Ethnology between Cultural History and Contemporary Studies
The world changed in the 1970s, with ‘new economy’, technological revolution and new social movements, which also changed the direction of Swedish ethnology. There was a need to contrast cultural history with anthropology – today they are linked together. Ethnological studies have always dealt with conditions of life in different societies as well as with norms and values, artefacts, buildings, landscapes, places and the social categories within which we experience the world. When Nils Lithberg, the first occupant of the Hallwyl chair was installed in Stockholm 1919, he called ethnology a science of human beings. He believed that though we may never find the answer to the riddle about them we must always chase it.
In that chase I think that ethnologists might be continuously successful in searching for shortcuts between the facts of cultural history and the contemporary analytical models of explanation. Since there is no present without history, we should not make a difference between research in contemporary society and in history, the strength of ethnology is to do both.
