Ethnology and Local Recalled Knowledge
Transmission of social memory in the village studies of the Seurasaari Foundation
Keywords:
local recalled knowledge, social memory, village studies, history of ethnologyAbstract
Villages as a research topic have interested Finnish ethnologists since the 1920s. According to many ethnological historiographies the Finnish village studies were a natural result of Finnish independence obtained in 1917. The main concern of the study was directed to local Finnish questions instead of the Finno-Ugric fields in Russia (the Soviet Union). The village studies in general contextualize the problematics between the little and the big or the integrating of micro and macro levels of research. As local studies they refer to the central meaning that the specific and the experience-near have had for ethnology. But the villages have also been seen as a kind of "laboratories" or "windows" to investigate larger cultural features at micro level, in restricted local and social context. (Lehtonen 1968, 338-339; Sallinen-Gimpl 1984, 94-98; Räsänen 1993, 11-14; Vesterinen 1995, 16-17.)
