Understanding a Discipline and its Object or the Unheroic History of Ethnology and Anthropology in Lithuania

• Authors: Auksuolė Čepaitienė
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Anthropological practices are local in craft, intellectual and disciplinary tradition, and they are just as different. The article will discuss the ways in which ethnology and anthropology are understood, constitute their identity in Lithuania in historical retrospection and among the spectrum of scientifi c domains, and which aspects appear signifi cant in the process of their institutionalization. It highlights the historical roots of ethnology and anthropology in Lithuania traced to the intellectual environment of Vilnius University of the late 18th century and early 19th century; emphasizes the infl uences of cultural evolutionism and the Vienna school; discusses the efforts to institutionalize the disciplines within the contemporary politics of science in Lithuania; and claims of the disciplines for the future. The article concludes with an emphasis on the methodological value of ethnography that witnesses the vitality of ethnological and anthropological thought in Lithuania, and affi rms the paradigmatic uniqueness of ethnology and anthropology among the spectrum of sciences.

Keywords

EN

disciplining; history of ethnology and anthropology; ethnography as methodology; classificatory systems of science; Lithuania

Discipline

• ETHNOLOGY: ETHNOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Český lid: etnologický časopis (Český lid: Ethnological journal)
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 103
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 163-180
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Auksuolė Čepaitienė

• Český lid, redakce, Etnologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic