Ethnological Knowledges and their Political Contexts

In her article "Slovenian Folk Culture: Between Academic Knowledge and Public Display," Ingrid Slavec Gradisnik presents an overview of Slovenian folklore research, tracing its historical development through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and ending with an epilogue about the post-1991 period of independence. Whether working with a folk group or producing a disciplinary history, North American folklorists today insist on an explicit engagement with political concerns to obtain theoretically valid work. Contrasting what Slavec Gradisnik describes as Slovenian heteroglossic disciplinary history with the practices of North American folklorists suggests questions beyond those of definition (such as, should we broadly conceptualize "the folk" as an accessible community of "we the people," in turn made up of smaller groups, or as a linguistically bound group only open to ethnically defined heirs?). [...]specific disciplinary divisions emerged in the Slovenian academic literature and research communities: contemporary lifeways were studied extensively, but research was strictly divided by theoretical approach, topical focus, and discipline of production.