3 February 2015

New special issue of Ethnologia Europaea

European Ethnology Revisited, special issue of Ethnologia Europaea - Journal of European Ethnology 44:2, Museum Tusculanuim Press, journal editors Regina F. Bendix & Marie Sandberg, special issue editor by Marie Sandberg, Saxo Institute.

Overlooked concepts and approaches
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 re-launching 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.

Original re-workings
In engaging with past knowledge claims, concepts and research endeavours, the volume offers original re-workings 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.

Themes and comments
As Marie Sandberg outlines in the introduction to the special issue, four main themes forge the connections of this volume:

  • reworking everyday life,
  • fieldwork as craftsmanship,
  • mapping connections,
  • and conversing with the past

They 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 (Orvar Löfgren, Vadimar Hafstein, Regina F. Bendix & Katharina Eisch-Angus).

Order the issue at the website of the publisher.