Studying Home Fields: Encounters of Ethnology and Anthropology in Estonia

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Center of Excellence CECT) and the target-financed project “Landscape Heritage and Practice”, No. SF0130033s07. We are very grateful to our reviewers, and to Ene Kõresaar, Kadri Koreinik, Triinu Mets, and Anu Kannike for their comments and suggestions on various drafts of this article.

Notes

1. Until the 1980s, Estonian ethnology was referred to as ethnography (see Pärdi 1998 for an overview of the development of the term). In anthropology, ethnography refers to in-depth, mostly qualitative description of any studied social group, institution or phenomenon (e.g., “an ethnography of urban nomads” (Spradley 1970) “an ethnography of the Khoisan peoples” (Barnard 1992) or “an ethnography of global connection” (Tsing 2005)).

2. Estonian ethnography also closely followed the linguistic focus of Romanticism. Estonian ethnographers turned their attention to Siberian linguistic relatives: the Finno-Ugric tribes, Estonians' “little brothers”. The vision of the linguistic unity of Finno-Ugrians had an element of social evolutionism hidden in it, as the Siberian Finno-Ugric groups were seen as displaying features that Europeanized Estonians were considered to have lost. As Ilmari Manninen noted in 1924: “We need a perspective beyond our own nation. (…) [L]et us think of our kindred people [I. M.'s italics], who have not yet become civilized nations and are therefore lacking a qualified work force to do research” (Manninen 2005, pp. 317–18).

3. Reference could here be made to Frazer's The Golden Bough (Frazer 1922) as well as Boas's collection of folklore amongst the Native Americans (e.g., Boas 1914).

4. See also Jaago 2005.

5. As the Estonian folklorist Oskar Kallas (1868–1946) suggested at the first meeting of the active members of the newly established ENM in 1909, collecting antiquated items may have had some practical purposes: “To begin with, less emphasis on collecting newer art, and more on the old art and more generally folk pieces – material artifacts, as it would be too costly to acquire modern art items and this would be beyond the financial capacity of the museum” (Leinbock 1934, 7).

6. However, A.W. Hupel, an eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century pastor, publicist and linguist, had already developed an extensive network of correspondents for collecting various materials from the local folk (see Jürjo 2004).

7. It is worth mentioning that, in this interest in physical features, ethnology resembled Anglo-American anthropology of the same era, e.g., Boas (1911); Notes and Queries (Garson & Read 1892).

8. Even though the mutual acceptance, understanding and respect was somewhat overstated by the collectors who ignored the frequent suspicion and dislike that the locals displayed; see for example Kannike (1994).

9. Today, the information from this network forms a special collection at the ENM.

10. Hiiemäe (2003) offers an overview of Oskar Loorits's activities, including his ideas in the 1930s which included a discussion of the function of religion.

11. Pärdi's italics.

12. Interestingly, around the same period, Soviet ethnographers, who had the whole Soviet “Empire” available for research, started to increasingly venture into “exotic” field sites. We thank Anu Kannike for pointing out this fascinating opposite development in the two fields.

13. The Estonian Institute of History had contained the Ethnography/Ethnology Sector, a research institute, since 1983.

14. It should be noted that, at the University of Tartu, lectures in social and cultural anthropology were offered at the Faculty of Social Sciences beginning in 1990 by the eminent poet and author Jaan Kaplinski, standing in as a local amateur, and, beginning in 1992, by some anthropologists from the United States. In 1995, however, when the faculty was reorganized into departments, no anthropology department was established. Since then, courses in anthropology have been taught occasionally by different lecturers (see also Gross 1997).

15. The program consisted of only two staff members and was closed in 2012.

16. Admittedly, in such discussions, the value of research abroad, supposedly the greatest strength of anthropology, is not considered and the discussions appear to concentrate on whether anthropologists and ethnologists have anything different to offer in terms of researching their compatriots.