Ethnography and Matija Majar
ETHNOGRAPHY AND MATIJA MAJAR JURIJ FIKFAK This article 1 examines the research issues and personal V članku avtor obravnava raziskovalne dileme Mati- problems faced by Matija Majar (a.k.a. Ziljski), one ja Majarja Ziljskega, enega najpomembnejših zbiral- of the most important collectors of folk culture mate- cev sestavin ljudske kulture sredi 19. stoletja, njegovo rial in the mid-nineteenth century, his place among mesto med drugimi raziskovalci in njegove namere, other researchers, his intentions, and, not least of all, nenazadnje tudi recepcijo njegovega dela pri sodob- the reception of his work among his contemporaries. nikih. Keywords: Matija Majar, ethnography, folk culture, Ključne besede: Matija Majar, narodopisje, ljudska philology. kultura, filologija. The appearance and the culture of Others—those that are unknown and different— have always attracted attention� The discipline that strove to discover, define, and study these Others developed in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries under various names, but mostly as ethnography (Germ� Volkskunde or Völkerkunde)� However, the motives for the discipline’s development were diverse� On the one hand, they concerned the traveler’s view of exotic cultures abroad in non-European countries or, in one’s own country, the view of the “uncivilized” layers of the population� An important enlightenment motive stimulated by the state was registration, not only of land and property, but also of the various cultures and layers of the population� This motive was typical of
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