Engaging Ethnography and Tourism. A Native Festival Organiser\u27s Experience

U etnologiji su sve glasniji zahtjevi za istraživanjem s namjenom društvenog djelovanja. Posebno se istraživačko ishodište uspostavlja kada je etnolog već unaprijed dio društvenoga procesa koji namjerava istražiti te svojim znanjem na njega i djelovati. Autor obrađuje vlastito iskustvo omladinskog aktivista, odnosno organizatora festivala i etnografa domaćeg okoliša. Također pojašnjava zašto je svoje istraživanje usmjerio na polje turizma.While “anthropology at home” has become a widely recognised research agenda, research deriving from the researcher’s own identity, locality and habitual practices is still not a very common practice. The author analyses how certain aspects of his own (local) identity formation constituted his fieldwork projects. He shows how his local identification evolved through interaction with certain place-making processes, which he was also analysing as a researcher. At a certain point the author realised he was not merely ethnographically documenting these processes, but was also actively initiating them. His role of “fellow passenger” thus developed into a consciously activist role. Since at the time tourism was emerging as a generator of local change and public hope, the author too engaged in tourism-related activities, namely music festivals. The author also points out certain ethical dilemmas that have accompanied his untypical research agenda, and discusses the possibilities of ethnography and tourism for creating a nonreactionary concept of place and local identity