Classical Ethnological Scholars in the Future
Ethnology is searching for its classical scholars in a time when canonization of the old big ones is in focus. History legitimizes a normal order and three of them from the 40s and 50s have become sacrosanct in the discussion. These three classics have not only a common focus on the concreteness, but also that the Swedish traditional material is related to and can be compared to similar international matters. What will the classics of the future look like in a contemporary research climate where everything is fluid and the old professors of ethnology write books based on personal reflections and private dreams instead of research based on empirical material? What does it mean when reviewers comment on these books that the authors should start researching the area? Is their research not being taken seriously? Will they become classics? Or will any of the doctoral dissertations from 2007 written by women born during the same 70s that gave birth to Culture builders become the classics of the future?
