Towards an Ethnology Beyond Self, Other and Third: Toposophical Explorations

Ethnology has long been seen as concerned with, as one would nowadays say, ‘constructing the nation’, thus invariably lending support to the nationalist project. In the nineteenth century, this was a matter of consolidating the emerging nation states primarily, but not only in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. Whereas in the twentieth-century some Western European states have experienced regional nationalism (e.g. in Catalonia or Scotland) as a significant political force that draws on more or less spurious distinctions of Self and Other, in Central Europe – especially in Germany – there has been a greater reluctance to use any discourse of indigeneity, due to its past and present ideological abuse, making appropriate contextualisation of cultural heritage in terms of place and memory, necessary for any nationalist project, rather difficult. Key words: European ethnology, ‘salvage ethnology’, Cultural anthropology, Self, Other, Third