ETNOLOGIE, FOLCLOR MEDIA ȘI LECȚIA DE ISTORIE: CÂTEVA REFLECȚII

Abstract

The current dynamics of ethnology in East European countries can be analyzed both from the point of view of the relationship between the discipline and its own history (in the version of folklore studies, closely related to national constructs) and from the point of view of anthropology only being accepted in Eastern universities after the fall of
communism. The dialectic of the relationship between ethnology and anthropology (with all their ʺnationalʺ or ʺcolonialʺ and even “post colonial” varieties) would, however, be particularly sought in the complex and nuanced relationship between ethnology and history.
Among the many perspectives that would allow approaching this topic, I will limit myself here to a less frequently researched one. I propose a preliminary investigation of the elaboration of an ethnological discourse destined for media coverage, subsumable today in a section of the media called “folklore”. The benefit of this approach has an
advantage: it opens for the reader the access to the mechanisms of construction and refinement of the folklore’s  discourse, as it has already been used as a tool of national policies expressed as media discourse.