painful fo rms of the experience of shared identity and collective self-images in history developed, to which eth nology, acting on behalf of the nation, had paid much less attention than in fo rmer times.
Such research would seem to me to be a useful "historizing the present" ie not to dis guise the view to the present day with historical fa cades, but to open new ways for it fr om the past into the present. This would be an impor tant step towards a critical cultural science which thinks energetically about the social ef fe cts of its researches.
But at the same time systematic criticism of the "ethnic paradigm" also meant a self-critical consolidation of the history of the subject, so far achieved only as a beginning. Otherwise the young generation in our discipline could hardly acquire that serene harmony of tho designa tion, "ethnology", which, to our astonishment we arc registering again today. And it would be more clear to them why thii:i hai:i to remain a historically "thinking" discipl ine, but of courl:lc a discipline which had to learn out of its own past that the search lor the right questions directed to history and culture has to stay in tho programme. This would not be the programme of any arbitrary science but of a discipline with the firm principle that its central paradigm should be consideration of not creating any more "ethnological paradigms".