Regina F. Bendix

An “eminently readable” collection of essays exploring what happens when cultural heritage meets commerce (Asian Ethnology). When heritage becomes a commodity, when culture is instrumental in driving tourism, and when individuals assert ownership over either, social, ideological, political, and economic motivations intertwine. Bestowing value on “culture” is itself a culturally rooted act, and the essays gathered in Culture and Value focus on the motivations and value regimes people in particular times and contexts have generated to enhance the visibility and prestige of cultural practices, narratives, and artifacts. This collection of essays by noted folklorist Regina F. Bendix offers a personal record of the unfolding scholarly debate regarding value in the studies of tourism, heritage, and cultural property. Written over the course of several decades, Bendix’s case studies and theoretical contributions chronicle the growing and transforming ways in which ethnographic scholarship has observed social actors generating value when carrying culture to market, enhancing value in inventing protective and restorative regimes for culture, and securing the potential for both in devising property rights. Bendix’s work makes a case for a reflexive awareness of the changing scholarly paradigms that inform scholars’ research contributions. “A significant contribution to the study of cultural resources . . . a must read for scholars particularly interested in politics and the allocation of funding and personal rights over tangible and intangible culture.” —Western Folklore

Tourism, Heritage, and Property

Culture and Value

Marie Sandberg

Disorder and order are among the principles through which the articles in this issue are connected. Peter Jan Margry grasps the exuberant excesses surrounding the Dutch monarch’s birthday with the term “mobocracy” and sees in the suspension of rules a means to reconcile Dutch republicanism with the anachronism of a monarchical system. Ongoing disorder of a rather different nature is experienced by migrant workers from Poland in Denmark. Niels Jul Nielsen and Marie Sandberg accompany them at work and in their different home settings and analyse the divergent interplay of the Polish labour niche and family dynamics on different constructions of “orderly work conditions”. Stefan Groth uncovers the structuring power of new tools and events to measure performance in recreational cycling; competitive norms are shown to permeate a leisure activity. Old age, too, is not free from the structuring arm of social and health regimes. Through his analysis of billiards – a game favoured by the older men he studies – Aske Juul Lassen critiques aging policies striving to “activate” the elderly and overlooking the rhythms inherent to a traditional game – and activity. The issue concludes with Tuuli Lähdesmäki’s comparison of how local heritage actors choose to narrate the transnationally launched European Heritage Label. Within an initiative to foster Europeanization, she finds actors formulating European identities in different moulds.

Journal of European Ethnology

Ethnologia Europaea

The leitmotif of this special issue is "revisiting": Swedish and Danish scholars pay a visit to concepts and approaches of the field of European ethnology. In re-examining, revising, reawakening and relaunching concepts and approaches that might have otherwise been overlooked, worn out or rejected, they explore and explicate new dimensions of research that have remained tacit knowledge. In engaging with past knowledge claims, concepts and research endeavours, the volume offers original reworkings of the role of everyday life in user-driven innovation projects (Tine Damsholt and Astrid P. Jespersen), on the possible links between the historic-geographic atlas works and controversy mapping (Anders K. Munk and Torben Elgaard Jensen), understanding the meaning and creation of archival knowledge (Karin Gustavsson), and of fieldwork engagements (Frida Hastrup). Discussing the role of continuity and rupture in past and present analyses (Signe Mellemgaard) and rethinking borders (Fredrik Nilsson) are further avenues explored. Four main themes forge the connections of this volume: reworking everyday life, fieldwork as craftsmanship, mapping connections and conversing with the past create a dynamic matrix of novel takes on ethnologies for the future. The six contributions are supplemented with four comments; in commenting on the revisits, they contribute their own reflections on revisiting European ethnology.

Special issue: European Ethnology Revisited

Ethnologia Europaea vol. 44:2

Galit Hasan-Rokem

A Companion to Folklore presents an original and comprehensive collection of essays from international experts in the field of folklore studies. Unprecedented in depth and scope, this state-of-the-art collection uniquely displays the vitality of folklore research across the globe. An unprecedented collection of original, state of the art essays on folklore authored by international experts Examines the practices and theoretical approaches developed to understand the phenomena of folklore Considers folklore in the context of multi-disciplinary topics that include poetics, performance, religious practice, myth, ritual and symbol, oral textuality, history, law, politics and power as well as the social base of folklore Selected by Choice as a 2013 Outstanding Academic Title

A Companion to Folklore

Michaela Fenske

Das Politische der Mahlzeit reicht vom komplexen Setting am Familientisch bis zum Staatsbankett, vom Status einer Speise bis zur Verweigerung von Nahrung im Hungerstreik. Die Beiträger/innen des vorliegenden Bandes nutzen diese Spannbreite, um das Essen als den politischen Brennpunkt auszuloten, den es nicht nur, aber besonders in der Gegenwart darstellt. The political meal encompasses the complex setting of meals at the family table as well as the state banquet; it reaches from the social status of a dish to the refusal of food in a hunger strike. The contributors of this volume use this breadth to examine food and eating as the kind of political arena they constitute not only but particularly in the present.--

Politische Mahlzeiten. Political Meals

Achim Spiller

Stefan Groth

Im Zeitalter verknappender Ressourcen ist Kultur - beispielsweise in Form von traditionellem Wissen oder Kulturerbe - in den Brennpunkt wirtschaftlicher, politischer wie ideeller Interessen gerückt. Die Rechte an Eigentum oder Nutzung solcher Kulturgüter werden von internationalen Bühnen bis zu lokalen Schauplätzen verhandelt und implementiert. Nach sechs Jahren intensiver, interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit legt die DFG-Forschergruppe 772 ("Die Konstituierung von Cultural Property: Akteure, Diskurse, Kontexte, Regeln") einen mehrgliedrigen Ergebnisband zu diesem wichtigen, spätmodernen Phänomen der Konstituierung kulturellen Eigentums vor. Ein erster Teil bietet griffige Vorstellungen verschiedener internationaler Instrumente und Arenen, in denen Handhabung von Schutz und Inwertsetzung von Kultur im Mittelpunkt stehen. Der zweite Teil versammelt Beiträge, die zentrale Handlungsmotive und Legitimationsweisen der Inwertsetzung von Kultur erörtern und Konzepte, die dabei von besonderer Relevanz sind, durchleuchten. Im dritten Teil werden Ergebnisse aus den verschiedenen Teilprojekten der Forschergruppe vorgestellt.

Regina F. Bendix

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