Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik
Slovenian Folk Culture: Between Academic Knowledge and Public Display
Abstract: Up to the second half of the twentieth century, Slovenian
ethnologists and folklorists were concerned almost exclusively with the
phenomena of folk culture in the “traditional” sense generally used in
European ethnology—that is, as the rural, low, simple culture typical of
an ethnic community and, later on, a nation. Due to historical, economic,
and social changes, the concept’s semantic alterations (as relected in
academic deinitions and public reception) were followed by more and
broader ways of transmitting it. From the perspective of knowledge formats
and other genres, the Slovenian case may offer some comparative insights
into the establishment, development, and popularization of scholarship.
These processes are the outcome of the scholarly reconceptualization of
culture research as well as the commodiication of culture.
This articl e ch ar acter izes ethnology and folklore studies in
Slovenia and focuses on “folk culture” as a speciic segment of Slovenian culture in academic and nonacademic discourse. The concept
of folk culture as a subject of scholarly and general public interest has
changed radically over the last two centuries, as have its forms, functions, and meanings, as well as its social and symbolic implications in
various historical and sociopolitical contexts. In spite of the modernist ethnological critique beginning in the 1960s, the concept exhibits
its persistence: ethnologists and folklorists studying living traditions
and cultural heritage realize the fundamental importance of performative enactments of (traditional) folk culture. Revivals and reconJournal of Folklore Research, Vol. 47, No. 1–2, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
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structions of folk culture are a segment of contemporary popular
culture, empowered by professional discourse and media communication promoting heritage politics.
The academic paradigm of ethnology and folklore studies in
the late nineteenth century established itself in highly formalized
academic texts, such as explanatory ethnographies. Other genres
were published mostly in nonacademic publications throughout the
second half of the nineteenth century and carried rich information
about customary and popular cultural characteristics. However, they
were not read as “ethnographic” by mainstream ethnology until the
wane of the twentieth century. Especially in the last two decades of
that century, literally every means of communication, ranging from
scholarship to advertising, re-presented content marked as “folk” or
“traditional.” Although the diversiication of knowledge transfer—in
terms of authors, genres, and media—is a transnational occurrence,
“the particulars of knowledge production and the circumstances of the
use and absorption of societal knowledge remain nationally, regionally,
sometimes even institutionally speciic” (Bendix and Welz 1999:111).
The perspective of knowledge formats and other genres presented
by the Slovenian case may offer comparative insights regarding both
scholarship and popularization of folk culture.
When discussing ethnological knowledge, we essentially think
about speciic knowledge that has been accumulated and continues
to be produced in ethnology. Today we regard ethnology as a segment
of discourse in contemporary humanities and social sciences and as
the heir of its own disciplinary history. The history of ethnology and
folklore studies demonstrates the knowledge reproduction of speciic topics (folk, vernacular, local, popular, everyday, common sense,
culture). In addition, this intellectual history reveals the discipline’s
methodological characteristics and its social entanglements, i.e., the
historically, socially, and culturally determined practices of individuals and the scholarly community. Folklore studies and ethnology are
discussed either as one or two ields in Slovenia. How they are viewed
depends on how scholars deine folklore as a subject of their research,
how they determine a speciic folkloristic methodology, and how they
practice the inter- and trans-disciplinary nature of folklore studies.
Discussions about these issues, which were very animated throughout
the second half of the twentieth century, have been documented in
detail (cf. Slavec Gradišnik 2000, 2008; Stanonik 2001, 2004).
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Up to the second half of the twentieth century, ethnologists and
folklorists were concerned almost exclusively with the phenomena of
folk culture in the sense that had been historically used in European
ethnology—that is, folk culture was understood to be the rural, low,
simple culture typical of an ethnic community and, later on, a nation.1
It is worth acknowledging some differences between American and
European approaches to folklore studies and practices. For instance,
the meaning of folk in the continental European ethnological/folkloristic tradition differs from its use in American folkloristics (cf. Bendix
1995, 1997), where “[t]he absence of nationalism as a component
of folklore was unique to the American coniguration of folklore”
(Ben-Amos 1998:259). In European scholarly use, folk only exceptionally denotes “popular” culture or the culture of “common” people.
Furthermore, “public folklore” as practiced in the United States (cf.
Baron and Spitzer 2007) and elsewhere is not a specialized disciplinary sector in Slovenia. The absence of overt scholarly engagement in
the public sphere is also the reason that the cultural production of
folklore has been observed critically only in recent years. The mass
commodiication of folklore and cultural heritage and the consequent
“crisis” of traditional folklore studies has helped to shift scholarly
attention to public displays of folklore in Slovenia (cf. KirshenblattGimblett 1998).
The meaning of genre as it is used here also diverges from the
meaning of folklore genre as used in American folklore studies (e.g., Oring 1986). In this article, I use it in its broadest sense, as “a recurrent
language-based category that guides or constrains communication”
(Gunn 2009).
In scholarly communities and in larger society, disciplinary practices
are transferred through speciic carriers for speciic content, and these
carriers include both knowledge formats and genres. Knowledge formats may be “deined as a special presentation of knowledge tailored
to a special form, structure, and content” (Fenske 2008:24). A knowledge format provides a framework that structures, shapes, transmits,
and reproduces representations of research data. While the meaning
of genre originates in philosophical, rhetorical, and literary traditions,
the term has been theorized extensively in modern scholarship, and—
thanks to Bakhtin’s theory of language and speech genres—has also
been extended to extra-literary genres and transferred to other schol-
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arly ields (e.g., linguistics, literary studies, history, art theory) and to
non-scholarly forms (e.g., art, music, ilm, video, electronic media).
In terms of Wittgenstein’s family resemblances, a genre is akin to
a knowledge format because it is a pattern of discourse, a tacit or explicit convention of language use in speciic situations (Cobley 2005).
From a Bakhtinian point of view, genres as “relatively stable types
of . . . utterances” are not just sets of conventions that shape oral or
written texts, but are ways of conceptualizing reality, forms of seeing
and interpreting particular aspects of the world (Bakhtin 1986:60).
Since context plays an important role in shaping texts, genres are
recognizable patterns of language in context. Their lexibility stems
from the fact that they have loose sets of criteria for composition; that
is, they are “vague categories with no ixed boundaries” (Breure 2001).
However, genres are usually bound to speciic audiences, media, and
publications. Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia and hybridity, which
brand the landscape of writing culture, are derived precisely from
the versatility and intentionality of genres, and from the polysemous
nature of language (as Bakhtin phrased it, language is “shot through
with intentions and accents” [1981:293]). In ethnography, for example,
the implications of a literary genre, with its “particular generic features
and means of argumentation and persuasion,” are deined in terms
of the production of narratives. Narratives are seen as an outcome “of
particular motivation and argumentative purposes, which are both
academic and non-academic.” Their scientiic status “calls for the
explication of the ways of writing—the poetics and aesthetics—as well
as the motivations and meanings —the politics—of the ethnographic
practice and the entire research as a process of objectiication” (Anttonen 2005:23).
While early twentieth-century ethnology in Slovenia constituted
itself as a scholarly ield with patterned authoritative texts, modern
ethnologists and folklorists take into account a more variegated and
democratic type of knowledge production. In turn, today’s scholars
utilize a corresponding set of representative and recognizable knowledge formats and heterogeneous genres. Rather than adopting previous textualization patterns that relied on explanatory paradigms of
representation (Anttonen 2008), these scholars acknowledge that the
cultural worlds we study are constructed in a multi-voiced or heteroglossic way. In this context, distinctive scholarly genres (i.e., knowledge
formats) constitute just one type of voice, and the character of each
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is intimately linked to the respective discipline’s methodology and
practices and constitutes a framework for scholarly and organizational
communication. From the perspective of knowledge formats, the ive
aspects of genre (dynamism, situatedness, form and content, duality of
structure, and community ownership [see Berkenkotter and Huckin
1995:4]) it well into the discourse on knowledge production. These
aspects also distinguish scholarly writing from other representational
forms (or genres). Although today academic discourse, common-sense
interactions, and media offerings often appear to be joint ventures,
the stakes involved in creating knowledge formats are as signiicant as
they were when ethnology and folklore studies irst aspired to academic
(“professional”) status. The production of academic texts results in
(but also reverberates with) cultural representations, as scholarly and
non-scholarly genres inform issues in the politics of textualization and
representation more generally.
Privileging the Written Word: Philological Paradigms and
“Minor” Genres
Alongside scholarly societies, museums, and universities, writing is
certainly one of the sites where a discipline shapes itself. Scholars’
thoughts, observations, and commentaries on people and culture have
been recorded in various forms—written, drawn, photographed and
ilmed, staged, and exhibited in museum collections. All disciplines
are founded on a corpus of inherited information documented in
archives, museum collections, and knowledge institutions. As researchers publish and organize academic conferences, they reproduce the
institutional memory and routines of professional enculturation and
engage in the social transfer of knowledge. In scholarship, written
texts remain the principal form of knowledge representation, and
most of what we know about our professional ield we have learned
from reading canonical texts. These texts not only inform us about
our founding fathers, topics, theories, and research agendas, but at
the same time they also reveal unobserved or marginalized topics and
issues, as well as personal and disciplinary biases.
When we examine general ethnological knowledge from the standpoint of various non-canonical genres—each a speciic representation
of culture—the proile of the discipline’s evolution is suddenly much
more diversiied; it has multiple voices (cf. Fikfak 1999). Moreover,
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attention to genre types reveals different concerns and controversies,
unveiling actors other than the “qualiied” experts. These nonacademic
individuals actively shape cultural knowledge by virtue of their diversiied interests and their relationship to the world. Non-canonical genres
not only animate our interest in different life experiences; they also
turn our attention to alternate representations of everyday life and
cultural practices. In this sense, disciplinary knowledge is not the only
source of what we know about cultural landscapes, past and present.
An examination of the “images of ethnography”2 (Fikfak 1999)
in Slovenia in the nineteenth century is very instructive. The topics
we today deine as ethnological and folkloristic were often recorded
in “literary” forms, such as travel literature (cf. Stagl 1995, 2002) and
Heimatkunde (local writing), as well as in various specialized texts about
history, geography, literature, language, and so forth. The authors
of these texts were educated men (including teachers, priests, and
other men of letters), but they were not trained ethnologists, professional ethnographers, or folklorists. However, the effort these “literary
ethnographers” took to describe natural and cultural environments
“objectively” creates links between their work and the goals of scholarly writing. Their narratives depict scenes from everyday urban and
rural life, characterizing domestic and foreign places and people, presenting the basic relationships between “the home” and “the world,”
shedding light on Slovenian self-perceptions and attitudes toward the
Other, and unveiling categories of inclusion and exclusion. An important source for ethno-historical reconstructions and interpretations,
nineteenth-century writing of this kind offers broad coverage of topics,
chronotopes, and social groups; thus, it can expand perspectives on the
everyday culture of the past. The texts from that period singlehandedly
relect the boundary-crossing nature of the folk-culture concept, as
deined later in the scholarly discourse. However, in the last decades
of the nineteenth century in Slovenia, there was a tendency to “ix” a
divide between scholars and “amateurs” (Fikfak 1999). In later (re)
interpretations of folk culture, this split reverberated in ethnological/
folkloristic scholarship and among the wider public.
From the standpoint of disciplinary history, these ethnographically
rich cultural portrayals (said to be canonical for continental European
ethnology) transcend competing perspectives about the origins of
ethnology and also rise above particular orientations: anthropological
(interested in cultural universals and cultural particularities imprinted
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in people’s everyday practices) or folkloric (in the traditional sense,
akin to literary studies of oral tradition). During the Enlightenment
and Romantic eras, the disciplinary boundary between Volkskunde and
Völkerkunde3 was unknown or unclear—at least in Slovenia. For example,
history textbooks of the time contain a great deal about cultures outside Europe. From today’s perspective, these texts are relatively more
informative about the culture of that time than are nineteenth-century
folklore collections, which, despite their adherence to Romantic patterns, are used to date the birth of European national ethnologies or
folklore studies. Collections of folk literature (especially songs), inspired
by Herder and his followers, served nationalist ends: they demonstrated
the cultural richness in which national consciousness was rooted. This
knowledge format is a recognizable genre of the Romantic movement
within a wider European context. In Slovenia, such collections were irst
compiled by Stanko Vraz (1839) and Emil Korytko (1839–1844) as part
of a more ambitious ethnographic plan to present the nation’s wealth in
its totality (including local customs, livelihood strategies, food, clothing,
and religious practices [cf. Novak 1986]). Their aspiration was to offer
a comprehensive ethnographic portrayal of Slovenian people and their
highly valorized (folk) culture.
Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the development of the middle class and its institutions, did Slovenian linguistic and communicative space start to take shape and thus reinforce
Slovenian national consciousness. This development was important,
since Slovenian ethnic territory was part of the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. Literacy and education spread, newspapers lourished,
and various societies were founded to promote the growing national
consciousness. In addition, ethnographic topics were popularized in
daily newspapers and specialized journals. Because a Slovenian university was not established until 1919, intellectuals from Slovenian areas
were educated abroad, primarily at Austrian universities. The philologists who studied there in the last decades of the nineteenth century
also canonized ethnography. However, these scholars wrote their
most prominent texts in German, and educated Slovenians became
acquainted with their indings only through summaries in the specialized or popular culture sections of Slovenian newspapers. Editors of
these specialized sections did not shape these texts too ambitiously,
but rather tailored content to their niche readers. A different selective
process was implemented in the rare scholarly journals, for they did
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not accept texts that did not meet their expectations and standards
(e.g., discussions of mythology were rejected by positivist philology
publications because of the lack of empirical evidence and inadequate
methods). Moreover, at that time it was unimaginable that reports
and expressions from everyday life that overtly showed banality, social
deviation, misfortune, morally unacceptable behavior, and marginal
existence should be printed. A kind of self-censorship seems to have
been applied to such topics. Thus, for example, the history professor
and writer Janez Trdina (1830–1905) recorded his daily observations
and comments on the everyday life of the common people in Lower
Carniola in his private notebooks. He focused on subject matter that
was deined as ethnological only a century later (see Trdina 1980),
with the result that the publication of Trdina’s ethnographic material
was delayed by 100 years (Kramberger and Štabi 1987).
Philological scholarship was read almost exclusively by experts
abroad, especially in German and Slavic intellectual circles. It was based
on the academic paradigms of the time, and so adopted a positivistic
style that insisted on critical presentations and comparative interpretations of material. The academic world codiied the forms and venues of
publications in terms of monographs and papers in scholarly journals,
edited by scholars in academic institutions. The form of this academic
output was recognizable in the systematic structure of the work and in
its precise scholarly format—with thorough citations of all available
sources and literature and extensive commentaries and notes.
One typical example of this academic format is the nearly 900page Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte (Introduction to Slavic
literary history), irst published in 1874 (with a second enlarged edition in 1887) by the philologist Gregor Krek. His long-term study
was intended to reconstruct literature (both belle-lettres and oral, or
folk, literature) and to conirm Herder’s thesis that language, in all
its forms, is a medium of the nation’s spirit and its cultural history.
He also adhered to the Grimms’s notion that mythological traces
are of essential importance to nation-building projects. Thus, Krek’s
monograph was based on a comprehensive presentation of historical,
etymological, literary, ethnographic, and mythological material, not
only from the Slavic and European cultural areas, but also from IndoEuropean sources, which Krek analyzed using a historical comparative
method and textual analysis. Although the Slovenian press reported
on Krek’s publication, it was largely neglected until recently, except
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for limited attention in professional circles (e.g., Fikfak 2006). Before
philological ethnography and folklore studies had their own institutions, this type of monograph and other similarly structured scientiic
papers shaped a scholarly model that was based on focused questions,
approved methodological tools, a recognizable writing style, and a
target audience. It was a model restricted to an academic community,
for scholarly writing at the time was relatively hermetic and esoteric, at
least from a Slovenian perspective. It was written abroad in a foreign
language, and its key references were comparable scholarly papers by
foreign experts.
Lectures constituted another important nineteenth-century knowledge format that consolidated the philological branch of ethnography.
These were delivered in German by Slovenian scholars at universities
in Graz and Vienna (Bockhorn 1994; Kropej 1995; Fikfak 2006). Thus
the “difference between the scholarly and non-scholarly was deined
largely by language because German as the lingua franca formed the
extra linguistic and extraterritorial discourse” (Fikfak 2006:146).
Two other philologists—Karel Štrekelj and Matija Murko—experienced a somewhat different reception during the transition from
the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Both of them were active
abroad at universities in Vienna and Graz, where they were educated
and established themselves as distinguished scholars. However, at least
part of their work was formulated in Slovenian and directly oriented
to the Slovenian national community.
Karel Štrekelj decided to issue a complete collection of Slovenian
folk songs (1895–1923). Because he planned to produce a “critical
edition,” he had exceptional dificulties with the publisher,4 who
measured scholarship in terms of morality and with the public in
mind. The publisher argued that readers should not be tainted by
the scandalous songs Štrekelj proposed to include; Štrekelj, on the
other hand, maintained that they deserved a place in a collection
that followed scholarly5 methods, most particularly Josef Pommer’s
production theory (1906) and philological strategies for pursuing
comparative poetics. Philology and other text-based disciplines of the
time adopted standard procedures from ancient philology, which relied
on textual criticism and critical editing techniques.6 Consequently, the
preparation of Štrekelj’s collection was accompanied by numerous
invitations to ield collectors, who were given strict instructions about
collecting procedures. Štrekelj’s guidelines were often published in
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the main Slovenian newspapers and, from today’s vantage point, they
were signiicant in popularizing his ambitious plan.
Matija Murko, inspired by Prague’s ethnographic exhibition in
1895, drafted a program for the ambitious and systematic development
of Slovenian ethnography, or narodopis, as he termed it (1896:132–37).
Murko clearly explained the substance, purpose, and value of ethnography, in addition to describing how collecting and research should
be organized. He canonized ethnography as the investigation of material, social, and spiritual culture and set up novel methodological
standards in ieldwork. In addition to the study of historical sources,
observations, and descriptions, Murko urged ield researchers to set
up archival iles (sketches, photographs, paintings, and, later on, phonograph recordings). In this way, sketches and photographs became
an important element of scholarly papers.
Both Štrekelj and Murko drew rather decisively from the work of
both amateurs and academics. As university professors, they educated
a series of philologists who subsequently developed philological ethnology, especially along the lines of cultural historical methodology.
Throughout the irst half of the twentieth century and beyond, this
method became the ruling paradigm for studying folk culture.
In addition to the “scholarly” breakthrough strengthened by
Štrekelj’s and Murko’s work, another factor signiicantly deined the
academic genres of ethnographic writing: relexive elements become
an integral part of scholarly texts. Relexivity was evident in methodical guidelines, introductions, responses to criticism, reviews, and
(especially in Murko’s case) thorough documentation of the research
process in the form of ield reports.7
Expanded Perspectives
Through the irst half of the twentieth century, Murko’s conception of
ethnography as an approach for researching folk culture was put into
practice relatively slowly and in a fragmentary manner. It is important
to note that Murko saw folk culture as only one part of the culture of
the entire nation, as that segment or layer with the deepest historical
roots. He stressed that Slovenians should be familiar with folk culture
in order to communicate conidently with European nations that had
already established ethnological institutions (museums, universities,
and academic societies). With the founding of the Ethnographic
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Museum in Ljubljana in 1923, a philological orientation joined with
a museum-oriented practice. Nonetheless, the history of preserving
“ethnographic artifacts” goes back at least to 1821, when the Museum
of the Carniolan Provincial Estates was founded in Ljubljana (after
1888, the institution was renamed the Carniolan Provincial Museum,
or Rudolinum). Its collection of non-European items, contributed
primarily by missionaries, was more extensive than the Slovenian collections. This extra-European emphasis resulted partially from the development of museums in Slovenia (Hudales 2008), but it was also due
to the fact that nineteenth-century folklorists privileged the collection
of intangible phenomena rather than material objects. In comparison
to certain European countries, the institutional lag is therefore obvious. The irst ethnographic program in a museum goes back to Matija
Murko (1892, 1896), who was ahead of his time in foregrounding the
signiicance of ethnographic collections and exhibitions, as he was
with many of the tasks of his ethnographic program.
The Ethnographic Museum was hard-pressed to follow the museological standards of the time for its exhibits. More important than the
exhibits were the museum’s research and publishing activities. In 1926,
the museum began issuing Slovenia’s irst journal dedicated exclusively
to ethnology, Etnolog (The Ethnologist).8 This publication helped set
standards for scholarly writing as practiced in etymological and ethnogenetic studies, physical anthropology, archeology, and ethnography.
Until the founding of the University of Ljubljana’s department of ethnology and ethnography in 1940, the Ethnographic Museum was the
only professional institution of ethnology in Slovenia.9 The museum
operated under exceptionally disadvantageous conditions with regard
to facilities and staff (Rogelj Škafar 1993). The researchers active in
studying folk culture were not trained ethnologists, but philologists,
art historians, and archeologists who studied folk culture in terms of
opposition, i.e., high versus low culture, urban versus rural culture,
modern versus traditional culture.
One of the main tasks of ethnography, even at the beginning of
the twentieth century, was to contribute knowledge about the national
spirit and national character, along with cultural and historical comparisons that broadly extended into (and sometimes beyond) European
space. As a result, a distinct segment of research implicitly sought to
identify characteristically “Slovenian” cultural forms. The geographical
and cultural position of Slovenian ethnic territory—squeezed between
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Romance culture to the west, Germanic to the north, Hungarian to
the east, and Slavic and Balkan to the south—greatly contributed to
the perceived urgency of this objective, as did Slovenia’s historical
and political fate, which, at least implicitly, motivated Slovenians to
delimit and differentiate themselves from others. (Following the fall
of the Austro-Hungarian state in the early twentieth century, Slovenia
became part of the “irst” Yugoslavia.) If, in principle, experts were
able to discard the notion that an individually autonomous Slovenian
culture could be extracted from ethnographic data and historical
records, the public (as well as nationally oriented politics, to some degree) nevertheless demanded some sort of list characterizing Slovenian
culture. This demand had been an issue since the Spring of Nations
(1848), and even today, when “being” or “feeling Slovenian”10 is discussed more in terms of intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism,
ethnologists are expected to provide answers about what constitutes
the core of “Slovenian” culture. In ways similar to the situation in the
nineteenth century, when the nationalization of folk culture began
(Löfgren 1989), from the twentieth century onward folk culture has
been viewed as a handy repository of cultural heritage, always ready
to serve national, regional, or local interests.
From the irst decade of the twentieth century to the Second World
War, this role was manifested in a rekindling of “national style.” The
strategy for constructing “national” (sometimes synonymous with “folk”)
song, music, dance, food, art, and so on was selective and primarily
emphasized aesthetic elements. Thus, an interest in artistic creations
(e.g., architecture, interior design, and embellished dishes, clothing and
other textiles, and furniture) moved to the forefront, explicitly underlining the aesthetic dimensions and values of folk culture. A product of
detached urban perspectives on the “Other,” the discursive mainstays of
the ethnic/national paradigm were devolutionary (antiquarian), rural,
and aesthetic (cf. Dundes 1969; Johler, Nikitsch, and Tschofen 1999;
Köstlin 1984, 1999)—emphases already common during the Romantic
era (and often still in force today). At the academic level, this type of
discourse, which imposed a “paradigm of loss” (Anttonen 2007:18), was
implicitly manifest in the selection of research topics and interpretive
approach. Scholarly texts primarily presented typological cultural and
historical reconstructions and interpretations of phenomena under
study. Regardless of the topic, form followed the prescribed philological
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pattern, aiming to explain the origin, distribution, development, and
decay of cultural phenomena.
Scholarly interpretations were not always and unavoidably meant
to promote the national idea. Although scholars foregrounded ethnic
or nationally interwoven cultural, ideological, and political meanings, they did not treat culture unequivocally as a single entity. Many
researchers after Matija Murko emphasized that one of the main
markers of folk culture is its regional variability11 and that the speciic
reception, or assimilation, of “other” cultural elements (from “higher,”
urban, “international” culture) is a vital and characteristic process of
folk culture. Systematic collections and studies of these phenomena
(subsumed in the descriptive deinition of rural, peasant culture) were
the core goal of research practice, and scholars were rarely engaged
in “translating” knowledge into formats more comprehensible to the
general public. Thus, ethnographic knowledge largely reached the
wider public in mediated and reinterpreted forms, and it was often
reduced to stereotypical images in public performances that decontextualized and abridged scholarly knowledge into visually pleasing
images (e.g., “folk” dress during folkdance festivals, or portfolios of folk
ornamentation). Scholars and amateurs alike were involved in these
enactments of the “folk,” whose function was to represent the nation
and reinforce people’s identiication, particularly in urban settings.
Since we have no detailed research from the interwar period on the
genres used for displaying selected elements of folk culture, we can illustrate their popularization with the activities of two researchers who
in particular sought to propagate information about and popularize the
values of folk culture. France Marolt, who was a founder of the Folklore
Institute in Ljubljana in 1934, demonstrated his commitment to folk
culture (especially song and dance) by founding and directing the
Student Choir (Akademski pevski zbor) and organizing folklore festivals.
Apart from his scholarly activities, Marolt worked primarily on stage adaptations of ritual practices whose main elements were song, dance, and
instrumental music. Niko Kuret—who began his career as a secondaryschool instructor and became a prominent folklore scholar after the
Second World War—was engaged in considerably broader activities. A
philologist by education, Kuret had an early interest in medieval and
religious theater. He found traces of these forms in folk theater, and he
popularized folk theater’s religious content through numerous stage
adaptations. In 1934, Kuret founded the journal Ljudski oder (The folk
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stage), which ran for thirty issues. He also made use of the growing
medium of radio, for which he prepared many scripts and broadcasts
on folk heritage.12 Kuret saw Christian theology and values as central
elements of folk culture; in addition, he found the idea of community
(Gemeinschaft) culture-sustaining. During the hard living conditions of
World War II, Kuret dedicated himself to “family culture.” His early love
for puppetry and children’s games in general led him to edit a collection
of games (1942a), a guide for hand puppetry (1942b), and the 1941
booklet Delajmo jaslice (Let’s make a nativity set), intended to promote
the typical traditional family celebration of Christmas.
Immediately after the war, systematic research13 agendas for the
national Ethnographic Museum and the Institute of Ethnography
(founded in 1947) were drawn up. The goal of both institutions was
to ill in the unknown and unstudied terra incognita of past and contemporary folk culture in a systematic way. This thematic specialization, for which we could use the old “Rock und Kamisol” metaphor
of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1859), came under attack in the 1960s by
proponents of the “new,” modernist ethnology. However, the critique
of folk culture began at least implicitly right after the Second World
War. The oficial Marxist ideology regarded folk life as conservative
and backward, something that had to be overcome and replaced with
new values that favored modernization and social progress. On the
other hand, Yugoslav policy animated the idea of the “brotherhood and
unity” of the Yugoslavian people by emphasizing the cultural wealth
of the various nations (the principle of “unity in diversity”). Elements
of folk culture (folk dress, traditional foods, folk dances, etc.) were
used for representative purposes.
Then again, without “traditional” comprehensive studies—of
literary, dance, ritual, architecture, craft, and artistic traditions, for
example—ethnology and folklore studies potentially lacked a basic
knowledge of past cultural forms. In part, then, the purpose of these
research plans and studies was still “salvage” ethnography. Research
was justiied on the basis of its concern for the general cultural, historical, and national consciousness and for highlighting European
comparative dimensions, which were important for disciplinary selfperception. During this period, research indings were published
in two characteristic formats: monographs and articles. The main
ethnographic journal, Slovenski etnograf (Slovenian ethnographer),
succeeded Etnolog (1926–1944) in 1948 as the publication of the Eth-
Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik
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137
nographic Museum. The journal preserved a similar genre structure
(discussion papers, reports on events, and book reviews) to Etnolog,
but had a more pronounced ethnographic proile than the mixtum
compositum content of its prewar predecessor.
From the 1960s, “modern” ethnology set itself a different conceptual and theoretical framework. By empowering historical, dialectical,
and materialistic perspectives, ethnological studies have sought to
demonstrate that culture is differentiated primarily through social
structure. Everyday life (and the social context of culture more generally) had also come to the fore in “new,” or different, knowledge
formats, such as local studies. Projects within this category included
ethnographies of places (village or towns), local professional groups
(which the model of functionalist-structuralist monographs had penetrated), and communal topographies.
Concurrently, the national/ethnic perspective in culture research
began to recede for two reasons. The irst was contextual, namely,
the Yugoslavian ideology of “brotherhood and unity,” which—at least
in oficial discourse—privileged proletarian and social concerns
over ethnic ones. The second reason was the acceptance of current
trends in European ethnology. Thus the “ethnographic picturesque”
no longer igures in today’s theoretical debates, except perhaps for
the discussion on folklorism. The objectives of this conceptually and
methodologically reframed ethnology differ from previous iterations:
they have more to communicate about everyday culture and its socially
determined issues. New perspectives and new topics are also expressed
in different ways of structuring scholarly texts: their content avoids
the broad generalizations about origins of cultural phenomena that
characterized cultural-historical orientations and methodology. Today’s
studies have increasingly shifted from colorful “case studies” to a focus
on cultural manifestations of everyday life and are therefore situated
in concrete social, professional, and local/regional settings. A typological concept of folk culture that conceals cultural differentiations
based on social status or class, profession, generation, and gender in
favor of ethnic or national cultural homogenization is unsatisfactory
to modern ethnologists.
Until the last decades of the twentieth century, there was considerable divergence between scholarly production and the public image of
ethnology and folklore studies. On the one hand, academic production in conceptually and methodologically modernized ethnological
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writings focused on selected cultural phenomena as “windows” of
meaning (Gerholm 1993:14–15) from which to perceive cultural worlds
and everyday life. “Traditional” typological studies were considered
important also for their cultural viewpoint and history. On the other
hand, stereotypical cultural images of the picturesque past persisted
in the minds of the general public. These images were at least partly
fed by folkloristic performances that scholars viewed with ambivalence.
Some saw them as a distortion and misrepresentation, or even abuse,
of folklore, whereas others regarded them as an opportunity for the
preservation and survival of past cultural wealth (cf. Stanonik 1990;
Poljak Isteni÷ 2008). In the mid-twentieth century, applied folklore was
a more contested ield than it is today, in part because many scholars
advocated for folklore as a “scientiic subject,” something not subject
to “profanation.”
Niko Kuret has been one of a few scholars to seek balance between
scholarly vocation and knowledge popularization. In one of his draft
agendas for the Commission for Slovenian Ethnography (1947, now
the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology), he envisioned three departments: a core research department, and the so-called departments
of reenactment and safeguarding. The former would enable professional reproduction of folklore by four folklore groups (choral, dance,
music, and theatre) and the latter would promote collaboration with
institutions (for conservation and education) as well as youth groups,
which he viewed as important agents in protecting and reviving cultural
traditions (Archive ISE SRC SASA 1948). Kuret preserved his original
commitment to the signiicance of folk culture for historical memory,
national consciousness, and quality of life. Both before the war and
after, he sought to present and popularize folk culture through diverse
genres: from research articles published in books and journals; to radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, and staged folk events intended to
promote education and tourism; to the new medium of ilm, for which
Kuret prepared scripts that reconstructed holiday rituals. While his
activities could be subsumed into the sector of “public folklore,” public
folklore has never functioned as a distinctive ield in Slovenia.
Beginning in the 1970s, researchers began to consider more systematically the popularization of their knowledge—that is, knowledge
of past cultural processes and critical assessments of contemporary
cultural phenomena. This challenge was partially connected to the
“science policy” of the time, which called for “socially useful” and
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139
applied scholarship (cf. Bogataj and Guštin 1978), and it was also
related to the increasing number of professional ethnologists and researchers.14 Continued research yielded adequate critical knowledge
of “canonical” or “traditional” disciplinary topics that some dexterous
authors were able to promote through scholarly formats that incorporated non-hermeneutical language and attractive illustrations and
avoided extensive footnoted commentaries. In the 1970s and 1980s
a number of such publications were well received among scholars
and a wider readership; the most prominent studies included works
on Slovenian festive calendars (Kuret 1965–71, 1989, 1997), folk
costumes (Makarovi÷ 1971), folk heritage (Baš 1978), dance heritage
(Ramovš 1980), folk art (Makarovi÷ 1981), and home crafts (Bogataj
1989, 1992, 1993). It’s worth noting that these studies were printed
by leading commercial publishing houses. The publications were at
least partly motivated by their potential relevance for folklore groups,
local groups, and school teachers—those interested in staging folklore,
enacting festive practices, or reviving crafts. They provided a model
for how to perform folklore the “right” way.
Following Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, oficial
cultural policy changed perceptibly from that current during socialism: cultural heritage became an important part of the renaissance of
Slovenian identity, both in terms of research and popularization. Of
course, this change did not mean more inancial support for academic
research.15 Instead, the general circumstances and atmosphere had
changed people’s awareness about how to make use of folklore in the
capitalist market, which in turn created opportunities and strategies
for reviving, preserving, and presenting cultural heritage. As a special
segment of national heritage, folk culture provided an identifying
and representational model, and it undoubtedly became not only a
market commodity but also an economic category. In scholarship,
the renewed interest in cultural heritage has invigorated a productive research niche for more traditionally oriented researchers and
for critical observers of contemporary cultural bricolage. It has also
stimulated some to rethink or deconstruct what they mean by terms
such as historical, collective memory, tradition, and cultural heritage (cf.
Hudales and Viso÷nik 2005a).
The popularity of cultural heritage discourse is evidenced by the favorable reception of intermediate genres that fall somewhere between
scholarly and popular. The wealth of cultural heritage in Slovenia is
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published primarily in the form of attractive books (often translated
into other languages). However, it cannot be overlooked that they are
infused with a “glocal” stance that takes multiculturalism into account:
the inferred “Slovenian”16 character is giving way to the presentation
and acknowledgment of regional and local cultural characteristics.
These books also suggest strategies for relating cultural heritage to
everyday life, leisure, and even state protocol (e.g., Bogataj 1994). From
a critical standpoint, these speciic applications (e.g., of the cultural
landscape, traditional activities, crafts, festivities, and “typical” food)17
may still reproduce cultural stereotypes. On the other hand, they
indirectly encourage people to develop speciic activities (e.g., crafts,
gastronomy, viticulture, tourism, commerce, artistic design) that may
provide livelihood, improve social cohesion, and contribute to environmental protection. The popularity of ethnological and folkloristic
knowledge is exempliied also by the fact that a large nonacademic
publishing house supported the publication of the Slovenski etnološki
leksikon (Encyclopedia of Slovenian ethnology, Baš 2004). This highly
referential edition of a scholarly format has authorized a speciic
genre or knowledge format (i.e., encyclopedic/lexicographical entries
structured according to a normative scheme). At the same time, it has
been successful in considering its target audience (scholars and the
general public).
Heteroglossic Cultural Brokerage
The term “heteroglossia” characterizes a multilayered discourse on
cultural heritage that emphasizes multiple and competing narratives;18
it is used here from the perspective of the genre or knowledge format
(content, forms, purposes, authors, addressees, contexts, etc.). Along
with scholarly texts and other academic activities, it is necessary to
refer to an entire series of publications issued by amateur professionals. These publications show positive inclinations toward folk “riches,”
exhibit various degrees of mastering the material, and either address
the public in general or have a more regional or local focus. Now and
then they are also criticized by scholars who believe these authors
propagate knowledge that cannot withstand professional criticism
and are therefore “detrimental.” On the other hand, critical research
indicates that cultural processes and human creativity must be acknowledged as “voices” of their time—as records of attitudes that reinforce
Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik
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differing (and overlapping) values, from romantic to commercial.
Additionally, attitudes towards cultural heritage can be expressed by
means other than writing. Two examples are museological presentations (no longer merely the domain of oficial national, regional, or
city museums) and the preservation of residential environments19 (no
longer the exclusive activity of institutes for the protection of cultural
heritage). Provisions for safeguarding, presentation, and promotion
are partially in the hands of state institutions (e.g., ministries of culture,
agriculture, spatial planning, and economics) that regulate safekeeping through legislation. To some extent, these projects are also carried
out by the tourist industry and local associations, associations of farm
women, rural youth, and individuals (craftsmen and collectors). Material elements of cultural heritage are displayed in specialized shops
that market replicas, in shopping centers, and in bars and restaurants
where items of folk heritage decorate interiors and add commercial
value. Amateur museology is evident in many private family and local
collections, in addition to special programs and workshops organized
by museums. Heritage is presented in countless events at local festivals
and on calendar holidays and is represented by various local groups in
specialized newsletters and on websites. The “intangible” characteristics
of the local population (e.g., joviality or stinginess) are emphasized in
public events at the local level. Typically, traditional crafts and craftsmanship, clothing, food, local trades, customs, rituals, folk dances and
folk music, and the use of dialect and archaisms are also represented
at these events (Smerdel 2006–07:107–12).20 These cultural elements
are clearly transcultural and transnational; they are part of the “international cultural grammar of nationhood” and at the same time
constitute a “speciic national lexicon” (Löfgren 1989:21–22). From
this perspective, cultural elements function at various identiication
levels—from the local via the national to the international.
In rethinking the relationship between scholarship and contemporary life among academic tribes, the larger community, and locations of
cultural heritage display, it is important to acknowledge the variegated
reception of cultural heritage. It is irrelevant to consider whether or not
the creative potential rooted within traditional forms corresponds to
the academic interpretation of the cultural past. Culture simply deies
standardization. The task of professionals is to critically examine the
ways and means of appropriation and transmission in a variety of representational forms: material objects (replicas of objects, such as museum
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and tourism souvenirs, decorative and applied craft and art objects,
food items, and symbolic markers used in visual communication), live
activities (demonstrations and the revival of various economic activities,
fairs, and so on; rural and farming festivals as a “theater of history,” and
folklorism), and revitalized intangible heritage (dance and music—
from historical reconstruction and folk-pop music to ethno-jazz and
world music, the publication and presentation of literary heritage in
dialect, nature trails with fairytale themes, and the use of dialect at
local events and in the media [Smerdel 2006–07:107]).
In the eyes of the general public, ethnologists and folklorists have
two prominent roles: irst, they maintain their reputation as “traditional” experts in folklore and heritage matters and are expected to
give instant and stereotyped answers concerning these topics. Secondly,
they are supposed to be gatekeepers of local knowledge against the
threats of globalization. Public appearances are a popular genre for
communicating expert knowledge. For example, in newspaper, radio,
or television interviews, which often allot only a few minutes of airtime, it is necessary to briely explain a tradition’s origins, its current
functions, and whether it is unique to Slovenians or instead simply
a “plagiarized” form created by consuming the international low of
cultural goods. Considering the impact of television, TV broadcasts
are an effective means for popularizing a deconstructed concept of
national (i.e., Slovenian) cultural heritage.
In the postmodern spirit of recent decades, cultural complexity
and luidity, and the segmented, partial, or hybridized construction of
cultural afiliations are at the forefront of ethnological and folkloristic
interest. The researcher’s relexive position has to take into account
that the production of knowledge is a multilayered and multivoiced
process. The researcher’s text is no longer an authoritative scholarly
discourse, but an interweaving of at least three reciprocally linked
discourses: professional, amateur, and media. Ethnological knowledge
is produced through interaction and synergy among different agents:
1) actors or performers (e.g., participants in rituals, collectors, “folk”
singers and dancers, storytellers, and so on, who in past ethnographic
practice were either ignored or treated as collective bearers of tradition); 2) researchers (whose presence, research, publications, and
other public presentations afirm the relevance of the events under
study); and, in many cases, 3) the media, which directly enable living
Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik
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143
traditions to shift rapidly from the local environment to the regional,
national, and often international levels.
Pleading for such a perspective, we are faced with the exceptional
dynamics of “knowledge production,” whereby the implications and
effects of the “democratic” model of knowledge production cannot
be overlooked. In scholarship, the dialogic or heteroglossic character
of knowledge production requires not only iner methods in order to
unveil and interpret the multilayered character of cultural reality, but
also greater ethical responsibilities in acknowledging the authorship
of knowledge. As “spaces of knowledge,” these formats and genres
provide us with new perspectives for studying the production and
reproduction of cultural representations.
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Notes
1. The articles on its contentiousness are comparable to German discussions of
Volkskultur (e.g., Bausinger 1961; Geiger, Jeggle, and Korff 1970). The term folk
culture has been used exclusively in scholarship but never in everyday speech:
people most frequently say “tradition,” “old culture,” “as in past/old times,” and
sometimes “national culture.”
2. In Slovenia, ethnography (Sln. etnograija, narodopisje) was a disciplinary denomination until the 1960s; it carried connotations similar to German
Volkskunde.
3. These terms are German disciplinary denominations, used already in the nineteenth century: Volkskunde refers to the study of the European researcher’s own
ethnic or national culture, Völkerkunde refers to general ethnology and study of
non-European cultures.
4. The Matica Slovenska (Slovenian Society) was the central cultural and scholarly institution in the second half of the nineteenth century, which also published
scholarly texts in Slovenian.
5. The scholarly standard of that time was grounded on positivism as a secular
worldview and on evolutionism as the pervasive theoretical and interpretative
model of life growth. From a methodological point of view, positivism rejected
non-scholarly or subjective judgments. In the late nineteenth century, positivism
was not a common term in Slovenia; expressions such as critical, real, and scholarly
or scientiic were used instead.
6. The earlier philological approach evaluates the authenticity of preserved texts,
documents their original form, reconstructs a proto-text, and traces changes in
the textual tradition; more recent philology uses the collected material for critical
editions (classiication, compiling indexes, registers of variants, commentaries,
and so on).
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7. When Murko studied Serbo-Croatian epics in the Balkans, he reported on his
studies and published them in Vienna (1913a, 1913b, 1915a, 1915b). His ieldwork is
described in great detail in the monograph on Serbo-Croatian folk epics (1951).
8. Niko Župani÷, at that time director of the Ethnographic museum and chief
editor of Etnolog, used the term ethnology (etnologija) and ethnologist (etnolog)
to reinforce a discipline, one more comprehensive in its aims than the “provincial
ethnography” (Kotnik 1944:42).
9. It should be mentioned that the Folklore Institute in Ljubljana was founded in
1934 due to the efforts of one man, France Marolt.
10. “I Feel Slovenia” is an oficial poster for promoting Slovenian tourism (http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduZE4lBfEQ).
11. Researchers after Murko established a kind of regional typology of culture,
dividing Slovenian territory into Alpine, Pannonian, Mediterranean, and central
Slovenian cultural areas (cf. Novak 1958; Baš 1978). However, a more detailed division into cultural and geographical regions and even smaller supra-local units has
been emphasized in recent decades.
12. Unfortunately, the prewar archives of Ljubljana Radio were destroyed. All
that has survived are an inventory and texts in the Slovenian Theater Museum in
Ljubljana, which have not yet been studied in detail.
13. As already mentioned, there were few researchers active in the ield of ethnography. However, some experts from other scholarly disciplines followed their
personal inclinations to study and interpret folk culture according to their respective methodologies (e.g., literary history dealing with folk literature, or art history
dealing with folk art).
14. Their number grew especially from the 1970s onwards, due to the broadening
and diversiication of the curriculum and research projects at the university department of ethnology, the consolidation of two research institutes (for ethnology/
folklore studies and ethnomusicology), and employment possibilities for graduates
in ethnology at museums and institutions for the preservation of monuments (now
institutes for the protection of cultural heritage).
15. Research on cultural heritage is supported by national research project funds
(Slovenian Research Agency) and the Ministry of Culture that promotes the preparation of the Registry of Intangible Heritage (linked with UNESCO’s Convention for
the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and to the Intangible Heritage
Lists as well). Local, regional, supra- or inter-regional funds are assigned to projects
that encourage protection of natural and cultural sites and revive traditional crafts,
community rituals, and festive events, locally or regionally characteristic performing
arts, food, etc. (cf. Bogataj et al. 2005).
16. The adjective Slovenian has been formerly frequently used in the titles of
publications, e.g., Slovenian Folk Culture, Slovenian Folk Costume, Slovenian Folk
Art, Slovenian Folk Heritage.
17. See, for example Bogataj 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2005, 2007, 2008; Bogataj and
Berk 1997; Godina Golija 2006, Nemani÷ and Bogataj 2004; Ovsec 1992, 2000, 2003;
Ren÷elj, Prajner, and Bogataj 1993; Ren÷elj, Perko, and Bogataj 1995. These books
are edited by commercial publishers and are intended for readers in Slovenia and
abroad. Compare these with multimedia presentations circulated on the internet
Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik
Slovenian Folk Culture
145
via YouTube; video titles have included “Slovenia on CNN,” “Slovenia—The Green
Piece of Europe,” and “Slovenia—My Country.”
18. Bakhtin does not celebrate heteroglossia (Rus. разноречие, literally “multilanguageness”), but in its various modalities he discovers tension and rivalry between
them. “In particular, it alludes to the tension between those forces within a national
language which are pulling it towards a standard central version, and those forces
which are tugging away from the national standard towards the demotic or the dialectal” (Dentith 2001). We may ind the analogy in rivaling disciplinary discourses
and competing discourses on tradition, heritage, culture, and so on.
19. For a thorough study of the history of these efforts in Slovenia and various
models of preserving and renewing built heritage, see Hazler 1999.
20. Based on everyday professional observations and documentation, the museum
curator Inja Smerdel (2006–07) prepared a provisional overview of the current
situation—who the actors are in providing for cultural heritage, and why and through
what phenomena cultural heritage or traces of folk culture are most often manifested. Her indings call for additional research because they substantially address
authoritarian discourse or power relations: who speaks about what in what manner
and on whose behalf (Smerdel 2006–07; cf. Hudales and Viso÷nik 2005a, 2005b).
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Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik is a senior research fellow at the Scientiic
Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Institute of Slovenian Ethnology), Ljubljana. She has researched and
published mostly on the history of Slovenian ethnology and folklore
studies in their European context. She is currently coeditor of the
journal Traditiones. (ingrid@zrc-sazu.si)