Title: “The Making of the Peasant in Romanian Ethnology” 

Authors: Otilia Hedeşan, Vintilă Mihăilescu 

How  to  cite  this  article:  Hedeşan,  Otilia  and  Vintilă  Mihăilescu.  2006.  “The  Making  of  the  Peasant  in 

Romanian Ethnology”. Martor 11: 187‐201. 

Published by: Editura MARTOR  (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Țăranului Român  (The 

Museum of the Romanian Peasant) 

URL:  http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/martor‐11‐2006/     

 Martor  (The Museum  of  the  Romanian  Peasant  Anthropology  Review)  is  a  peer‐reviewed  academic  journal established in 1996, with a focus on cultural and visual anthropology, ethnology, museum studies and the dialogue among  these  disciplines. Martor  review  is  published  by  the Museum  of  the  Romanian  Peasant.  Its  aim  is  to provide,  as widely  as  possible,  a  rich  content  at  the  highest  academic  and  editorial  standards  for  scientific, educational and (in)formational goals. Any use aside from these purposes and without mentioning the source of the article(s) is prohibited and will be considered an infringement of copyright.    Martor (Revue d’Anthropologie du Musée du Paysan Roumain) est un journal académique en système peer‐review fondé  en  1996,  qui  se  concentre  sur  l’anthropologie  visuelle  et  culturelle,  l’ethnologie,  la muséologie  et  sur  le dialogue entre ces disciplines. La revue Martor est publiée par le Musée du Paysan Roumain. Son aspiration est de généraliser  l’accès vers un riche contenu au plus haut niveau du point de vue académique et éditorial pour des objectifs  scientifiques,  éducatifs  et  informationnels. Toute utilisation  au‐delà de  ces  buts  et  sans mentionner  la source des articles est interdite et sera considérée une violation des droits de l’auteur.  

 

 

 

 

 

Martor is indexed by EBSCO and CEEOL. 

IInntteerrnnaattiioonnaall aanntthhrrooppoollooggyy oorr nnaattiioonnaall eetthhnnoollooggyy??

In a special issue of the Nordic journal Ethos,Thomas Gerholm and Ulf Hannerz raise thequestion of “the bases of unity and diversity ofinternational social and cultural anthropology.”“Anthropology is an interpretation of culture” –they argued. “Could it be that this interpretationis itself shaped by culture? Could some of the dif-ferences between national anthropologies be de-rived from differences between the cultural sys-tems which have formed the anthropologists?”(Gerholm and Hannerz, 1982: 13) Their answerruns as follows:

“There are both cosmopolitan and localstrands to any national anthropology, i.e. traitsthat are more or less reflexes of the major inter-national traditions, more or less products ofpurely national conjunctures. (…) Although thesetypical orientations are found both in centersand peripheries, it may be the case (…) that acountry’s position in the center/periphery modelhas an influence on the particular balance struckin that country between cosmopolitanism and lo-calism” (idem: 14-15).

Let’s start with cosmopolitanism. What

makes anthropology a distinct science, what isits common international denominator? At theend of the same issue, George Stocking tries togive an answer:

“The ultimate basis for such underlying unityas Euro-American anthropology manifests – andby extension, for the unity of ‘international an-thropology’ – has probably been what KenelmBurridge has called the ‘reach into otherness’(Burridge 1973:6). Allowing also for its manifes-tation in relation to the ‘internal’ otherness ofEuropean diversity, it is the fascination with theexternal ‘other’ encountered during the expan-sion of modern Europe that has provided histo-rically the lowest common denominator of Euro-American anthropology “(Stocking, 1982:173).

Indeed, when August Comte decided that thenew born science, sociology, should address only“the latest born societies,” a historical split wasproduced between “sociology,” having to studyoouurr European, modern societies, and the “an-thropological” studies, having to deal with theootthheerrss. “Thus, whereas sociology is the scienceof internal difference, anthropology is the sci-ence of external difference. Whereas sociology isthe science of the Self, anthropology is the sci-ence of the Other” (Kearney, 1996:25). Many an-thropologists would still agree that “science of

TThhee MMaakkiinngg ooff tthhee PPeeaassaanntt iinn RRoommaanniiaann EEtthhnnoollooggyy

OOttiilliiaa HHeeddee[[aannProfessor,

West University of Timi[oaraVViinnttiill`̀ MMiihh`̀iilleessccuu

Director, Romanian Peasant Museum

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the Other” may serve as a good brief definitionof anthropology.

But here already emerges a difference: thereis more then just one “Other!” In this commonground of “the lowest common denominator,”there is a second split: the one between an ex-ternal and an inner “Other.” The first, original-ly, signified the Primitive; the second one was,and to some extent still is, mainly the Peasant.These two main heroes of anthropology are alsothe products of different political conjunctures:the first was the product of what Stocking callsan “empire-building anthropology,” the secondone was the invention of a “nation-building an-thropology:”

“Between the Euro-American traditions onemay also distinguish between anthropologies of‘empire-building’ and anthropologies of ‘nation-building’. The character of anthropological in-quiry in Great Britain has been primarily deter-mined by experience with dark-skinned ‘others’in the overseas empire. In contrast, in manyparts of the European continent, the relation ofnational identity and internal otherness tended,in the context on nineteenth century movementsof cultural nationalism, to be a more focal issue;and strong traditions of Volkskunde developedquite distinctly from Völkerkunde. The formerwas the study of the internal peasant others whocomposed the nation, or potential nations withinthe imperial state; the latter was the study ofmore distant others, either overseas or fartherback in European history “(idem: 172).

These different types of otherness are notjust physically different, one being more distantthen the other. They mean different things andanswer different problems. In both cases, theproblem—a crucial political one—is what to dowith the Other? But there are different stakes inthe two cases, empire- and nation-building beingtwo originally different “motives” for anthropo-logical investigation to rule over “exotic” othersfrom remote colonies is not the same as govern-ing your own others, even if they come from dif-

ferent regions! And it is also different to studyyour own people, who speak the same languageas you, and who struggle to be accepted bystrange faraway foreigners. It is not by chancethat most of the representatives of this “nation-building anthropology” never studied communi-ties other then their own. Taking the case of Yu-goslavia, for instance, “it is no accident,”Aleksandar Boskovic states, “that no researchwas done in the various parts of Yugoslavia bymembers of ‘other’ ethnic groups (‘nations’)from within the country: Croats studied the folk-lore of Croatia, Serbs that of Serbia, and Slove-nians that of Slovenia” (Boskovic, 2005:13). Thesame was two in Transylvania: Romanians studyRomanian folklore, Hungarians their own folk-lore, and Saxons do not want to interfere with ei-ther one of the two communities.

These rather political characteristics are ac-companied by methodological differences aswell. The empire-building anthropology “becamepossible starting from a triple experience: the ex-perience of plurality, of alterity and that of iden-tity,” all of which have to be thought of together(Augé, 1994:81). Committed rather to specifici-ty, nation-building ethnologies are not submittedto this triple bind Augé is speaking about, andusually omit plurality and alterity in their re-search designs.

Finally, there are many other different “na-tional conjunctures” beyond this main politicaland methodological split between nation and em-pire-building anthropologies. In the case of Ro-manian “anthropology,” for instance, one canwonder to what extent and in which way “theRomanian peasant” was indeed the “innerother” of this discipline. Our own other, thepeasant was rather turned, in this case, into thenational Self thus beconing the object of socio-logy as well, which was conceived as it was as a“science of the nation” (Gusti, 1938).

A first and preliminary question thus arises:by viewing the Peasant instead of the Primitiveas an object, and a special kind of peasant atthat, because of particular “national conjunc-

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tures,” can the Romanian anthropology be con-sidered an “international anthropology” in thesense discussed above? Is it part of the samestory? I think not. I believe we can not — andshould not — speak about anthropology (a “na-tive anthropology,” for instance, or a genuineRomanian experience in “doing anthropology athome,” as suggested by Gheorghi]` Gean` in1999). Instead, we should adopt the suggestionof the international conference of European“folk ethnographers” held in 1955 in Arnhemto use the general term of “national ethnology”when referring to all kinds of scholars of “folkculture” in the frame of a national space (seeTamás, 1968). In this way, ethnography and folkstudies — the main “anthropological” disciplinesin the case of Romania — can be bridged in acommon approach, and their common inventionof the Peasant may be better understood.

PPrriimmiittiivveess aanndd PPeeaassaannttss

In order to address this invention of thePeasant and try to understand its characteristics,one has to start from what it was distancing itselffrom — and, to some extent, what it was reactingto: the “primitivist ideology” (Paul-Lévy, 1986),i.e. the very backbone of modernity and the oneinfoming the birth of social sciences in general,and of anthropology in particular. This world-view was classifying cultural differences accord-ing to presumed stages of evolution between the“primitive” world (of the colonies) and the “ci-vilized,” metropolitan world of our own. “Thelowest ideological common denominator of (this)Euro-American anthropology was a belief in thehereditary or cumulative environmental physicaland cultural inferiority of the non-European oth-ers” (Stocking, op. cit. 173): the Primitive wasthus viewed as the weak origin of mankind. Assuch, the Primitive was everything that We arenot (or are no longer) and that Man in generalshould avoid beconing. In other words, the Prim-itive was the close-to-nature stage of humanity,and as such, the extreme origin of millenary cul-

tural evolution culminating in modern Westernworld.

This close-to-nature status was eventually re-versed: nature is good, while civilization is per-verse, some romantic voices claimed, thus react-ing also to the mainstream of modernization andprimitivist ideology. The Primitive became, inthis case, a “noble savage,” a kind of model orideal reminder rather having the derogatory con-notations of the classic evolutionist discourse.

The Peasant was shadowing this image of thedouble faced Primitive, serving, to some extent,as his local companion: there was a bad inner-primitive-peasant, informed by an Enlighten-ment – inspired primitivist ideology and stagingthe inner cultural difference, and a noble-savage-peasant, shaped by a mainly romantic auto-chthonist ideology (Mih`ilescu, 2003) and per-forming the own cultural specificity. The choicesand variants depended on “national conjunc-tures.” In France, for instance, the inner-primi-tive-peasant prevailed, both his backwardnessand his “ethnographic” particularities having tobe overcome by the “national everyday ple-biscite.” In Germany, on the contrary, it was thenoble-savage-peasant that was the national hero.In both cases, the opposite option was also pre-sent, in different forms and to varyingdegrees.What was the case in Romania?

TThhee ppeeaassaanntt bbeeffoorree eetthhnnoollooggyy

In order to answer this question, we shouldfirst take a look at the peasant before and with-out the discipline of ethnology.

As noted by Burguière in France, this peas-ant starts by being for a long time a rather “in-visible” one,152 largely present in the artistic im-agery of the educated people by means of“pastorales” and “bergeronnettes,” it’s true, butrefused of cultural autonomy (Burguière, 2000).When he starts to become an object of interestand scientific knowledge, it is initially for ad-ministrative reasons. The German case is well-known:

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“As we know it for sure now, the real defini-tion of Volkskunde refers, since the XVIIIth cen-tury when the word appeared for the first time inthe context of administrative statistics, to the‘knowledge about the people’ (Kentnisse überdas Volk) and not to the ‘traditions preserved bythe people’ (Uberlieferungen im Volk)” (Brückn-er, 1987: 228).

Such is also the case in France with the“statistiques départementales” during Napo-leon’s rule (Burguière, op. cit.). We may find inRomania too, after the “oriental crisis” and dur-ing the emergence of the Romanian principali-ties, a growing interest in general data about thepeople of these territories for diplomatic, ad-ministrative and/or economic reasons, a growingcorpus of administrative and economic statisticsand geographic descriptions that can be put to-gether as “knowledge aabboouutt the people.” This isthe case with the “consular documentation,”and, starting with the “Organic regulations,” the“periodic records.” It is what Stahl has chosen tocall “sociography” and which served as a kind of“statistics” in the original sense of a “science ofthe states,” including useful information about acounty’s geography, economics, social organiza-tion, customs, etc. (Stahl, 2001). These “sociog-raphers” were of two kinds. The first and mostimportant one was made by experts sent by thesurrounding empires, interested in better know-ing their constituting nations in order to bettercontrol them. Such is the case of representativesof the Enlightenment such as Georg Tallar, Ger-hard Van Swieten, Francesco Griselini or J. J.Ehrler, sent to Transylvania and Banat by theHapsburg authorities. Their approach and thekind of ethnographies they produced were closeto those practiced by missionaries and public ser-vants in the remote colonies, the Romaniancountries being for them a kind of “small Amer-icas close to us.” The second category is repre-sented by local intellectuals, from Dimitrie Can-temir to Ionescu de la Brad or Spiru Haret, who,in addition to their personal theoretical views,

were developing detailed descriptions of theircountries, i.e. a kind of Volkskunde in the origi-nal sense of “knowledge about the people” andfor the peoples’ own interests. Although theyserve as valuable pieces of ethnography, thesecases are rather distant from the ethnological in-terest and perspective, the peasant representinghere mainly a socio-political category.

TThhee iinnnneerr pprriimmiittiivvee ooff tthhee EEnnlliigghhtteennmmeenntt

The first interests in the knowledge of thepeople do not concern the “traditions preservedby the people,” but rather their superstitionsand the need to overcome them. This image ofthepeasant is thus the equivalent of the (bad)savage, eventually of the exotic primitive. Indoing so, this kind of Enlightenment ethnologyis overtaking and translating in rational terms –and for other reasons! – the Christian (mainlyCatholic and Protestant) theory of superstitionsas developed from Saint Augustine to Lutherand Calvin. In the Romanian case, leading fig-ures of the Orthodox Church in the 19th centurysuch as Vasile Moga in Sibiu or Simion PopoviciDatcu and Radu Verzea in Brasov also con-demned the “superstitious” or “vain” beliefs ofthe Folk in very similar terms (Muslea, 1945:128-129). The Church even sometimes excom-municated whole communities suspected ofpracticing “magical rituals” (Duma, 1995:108-109).153

Nevertheless, the main actor in this respect isnot the Church but a group of enlightered andpolitically engaged intellectuals in the 19th cen-tury known as the “{coala ardelean`” (the Tran-sylvanian school). A typical example is a book pu-blished in 1808 by a leading member of theSchool, Gheorghe Sincai, entitled Înv`]`tur`fireasc` pentru surparea supersti]iei norodului(Common sense lessons for undermining peo-ple’s superstitions). A handful of such “supersti-tions” are presented by the author in order to be“explained” in science, rational terms, and alsomocked as they are interpreted by local people.

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Written ten years latter, Vasile Popp’s doctoraldissertation on funeral practices defended in1817 in Vienna is considered to be the very in-augural work of Romanian folklore. It is “thefirst scientific essay in the field of Romanianfolklore, the subject and the author belonging toour folk. But its meanings are transgressing thenational borders,” Vasile Muslea claims, “whatother modern nation had in 1817 a research onits funeral customs? None, as far as I know!”(Muslea, 1971 [2]: 46). This may be true, butPopp’s intention was the same militant enlight-ening one, with his ethnographic descriptionscurrent of peasant practices interded to illustrateand condemn their irrational superstitions. Lateron, different kinds of social workers would fol-low and develop this kind of rationalist hygienicapproach, interested in such knowledge aboutthe people’s nutrition, heath, conditions of workand living, etc., criticizing them in order to tryand change them (see B`rbulescu, 2006).

Nevertheless, another current ran throughthis main discourse: these very condemned “su-perstitions” may be also perceived as historicalproof of the ancient origin and continuity of theRomanian people, and thus turned into valuableideological arguments. This is what another lead-ing figure of the School, Samuil Micu-Klain didin his 1800 history of the Romanians (Muslea,1971[1]: 4). In a more explicit and programmat-ic way, such then-popular customs were com-pared with ancient Roman ones by DamaschinBojinca in 1832-1833, in order to prove theRoman origin of the Romanian people (Bojinca,[1832-1833] 1978; 115-130, passim). Inside astill primitivist approach, the nation-buildingethnology was taking its first steps.

TThhee nnoobbllee ssaavvaaggee ooff rroommaannttiicciissmm

In the German space, the specific interest forthe knowledge of the people—as “traditions pre-served by the people,” and thus the second andbetter known sense of Volkskunde—appearedonly later on and entered the mainstream under

the influence of “romantic literary ambitionsand the emergence of a national historiography”(Brückner, op. cit.: 228). The local/national cus-toms (Sitten und Kultur) were shared as a kind ofpre-ethnological object of interest by both ap-proaches, only from rather different standpoints.

In France, this view of the peasant frequent-ly a cultural temptation but never succeeded inthe long run:

One should wonder why the discovery of thesingularity of popular culture did not engenderthe idea of a national culture embedded in thepeasants’ customs, and why neither Legrandd’Aussy, nor Dulaure, Cambry, or Lenoir havenot been French Herder. In other words, whywas this idea of cultural singularity, as a meansof conceptualizing social practices, replaced sosoon (…) by the measure of economic or moraldistance? By this missed beginning, the ethno-logical approach to studying cultural diversity inFrance left an open space for (…) a sociology ofFrance (Burguière, op. cit.).

Burguière also points to the complex politicalreasons of this different trajectory, neverthelessinterfering periodically with romantic dreamsabout Celtic origins or about regional differ-ences.

Romanian national ethnology is essentially aromantic one, with romantic influences comingboth from Germany (mainly in Transylvania) andFrance, with Jules Michelet playing the role of ago-between. It is linked to the political romanti-cism spreading over Europe during the revolu-tionary times of 1848. In fact, romantic ethnolo-gy begins around 1840, with Alecu Russo’spreoccupations with the ballad – involving boththe collection of texts and the commentariesupon their importance from a rhetorical per-spective (cf. Russo, [1840] 1942). At the sametime, the flag-ship journal Dacia literar`, (Liter-ary Dacia), with its famous statement that “ourbeautiful customs are interesting and poeticenough,” implied that the Peasant is now con-sidered worth becoming a visible personage,

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marking a definitive orientation towards thisnew perspective. Almost immediately, the firstcardinal texts are configured: the collection offairytales of the Schott brothers, WalachischeMärchen (Stutgart – Tübingen, 1845), a collec-tion made in the tradition and under the directinfluence of the Bothers Grimm, respectively thecollection of ballads “gathered and improved” byVasile Alecsandri. (1852).

Voicing this new representation of the peas-ants, Vasile Alecsandri claimed that “the Roma-nian is born poet.”154 Fastidious as this maynow sound, it was meant to explain that the Ro-manian people were a close-to-nature, speakingin poetical terms155 as any other “natural com-munity” and having all the spiritual and moralqualities of the “noble savage.” This marks acrucial ideological turnaway from the inferiorinner-primitive-peasant to the valued noble-sav-age-peasant. The metropolitan “noble savage” isthus turned into the local “autochthon,” thePeasant becoming the very emblem of this Ro-manian autochthony.

TThhee PPeeaassaanntt aanndd tthhee aauuttoocchhtthhoonniisstt iiddeeoollooggyy

But why did this have to be?The fact that at the time the Romania con-

sisted mainly of peasant societies is not a suffi-cient explanation. In Germany, the Volk wasidentified with the peasants in spite of the exis-tence of an already large category of proletarians(Bausinger, op. cit.). Ideology was never limitedby demography – or the Peasant is an ideologicalfact.

It was “a necessity for both the boyar class156

and the peasant one – Henri Stahl briefly ex-plains – to prove that the ‘rumâni’ are au-tochthons, direct heirs of the Romans, fallen intoslavery only by accident and thus having the rightto fight back for their autonomy” (Stahl,2001:30). The national elites thus had the urgenttask of finding “the arguments proving that theRomanian populations from all the threeprovinces, Transylvania, Moldavia and Walachia,

are aboriginal, that they form a single people ofLatin origin, and thus have at least equal rightswith the populations that moved later on in thespace of former roman Dacia”157 (idem:26). Con-tinuity and unity thus became the two comple-mentary key words of what was almost an actualstake of political survival before being one of fu-ture nation-building and development. It is thisdouble political claim that both fueled a genuineautochthonist ideology and made it necessary.

The Peasant is the main personage of the“great narration” elaborated by Romanian elitesin response to these historical constraints and inorder to serve this political argumentation. Em-bodying the Romanian autochthony, the repre-sentative Autochthon, i.e. he stands for the aboriginem continuity of all Romanians on theirown fatherland. He thus serves as the living ar-gument for all these national claims. As such, hewill be less of a social actor, part of the currentsocial life, and more of an ideological character,an object of political interest and spiritual devo-tion. In other words, the ideological model fit-ting the nation-building needs had to–and in factdid–prevail over the empirical image of the peas-ant and was used to describe him in all his actsand contexts. Before being an object for ethno-logy, the Peasant was thus a product of ideology.

AA ppeeaassaanntt--bbuuiillddiinngg eetthhnnoollooggyy

We may now ask what was ethnology’s mis-sion in this context? How did the national eth-nology methodologically produce, use and abusethis personage of the Peasant, turning it into itsown object?

Let’s resume what has already been said: inthe 19th century continuity and unity became themain political concerns for all three Romaniancountries and for all its autochthon social cate-gories; these crucial political stakes fueled a gen-uine autochthonist ideology; that answered tothe political claims of continuity and unity bystaging the Peasant as the representative Au-tochthon of the nation. In this context, ethnolo-

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gy had only to add flesh and blood to this ab-stract personage of national desire.

Very roughly sketched, the methodologicalsolution was to turn continuity into tradition andunity into typology: ethnology’s Peasant was arepresentative Autochthon in so far as he was thetypical traditional man.

TThhee mmeetthhooddoollooggiiccaall iinnvveennttiioonn ooff ttrraaddiittiioonn..TThhee ppeeaassaanntt aass ttrraaddiittiioonnaall mmaann

Continuity from ancient times was, as wehave seen, a main argument. In this respect, aprimary way to use (and abuse...) folklore was toturn it into an historical argument for such acontinuity.158 Folk studies were thus rather anhistorical discipline or part of history. They wereturned into a discipline in its own right only byforging their own interpretations of social factsas traditional facts. The political problem ofcontinuity was thus transferred into an epistemo-logical one of tradition. Further on and accor-dingly, the Western type of conceptual frame op-posing the civilized to the primitive is reshapedas an opposition between modernity and tradi-tion.

Traditional facts are considered to be the factsof a “traditional society,” i.e. of a distinct, specif-ic one: the Romanian peasant society. In fact,they serve as methodological means to link pre-sent observable facts to their supposed ancientorigins, whatever these origins might be. This issupposed to fit with the existing peasant society,where social life seems to be an eternal repro-duction of such “traditional” facts. An ideologicalladen methodology is thus shaping the social re-presentation of society as being a “traditionalone.” Consequently the insider of this society,the peasant, can only be a “traditional man”. Ac-cordingly, the origin of “tradition” is not in “tra-ditional society” but in the minds of ethnologistsand their ways of looking at peasant society!

In order to do so, Romanian ethnologistswere deeply inspired (although in a confusingway) by one of the key methodological solutions

of classical evolutionism: the idea of “culturalsurvivals.”

Romanian national ethnology is not evolu-tionistic, but Tylor’s doctrine was adapted tolocal needs. Traditional facts are indeed used assurvivals in order to trace back their origins, akind of Urtexte from which the whole contem-porary society is supposed to flow.159

But this is not ideologically interpreted astheir performers (the present day peasants) be-longing to a primitive or former stage of evolu-tion: few ethnologists – if any – would concludethat such surviving practices or beliefs wouldplace the peasant close to “the negro from SouthAfrica” as Tylor did. And no Romanian ethnolo-gist will be ever interested in comparing culturalsurvivals of the Romanian peasant society withthose from Africa or elsewhere, as was the mainpurpose of the comparative method of classicevolutionism. This methodological approachonly explains continuity and not evolution. Tra-ditional facts are thus facts of continuity and notof evolution, expressing and explaining continu-ity; in a way they are this very continuity. Ac-cordingly, the Peasant is not supposed to“evolve” in time from an inferior to a superiorstate, but rather to express (more effectuely andmore fully) the same inborn specific capacitiesof the Romanian people. It is this specific andperennial character of the Self that ethnologyhas to document using available cultural sur-vivals of a traditional nature.

This methodological design of the Peasanthas some important consequences:

a) Praising continuity, one has to value theorigin of this continuity too. If we are proudabout our continuity, we have to be proud aboutthe ancestor with which this tradition is bridgingus. Being this lasting ancestor, the Peasant willaccordingly be treated rather as a “noble sa-vage,” then as an inferior “primitive.”160

b) Traditional facts are not just end-productsof the historical process of tradition but re-current expressions of this process itself, from

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the time of its origins. As landmarks of tradi-tional legacies throughout time they are thustimeless: “eternity was born in the village,” poet-ically exclaimed Lucian Blaga, overemphasizingwhat has become a common-sense representa-tion.161 Romanian national ethnology will bethus unable to or only with difficulty, replace itsobject in time and approach it in a historicalway.162

c) Finding their full meaning as informativesurvivals of some original models or Urtexte, tra-ditional facts will be approached, described andinterpreted as parts of these original modelsrather then components of a social functionalwhole. Romanian national ethnology will be thusunable to or only with difficulty, replace its ob-ject in the present social space and approach itin a functional way.163

d) Interpreting social life mainly as a repro-duction of Urtexte, it is not a surprise that themethodological approach is rationalism ratherthen empiricism (Leach, 1976); Romanian eth-nologists more interested in “what the peasantssay” and their “systems of ideas,” than “whatthey are doing” and their “systems of actions.”Our archives still have billions of pages aboutRomanian folk lyrics, but there is almost no re-search on kinship, for instance.

e) Another consequence of this focus on Ur-texte is that the ideal subject of the ethnologist isconsidered to be an old man in a remote village:age and isolation are almost mystically consid-ered to be the best conditions for preserving asupposed “popular memory” the ethnologist is-expected to update164 (Belmont, 1986).

f) Not all social facts are traditional facts, ex-pressing the worldview of the autochthonouspeople, the meaningful side of continuity. Thereis and has to be a selection–and that ethnologyhas chosen not to be “traditional” is extremelytelling as well.165

Traditional facts are thus value laden factsand ethnological description of traditions in-volves by definitions value judgments. Accord-ingly, Romanian ethnologists will be (almost bydefinition) emotionally involved in any evalua-tion of the peasant world and will be anxiousabout any rumor of its disappearance.

g) This moral and emotional relation shil ofthe national ethnology with its Peasant is essen-tially different from the “physical and culturalinferiority” of anthropology’s Primitive. That iswhy Romanian ethnology never had a “bad con-science” as was the case with anthropology dur-ing the so called post-colonial crisis, nor was itequipped to play this role: antropology loved anddefended its native object/people from the verybeginning. Perhaps this is also one of the mainreasons also for the fact that it has never ques-tioned its epistemological and methodologicalfoundations or was tormented by the political orethical implications of its doings: it had a goodconscience from the very beginning – and stillhas. What is more, the peasants loved antropolo-gy too – and still do.

This “traditionalist” relation ship with ori-gins and the obsession with archaic models isconstitutive of ethnological thinking to such anextent that it seems impossible even now to getrid of it. Thus, after prizing the idea of “livingfossils” Mircea Eliade was speaking about sixtyyears ago, Nicolae Constantinescu, a reputedprofessor of ethnology, still claims that “the re-construction of the cultural context, of the (pos-sible) original source of the different folk texts(...) is a path to a better knowledge and compre-hension of the great unity of the Romanianpopular culture” (Constantinescu, 2006). “Cul-tural survivals” are very much alive, indeed!

TTaaxxoonnoommiieess aanndd tthhee ffrraaggmmeenntteedd ppeeaassaanntt

Another main methodological choice is thatof the Linné type of natural taxonomies Tyloralso preferred. In this respect, he was recom-

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mending the “dissection” of culture into fine“details” that can be arranged in systematicclasses as in botany or zoology (Tylor, 1871/2000: 29). As a matter of fact, this approach wasshared by most social scientists with positivist in-clinations. The first step of ethno-folkloristic re-search is thus a taxonomical one too, placing thetraditional facts in their appropriate classes andby removing then from their present social con-texts.

In the Romanian case, this kind of classifica-tion started almost simultaneously with the firstfolkloric collections. Vasile Alecsandri, for in-stance, accompanied his collection of Balladespublished in 1852 with an early attempt at ty-pology.166

This approach was institutionalized at theturn of the century when the Romanian Acade-my founded an ambitious national programcalled “About the life of the Romanian people”aiming to present Romanian popular culture inall its “components:” birth, marriage, death,children’s play, festivities, textiles, and so on. Alarge part of the reference books of the Romani-an national ethnology comprise this project. Thedevelopment of the discipline is also perceived,to a large extent, as a refinement of these ty-pologies. It is telling in this respect that, howev-er excessive it may be seen from an anthropo-logical perspective, this obsession with types,classes, and categories in classical Romanian eth-nology is considered by a present historian ofthe discipline as an “insufficiently rigorous sys-tematization of the issues according to theirspecies” (Datcu, 1998 : 133).167

The “life of the Romanian people,” i.e. ofthe peasant society, is thus fragmented intospecies and sub-species of traditional practicesand beliefs. Exit functional or structural analy-sis! The idea of the “total social fact,” of typicalanthropological holism is thus excluded from thevery beginning, and replaced by a kind of topicalholism: the Romanian wedding, the Romanianepic, Romanian ceramics, etc. Thus, the Roma-nian Peasant has a patrimonial unity instead of a

social-empirical one. As such, he becomes asource for the Self-collection (Clifford, 1988) theethnologist aims to produce. Finally, what thisethnologist cares about the most are these “pat-rimonial scarce resources” the Peasant is sup-posed to posses, instead of what he claims to beinterested in: the very life of the Romanian peo-ple.

In this respect, Romanian ethnology is muchcloser to “Frazerian anthropology (that) frag-mented the ethnographic community into bitsand pieces that were reassembled in kaleido-scopic fashion in the grand compendium,” thanto “the Malinowskian style of ethnography (that)reconstructed these communities as places ofhuman habitation” (Kearney, op. cit.: 27). Evenif ethnologists always speak about “we the Ro-manians,” the meaning of this plural is deeplydifferent from, say, the classical anthropologicalrepresentation about “We the Tikopia”…

WWhhaatt nneexxtt??

In his challenging book on “Reconceptualiz-ing the Peasantry,” Michael Kearney states that“the category peasant has outlived the condi-tions that brought it into being” (Kearney, op.cit.: 25). Not only because of the “changing rea-lities of rural life,” but also because of the shiftsin social theory and representations about thepeasantry.

At different times in various western soci-eties, the Peasant was turned by bourgeois popu-lation and taste into an object of entertainment:a peasants’ life is an attractive opposition to capi-talist work (e.g Bausinger, 1993). In this respect,the “Romanian peasant” is starting to be ap-proached and dealt with in this way too, “tradi-tions” being turned to commodities and peasantway of life being hailed as loisir: the phrase “tra-ditional houses for tourists,” sounds like adver-tising. Nevertheless, the discourse about thePeasant of these very “managers” is still aboutarchaism and authenticity.

Another main dimension of change is em-

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bedded in the views and policies of develop-ment. During the Cold War, the Peasant was re-emerging as the representative insider of the“third world” that both “first” and “second”worlds were struggling to dominate. In this po-litical context, the Peasant was the updated ver-sion of the very primitive Other. He was the oneto be “civilized,” and much more importantly,to be “developed.” The third world peasant isthe underdeveloped primitive. And this is whathappens to our noble peasants too: with Euro-pean integration and from the standpoint oflocal and regional development projects, the Ro-manian peasantry is a social category in a ratherunderdeveloped stage. In as far as this “under-developed Other” becomes the central figure ofpost-modern anthropology (Sabelli, 1993), theRomanian Peasant is theoreticaly becoming theobject of this new anthropology as well.

But national ethnology still does not want toset him free! A very recent text by professorNicolae Constantinescu serves as but one exam-ple in this respect. In (at least seemingly) plead-ing for “context,” the renowned Romanian folk-lorist reintroduces, somehow through thebackdoor, the defining reference of folklorism tothe Urtext.

“Coming back to the relation of the folklorictext to its cultural (or genetic) context, let’s saythat the first is an extremely important source inrestoring the other, that folklore, popular litera-ture, primarily, but music and popular dance aswell, represent a sort of a ‘diary of the childhoodand adolescence’ of those peoples that have nohistory (Cl. Lévi-Strauss). Or, in the words of anAfrican poet and philosopher, dance, which hasbecome nowadays “the most profane of arts,”represents the “warm ashes” of certain rituals,myths, archaic behaviours, maybe long gone(Leopold Sedar Senghor, From Negroeness to theuniversal civilization, 1986). So has Mircea Eli-

ade argued in an article written sixty years ago inSpeology, History, Folklore in the volume Frag-mentarium (1939), where the concept of ‘livingfossils’ appears, borrowed from the language ofspeology” (Constantinescu, 2006 : 3).

Here we are, back in the dawn of evolution-ism, captive in Tylor’s visions of “cultural sur-vivals” (translated into Romanian as “culturalfossils”). Romanian national ethnology cannotgive up, it seems, the obsession of reconstructinga paradigmatic origin, even if, for this purpose, itwill use devious and somehow more.... “mo-dern” means. The folklorist from Bucharest con-fesses this as clearly as possible at the end of hisarticle : “The operation of reconstructing the cul-tural context, the primary (possible) source ofvarious folklore texts (...) is a path to a more pre-cise acknowledgement and understanding of thegreat whole that popular Romanian culture is”(idem, our underlining). It seems that Stahl wastruly accurate in saying that folklorists do notcease hoping that they will end up restoringthese origins of national culture on the basis oftheir present folklore texts. It is no surprise thenthat they do not know how to approach and de-scribe the “Romanian peasant” alive today.

What about “new” Romanian anthropology?It seems to be interested in the “peasant” only asa subject of development and/or as one of mi-gration—and as such something with almost noconnections to the former “Romanian peasant.”This opposition and lack of dialogue between thetwo approaches (disciplines?) produced a lack ofcontinuity as well as a lack of consistency of thevery character of the Peasant. Consequently, aca-demic discourse seems to be unable to give a co-herent and comprehensive answer to the simplequestion: what are we referring to when we (still)speak about the Romanian Peasant?

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152 See also {erban Anghelescu in this volume for theRomanian case.

153 Local priests used to be much more indulgent withsuch “superstitions,” sometimes also being accused bytheir superiors (Muslea, op. cit.: 128).

154 “The Romanian was born a poet. Gifted by naturewith a brilliant imagination and a sensitive heart, he re-leases the mysteries of his soul in harmonious melodiesand in improvised poems. If smothered by yearning, ifcaught by joy, if astounded by a great deed, he sings hispains and satisfactions, his heroes and history and thus hissoul is an endless spring of beautiful poetry” (Alecsandri,[1852]1965 : 99).

155 Giambatista Vico largely diffused the idea that sav-age people think in poetical terms. Romanticists largelyshared this view. In this respect Jean Cambry, for in-stance, was claiming at the end of 18th century that “thecustoms of the people are those of nature in its very sim-plicity. It is imagination that prevails; their language is fig-urative, full of metaphors and imaginative tricks (…) poet-ry was born before prose. It is the burning expression ofemotions of terror, surprise, admiration or love the natureman feels in a much deeper way then the civilized man”(apud Burguiere, op. cit.).

156 Especially after and because of the century longPhanariot governance, when the local aristocracy (boieriide ]ar`) lost her hereditary rights, the Romanian boyarswere interested in stressing a common autochthony withthe peasants. It is not by accident that a main representa-tive of this category as Alecu Russo, for instance, hasworked out a historical narration of fundamental similari-ties between real boyars (i.e. the local ones) and “real”peasants (the free ones, the r`ze[i) (see Bîrlea, 1974).

157 There are some similarities, in this respect, withthe Greek case. “By identifying with the absolute values ofEuropean romanticism, Greek scholars sought to gain ad-mittance to Europe as cultural as well as political equals”- Michael Herzfeld explains (Herzfeld, 1987:52). The samewas true with Romanians scholars playing the card ofRoman origin, what Vasile Pârvan calls the founding“myth of Rome” (Pârvan, 1921).

158 The series of Romanian ethnological texts dedi-cated to demonstrate the continuity of a practice, of a cus-tom, of a character from very old times up to the momentof its collection is impressive. It begun during Enlighten-ment by a series of small studies in which information re-garding traditional life was converted into arguments thatcould prove roman continuity. For example, SamuilMicu–Klein does this is in 1800 in Short Account of theHistory of Romanians, than in 1801, in Dictionariumvalachic–latinum (Mu[lea, 1971 [1] : 4). The most repre-

sentative case is, however, that of Damaschin Bojinc`,whose Antiques of Romanians Now Written in Romanianfor the First Time constantly refers to the facts of Romancivilization described as Romanian customs (Bojinc`,[1832–1833] 1978 : 115 – 130, passim). In the Romanticage, the pleading for continuity is not removed from theethnological discourse, but slightly shifted: “the revolt ofour non-latin spirit” Hasdeu was promoting, brings the Da-cian element to center stage. Romans or Dacians, Pelas-gians or Slavs, Christians or Pre-Christians, according toacademic school and political ideology, are all invoked toexplain the archaism and the continuity of various folkloreelements. And this approach seems to be still en vogue: ayear ago, the distinguished critic Mircea Mih`ie[ wroteabout Otilia Hede[an’s volume on calendar customs that itis a book that should exist in all libraries as it refers to our“archaic customs!”

159 “In a very real sense, the attempts to reconstituteUrtexte expressed metonymically the programs of nationalregeneration they were intended to serve” (Herzfeld,1996:236).

160 One can say that there is almost a “canon of thePeasant” in Romanian ethnology, describing and pre-scribing how is he to be conceived. In a pioneering text,Alecu Russo writes for instance: “I have long researchedthe oldest of literatures and the works of the most emi-nent poets, and I did not come across such a marvelousand beautifully told idea. Such an idea is the result ofhuman wisdom, a display of the sense of immortality, ex-pressed through the voice of the people. Vox populi, voxdei!” (Russo, [1840] 1942: 221). This kind of representa-tion follows, as a pattern, a great part of the researches ofRomanian ethnology, functioning as a real Procustian bedfor what is usually considered “the right/correct/realimage” of the Romanian peasant. There are but a few ex-ceptions, the most illustrious being Ovid Densusianu (Den-susianu, [1909] 1966), Ion Mu[lea (Mu[lea, [1935] 1971:299 – 301) and Henri H. Stahl (Stahl, 1983). In this re-spect, Densusianu, for instance, wrote at the beginning ofthe XXth century: “Under the influence of some nebulousconceptions and of an enthusiasm that had degeneratedinto Romantic rhetoric (…), the simple man, from thecountryside or from elsewhere, has been presented to usas a being endowed with numberless qualities, with a soulharvested by nature with an abundance of good thoughtsand feelings” (Densusianu, 1909 [1966] : 46). It is tellingthat this kind of statement was generally left besides inspite of the high reputation the philologist-folklorist’s en-joys between folklorists.

161 Henri Stahl was mocking in the thirties this ob-session: “Any direct researcher of folklore can regretfullysee that there is no standard text, as there is no pattern of

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belief, custom, rite or ceremony, known by everybody andrepeated identically, there are only themes and expres-sions generally known (...). In almost all cases, such textscannot be found. Nevertheless, folklorists cannot help be-lieving that they existed and they do not lose their hopethat they will end up restoring them. When such ‘texts’ donot seem to be possible, as in the case of ‘ceremonies,’they continue to believe in a ritual scheme that must haveexisted in clear and perfect forms, that survived in a dam-aged form up to our days” (Stahl, 1983: 237 – 238).

162 It is not by accident that almost all historical“winds of change” in Romanian society had to refer to thePeasant in one way or another. “We don’t want any longerto be the eternal peasants of history!” Constantin Noicawas claiming, for instance, in the name of his 1940 gen-eration (Noica, 1943). Post-communist changes are also ac-companied by the adagio of the “death of the Peasant.”

163 We are not referring here to functionalism, but towhat all anthropologists would share as the “functionalistmethod.”

164 The sociologist Henri Stahl is strongly criticizingthis doctrine of a “social amnesia” that the ethnologist issupposed to bring back to life (Stahl, 1983).

165 There is not an ethnological interest in sexualpractices or licentious jokes, for instance, and one willnever see a peasant’s toilet in a peasants’ museum.

166 “These poems are diveded into three distinct cate-gories: ballads, doine and hore,” Alecsandri claims and of-fers a rather impressionistic description of each of them(Alecsandri, [1852] 1965 : 99).

167 Further re-working of folk-typologies is even con-sidered at the core of what a leading folklorist calls “a sec-ond life of folklore”” “Folkloristic has a great responsibil-ity mission in the first and most important stage of whatwe called ‘the second life of folklore:’ the re-grouping ofthe material in scientific collections in a different envi-ronment than the one genuine folklore exists in. It shouldbe discovered firstly, then recorded (collected), processed,archived, preserved, systematized in a typological form, an-thologized, and, last but not least, offered as a model,through its most representative facts in a scientific usage.Through all these activities, the genuine message shouldnot, under any circumstances, be distorted” (Ispas, 2003 :31, our underlining).

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