Anthropologists and Native Ethnographers in Central European Villages: Comparative Notes on the Professional Personality of Two Disciplines
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Tamas Hofer
Current Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1968), 311-315.
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Anthropologists and Native Ethnographers in Central European Villages:
Comparative Notes on the Professional Personality of Two Disciplines1
by Tamas Hof er2
A growing number of American anthropologists are coming to Europe to study European peasant or post-peasant villages. These same villages have been explored for 100 or even 150 years by ethnographers who specialized in the study of the folk component of their own cultural heritage. However, contact between the two disciplines is scanty and rather casual.
In America, ethnography of the European type has been drawn in on the map of the sciences of man with indistinct contours only. Kroeber (1959: 399) identifies "the folk ethnography of peasantry in civilized countries as it is pursued in Europe" as a branch of anthropology. Yet the Biennial Review of Anthropology reviews the studies of European ethnographers only in a haphazard way. In the 1965 volume, Robert T. Anderson introduces a "new kind of study" which owes its life to a "scholarly intercourse with investigators who themselves belong to the subject, civilization," since "the literati   of peasant societies  have   their
1  Pre-printed by permission from John J. Honigmann, Editor, Modernization and Tradition in Central European Rural Communities, published by The Canadian Research Center for Anthropology.
2  I wish to express my gratitude to the members of the Conference on Central and North-Central European Peasant Cultures, Chicago, January 9-13, 1967 organized by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and to the chairman of the conference John J. Honigmann. The friendly and keen discussions offered numerous possibilities to collate the American and European points of view concerning peasant society and culture and helped me in shaping my stand-point. Later I was invited by the chairman to prepare a paper summing up my own contributions in the course of the debate. The result is this short essay.
The "Experimental basis" of this paper is a community study prepared by Edit Fél and myself of the Hungarian village Átány, now scheduled for publication in VFPA as volume 42, in which we tried to keep in balance, or reconcile, ethnographic and anthropological approaches. I should like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Sol Tax for his encouragement and advice during this experiment as well as later, during my stay in Chicago in winter 1966-1967.
My stay of several months in the U.S. to study anthropological methods was rendered possible by a Ford Foundation Grant, which is acknowledged here with gratitude.
own traditions of scholarship" (Anderson 1965:182-83).
Often European ethnographers and ethnologists are treated as one group indiscriminately, whether they study their own or foreign peoples; this composite is then contrasted with American anthropologists (Ishida 1965). In Europe, however, ethnographers studying their own people are considered a separate and different group from those scientists who study other non-European peoples. Each have their own chairs at the universities and their own associations and museums, even when some of these scientists and institutions have a "dual nationality" (cf. Hultkrantz 1967: 38).
A survey of the field is difficult since interest in these areas of research arose more or less independently in each European country or in larger national areas. Hence there are differences in approach, methods, and knowledge within each of these areas. Even the terms in the national languages (Volkskunde, folklivsforskning, néprajz, národopis, etc.) are not congruous in meaning. These terms can be rendered into circumscribed forms of English only; this Kroeber (1959) has done. The term folklore is also current; in a narrow sense it means the study of oral literature, in a broader sense that of all manifestations of traditional culture. Folklore is sometimes regarded as a field of ethnography, sometimes as an independent branch of knowledge. With an aim of creating a unanimous terminology, an international conference of European "folk ethnographers" held in Arnhem in 1955 adopted the term "regional ethnology" or "national ethnology" as an international denomination for the discipline which studies European folk culture or a certain national folk culture in Europe (Hultkrantz 1960: 202-203).
Lack of knowledge about one another often makes the contact between anthropologists and ethnographers frustrating; they do not take into account one another5^ differing professional personalities. An anthropologist may consult books written by European ethnographers only to be disappointed when he finds that most of what the ethnographers have written is irrelevant to his own problems. He may well conclude that  ethnographers  in  Central  Europe
are underdeveloped anthropologists unable to rid themselves of a narrow-minded 19th-century empiricism and to reach a higher level of generalization and theorization.
The case is no better on the other side. In general, the ethnographer can add little to his own knowledge from community studies of Europe done by Americans. He may admire the American's fresh approach as well as their capacity to analyze and describe themes too familiar to European ethnographers for them to investigate. However, conclusions about culture, society, and human nature drawn by the anthropologist from the study of a single community dash through the layers where the European ethnographer feels that his problems lie. His own research involves interpretation of processes and patterns of cultures in definite regional and historical frameworks.
As a Hungarian ethnographer, I am directly acquainted with the ethnographic research of my fellow countrymen. A grant from the Ford Foundation allowed me, after a period of library research, to acquire knowledge of American anthropologists through participant observation. These two experiences form the empirical basis for this short essay comparing the ways of life and thinking of anthropologists and ethnographers.
The Study of
One's Own Culture vs.
the Study of
Other Cultures
Anthropologists devote much attention to specialists (for example, shamans, medicine men, genealogists, and mytho-graphers) guarding traditional knowledge within a given society. However, as far as I know, European national ethnographers have not yet been studied as a corollary in their own society. Such a study would help to understand their writing, and perhaps would throw light on some problems of anthropology as well.
The origins of national ethnography, like those of anthropology, may be traced back to the age of the Renaissance. Antecedents of ethnography are to be
Vol 9 . No. 4 . October 1968
311
found partly in essays on national and regional characteristics of European people, partly in the objective studies of rural populations carried out from the beginning of the 18th century by government commissions, or prompted partly by the zeal of political reformers. However, systematic ethnographic studies began only in the early 19th century. The centres of ethnographic growth were those regions where the creation of national states and cultures had become a vital problem (for example, Germany). Herder and the Grimm brothers are usually credited as initiators of the new discipline. Generally, Central Europe is considered to be the birthplace of ethnography. In contemporary Europe two differing sets of notions dominated the thinking about society and culture. In Germany the notion of culture was in vogue which stressed internal moral worth and other internal qualities. In England and France the key concepts were society and civilization. (Wolf 1965:16-19). National ethnography of the Central European type was clearly associated with areas where "culture" prevailed.
The birth of ethnography in Central Europe formed part of the revitalization movement—according to the definition of Wallace (1956) "a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture." Thus, during the first half of the 19th century in Hungary the Reform Era began. The reform of the literary language was launched. Attempts were also made to reform economic life, the civil service, law, art, and literature. The poets introduced national metrical structures extracted from folklore, and wrote epic poems of the past; these replaced older epics which were not felt to fit in with the political movements for national independence and social reform. The sources of the new national culture were sought in national history and folk culture or "small traditions." The systematic exploration of the "small traditions" called for a new branch of research; this became the national ethnography At its birth, the disciplines linguistics, literary history, and national history co-operated. That is to say, ethnography remained closely associated with the humanities.
The new discipline was expected to produce an overall and coherent picture of the folk culture. Meticulous recording of texts and ceremonies and collecting of objects were animated by the conviction, that even the slightest piece of information has its own place in this overall picture. As in Jacob Burckhardt's portrayal of Italian renaissance culture every historic event, military campaign, work of art and festivity got a special meaning as a manifestation of the culture
of a period, ethnographic facts were looked upon as manifestations of an integrated national culture. The national culture was regarded as a fabric of inter-wening subcultures of local and professional groups. Side by side with the exploration of various regional groups, ecological systems, and local styles was the historical trend of interpretation; that is, the study of the origin and history of particular cultural elements, the classification of the elements of folk culture by historical layers, and the study of evidence of historical contacts produced by cultural elements. Research became permeated with the conviction that all that had been studied (ballads, tools, religious ideas, systems of land tenure) were of interest and value by themselves. This interest was some sort of a "sensory, aesthetic interest" which was not alien even to early anthropology (Kroeber 1956).
One has to go to Africa in order to profess to be an Africanist. On the other hand, everyone is born into their own nation, and may even believe that they know it well. Thus periodically, a varying number of amateurs and laymen, clinging to scientific ethnography, focused attention generally on small, more local units of folk culture. Local movements of revitalization with a small sphere of action tried to keep alive or revitalize elements of folk traditions in industrialized societies. (For a discussion of these roots of ethnography and of the secondary, artificial folk traditions, see Bausinger 1961.) Various trends of "applied ethnography" came into existence; endeavours were made to utilize elements of folk culture in ornamental art, fashion, and architecture. In general, the scholars kept away from these endeavours and made efforts to weed out the romatic opinions of these amateurs.
The relationship of ethnography to national societies and cultures underwent changes because the nations and their political systems were changing. Ethnography, cultivated by a sense of humanism and scientific responsibility, sometimes found itself in opposition to, and at other times, supported by official cultural policy.
In spite of national concerns, ethnographers from the very beginning have transgressed national and linguistic boundaries, and have sought international co-operation. Nor were the views and procedures of anthropology (or ethnology) completely ignored. Hungarian ethnographers, for example, were led as far as Siberian tribal settlements in their search for the predecessors of the Magyars and for other linguistically related peoples. Recently, international contacts and co-operation between ethnographers have been develpping rapidly as has been pointed out by Rasmussen (1967).
Accumulated knowledge and critical comparative and historical methods have indicated that most cultural processes are not limited to a single nation. Ethnographers, formerly remaining within the frontiers of their own country, frequently embark on study trips abroad. Coordinated projects have been launched for the exploration of such European regions as Scandinavia or the Carpathians, even taking the form of all-European enterprises. (It is characteristic of the personality of ethnography that the most successful international committees include specialists in well-defined partial topics such as folk narratives and legends, proverbs, traditional farming implements, and methods of tillage.) However, this co-operation does not alter the fact that each regional ethnographer has his own country and concentrates his research there^ He moves only occasionally from his^own country to other regions, and then only, for the most part, for comparative studies. In spite of international co-operation, Swedish ethnography is still normally explored by Swedes, and Hungarian ethnography by Hungarians.
Hence the question may arise: what drawbacks or limitations and what advantages are implied in this ethno-centricity? Ethnography in Central Europe differs from anthropology in many respects^ Is a "national" or "regional" anthropology imaginable at all? Are the methods and principles of anthropology applicable exclusively to the study of other peoples, or may these methods and theories be used in studying and understanding one's own people ?
Many excellent studies have been written by anthropologists about their fellow-countrymen. Nevertheless, in the United States, most of the research into the culture of the nation (except for that into the autochthonous population) is carried out outside the sphere of anthropology. The Central European ethnographer may have the impression that this research is far less unified both in organizational and methodological aspects than are the regional ethnology or "folk-life studies" in Central and Northern Europe. Students of folklore, American folk art, colonial antiquities, immigration and immigrant groups, and of agrarian history seem to have only scanty contacts with each other and with scientists studying contemporary Indians. It is almost symbolic that in the Smithsonian Institute, collections from all human cultures are housed in the Museum of Natural History with the exception of the culture of the "White Man in America" which is displayed in the Museum of History and Technology.
The formerly primitive peoples now on the way to becoming new nations more and more emphatically refuse to
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remain subject matter for anthropologists. As Lévi-Strauss (1966:125-26) states, "the mere fact of being subjected to ethnographic investigation seems distasteful to these peoples." In his opinion anthropology, irr order to survive, has to undergo radical changes (Lévi-Strauss 1966):
For anthropology is the science of culture as seen from the outside and the first concern of people made aware of their independent existence and originality must be to claim the right to observe their culture themselves, from the inside. . . . Anthropology, progressively taken over by local scholars, should adapt aims and methods similar to those which, from the Renaissance on, have proved fruitful for the study of our own culture.
The ethnographies of the Central European peoples can be comprehended as experiments in this direction.
Strategies of Anthropology and Ethnography
It seems that American anthropologists in Europe are surprised by the fragmentation of the specific fields of anthropology in university instruction, museums, and institutions (Kroeber in Tax, Eiseley, Rouse, Voegelin 1953:363-364; Maday 1966; Arensberg 1967). For instance, physical anthropology is in the medical schools; the folk component of national culture is part of the humanities, and does not include the study of folk cultures outside Europe. Similarly, Europeans are astonished at seeing that Americans are capable of grasping the enormous range of anthropology and often doubt whether human intellect is capable of such a performance at all (Hultkrantz 1965).
The spheres where anthropologists and ethnographers have to be well-versed and those where they can afford to be naive differ considerably (cf. Gluckman 1964). An anthropologist may at least be familiar with all the fields of anthropology, even when he does not explore them. His European colleague lacks this familiarity, and is naive where an anthropologist ought not to be. On the other hand, his sphere of competence extends to regions where an anthropologist will be naive. He has been brought up as a member of the culture he is studying. He has received a thorough training in the culture, literature, and history of his country; in addition, due to his profession, by the time he becomes a middle-aged man, he has spent many years in studying his fellow-countrymen. These two different types of specialization may complement one another. However, serious consequences may result when each discipline stresses the naivety of the other.
Bailey (1964) examined the extent to which knowledge of national culture and literary tradition is necessary in order to understand the social system of a small Indian  community.   In his  opinion,  in
some types of studies, it is possible to be naive of Sanskrit literature or national history. The editors of this volume went even further (Devons and Gluckman 1964:194-95):
To import too much knowledge of Hinduism would indeed be a dangerous solecism. . . . We would indeed contend that knowledge of South American and European villages might be more useful for the analysis of Indian villages, than is knowledge of Sanskrit.
Nevertheless, they admit the possibility of research of another type.
In the case of India, Singer (1961) expressed a similar contrast by Juxtaposing text and context. He did not call into doubt the justification of the trend represented by Devons and Gluckman, but went on to investigate the potentialities of the anthropological approach on the other side where "texts," history, "the great tradition," and "the textual approach" are involved.
These basically different but complementary approaches look rather similar to the comparison between the approaches of anthropology and Central European ethnography. The ethnographer does much "textual" analysis and his work habits are in many respects similar to that of a "textual" scholar. (I think that objects, houses, clothing, and formalized behaviour can be treated "textually" equally as well.) The ethnographer is inclined to look at the social organization of tradition, which, according to Bailey is the alternative to internal structural explanation (Bailey 1965:60-65; Red-field 1956).
To all appearances, at least in the case of India, the two approaches can hardly be united in a single person. As Gluckman and Devons (1964:195) point out, "The study of Sanskrit and the sacred texts is a lifetime's work in itself." Interdisciplinary co-operation is needed, as in the case of Singer's Krishna volume (1966). Nor are the two approaches only a problem of intellectual attitudes in Europe. The native ethnographer usually has no earlier familiarity with Indian and Central American villages (this knowledge usually cannot be obtained later either). On the other hand, he is already guilty of solecism because of his absorption in his own "great tradition." The American anthropologist is generally unable to invest a lifetime's work in the study of a single European national culture, and therefore usually singles out local contextual studies.
It follows that arfthropologists and ethnographers have different strategies when investigating the unknown.
In a book review, A. Wallace (1966) made the observation:
Theory in cultural (or social) anthropology is   like   slash-and-burn    agriculture:    after
Hof er: personality of two disciplines
cultivating a field for a while, the natives move on to a new one and let bush take over—then they return, slash and burn, and raise crops in the old field again.
This statement, I think, expresses the extreme mobility of American anthropologists, which is perhaps characteristic not only of their theories, but of their whole way of life. The theoretical orientation of the discipline as a whole, coupled with a continual search for the new, makes too long a cultivation of fields nonproductive and forces the anthropologist to slash and burn. These traits are in general missing from European ethnography. European ethnographers are not as mobile as their American colleagues. Geographically, their activities are confined for the most part to a single country, or perhaps only to a specific area of a country. They tend to make fewer theoretical statements, usually of a more limited range, than the anthropologists do. Scholars earn recognition with voluminous works that systematize great bodies of data. The period before obsolescence of scientific publications is by far longer than seems to be the case with anthropological literature. National ethnographers may be compared to granaries where generations of ethnographers, one after the other, hoard and preserve their knowledge. Ethnography is a cumulative discipline, like history (Cohn 1962).
The divergent strategies of investigation in the two disciplines result in different career patterns for their members. In general, the life cycle of the American anthropologist consists of several rather short periods of changing affiliations, of participating in a number of different government projects and international commissions, and of well-delineated periods of fieldwork lasting a year or two in different parts of the world. This variegated career is held together by a peculiar approach, or personal point of view.
It is by far more difficult to offer a general picture of the life of European ethnographers. Considerably more effort is expended in the collection of data. In America, the authors of books or monographs are presented to the readers through biographical notes, so that external observers may conveniently follow their careers by comparative methods. In Europe, it is not customary to add biographical data to an article (perhaps because most of the European biographies are by far not so colourful as American ones are).
There are fewer scientific institutions, with more stable personnel, in Europe than in America. Ethnographers are more "settled" than anthropologists. Careers often begin in the service of a museum   or  institution,   and  end  with
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retirement from the same institution. Fieldwork can be integrated into such a career easily; the field is nearby, is easy to visit, and field visits are usually short. The personal career of an ethnographer is also cumulative.
As soon as an anthropologist has passed the initiation of fieldwork and has formulated generalizations or hypotheses of his own, he can qualify for a frontline position in his science (cf. Cohn 1962). The period of maturation of his European colleague is longer, his recognition depends to a greater extent on the knowledge and experience he has accumulated, and so in fact on his age, Some of his themes will mature into a book only after many decades.
Differences Between
Anthropological and
Ethnographical Publications
From what has been set forth above, it follows that there are essential differences between the books of European ethnographers and those of anthropologists. The differences are evident even in the choice of title. Recently, Leslie (1960) wrote of the naming customs of anthropologists and determined which muses must have co-operated to create titles like Argonauts of the Western Pacific, New Lives for Old, Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and Nomads of the Long Bow. For a European reader these titles themselves sound like the shouts of returning argonauts or successful hunters informing those awaiting them of their booty. On the other hand, European titles are prosaic and flat but define the content of the book. These titles read like the communiques of a slow-moving army in an occupied area or like the items in the inventory of a scientific storehouse. Often titles are understatements. It is considered to be against good manners if the author calls attention to the significance of his discoveries. Weiss, for example, investigated the relations of regional subcultures to both linguistic and religious boundaries and to historical territorial divisions in Switzerland, and established the independent system of the variation of culture in space. He published his results under the title "The Brünig-Napf-Reuss Line as a Cultural Boundary-Line Between East and West Switzerland on Swiss Ethnographical Maps" (Weiss 1947). István Györffy discovered that until the middle of the 19th century the dwelling houses and the farm yards (with all their related outbuildings) were located in two different zones within the settlements of the villages and peasant towns in the Great Hungarian Plain. This discovery threw new light on the family and community structure of the Hungarian peasantry, on the organization of the peasant farms, and on certain historical   processes.    His   study   bears
the title, "The Settlement-Pattern of Hajduböszörmeny" (Györffy 1926; cf. Den Hollander 1960-61).
The European ethnographer's modesty is not confined to the titles of books and papers. In general, ethnographers devote far less energy to the elaboration of general statements and theoretical conclusions than their American colleagues. (Cf. Hultkrantz 1967.) If theoretical conclusions are drawn, these are often concealed, so to speak, in the studies. Monographs are generally written for colleagues who are thoroughly familiar with the country being discussed and the accumulated knowledge of their specialized branch of science. For them the wink of an eye or an allusion between the lines is sufficient to enable them to comprehend the theoretical significance of a newly described fact.
The books of ethnographers may be compared to icebergs: Besides the facts on the printed page, there is a lot which does not emerge above the level of the water. In America, on the contrary, the glittering hypotheses and theories are on top and most of the factual material is forced below the water level. The facts serve the theory. Facts are "marshalled towards an objective, like ranks of privates that are there to make Gen. Principle win a campaign" (Kroeber 1956:306, Wolf 1964:16).
This difference-does not merely express divergences in the rules of literary form; it also touches on the essence of the two approaches. According to Wolf (1960:92):
In a true humanistic sense an individual life or even the sum of lives, interlaced in a common fate, are entities irreducible to general statements.
For the humanist there is no doubt that Homer's poetry, or Rembrandt's paintings and even those of lesser masters, are more valuable, more important, and more outstanding than his theories about them. The ethnographer harbours about the same modesty with regard to his subject. On the other hand, the anthropologist, humanistically minded and sympathetic as he may be to the people he studies, is a natural scientist for whom peoples and cultures are only limited cases and arguments in his search for laws. According to Lévi-Strauss (1965), it is exactly this objectivity which irritates the sensitivity of the new nations. It recalls a "state of affairs in which one part of mankind treated the other as an object" (Lévi-Strauss 1965:126).
The major portion of ethnographic literature is arranged by factual categories. Manning Nash studied the seasonal fluctuation of pottery production in a Mexican village and the reasons for this fluctuation. The title of his article (Nash 1961) is "The Social Context of Economic Choice in a Small Society." Had he
written this paper as a European ethnographer (ethnographers have, in fact, studied the same phenomena) it would probably bear the title, "Pottery Production in Amatenango del Valle." In indices and bibliographies, it would be listed under such categories as "domestic industries" and "pottery." The anthropologist looking for data on the topics of "decision making" or "economic choice" would stumble upon the paper only after perusing an enormous mass of irrelevant ethnographic monographs on pottery.
The cumulative growth pattern of ethnography presents further difficulties. In general, scholars disclose only what adds to the fringes of knowledge. Hence, the overall picture of the cultural process will vary continually, and will live only in the general consciousness of the ethnographers. Only rarely will it be expressed by summarizing studies.
An enormous mass of information has been accumulated in ethnographic literature on a number of topics that are of interest to anthropologists. Some examples of such topics are the organization of tradition, networks and centres of cultural integration, revitalization movements, the unfolding of local peasant styles, and their florescence and exhaustion. However, to investigate topics of this sort, even in Hungary, dozens of partial publications will have to be scanned. Major publications are to be found as articles in periodicals, not in books. No textbooks, compilations or collections of papers exist; the reader must find each article in the periodicals himself.
In Central Europe, at least in Hungary, the skills needed to handle the literature and to obtain data are taught to the student ethnographer in his preparatory courses. In ethnographic publications, the text often reverts to footnotes. Often footnotes cover a larger portion of the page that the text itself. Good and exact footnotes are appreciated by the fellow-ethnographers as indispensable guideposts in the scattered data-material. This also is a consequence of the affiliation between ethnography and the humanities. As Kroeber wrote (Tax, Eiseley, Rouse, and Voegelin 1953:358): "Now humanists unquestionably operate evidentially. They not only cite evidence, it was they who invented the footnote." In American books, the notes in general cover the back pages, or are missing altogether.
The anthropologist using the ethnographic literature embarks on a long and tiresome work, and, as Honigmann has said at the conference on Central and North-Central European Peasant Cultures (Chicago 1967), will have to perform some sort of "footnote gymnastics." However, ethnographic literature was made for this kind of use, so a cursory examination   of a   random   sample   of
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studies does not give an insight into the knowledge of the ethnographers.
Merriam, being criticized for the neglect of the European and Latin American contributions to his topic, answered (Merriam 1966:230), "One chooses from the materials he has at hand and knows best." This reasoning is fully justified in anthropology where the author uses a more or less random sample of facts to prove his theoretical proposition. In Central Europe, however, the same position is not acceptable; anybody making a new statement is expected to do so in full command of all the previous contributions to the subject, citing all of the evidence which is available.
Conclusion
If this essay has any predictive character, it would earn in all probability only displeasure. Anthropologists, like a developing nation awakened to self-consciousness, prefer to study their culture from the inside. Berliner, an indigenous American and professional in a related branch of science, visited anthropologists to study them and was censured for choosing the wrong informants, and for misunderstanding their writings (Berliner 1963). The present author could be exposed to this censure for a better reason.
The nature of comparison is to minimize the differences between the two things being compared. However, this statement does not amount to the ignorance by the author of the differences in the order of magnitude of the societies compared, or of the complexity of their ideologies. This is also expressed by the apologetic character of his opinion for the side of ethnography.
Nor can this article be expected to evoke a more favourable reaction from ethnographers. As I have tried to make clear, theorizing is not as customary in European ethnography as in American anthropology, and is generally reserved for the peers of the science. It is considered a sign of bad manners when one pronounces his opinion of his branch of science with a levity of this sort.
In the Scandinavian countries, where contact between ethnographers and American anthropologists is both intensive and long-established, it has been recognized that the adoption of a number of anthropological concepts and theories might benefit ethnography (Hultkrantz 1960:12, 1967:39). On the other, it has been declared openly that a wholesale adoption of American anthropology would be a step backwards (Hultkrantz 1965:18). In these commentaries, a certain anti-missionary zeal is implied, together with complaints against the missionary attitude of American anthropologists. I have never read a proclamation in which anthropologists have invited  ethnographers  to  abandon  the
gods of their ancestors and join the anthropological universal church. Yet, from anthropological writings, the conviction may be formed that they have discovered the general science of man, which will become a new humanistic creed of mankind (cf. Hultkrantz 1965:5-6). This may arouse in the ethnographer uncomfortable doubts about his right to exist. If the net of the anthropologists were in fact as large as the lake itself, this would mean not only that not a single fish could escape, but also that the situation of all other fishermen would become hopeless (Tax, Eiseley, Rouse, and Voegelin 1953:353).
Anthropology is a vigorous expanding discipline which continually conquers new territories. The national ethnographies of Central Europe also appear to be thriving, if not at the same rate as North American anthropology. There are no symptoms of a depletion in research themes, nor are the ethnographers under a compulsion to repeat themselves.
I am inclined to believe that this situation is good, and that both anthropologists and ethnographers have their own tasks in the exploration of Europe. It is regrettable that the picture of the European countryside formed by anthropologists is more or less confined to what the community studies of recent years have grasped, namely the oppressive post-peasant morals of vanishing villages and backward societies. I believe that it would be expedient to insert into this picture the colourful, rich, intricate fabric of cultural processes which the ethnographers have explored and described in a language differing from that of the anthropologist.
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