Slovak-Slovenian Parallels in ethnology and folkloristic

The project proposal is based on the current ambition of both research groups and represents the beginning of more thorough scholarly and inter-institutional cooperation between two central national research institutes for ethnology and folklore in Slovenia and Slovakia.

The project focuses on two topics:

1. on the comparative history of European national ethnologies, and

2. on the thematization of tradition and folklore, its genres , and social communication.

Both topic areas interest us at two levels at which the images of cultural dynamics are reproduced: academic discourse and everyday life (the empirical level). To understand cultural dynamics, the concepts of tradition/cultural heritage and cultural identity are central. We view our contribution to elucidating both of these in issues of concrete cultural practices and findings about them through the production of knowledge in ethnological and folklore studies today. As part of the first topic, researches from both teams examine the period following the Second World War, that's the period of the so called socialist ethnology/folkloristics. The second part is oriented towards addressing the mechanisms for maintaining andr e-creating tradition (selected folklore genres) and theit social implications (for esthetics, communication, and identity). The reaearchers on both sides will elaborate particular in depth studies on selected topics. The results od their studies will be discussed and compared during the planned mutual visits as well as at the closing conference and in the joint publication (2010).