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[email protected] EUROPEANIZATION AS STRATEGY Disciplinary Shifts in Switzerland and the Formation of European Ethnology Konrad J. Kuhn This paper examines the epistemological and institutional activities in the field of Volkskunde/ folklore studies in Switzerland leading to the discipline’s reformation as “European ethnology”. Drawing on archival materials, the article takes Arnold Niederer (1914–1998) as a starting point by showing how Niederer, his networks and research contexts were involved in the formation of the loose alliance of interests that were subsequently institutionalized. This paper traces the new perception of the discipline “European ethnology” as it draws on early transnational contacts of Swiss Folklore Studies in order to overcome the crisis in which Volkskunde found itself in the 1960s. Europeanization and an orientation toward the present were strategies to stabilize the academic discipline but also to establish the discipline in the public sphere. Keywords: European ethnology, Volkskunde/folklore studies, history of knowledge, disciplinary historiography, Switzerland European ethnology has never been a coherent, con- cross-cultural interests were present already well be- clusive discipline but has rather been a loose network fore the institutionalization of the corresponding re- of interests, topics and collaborations. This had al- search context. Thus, he is one of the pioneers of the ready been the case as numerous institutions such as discipline; a comparative perspective on the Alpine the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore region and research on forms of cooperative work or- (SIEF) and the journal Ethnologia Europaea were ganized at the community level kindled his interest in founded.