Etnologin på gärdsgården?

Abstract

Ethnology ”Hanging on the Farm Fence?”

To discuss our subject’s core and sense is of course an important, not to say necessary, element in all academic activity. But we are also proned to adapt to a changing academic reality, with students that request usefulness and employment prior to education and analytical ability. Is it possible to find an input to new and former labour markets, without giving up on the aspiration to represent a research tradition that wants to be subversive, creative and free in thought? Can we maintain and increase our scientific legitimacy, depth and weight, and still find new fields and create a more distinct identity for the labour market?

My hypothesis is that Ethnology in its eagerness to win in scientific weight has freed itself from earlier labour markets and has become a pure academic matter, a matter that aims to research – but nevertheless remained so, so to say ”hanging on the farm fence”, since we have never received the admission that for example History enjoys.