Ethnography Of Mundane Transition: Matrices And Distortions

Principal researcher: Ines Prica
Researchers and associates: Melanija Belaj, Lada Čale Feldman, Renata Jambrešić Kirin, Maja Povrzanović Frykman, Nives Rittig-Beljak, Reana Senjković, Tea Škokić

Based on the insights of the ethnography of war, that the same group of researchers carried out within the Interdisciplinary research on values in Croatian culture project, the planned project aims at the whole range of transdisciplinary oriented ethnographies based on models of culture – ideologies, political and socio-economic structures, cultural politics, patterns of behaviour – that detach the very focus of distortion of these patterns within their mundane embodiments and living practices. Ethnographic views related to phenomenologically-critical interests of cultural studies would be aimed at (applying iconographic analysis and approaches of oral history, folklore studies, literary and theatre anthropology) qualitative research of the Ťinvisibleť cultural content of mundane transition – a concept constructed to denote the process of cognitive reorganisation of the cartography of identities within hierarchical reverses. On the assumption that it is exactly the distortion towards a model that becomes a temporary model, the constitution of hybrid mundane practices will be demonstrated as a kind of cultural corrective towards binary figurations that govern national narration. Insight will be given into the scenes of transgression of cultural matrices, that through their marginality and not-belongingness also elude nominal points of reference of other scientific disciplines: personal dystopia and collective utopia; the Ťcitizenry and peasantryť phenomenon; the secular and religious in Socialism; comic and serious, appropriate and inappropriate in media discourse standard; cultural metropolis and margins; self-censorship and tacit norms of political correctness; intelectuals’ black lists and white books; the Gastarbeiter phenomenon; deviant intelectual, gender and age-related configurations; cultural coding of love; culinary code and social norms. The result of the project are expected (four books, three collections of essays, one PhD and one MA thesis, as well as other articles and studies), being well-documented and evocative scientific documents, to help form dialogical analytical ground for social identification and revaluation of the Croatian vernacular cultural history in its specific 20th-century context. By archiving documents (IEF archives), organising international conferences as well as participating at other conferences, forums and seminars, the result would further be made available to both home and international public.