Perspectives of European Ethnology

The current identity discourse inside and outside ethnology is for different reasons since more than a decade connected with political rhethorics . It includes a frequent labelling of artifacts and attitudes as "ethnic" and the use of history i n search for key-words as "roots" and "authenticity". Since ethnologists often arc authors or mediators of plausible metaphorics they seem to serve as story-tellers, as entertainers. Since ethnologists offer materials for the construction of the self by interpreting habits, rituals etc . , contemporary everyday-life turns out to be a scientificated one and has lost its quality of indisputable self-evidence. Modern lives have to be narrated and explained by stories . People have learned to use a set of options and thus are enabled to celebrate a 'virtual identity' which turns out to be the everyday practice. Interpretations surrounding identity brought up by ethno-sciences as well as its creators achieve more importance since ethnological knowledge is to be regarded as an integral part of modern lifestyles. They demand responsibility. The planned celebrations for the year 2000 e.g. are stuffed with cited patterns of culture marking a change.

The current identity discourse inside and outside ethnology is -for different reasons -since more than a decade connected with political rhethorics. It includes a fr equent labelling of artifacts and attitudes as "ethnic" and the use of history in search for key-words as "roots" and "authenticity". Since ethnologists often arc authors or mediators of plausible metaphorics they seem to serve as story-tellers, as entertainers. Since ethnologists offer materials for the construction of the self by interpreting habits, rituals etc., contemporary everyday-life turns out to be a scientificated one and has lost its quality of indisputable self-evidence. Modern lives have to be narrated and explained by stories. People have learned to use a set of options and thus are enabled to celebrate a 'virtual identity' which turns out to be the everyday practice.
Interpretations surrounding identity brought up by ethno-sciences as well as its creators achieve more importance since ethnological knowledge is to be regarded as an integral part of modern lifestyles. They demand responsibility. The planned celebrations for the year 2000 e.g. are stuffed with cited patterns of culture marking a change.
I. Identity quarrels and the consump tion of the past Some European ethnologists feel themselves surrounded, endangered and even conquered by social history, cultural and historical anthro pology. Even history of art and literary sciences now call themselves Cultural Studies, 'Kultur wissenschaften' (Glaser/Luserke 1996) and seem to do our jobs. Noble disciplines which gain their self-confidence fr om the dignity of high class objects of self-evident acceptance (like 'art', 'literature' or 'history') seem to have laid claim on fields which we believed to be 'ours', such as popular art and iconology, village-life or the interpretation of fo lk beliefs. They fr eely use the 'soft' and 'narrative' methodological approaches and textualization strategies of eth nology as well as offolklore studies. Sometimes they seem to be better informed about the specific approaches our science has developed.
The triumph of Cultural Studies seems to be a complete one. But its ambivalence is marked by the question if it is going to replace ethnology while on the other hand the relation towards traditional fields remains indistinct.
The very moment museums are of public interest again, the study of artefacts and of museology seem to be no longer subjects of ethnological interest, as Nils-Arvid Bringeus pointed out in his final editorial of Ethnologia Scandinavica (Bringeus 1994). Even the study of fo lk costume and similar traditional fields which we thought to be very clearly "our" topics have started to be more and more associated with other sciences having been influential and successful in the book market using for in stance the word 'folk culture' (Peter Burke et al. 1984). Indigenous fields of European ethnology seem to disappear and the story of the vanish ing discipline ethnology (Volkskunde) on the one hand and the ethnologization of social and historical disciplines on the other is a new field of discourse within the scientific community (Bruckner 1992).
Two strategies can be observed. On the one side there is an effo rt to transfi>rm th e histori cal orientation of our discipline into a social in quiry. The other shapes its perspectives to ward::; modernity and it::; central topics such a::; identity, authenticity, ethn icity and -againcontinuity: constructs which have a strong ten dency towards homogeneity and roundness as opposed to modern societies which are described in terms ol'::;egrcgation, diversity and individu alization. As a result modern world-views are filled up with ethnographical knowledge.
Pa llo Ovc Christiansen (1988) has discussed omit aspects of "Construction and Consump tion of the Past. From Mu ntailluu to The Name of' the Rose" and that so called "microhistory" of world-views, which seems to have become an entertaining genre of general interest. Natalie Zemon Davis' story of Martin Guerre has been adapted as a film starring Gerard Depardieu.
The world-view perspective makes us fe el fa miliar with lived history, its tendency towards a descriptive neutrality and its compactness of a good story allows an easygoing adaptation to one's own biography and makes history as well as identity a segment of the entertainment industry.

II. 'Ethnic': the career of a word
In the meantime construction and consumption of the past happens in terms of ethnicity. Ever since the paradigm ofEuropean ethnology shift ed fr om social fa cts to ethnic roots (which in cludes after all 'ethnic cleansing') the concep tion of ethnicity has tended towards biological interpretations. A liberal Vo lkskunde (Europe an Ethnology), which once had described and interpreted a fr iendly and mostly harmless identity game in 'developed' societies turned out now to offer arguments against the stran gers and has showed all societies as less devel oped than we (and they) thought.
There is a new fo cus on authenticity and continuities. Recently the concept of 'continui ty' was revitalised (and camouflaged), coming back onto the stage through a surprisingly wide backdoor that was opened by Fernand Braude! and the Annales School and their idea of a "longue dun�e". Since then this idea of persist ence is supported calmly by anthropological as 170 well as psychoanalytical groups and th eir con cept. Further inte nsified by a risingdiscourse of biologistic and ethologic axioms the conception of continuity leads step by step to the assump tion of undiscussable and unchangeable an thropological constants as the essentials ofhu man nature. In addition, feminist studies try for example to elaborate women's competence for "the gift" fr om past or exotic worlds as "a fundamental fe minine attitude" and to perform it as a playground for contemporary orientation (Joy 1996 if we were to cast a glance at the historical parentage of these processes, we should recog nize, that they have to stay in the middle of our scientific field.
In the science-and media-made fe elings of the approaching 'fin de siecle' we can record everywhere a rollback to simple models and solutions such as 'ethnic pureness'. But we mostly discuss our own lives in terms of soft ideas of friendly nationalism and smooth mul ticulturalism which the ruling classes have

III. Storytelling and the microlevel
Hardly any subject within German ethnology has attracted so much researchenergy in recent years than the fa st-food complex (Tschofen 1993). Since Ulrich Tolksdorf's valuable analy sis of Ronald McDonald's (To lksdorf1981) quite a number of scholars have done field-and espe cially brain-work on the subject; "tast-work" sometimes was also included. Obviously it was not a wrong decision to fo cus on the fast-food complex. Without any doubt fo od has under gone one of the most indicative changes in everyday life of modern societies. It is linked in many ways to social processes like industriali zation, the division oflabour and its subsequent separation fr om the home. Further nothing seems to be more adapted to a mobile society and its life-styles than a type of fo od which is industrially prepared and which is intended to be served and to be eaten quickly. Fast-food can be characterized through its distinctive func tions; cultural aversion and sympathy are very much connected with it. Fast-food divides class es of taste and symbolizes distinctions in orien tations, ages and world-views. The ubiquitous fo od of McDonald's can be described as a kind of soul-food, for example for American soldiers overseas, which could symbolize the 'national fo od' and which could be advertised as "a bit fr om home" and "a bite fr om home" when the first McDonald's restaurants started next to the US-Army barracks in Germany.
The ubiquity ofMcDonald's can mediate the fe eling of an absolute security, the fe eling of being in a way at home anywhere in the world. Today nothing exists in our world without an interpretation and without a story fo r its legit imacy (Kostlin 1995). The fa st-food paradigm includes stories as well. It includes stories of our existence which are researched, construct-ed and invented by eth nologist:; (among other story-te llers in modern sm;iet.ies) ta lking about (and thus creati n g) hidden languages, niches, communication styles, counter cultures, places of ' identification, localities and training fields fo r young people, areas of contacts and multi cultural experiences.

IV. McDonaldism and regionalism
Ethnological fields -the smaller the better -do not exist in reality but are created and defined by scholars. So our attitudes toward McDonald ism are not only a matter of taste but also of professional deform ations. As protagonists of the small entiti es we should heartily dislike it.
But to fit it into our fr ames of reference we explain it mainly on the micro-level as a cultur al niche with its own language and rituals which we dignify as "fast-food culture".
On the other hand McDonaldism and region alism are components and results -two sides of the same coin -of modernization. McDonald ism, so one could argue, has not only provoked a unification of taste all over the world but has also re-inflamed modern regionalism. It is to be taken for granted that the rise of regional cul ture (not only in the so called western world) has got its power as a counterpart of unifica tion. The rise of the new European cuisine movement "slow-food" may illustrate that.
"Slow-food" is an absolutely modern phenome non quoting an image of European fo od-history and culture. It is supposed to be the common type of preparing and consuming fo od in a distinctive, especially European way. "Slow fo od" raises an objection to acceleration. The tntions. Showing our preference, let':; ::: ay for Italian Jood, we will be involved in a complex life-style which may also include our fu rniture, clothing and musical attitudes.

V. Selected "his-story"
Since we argue with 'history', anniversaries seem to be natural events. mainly as an interpreted nne. The naivet6 nf earlier periods is -if ever true -no longer possible. The structure ofthe argu mentation by cultural 1:1cience ha1:1 become popular. Every body is a scientist (inventor, explainer etc.) of his own life, h a ndling a set o f i dentities.

VII. Corporate culture
Duri ng the last decades and especia lly in West ern countries eth nology hm; given fi-iendly and s mooth comments on the development of the type of society it is pa id by. to class but has to be Swedish, is to be national ized" (ES 1994, 177). In other words: there seems to be a lack of critique towards develop ments of modern societies. Thus ethnologists share in the fa brication of national identity and are part of an elite group which contributes to cultural interpretation of social conflicts which are then labelled as 'ethnic' or 'cultural' in both Western and Eastern contexts. It may mean that ethnology transports people into another mood and hides such categories as class and social structure just by definition. Ethnicity, regionalism and the production of regional and national identity can be described as a depriva tion of social or class identity just by shifting the parameters of description. So the modern man agement of cultural diversity by learning and teaching 'Intercultural Communication' is con-sequent (Roth). Following that idea all stories to be told must be streamlined f(>r their fu nction as 'therapy-stories'. They must not be true but they have to fit publ ic discourse;;.

VIII. Identity and difference
The discussion concerning the E u ropean Com munity showed the way in which 'Ethnoscienc What may have been an easygoing game of colouring and illustrating the greyness of mod ern societies now appears to take a dangerous turn against the others, those who are differ ent, those who have not the same attitudes towards sex, towards cleanliness, houses, wom en, gardens, haircuts, towards ecology or to wards bicycles, towards strangers.

Tamas Hofer once mentioned that Vo lks
kunde is a discipline which describes the story of fo lk culture for its 'own' people, in its own country and in its own language (Hofer 1979).

European ethnology, I continue, explains to
people what is their practice. It tells stories referr ing to that 'own', and creates identity by means of assumptions of authenticity. This is the point linking European ethnology to post modernity and making 'folk culture' attractive for modernity. What Hofer once described is exactly the same today concerning the individ ual. The 'Selbstthematisierung' (Hahn 1988) to talk about the self in cultural terms -could lead in different directions. It may run into a confession ofbeing guilty and into the glorifica tion of its 'own'. Both directions are easily con nected with each other.

X. What we are?
So we arc -as m en ti oned above -never quite ai home bu t pa rt i ci pant ob;;crver;;. We arc not a society deeply rooted like old tree;; which should not be transplanted butwe are as our object people who have fe ci to movc.And we should lei people take pari in thai insight we have discov ered, that man can be nomadic and have to live in reflexivity and in same moment bound to thai dream of continu ity, roots and stability. ln a world which is described as rapidly changing, people seem to fe el a lack of permanence, which is not thinkable without the horizon of modern mobility and instability and -sometimes -the anarchy of abu ndance. The idea of stability as well as of mobility are historically grown essen tials. Both are as modern as all historical sci ences -including European ethnology -which for 200 years made people believe that 'culture', which was elaborated in an historical process, is somehow nature.
Some philosophers have pointed out the role of arts and culture in softening the damage caused by modernization, arguing that people were unable to cope with the acceleration of changes of all kinds . In their opinion the hu manistic sciences should no longer be sceptical but produce interpretation and orientation (Marquard 1986). In this conception culture has to enhance the speed ofthe technical devel opment in our societies. It offers positive com ments instead of questioning at which point the exacting demands of modernity could be inhu mane. The limited piece cut out which we call 'world-view' should be widened to the question of power relations which are involved in the politics of national (regional, local etc.) identity.
The acquisition as well as the maintenance of power in our societies is closely connected to the ability to make a particular construction and interpretation or definition of reality a domi nant one instead of stressing the contemporary multivocality of symbols, attitudes etc.
Thus, in a critical accompaniment of the modernization of the society ethnology could shape its contours again: orientated to the present and offering a comparison with the past and at the same moment searching for the elite and groups which have constructed modernity 176 and its past time orientations and sh ow i ng values as man-made fa cts. But ifihcy are man made, invented or constructed, they also are to be changed -in a discourse by human beings .
Culture must be described as the man-made part of the environment. We should accentuate culture as man-made and women-made. Re construction is also a de-construction naming the consumption of traditions and history and the new and highly important diflerence be tween history and memory (Nora 1988). The question is: do we re-bewitch the world by naturalizing the 'givenness' of ethnicity or na tionality (and all the other social forms) and so lessen the potential of reflexivity.

XI. Virtual ethnicity
To day we cannot just handle things. We have to reflect on nearly everything that we do. The public discourse initiated by the intellectual elite has taught us to be politically correct (this movement along with the 'urban legend' seem to have their origin in US-campuses). In a world which is described as aesthetically structured we have to decide. Our 'habitus' demands con sideration and creates attention -our own attention and the attention of others. We are creating ourselves more than in the past by acting in society and we are controlled much more by the society inside our body, concerning for instance morals, garbage, our attitudes to ward strangers, women, dogs and children. We have to "perform ourselves" in nearly every situation. The 'normal' biography does not exist any longer. Most people start their working life later, their biographic::; arc more fr equently interru pted and a career in the traditional sense i::; lc::;::; normal than befiJre. Most people will not climb up a career-ladder but move fr om job to job. We have to explain and legitimize ourselves, we have to invent our individual story. All this has an impact on our science's questionnaire.
What This exactly happens more and more in a pri vate and individualistic manner which -for instance by means of the esoteric -is offered in a mass market. And this is one ofthe paradoxes of our time: we quilt our identity with mass culture which we combine in an individualistic way. The 'urban legends' (Brunvand) ofthe type "Rattan i Pizzan" (Klintberg 1986) in the late 80's are analysed as indicators leading to situ ations we are afraid of. The softening story behind those interpretations explains to us that even modern society is able to invent adequate stories not unlike fo rmer societies did. Creativ ity and storytelling has not vanished, it still exists; modern legends are handled as equiva lent with the old ones. The word 'legend' link::; u::; with the past and deepens the stories as well a::; the individuals in continuity. Those stories, lillcd up with eclectic ele ga nce, offe r more and more spccili cd worlds of descendants. Now every group has its own histo rian. Each group and each society obvioul:l ly needs its story-tellers. They shape -if they arc successful -a common world-view includ ing an d thereby delining th eir own group and the individual . More and more intermediate institutions like 'networks' fill the place be tw een the individual and the state authorities.

XII. Ethnologists as entertainers
More and more groupl:l dedicated to one-issue movements -which therelore must not exist permanently -originate . They will need stories and they base themselves on stories which the experts offe r. life is "in". The idea of 'society' is such a con struction (which assumes totality). The inter pretation of our 'roots' as an absolute necessity for a human individual and also for a group was claimed by the sciences. Human memory seems to be replaced by what we call 'history', a prod uct which scientists as experts in modelling history, memory and culture have created (see for example centennials or millenniums). If history fills our memory, consequently a virtual identity based on expert stories will be think able. The scientific input in everyday-life has grown im m en sely, nothing remains unre l:ICarchcd. In the m eantime everybody il:l hil:i (or her) own expert using 'own' life ideas (Beck 1995) for their individual construction of a biography (Hofer/Niedermi.iller 1988)  Ethnologists coproduce the contours of a common narrative. This narrative can be a story which allows the nation or the group to perform itself. If this narrative is based on soft differences which create a slight diversity it may enable the members to perform them selves in an easygoing way. The common narra tive tells the story of the national and the self as liberal, fr iendly, aggressive or boring, as hedon istic or extremely moralistic (LOfgren 1989) and installs artefacts and symbolic routines (Nied ermi.iller 1994). But even a soft story can be turned into an aggressive one by accentuating and interpreting even slight differences as iden tity-markers.
Looking in different directions for an histor ical or cultural anthropology we have brought ourselves in new nets of discourse. This is helpful. Otherwise what would remain for Eu ropean ethnologists would be a marginalized area of the banalities of everyday life (into which some have already escaped). It is not the only chance to look into the niches and to put the banalities a::; our driving fo rces on the altar of celebrated identity. Our actualjob is a critical discovery or the ::;ell�evidence (f(>r instance of ethnicity ). It is more than th e reconstruction and production ofthe ingredients of a corporate culture which seems to be more necessary (at least more asked for) than ever before. Once we have erected the construction and production of realities in shaping nations, groups just by description; are we simply replacing the old class model by a cultural one? In Germany (as well as in other western countries) male teenag ers for decades have stolen cars (James Dean in "Rebel Without A Cause", 1955) and damage them on risky tours . Since they are labelled as 'crash kids' their behaviour is culturally ex pressed; and told as a story it seems integrated in a relatively normal biography of a male youngster.
Science has to name interests and should look for the authorities which are setting marks and thus should be more than a story-telling institution. Through that healing attitude which stories mostly include, a lot of questions and aspects have been lost during the last years.
Ethnology took part in the ethnicization of culture supporting a camouflage of the social dimension of conflicts (Kaschuba 1995). Since the narratives of the 60s and 70s have lost their integrating power the common story of ethnici ty has been raised and revitalized again. We put forward what we discuss and give key words for the political rhetorics: angels, ethnicity, fa st fo od. By writing books and planning symposi ums we initiate, create and strengthen dis courses on certain topics. And we know: in deconstructing the stories we de-construct our role as scientific authorities. There is a turn towards literarization which makes us neglect our job: we describe our own lives and invent colourful stories pretending it is somebody else's life. We describe what does not change and look for an entertaining interpretation, a good story.
But, we should not streamline our stories too much and fu nction like a therapy-institution which entertains a certain segment of the soci ety. Since globalization seems to emerge a soci ety in which compulsory leisure will be the order of the day, the demand for entertainment will rise and will include appeasing purposes.
Since Folk-Culture is regarded as a storage depot for various identity games the rhetorics of identity gain an easy going plausibility. A new CD with traditional music is advertised as follows: "Authentizitat, Originalitat und Un terhaltsamkeit zeichnen diese neuen To ntrager a us."