Culture and Politics in a Historical Europe

It i s thought provoking that it w a s the West's modern project i n the 20th century thai almost eliminated history in much of education and the social sciences whi le ai the same time polit ical a n d cultural development i n the l ast decade i n Europe ha� �:�irong ly em phasi sed the necess i t y or a h is t orica l perspective. The consc ious and u nconscious myihologi s ing or the past, w h ich powers or state , organisations and minority groups often practice in order to lb rthcr their own interests, can on ly be revea led , if researchers nrc able to work both synch ron ically and diach ron ica l ly. To work historically with the concept ofcultural complex i ty cal l s for different forms ofh istorica l analys is than we lind i n the traditional historicism ofthe 19th century until today. One ofthe challenges we are confronted with lies in developing a form of new cultu ral h istory or h istorical cultural analysis .

It is though t provoking that it was the West's modern project in th e 20th century thai almost eliminated history in much of education and the social sciences while ai the same time political and cultural development in the last decade in Europe h a� �:�irongly emphasised the necessity or a historical perspective. The conscious and unconscious myihologising or the past, which powers or state, organisations and minority groups often practice in order to lb rth cr their own interests, can only be revealed , if researchers nrc able to work both synchron ically and diachronically. To work historically with the concept ofcultural complexity calls for diffe rent fo rms ofh i storica l analysis than we li nd in the traditional historicism ofthe 19th century until today. One ofthe challenges we are confronted with lies in developing a form of new cultural h istory o r h istorical cultural analysi s . Lelltm; d1: ph il., Palle Oue Ch ristiansen, ln stitnte oj"Archaeology and Eth nology, Va ndkunsten 5, DK-1467 Copenhagen.
What can European ethnology most obviously concern itself with in relation to the Europe we see today, and in relation to what those disci plines closest to us study? What is it that eth nology, and European society today, needs with regard to knowledge, problems, and answers?
What gaps are there to be filled, and is it states, majorities, minorities or ethnologies, who should define these gaps?
I have my doubts as to whether an answer to that type of question can influence fu ture re search to any degree. On the other hand I am personally optimistic on behalf of ethnology, while at the same time believing that it is dangerous directly to allow the subject's main topics to be decided by political trends, even though the present neo-nationalism and polit ical ethnicity are experienced as extremely pow erful phenomena, when we find ourselves in the centre of them.
My optimism is based on the fa ct that there is both a need in today's Europe -and since 1989 also possibility for -a critical historical and cultural perspective if we are to under stand many of the phenomena with which we are surrounded. On the other hand, it seems to me that ethnology would maybe have greater importance, if one addressed socio-political sub-jects not more, but less directly that some col leagues seem to wish. It is well known that sometimes circumvention can be the best route.

Waiting fo r the past?
There is something paradoxical in that it was the completion of Europe's modern project in the 20th Century that almost did away with history. This has been shown in the growth of the synchronic social sciences, in the realisa tion of the welfare state in Northern Europe, in the extreme economic materialism since the 1960's and in the so-called postmodern relativ ism of the West. The last ten years political and cultural development in Europe has, mean while, emphasised precisely the necessity of a historical perspective, that is to say, the oppo site of what modernism imagined.
As so often previously, it was not the profes sional researchers who first became aware of the lost time. The Danish poet and trendsetter, Poul Borum, had already in 1985 said, in a TV programme, that humanity was, in his view, bound by things and by the past.1 When I heard his comment, I immediately thought how strange it is, that anthropology has for the most part abandoned history and the material cul-tu rc, wh ich people continuously creates, and with which it �>urround::; itself. Borum suggest ed, that We stern man is content to dream of the pa�>t, in the hope that episodes fr om the past will return. We have lost the experience of time, or ra thor, the talent ofl iving with the past in the present. The proj ect of modern life does not enquire after the abil ity to preserve or use the past as a part of ourselves.
On the one hand, Borum suggests that peo ple are at least accompanied in their life cours es, with parts ofthc past, which arc still used to work out thoughts and feelings in their exist ence. Thus a contemporary situation cannot only be understood contemporaneously. This is a discussion, which both E. Durkheim and P. In 1991 the Portuguese author Jose Sarama go wrote about fo rgotten history and modern man: "I believe that the basis for our disquiet lies in the awareness of our lack of an ability to reconstruct the bygone. And the result of our inability to do this is that we are tempted to adjust it." Powerlessness causes humanity to create its own quite special past. Others con sciously use the past for purely idealogical pur poses.
Thus there is a need for researchers and authors, who are interested in what goes on in this process, and who can write testimonies in relation to some of that which could have hap pened in history (according to our convictions).
Saramago is not talking about a naive and submissive addition of "historical fa cts", but about a support fr om necessary information fr om the past (our so-called sources)2 with the aim of using history in our construction (under standing) of the present: "When I consider the past, I have a strong fe eling that we are looking 138 at much lost time. The writing of history and novels, with themes taken from History, are journeys through the past, attempted travel books, and always with the same aim, th at i�>, to be wiser about what is to become of us" (Sora mago 1991). No one can naively just write History. We shape history; never fr om nothing, but always on a partial fou ndation.
Saramago's final sentence, concerning our selves, seems to me to contain an important element. That is, that our preoccupation with the past could have a scholarly aim, but th at it also -and at the same time -like all other literature, has the possibility to make us wi ser about life as it is lived here and now, and thereby maybe equips us a little better on our journey into the fu ture . This is also true con cerning our ability to relate to political ch ange.  Europe cannot be compared to the "melting pot" of the USA at the end of the last century.

Europe's lost past
Perhaps some might say that Europe has just "melted" considerably more slowly than North America in the 17th-18th century, or is of a different character, but th en the metaphor los es its force. Historians of civilisations, leaders of state and humanist educators have attempt ed to refer to Europe as a unity, with a common background in the Orient or Greece, as a dy namic plurality of self-determining national states, or as a unity of"folk"-communities. This This longing to be able to legitimate one's own intellectual humanistic origins, a country's sovereignty or an area's boundary, which have been the characteristics of statesmen and na tionalist writers, is, in itself, a political and cultural phenomenon, which can provide an excellent object fo r analysis. If ethnologistH wish to carry out that type of review of the situation themselves, as is the case in a few areas in Europe, then one can end up in th e same difficult situation as some archaeologists, historians and ethnologists in many European countries in the period fr om the end of the 19th century up to the Second World War. This is a topic which W. Kaschuba (1996) has comment ed on in the case of Germany.
It is understandable that some researchers think that their insight can be of direct help in many of the unhappy political-ethnic dilemmas which fa ce us at present, and that members of universities maybe have an idea that they can help the state, a minority group, or whoever else they think they might help. I myselfbelieve that the history of our subject in many Europe an countries, shows that this fo rm of engage ment seems to resemble politics more than perception. In direct political involvement it is usually politicians or civil servants, and not research workers, who control the situation. On the other hand, I believe that the mythologisa tion of history and its use in political strategy, both by majority powers and many minorities is an obvious field for -amongst other thingsethnological research (cf. Ktistlin 1996). The French literary analyst R. Barthes (1969: 175) shows in his My thologies, how an ideological distortion of reality happens in myth, and thus the way historical quality disappears . Any nor mative argument is, in itself, particular and historical, but in a mythologised form powers, interested groups, or religious authorities' ar guments appear as "natural", as something obvious, which needs no cultural explanation because it is evidently a part of nature.
The researcher can help to reveal what hap pens when reality is emptied of its content, whether it is the state or a minority that carries out this mythologising. It is obvious in many ethnic and national problems that much of the mythologising and distortion that also is car rele! ' Cnce to their "original" culture, and with the protection of our own politically correct tolerance regarding ethnic differences. Being difl'crcnt can clearly create serious problems, but in Europe and the USA today it can, in certain situations, be an advantage to be "eth nic", as we have become bli nd to cultural manip ulation through our own culture's relativism.
By cxce10sively ethnicising one's own background it is possible to oppose the modern order, when experienced as Lhrcaicning, because it is seen to remove all differences.
In such cases culture is made absolute. Eth nic characteristics and cultural identity are experienced as organically imbedded strata, which can, and must, never be changed -except voluntarily! Many of daily life's cultural con fr ontations come fr om both the minority's and the majority's claim to their unreflective "rights" to do precisely what they want to do at that particular moment, with an expressed fe eling that this natural right is, without overexhaust ing reflection, everyone's right. By this, I do not mean that history, in itself, should be regarded as a benefit. As with culture, history must not be regarded as an empirical field, but as an analytical perspective, called for in some investigations, i.e. various fo rms of the creation of identity within Europe. Here the aim is to use the past in order to understand present problems, that is -a specific use ofthe historical perspective.
On the one hand European ethnology is sur rounded by social anthropology, which has very great influence outside continental Europe, and which, in many areas, has inspired the Europe an/national ethnology. Many of us have benefit ted from this co-operation. Anthropology has, meanwhile, never really been a good fr iend to the historical perspective, since the dominating trend in British anthropology in the years be tween the wars in the clash with historicism saw it necessary to be extremely ahistorical (Chapman et al. 1989:3). This attitude has in deed changed in recent years, but there has never been a breakthrough of a true historical an thro pology, which many of us expected 10 to 15 years ago. There are many reasons for this, not dis cussed here. It seems to me that the anthropol ogist N. Thomas indicates an important issue, when he shows how the modernisation of an-thropology meant that the subject came to work more ByBtomatically thun pnlcc�;�;iunally, and thus conceptually had problems in directly in corporating history (ThomaB 1989: 6, 121).
On tho other hand ethnology is confronted with the particul arly large and many-sided subject ofhistory, with which we have generally had a strange love /hate relationship. However, there arc no grounds for ethnologists to feel it necessary to have an opinion on a discipline which is so all-embracing. History contains various niches and traditions of study, with which it is both easy and inspiring to co-oper ate. However, if we look at the interest in the development of a modern cultural history or culture analysis, we can see thai history has not been of first importance. I am personally a little disappointed that my fr iends in history seldom regard their historical work in relation to con temporary dilemmas, or bring their topics up to the present, but instead hand over these topics to political scientists or sociologists. Much is happening just now in many countries in the cultural historical field, but the cultural histor ical perspective is still in its infancy. European ethnologists have an obvious chance to make an impact in a historical cultural analysis by hold ing on to -though with a will to modernise -the subject's classical interest in history.

A historical world
If we acknowledge, that we, in our expectations and actions concerning the fu ture, use our expe rience as a sort of directional signpost in the past -we are perhaps more steered by "seeing" backwards than fo rwards -then we are on the way to getting in contact with the strata in the subconscious, by which our thoughts, to a large extent, are directed. To think the present his torically is to transfer this picture onto our professional activities. This is to say, both to recall that experiences or characteristics fr om the past are filed in "memory" as a type of "historical processing" (I know that the word isn't perfect), and consciously to accustom one self to compare or engage the experienced present with the figurations or events in the past, of which one has knowledge, naturally with regard to the different prerequisites for these phenomena, which almost always exist. It is the development of the ability to sec back wards and then fo rwards again in how one regards "the other", which is important for working with diachronic, and not only syn chronic, comparative perspectives. One gets better at it as the years pass, and one's histor ical knowledge also increases in the process, as the motivation to reach back into the past increases all the time. I believe also, that a conscious knowledge of the past sharpens present experience.  also about relations, and this whether we find ourselves in the Renaissance, in the Enlighten-ment or in the years after 19-15/4 8. Relution s hip::; defi ne and connect boundarieH, and it i:; im material whether there i;; reference to con fl ict, ::;ymbio;;i;; or equivalent diflcrence;; ("brotherhood") .
From state-oriented historicism to his torical cultural research li is ihc case, however, thai ethnologists cannot be expected to carry oui all forms of research.
We arc part of a universal division oflabour, but sometimes one finds one�:>clf in so many layers of history that one must be in a position to pry them apart, particul arly if others neither can nor will recount the histories; as was the case in H.iga up to the end of"The Singing Revolution".
In the European Middle Ages there was, as is known, no fe eling of history. People knew that the past had been different fr om their own time (i.e. heathen), but one did not generally take these differences particularly seriously. None ing what role culture plays in social life, and how it should be understood (cf. also Scharfe 1995). It can also be the smaller investigation seen in a wider context, that is the challenge, and not the smaller investigation for its own sake, as many believe. Here, it must, however, be said, that the particular example can quite well stand alone, if it has the characteristic of a parable, i.e. if it can be read and used to set the reader's life, or general problems, in relief. This can be a noble genre.
The use of the past in the present Ethnology has always been threatened by it self. Both because its practitioners have some-times had a tendency to fa ll for the colourful special ities, and because others, maybe in a reaction to the many studies of apparently

1992).
The research I am referring to is not just an unfeeling presentation of a phenomenon, but the history of ourselves, and the context of which we are a part. It is thus that we exist.
That is to say by hearing the history of man, by experiencing how our world is spread out, and by having an opinion about it. The best within the genre, which in Italy and Germany is called micro-history, can contain these qualities. The micro-historical cultural analysis fo cusses on historical situations' qualitative character, of ten by giving perspective to several layers of meaning in apparently simple forms or events (Levi 1991, Medick 1994. Such case-studies of different conditions can -if reader-identifica tion is successful -contribute to an expansion of a recognition of our own actions. 6 The investiga tions often reveal characteristics in society, with another world view than today, where the researchers' historical reconstruction makes it possible to come close to otherwise anonony mous human daily problems, hopes and dreams. Some micro-history has been criticised for its interest in cultural complexity and richness of detail which has deemphasized politics in soci-ety (i.e. Chartier 1988, Kaschuba 1996). 'l'o overcome this problem it is, to my mind, neces sary to set the little compact problem in analyt ical perspective. Not empirically -as the micro investigation would thereby lose its special qualities -but on a more principal level. This can be done, for example, by seeking the infi nitely large through the infinitely small, and by connecting the historical exemplification to an understanding of our own social life.
A fo rm of anthropologising oflife is called fo r.
Not primarily through the implementation of a social science method of study, but through awareness in present cultural history that should be directed towards general human re lationships in their different cultural expres sions. It could be studies of themes such as people's reaction to accident, authority and re sistance, previous experiences' role in the course of life, varying meaning of work, or the clash between various perspectives oflife. The impor tant thing is, that we, in the course of research, say something real, instead of just talking in phrases and fo rmula, which is -unfortunately -the easiest and most professionally accepta ble.
I no longer believe that scholars should, fr om high motives, merely fill gaps in our knowledge, regardless of how obvious the case appears.
Every filled gap reveals still more empty gaps, which had not previously been visible. It is much more important that readers can sense the researcher's personal engagement and dis quiet. That is, where he finds himself in relation to his research, instead of hiding himself be hind his subject or behind an abstract scientific goal. 1. Poul Borum, Danish TV, 23.11.1985. 2. Saramago emphasises that we always have things only in part when writing history. We confidently assert that we have, for example, written the history of a certain topic (a journey or an area), but we have always left out an enormous amount, as we all write fr om one certain angle. It is impossible to take all perspectives into account. Irrespective of how many books we write about a certain area there is always a large grey zone consisting of everyth ing else with which we haven't been con ccr·ned -grief', rnilwuy :-�tnt ion:-�, de:-�i re:-�, eat ing habits, de. IJist.oJ·y, as we create it, i� alway� only the fi rRt book, or nne po:-�:-� ible ed it ion. 3. The extremely materialistic Scandinavian coun tries have, in their understanding-of' the welfare stale since the Second Wo rld Wa r, almost mechan ically supposed that more of' the same is a lways better. This was possibly understandable, when the socinl deprivation of' the period between the wars was sti ll a living m e mory fiJr the socialdem ocrats, who innovated "the new welfare model".

Notes
Progress is however today tu rning in the other direction, fiJr example the destruction oft .he envi ronment. The myth of' progre�s depends on the belief that the qua l i ty of li fe improves because of technical and scient.itic advances. 4. Thi s apparently made it difficult for the extremely small group of' Latvian bourgeo isie (who were tor the most part German) to create a real national i dentity on th e basis of peasant society, as th e peasants, in contrast to the situation in Sweden, had scarcely become "bou rgeoi s" . The Latvian (material) peasant culture looked in 1900 still rath er "manori al".

The Danish crown lost Norway and Schleswig
Holstein in 1814 and 1864 respectively.
6. This is only true for a part of microhistory. An existential reading of much of the work of the leading researchers is impossible, due to them aspiring to an almost. ovor-int.ellectualisation. This leads one to remember British social anthropology in its most "scientific" period. This school has clearly inspired parts of German and American microhistory.