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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
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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
Anii 90_1_115 11/16/06 5:13 PM Page 187
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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-
188 Otilia Hede[an Vintil` Mih`ilescu
Anii 90_1_115 11/16/06 5:13 PM Page 188
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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:
The Making of the Peasant in Romanian Ethnology 189
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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.
190 Otilia Hede[an Vintil` Mih`ilescu
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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,
The Making of the Peasant in Romanian Ethnology 191
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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-
192 Otilia Hede[an Vintil` Mih`ilescu
Anii 90_1_115 11/16/06 5:13 PM Page 192
-
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
The Making of the Peasant in Romanian Ethnology 193
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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-
194 Otilia Hede[an Vintil` Mih`ilescu
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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-
The Making of the Peasant in Romanian Ethnology 195
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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?
196 Otilia Hede[an Vintil` Mih`ilescu
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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
The Making of the Peasant in Romanian Ethnology 197
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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).
198 Otilia Hede[an Vintil` Mih`ilescu
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