| Kristin Kuutma: Collaborative Representations. Interpreting the Creation of a Sámi Ethnography and a Seto Epic. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica). 2006. 282 pp.
ISBN 951-41-0969-4 (paperback) 30 euros (hardback) |
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| CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS are constructed through interaction of cultural researchers and culture bearers. A study of collaborative processes that resulted in published representations of Sámi and Seto traditional culture requires an exploration of the emerged voices and representational agencies, editorial activities and reception histories. The focus of this book revolves around two manifestly representative texts from the early twentieth century: Johan Turi’s story of Sámi experience Muitalus sámiid birra and the Seto epic Peko performed by Anne Vabarna. The current analysis of the complex performative interaction between the culture bearer, his or her repertoire, and the culture researcher benefits from an interdisciplinary anthropological and folkloristic approach, informed by hybridity and the blurring of disciplinary boundaries in historicizing inquiries into documentation and textual practices.
KRISTIN KUUTMA is an Associate Professor teaching folkloristics and ethnology at the University of Tartu. She has published articles on the implementation of cultural heritage in representation and in recontextualized communicative practices. Her recent work in disciplinary history includes the co-editing of Studies in Estonian Folkloristics and Ethnology: A Reader and Reflexive History (Tartu University Press, 2005). |
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