Liszka József (szerk.): Az Etnológiai Központ Évkönyve 2000-2001 - Acta Ethnologica Danubiana 2-3. (Dunaszerdahely-Komárom, 2001)

1. Tanulmányok - Schippers, Thomas K.: A határok egyenlőtlensége s annak módszertani következményei az európai etnológusok számára

“nationals” with this particular form of popular (cartographic) imagery. Here national borders often became, in an era of nationalism, the metaphoric contours of Self, of a „second skin“. The well-known anthropomorphic or zoomorphic representations of the various European Nations as in popular newspapers around the turn of XXth century, has led towards many forms of border/body images, reinforcing among the general public this identification with the national territory as an extension of one’s Self and as an accepted representation of the “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) formed by the Nation. This familiarity and consequent identification by most people with diverse graphic and cartographic representations of the national space have frequently led to a very emotional relationship in regard to administrative borders, which in it’s turn has caused some worries for ethnocartographers. Not only have national or regional administrative borders formed the geographic limits of most ethnocartographic investigations, but in the (few) cases where these were „crossed“ by researchers for scientific purposes, this has generally given rise to reactions of anger and protest from both politicians and ordinary people3. Such emotional responses also seem to prove that the establishment of borders and limits are generally considered in Europe as the exclusive attributes of the legal authorities currently in place. Here every form of transgression of this tacit rule, even perhaps the academic mapping of some particular tool or of some nursery rhyme, can here become considered as potential threats to the politically established boundaries which could lead indirectly as a possible reappraisal of the national entity. Even within a Nation-State like France, when cultural cartography seems to indicate not officially recognised interior regions or even cross-border cultural similarities, very few cartographic research projects have actually “dared” to draw borders or limits (Le Bras & Todt 1981), most preferring to publish only maps with „dotted“ data within the “official” borders. In modem Europe spatial transgression appears as being closely linked to social transgression.

All this seems to indicate that the idea of a limit separating a „within“, a „we-group“ from a „beyond“ of „others“ has become profoundly ingrained in European mentalities, where it models not only the individual and collective perception of geographical, but also of social and cultural „spaces of belonging“4. On the other hand, the acknowledgement of forms of „otherness“ in regard to oneself, leads people to suppose the crossing of some kind of limit or even barrier to which they then often try to grant a mental „demarcation line“. Here we should ask ourselves why these banal everyday experiences of (mental) border crossing and „otherness“, have caused so many problems to ethnocartographers who, as a result, have been very reluctant to actually draw any borderlines, at least „in public“ (i.e. in published documents)?

Many European ethnocartographers have justified their hesitations or even their refusal to draw limits or boundaries on maps presenting cultural data, either because of the too precise, too sharp character of a line on a map or on the other hand because of the very complex nature or fuzziness of the data from the field. As a result, the sharpness of a black line drawn on a white cartographic background seems to involve such a degree of interpretation on behalf of the academic designer, that very few have been willing to acknowledge the authorship of such

3 The case of the questionnaires of the Atlas der Deutsche Volkskunde (ADV) sent in the early 1930s

to various German-speaking regions outside the German Republic, is a well-known example of the difficulties encountered by academic researchers trying to cross national borders.

4 Cf. Anthony Cohen 1986, 1-21.

174