The Ethnography of Finland

In: Annual review of anthropology, Band 35, Heft 1, S. 153-170

Abstract

Different national traditions define disciplines in different ways, and ethnology, folklore, and anthropology are separated in the Finnish university system. The great divide between the more universally oriented anthropological research and the local, especially Eastern and Northern European ethnological traditions is sometimes conceptualized by defining the latter as nationalist. The emergence of Finnish and Finno-Ugric studies in Finland complicates the difference in a way that is relevant to urgent questions of globalization and its relationship to cultural diversity. At the same time this emergence raises important questions about the significance of ethnographic knowledge. Historically oriented ethnological and folkloristic studies in Finland have formulated a multidisciplinary approach analogical to the four anthropological fields for research into the history of Finnish and Finno-Ugric cultures and languages. Researchers have used the accumulated data in new and novel ways, which has opened up perspectives instead of limiting them to the field of area studies. The development of Finnish ethnographic studies clearly demonstrates the necessity of comparison and the comparative perspective.