Contested Knowledge : Political Dimensions of European Ethnology and Folklore Studies in Post-War Europe

Abstract

The edited volume Contested Knowledge. Political Dimensions of European Ethnology and Folklore Studies explores how European Ethnology and Folklore Studies in post-war Europe were shaped by political agendas, ideological control, and the contested production of ethnographic knowledge. Comprising various case studies from both socialist and non-socialist contexts, the volume traces how scholars navigated authoritarian pressure, Cold War divisions, disciplinary reforms, and competing national narratives. The volume offers a collection of case studies that reveal the mechanisms through which ethnological and folkloristic research was organized, appropriated, resisted, and transformed in shifting academic and political landscapes after the Second World War. It sheds light on the varying ways in which individual ethnologists from the Baltic countries negotiated the restrictions placed upon them by the Soviet Union, with some of them deciding to continue their research in exile, while others stayed and tried to create niches for themselves within the Soviet system. It also explores the roles of different nationalisms within ethological research after the Second World War. This terminology appears in the form of competing nationalisms as a concept of research or in the context of funding for ethnological research. The volume highlights the creation of new perspectives within research and in the context of the discipline’s entanglements with day-to-day politics and history. The book offers historically grounded insights for researchers in European Ethnology, Folklore Studies, and the broader humanities seeking to understand the political uses, limits, and vulnerabilities of contested cultural knowledge.