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
But in the case of the cultural facts studied by European ethnologists, not only the spatial scales are to be considered. Cultural facts themselves are also grouped in categories and clusters bounded by conceptual boundaries which have their proper scales like Russian dolls. As the French ethnologist and archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan pointed out more than 50 years ago, ethnographic facts can be grouped or distinguished by category-specific boundaries according to the „classificatory distance“ at which one takes them into consideration. Between the sometimes unique micro-local variant encountered in the field and the often universal general ontological category to which it can be considered to belong, an infinite variety of category-specific levels, scales or boundaries can be chosen. Here again we encounter the fractal idea, but related to the „classificatory boundaries“ or categories which allow ethnographic facts to be distinguished ipso facto. Confronted with this problem, ethnologists and anthropologists either impose their own, so-called „etic“, categories onto the reality observed or they „borrow“ local, so-called „emic“ categories from the people they study. The wellknown „ Wörter und Sachen“ problem is a good example of this type of category-specific complexity as it puts into relation local, emic names and taxonomies with, for example, scholarly, etic categories based on the morphology or function of artefacts. But borders and boundaries between ethnographic facts do not only appear or disappear on maps according to the geographical scales or the „classificatory distances“ at which they are studied. In order to have a scientific „existence“, they also depend on other variables among which time is probably one of the most important. Cultural facts change in time: they appear, change, disappear and sometimes reappear after a period of absence. One of the main problems encountered by European ethnologists has been the extreme variety in the historical depth of many of the cultural items and especially artefacts encountered in the field. As is well known, this lack of temporal precision has been a recurrent source of debate among specialists using cartographic methods. Except in a few cases where precise historic data were available, the drawing of cultural boundaries concerning diachronic changes of ethnographic facts has shown itself to be quite hazardous especially when social or technical parameters have „blurred“ the data7. Another, quite different aspect of ethnological interest in borders and boundaries and in particular geopolitical ones, concerns what may be called „administrative belonging“, which has largely influenced local cultures in many places. The modem Nation-States especially have very often had since the XIXth century active policies of „nationalising“ local and regional cultures8 But earlier administrations have also frequently imposed regulations and rules which have become part of both material culture (architecture, technical solutions,....) and immaterial culture (language or dialects, property regulations, taxes,...) in large regions and which have survived geo-administrative changes. This interaction between global administrative regulations and more local cultural facts is often most visible at present but also at past administrative borders. During the last decades a series of historic, ethnological and social-anthropological case studies (Col and Wolf 1974, Sahlins 1989, Donnán and Wilson 1998, Minnich 1998,...) has interestingly documented this ethnographically by showing how particular forms of national identities have been (re)elaborated in border areas in parallel with specific „border identities“. They often nicely illustrate the fractal nature of geo-political bor7 Cf. for example Voskuil 1982-83, 105-116. 8 Cf. Ethnologia Europaea XIX, 1, 1989 176
