Provocations of European Ethnology

AT A SPECIAL WORKSHOP held in the fall of 1994, we gathered to discuss the rapid growth of interest in European ethnography and ethnology, especially since the foundation of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe in 1986, and its implications for the larger development of anthropological theory. 1 After the deliberations, each of us developed the position paper originally formulated for that initial encounter. The texts that follow are the result. They claim neither thematic nor theoretical unity, but they do suggest that the refocusing of anthropological interest on one of the discipline's cultural contexts of emergence, coupled with the geopolitical shifts of the past decade, may have contributed to a reconsideration of the role of social and cultural anthropology in the formulation of a social theory. In one sense the "anthropologizing" of Europe was a necessary methodological counterpart to the dethronement of Europe as the fount of all wisdom. But what, for those who still (or for the first time) claim it as their identity and home, is Europe? We offer these brief ruminations