Working Group on Historical Approaches in Cultural Analysis
The WG reports on the conference “Reimagining Europe: De-colonizing Historical Imaginaries, Disciplinary Narratives in Folklore and Ethnology and Beyond”. The conference was held in Marburg, Germany.
Report: “Reimagining Europe: De-colonizing Historical Imaginaries, Disciplinary Narratives in Folklore and Ethnology and Beyond”, June 13–14, 2024; Marburg, Germany.
The picturesque town of Marburg, rich in history, served as the remarkable location for the interim meeting of SIEF’s HACA – Historical Approaches in Cultural Analysis Working Group, where also the conference, Reimagining Europe: De-colonizing Historical Imaginaries, Disciplinary Narratives in Folklore and Ethnology and Beyond took place between June 13 and 14, 2024. The conference aimed to explore Europe and European-ness as shifting social constructs, entangled in complex and transnational negotiations and encounters. Decentred perspectives on the history of Europe and of European ethnologies, anthropologies and folklore studies became useful tools for exploring the effects that social, historical, political, and linguistic borders and disciplinary divisions.
The event was organised by Hande Birkalan-Gedik and Gabriele Orlandi (HACA co-chairs), Anna Caroline Haubold (HACA secretary) and Viktorija Ceginskas (HACA member), with the valuable financial support of SIEF and the Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung (Herder Institute for historical research on Eastern and Central Europe).
Nearly 15 people attended the event–online and on-site, also including non-SIEF members. As such, the conference became an event to recruit more members into SIEF and to our Working Group. With varying geographical and chronological foci, participants covered several themes, ranging from religious identities to visual anthropology, to the transnational connections between anthropologists, to peasant economic institutions, folklore and nationalism, or even agronomic science, contemporary uses of folklore and colonial musical archives in the context of Europe and European Ethnology. In particular, and in the light of the legacy of postcolonial and decolonial studies, during four sessions, presenters illuminated peripheral and subaltern practices and narratives concerning projects such as humanitarianism, science, economics, coloniality that are mostly associated with Western modernity.
The first keynote by Carna Brković (University of Mainz) illustrated that some key political categories in Europe today, such as humanitarianism, have emerged from interactions between the Global North, Global South, and the ‘Global Easts.’ Humanitarianism, a core element of Europe’s cosmopolitan liberal capitalist project, often reinforces colonial distinctions between the North and South. However, the role of the ‘Global Easts’ is more ambivalent and requires further exploration. Examining alternative histories of humanitarianism reveals the diverse and unequal ‘Europe’s that have emerged since World War II. This approach also highlights the tensions within socialist humanitarianism and opens up discussions on global care and solidarity.
In considering the countless, mutual influences between the West and the rest, between “domestic” ethnological sciences and “exotic” anthropologies, that we can un-do our scientific perspectives on societies, as Diarmuid Ó Giolláin (University of Notre Dame, Indiana) argued, in his closing keynote. His talk focused on a discussion of the main ideas and conclusions of his most recent book, putting a temporary halt to days marked by fascinating discussions and reflections.
Hande Birkalan-Gedik, drawing upon the examples from the transnational entanglements of anthropology in Turkey with German, Swiss and US anthropological traditions, called for writing transnational anthropological histories, urging scholars to shift focus from nation-centred perspectives to consider transcultural and transdisciplinary encounters in disciplinary histories. She particularly considered the transnational entanglements of anthropology in Turkey from the 1930s onward, highlighting the roles of graduate students trained abroad who returned to Turkey, as she provided a nuanced understanding of anthropological development that moves beyond traditional “center-periphery” debates.
Such deconstructing perspective was also adopted by Gabriele Orlandi, whose paper focused on a “disoriented history” of agricultural and economic thinking in the Italian Western Alps, considering in particular how heterogeneous and competing societal projects were rooted into wider, European debates on science, politics, and environment.
Sophie Bärtlein (Humboldt University of Berlin) examined multireligious spaces (MRS) in Europe, which promote ideas of coexistence and religious diversity. She argued that while MRS can be seen as a "liberal form of governmentality" (following Foucault) and a way to regulate minority religions in a state that claims to be “secular,” they remain problematic. Religious hegemony is highly contested in these spaces, where a specific European understanding of religion often prevails, since MRS functions as an analytical prism through which configurations of Europeanness, religion, Muslimness, and the “secular” are negotiated.
Oriane Girard (Aix-Marseille Université) examined the collaboration between Albanian ethnologist Afërdita Onuzi and French anthropologist Monique Roussel de Fontanès during the Communist era in Albania, focusing on their fieldwork, correspondence, and the intellectual exchanges. She argued that their work, conducted during Albania’s isolation from Western influence, helped bridge disciplinary methods and perspectives, contributing to the redefinition of European ethnology in the mid-20th century.
Konrad Kopel (University of Warsaw) analyzed the diverse political practices of peasants in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 16th to 18th centuries, challenging the assumption of political uniformity in pre-modern Europe. His study highlighted the dynamic and locally specific nature of peasant politics, emphasizing their agency and political creativity beyond resistance to nobility, thus decolonizing European history by revealing its political heterogeneity.
Katre Kikas (Estonian Literary Museum) presented her research on Estonian folkloristics emerged during the 19th-century national awakening, with Jakob Hurt (1839-1907) playing a key role by promoting folklore studies and building a network of collectors. Hurt’s efforts linked folklore collection to the idea of Estonia "catching up" with Europe's civilized nations, a theme reflected in his rhetoric and in the writings of those who supported or responded to his calls.
Athanasios Barmpalexis (Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen) presented his research on black metal, a subgenre often linked to controversies such as violence and nationalism. It has historically been used by some artists to promote white supremacy and Eurocentrism by reimagining the European Middle Ages. However, a growing group of contemporary black metal artists is pushing back, using folklore and folk songs to highlight historical themes of anti-authoritarianism, multiculturalism, and resistance, as part of their efforts to challenge fascism and ethnocentrism within the music scene.
Lennart Ritz (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) explored the audio collections from the Berlin Phonogram Archive, recorded during German colonial expeditions in the Pacific (1904–1915). By retracing the expeditions and examining primary sources, the study highlights the colonial nature of the recordings and how comparative musicology overlooked local sound epistemologies, treating the recordings as objective traces of a lost musical past, shaped by colonial and anthropological paradigms.
More generally, all the efforts of the scholars attending the event were directed to uncover the multiple, complex and intertwined processes, exchanges, and translations allowing us to unfold essentialised and wide-spread assumptions about Europe and European ethnology, folklore and anthropologies. Fostered by the similarity of approaches and the warm atmosphere created by spending a few days together as a small group, discussions were vivid and enriching. In particular, many participants stressed the crucial role that comparisons, conversations and exchanges when adopting decolonial and de-centring perspectives on disciplinary narratives.
First row, from left to right: Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Caroline Haubold, Gabriele Orlandi.
Second row, from left to right: Hande Birkalan-Gedik, Lennart Ritz, Sophie Bärtlein, Katre Kikas.
