Folcloristica românească" versus „Istoria folcloristicii". Vrabie, Bîrlea şi dominantele ideologice ale etnologiei comuniste

The study provides a political reading of the two histories of the Romanian ethnology, emphasizing both elements of obedience towards the political authority of the moment, actualized under the shape of the institutional hierarchy and state authority, as well as small gestures of dissidence. Although both ethnologists cultivate attitudes of distancing in relation to the episteme and politics of the establishment, mare obvious Bîrlea and more discreet Vrabie, the conclusion of the study is that these dissident gestures are not radical, capable of challenging the dominant perspective of the Romanian ethnology. Although at a subjective, personal level these initiatives might have had something heroic and worthy of praise, in the larger perspective of the power dispositive of the period their value had been one of validation and confirmation of the epistemic and political order of the system.