The politics and identity of European ethnology : Example Sweden

The public research policy in the humanities and the social sciences in Sweden during the postwar period linked to the idea of the welfare state is the start i ng poi nt of this article. Priority has been given to particular research themes " f�tci ng society". At the same time, the general left-wing orientation and the concomitan t. interest in processes of modern society accounts for a genuine interest of a sim i l a r kind among many young ethnologists . The author's personal research policy is summarized in a four-point program arguing for a more courageous stress on synthesis, for more culture comparison::; preferably through interdisciplinary cooperation, for combinations of quantita­ tive and qualitative methods, and, finally, for a theoretical involvement in the study of human beings, not only of cultural variation.


Public research policies
In Sweden, public research policies changed considerably during the 1970s. By public policy, I mean one influenced by the state through state research councils, ultimately by the government in power, but also through leading officials in the field of higher education and research. At that time a much more active research policy was introduced. One side of this change was achieved by giving priority to certain themes of research, to ear-mark certain money for certain projects. Another means was to set up special ized "council professorships" and "council re search positions", which were directly paid by the councils. Even the word "project" as an inte grated part of the Swedish academic terminol ogy was established in those days. A "project" was not any research task or piece of work (which seems to be the meaning today); it was a larger research plan, hardly less than three years in duration, preferably involving several scholars, and -not the least important -aiming at "solv ing an important problem".
Another key word at the time was "samhiills tillviind" (roughly "facing society", or "dealing with current social issues"), originally repre senting a left-wing view, but soon a widely accepted research approach. The very pronouced idea was that research should more or less directly serve general political interests. The dominating ideology involved social science re search as a means for improving the welfare state, and thereby the quality of life of its inhabitants (cf. Sandstrom 1993). A s ign i fi ca n t development was the establ ish ment ofDSF (Delegation fo r Social Research) at the Ministry of Health and Social Mfairs in 1971, which supported research on welfare in a general sense. DSF welcomed applications, but also -by its very existence -stimulated initia tives within the subject area. In 1977 another research authority was established, FRN (Coun cil for Planning and Coordination of Research). The purpose set up for FRN was to fa vour interdisciplinary research, and also, prefera bly, reseach about general social problems of national relevance.
The method used was not to order -i.e. to employ people to do -particu Jar research work (which was also done using public money, named "sector research", within a variety of public institutions), but to oiler money, to open up finance opportunities for specialized fields. Also in the selection and decision-making process within the research councils certain policies could of course be carried out.
Another council to be mentioned is Council of Building Research (BFR), established in1960.
Its programme is to promote technical develop ment, building planning and related areas, but its deliberate support of social science (includ ing ethnology) belongs to the 1970s.
What also happened in the 1970s was the union (in 1977) of two separate research coun cils into one, named Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSFR). In our discussion of the identity of ethnology, we may note that research applications fr om ethnolo gists were, fr om now on, dealt with by a commit tee also managing applications fr om anthropol ogists and sociologists. Also in other contexts, ethnology was identified as a social science,just as much as a discipline in the fa culty ofhuman ities.
There seem to be two circumstances contrib uting to such a profiled research policy. The primary one was the politically perceived need for certain kinds of knowledge in order to be able "build the modern society". This aimed at a scientifically constructed system, technologi cal and economic rationality, modern thinking and modern values, and also a modern social organization. This was the basic idea. What is good housing? What technical and social qual-ities should modern housing areas contain? What is a good place of work in te rm::; of ergo nomics, risk statistics, personal development? Furthermore, how can visual arts, music, thea tre, cultural heritage, etc. be made available for the majority of the citizens?
Many areas of expertise should be developed through systematic research, it was thought, such as those areas dealing with criminality, drug addiction, unemployment, "social passivi ty" , "sense of alienation in political matters" (two key concepts in the 1 970s). The ever-chang ing structure and function of modern society represent a market for "interpreters", people who are trained to sort out, classify, define, explain, suggest perspectives. Questions to be answered come fr om the growing complexity of today's world, as well as fr om the rapid speed of social transformation. The belief in social engi neering lacks optimism today, but interpreters seem to gain in popularity.
One of the most loved key words is informa tion, particularly in the expression "the infor mation society". The term accommodates the perception of"knowledge" as a strategic vehicle for designing change. In this sense research policies aim to stimulate scholars to choose certain themes rather than others. A fe ature of the public policy for more than twenty years in Sweden is to propose large projects, as has already been mentioned, including several schol ars, preferably comprising people fr om differ ent academic fields. The message is that public ly supported research work should first and fo remost serve ends that transcend internal academic interests. Although great fr eedom should be given to individual scholars in choos ing methods and in theory development, public grants should fu nction as public investments.
Those who profit fr om academic research should ultimately be those who supply money, i.e. the taxpayers.
Contributing to this thematic specialization is also, by necessity, the combination of decreas ing fu nds and a growing number of applicants for grants. Although extra money has recently been given to research within the social and cultural sciences (under a few thematic head ings), many good applications have had to be turned down. Since the number of applications to resea rch councils has increased so much, the quality criterion is not enough as an instru ment for selection. Consequently, the particu lar theme or research �:; ubject will offer the final selection criterion. Once again, a limited number of themes will be fa voured. To the extent that material artefacts and other expressions of culture are studied, this is done to develop our understanding of humans; m ateri al obj ects are means and not ends orthe study. During the 1980s the fbcus haR once again shifted, although less dramatically, fr om "human behaviour" to "human thinking", or fr om external to internal. Sub-fields like histor ical anthropology (including mentality studies) and the history of thinking attract considerable interest among students, more so than cultural history in a more general sense. Historical studies are continuously getting started by young �:;cholars, but there is a marked trend towards research into contemporary soci ety. Some do both, and the theoretical orientation for the most part does not separate these two lines.

The identity of ethnologists outside Academia
The professional use of ethnology outside uni versities a generation ago was mainly museum work. Cultural museums were the labour mar ket; research and museum work were integrat ed. To day, the educational volume only allows a minority to get employment at museums. When I myself registered as a student of ethnology some 35 years ago, we were less than five students who did so, that autumn in 1961. The Ethnology was never integrated into politi cal and social planning to the same extent as, for example, sociology. The role given to ethnol ogists, during the 70s -as today, is the one that serves "background information", e.g. how peo ple arrange their lives, what they do and how their interact, in the fa mily, in the neighbour hood, at workplace:;. What do they say about all this, how do they express themselves? What :;cern to be their thought:; and feelings? It is nccc::;sary to know something about the real contexts, "out there", in order to plan and to make political decisions. The key word is "un derstandin g" , hardly explanation, nor predic tion . Statistical tables are weak instruments to infuse understanding. Ethnographic descrip tions arc more efficient A fifth study deals with psychiatric patients, namely, those who were originally treated in closed wards, but who have been given individ ual dwellings in ordinary apartment buildings (Lotta Mannerfelt). The relative success ofthis reform, which has taken place in other coun-184 tries as well, is insufiicicntly known. A research grant has been given by the Nation Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen).

Eight research themes
Attitude::; to mental illness, especially ::;chiz ophrenia, and how it is talked about by laymen, is the subject of another project. Like all the others it is carried out in a local field, in this case an area in northern Sweden where the occurrence of schizophrenia has long been no ticeably high (Dr. Lena Gerholm). Also this research work has been granted public money, although mainly carried out within the fr ame of a teaching-and-research position at the univer sity.
A seventh project -conducted as a doctoral thesis -has been granted money fr om the  Communication apprehension among Ameri can and Swedish students was systematically compared in a collaboration study by myself and James McCroskey (reported in Daun 1996).
Another example is my own comparison of! tal ian and Swedish va lues (Daun 1992). A third exa mple is a more recent comparison of univer sal values in Estonia, Finland and Sweden (Verkasalo, Niit, and Daun 1994).
The latter study is a subproject within a broader intern ational -psychological -study of un iversal values (Schwartz and Bilsky 1990). I would like to see a number of empirically and theoretically integrated trans-national studies in European ethnology too. The tradition with in the humanities, at least in Scandinavia, of "one-man shows" seems to me to be too strong. The first attack on cultural relativism to be published was the one by Berlin and Kay (1969).
Their fo cus on colour terms is interesting, since for decades the perception of colours had been considered by anthropologists to be arbitrary. "Berlin and Kay show th at al though color clas sification does vary, it also shows remarablc uniform ities", according to Donald E. Brown in his book Human Universals (Brown 1991:11). Later studies added fu rther evidence in this direction.
Facing cultural variation, and the intellectu al fa scination that goes with it, will not cease to make up the basic motivation f(Jr students in ethnology and anthropology. But "are the differ ences all that should be of concern to anthropol ogy? Does an emphasis on differences present a true image of humanity?" asks Brown (p. 2).
In my own tentative writings of the 1970s and 1980s on the subject of "quality of life", I looked for universal criteria in motivational psychology. The thesis that appealed to me was the fo llowing: humans continuously act in order to satify psychogenic needs, although this is done in culturally different fo rms -sometimes amazingly different. The psychogenic need for social contact (need for affiliation), for example, is satified differently in different cultures. The same is true ofthe need for self-respect, and the need to excert influence over conditions that strongly influence one's personal life. More can be added fo llowing Murray's need theory (1938).
The universal nature of these needs is indicated by individual reactions when psychogenic needs are fru strated (Daun 1974;1978). In my own work, I tried to fu rther elaborate this theme in a book fo cusing on universals, partly inspired by the Israeli psychiatrist Antonovsky and his two concepts, "coping" and salutogenesis, i.e. the origin of health (Daun & Landell 1982).
From ethnologists dealing with today's events in Europe and elsewhere, I would like to see analyses which include, not only the ordinary message that what history makes is unfathom able. It certainly is, but there is also invariance which make all humans equal. Cultural behav iour varies, but variation is not infinite. Fur thermore, given certain fa ctors -incentives and restrictions -particular patterns should be expected. Phenomena like ethnic conflicts, na-tiona] chauvinism, guerrilla wars, fa mily vio lence, all present their particular configura tions . Still, they also express universal fea tures, which are equally important for the un derstanding of historical processes in general terms. Cultural variation is just one universal -among many others -in "the study of man".
We may have to reflect on the fa ct that th e concept of cultural variation underlines differ ences between peoples, in other words, cogni tively separates them. This is done by means of terms like ethnic group and national culture.
These terms are academic ones but they arc also used in political rhetoric, as we all know, with the intention of separating peoples in a real sense -in violent political actions, some of them called ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that this political misuse should be counteract ed by an equally important stress on similari ties between peoples, i.e. to make human uni versals much more explicit in the study of culture. The recently established concept of "cultural racism" indeed necessitates some kind of reaction on our part. I see this as an educa tional mission.