Museum (Ethnographic) Folklore vs. The Folklore of (Ethnologist) Museum Professionals

Abstract

In highly ideologized societies, such as socialist-era Serbia, every form of activity was officially declared as the result of the consensual free will of conscious participants. From a discursive perspective, ethnographic museum work also represented a kind of prism through which curators, experts, and institutional leadership set the tone and value framework for interpreting the folk culture of traditional communities. Looking back, this ideologically influenced system of professional selection, documentation, consideration, and subsequent representation within ethnographic museum practices can, from today’s perspective, be viewed as a form of ethnographic museum folklore. This so-called museum (ethnographic) folklore emerged and was maintained within a small yet, authoritative and informal social group of curators operating within the cultural heritage protection system. Recognizing the need for research into this phenomenon, as well as the initial hypothesis on the existence of such a form of folkloric activity, could be further considered within the broader context of motives, goals, and outcomes that characterized the processes of retraditionalization among various social groups during late socialism, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the ongoing transition period.