Ethnologia Europaea - Journal For European Ethnology
Ethnologia Europaea - Journal For European Ethnology
Ethnologia Europaea - Journal For European Ethnology
In this paper, we investigate the background and history that ethnologists bring to bear on interdisciplinary innovation projects. We argue that although ethnology is well-equipped to contribute to
innovation projects, our discipline also builds upon a series of conceptual configurations, and that
these classic ethnological concepts and taken for granted understandings sit oddly with contemporary ideas about innovation as expressed in recent Danish innovation policy. These reflections
were prompted by our participation in a joint innovation project funded by a Danish programme
for user-driven innovation. By revisiting the discipline of ethnology as it has been conducted in
southern Scandinavia, we identify three key points that explain our concerns regarding the way in
which everyday life was analysed and configured in the innovation project.
Keywords: everyday life practices, user-driven innovation, tinkering, resistance
2012). With their apparently intimate understanding of users, the Minister envisioned social scientists
as key players in innovation and product development, who could take on the task of ensuring growth
in the private sector.
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mechanisms by which they are changed. These conceptualisations, which are normally more or less implicit, were challenged and therefore also articulated
through our participation in the project. We revisit
our ethnographic backgrounds and history in order
to more fully understand the contrast between our
approach to innovation processes and the one articulated in the UDI programmes, especially by the
scholars from Future Studies. But first we describe
some of the main characteristics of UDI. In doing
so, we hope to provide the reader with an insight into
the types of understandings that we encountered,
and with which we found ourselves at odds throughout the project.
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of phenomena we tend to think of as devoid of history (Foucault [1971]1977). In line with this version
of genealogy, we revisit some of the classic Scandinavian3 ethnological studies that formed the backbone
of our education. Through a couple of cases in point,
we revisit studies of habits and routines, as well as
notions that deal with the adaptation of new lifestyles, such as longue dure and neoculturation,
and the ideology of the good life. On the basis of
this, we qualify and rearticulate our understanding
of the resistance and inertness of transformations
to everyday life, and the conditions under which
everyday life can be reconfigured. This brings forth
an alternative vision of innovation in the realm of
everyday life practices; one which lies closer to the
ethnological body of knowledge.
The relationship between past, present and future
everyday life practices has been one of the pivotal
focuses of the ethnological disciplines. However,
everyday life is not to be perceived as an entity or an
object in and of itself. Rather, as an object of study,
it is configured and shaped in specific types of agendas, problematisations and concerns. The ethnological understanding of everyday life is not just a body
of knowledge compiled through disciplined investigation at different times. Instead, everyday life,
as a concept and a body of knowledge, has become
intelligible and authoritative in various and specific
historical contexts and situated fields of knowledge.
Based on our return visit to the ethnological classics, we suggest three key points that also have the
potential to answer our initial question of why we
were so concerned by the way everyday life was configured in the project. Accordingly, we present the
response we came up with based on our ethnological
body of knowledge. Our first point relates to the shift
from a focus on an individualistic user to a focus on
households and heterogeneous practices. The second point is concerned with a shift from the idea of
abrupt movements between distinctly different scenarios to an emphasis on innovation as an ongoing
tinkering, and as changes in and of an established
order. The third point deals with the role that ethnologists are called upon to play, and points to the
difference between, on the one hand, the role of an
agent of radical change or reformist and, on the other hand, the more traditional (curatorial) role which
often is played by ethnologists.
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which was regarded as a resource that could strengthen the state. Often, the vicars accounts stemmed
from the idea that knowledge about the facts relating
to the conditions and nature of the population was
an important precondition for improving the economy of the country (Damsholt 1995). Thus, investigation and intervention were part of the same practice. In this perspective, everyday habits were by no
means considered valuable or worth preserving; on
the contrary, they were considered barriers to progress. The superstition and backward irrationality
of the peasants and their everyday life was viewed as
something to be overcome, and change was expected
to come through enlightenment. Spreading informative material, education, and setting a good example became technologies in this biopolitical project
to improve the health, civilisation and productivity
of the common people.
If the peasantry as a central resource of the state
was to be fully exploited, barriers had to be eliminated. In the biopolitical perspective, everyday life
and its resistance to (or possibility for) change thus
became central objects of study. Could peasant culture and everyday life be changed? And if so, how?
The vicars involved in mapping life and habits in
their parishes had different ideas about the causes
of resistance. Some believed the backwardness was a
matter of character (e.g. Junge 1798), while others
believed that it was a question of living conditions
(e.g. Blicher 1795). Different beliefs also led to different solutions for changing habits. Despite all of these
differences, the vicars agreed that everyday life and
routines seemed to have inherent reasons or logics
that made them difficult to change from the outside
(for more on this topic, see Damsholt 1995). In this
way, one could argue that everyday life as an object
of study and body of knowledge was (and is) shaped
within governmental practices with specific agendas
of improvement and change. As mentioned earlier,
the change and improvement projects of the twentyfirst century are often discursively articulated as innovation (Godin 2012, 2013).
A similar entanglement of investigation and intervention (and thus a war against habits) was the
mainstay of studies of everyday life among common
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everyday life, we must analyse the necessary preconditions for the acceptance and integration of such
new cultural elements. The structures of everyday
life are obstinate structures, resistant to change.
To understand potentials and barriers to innovation,
we must investigate how the subjects of everyday innovations perceive the good life.
Another important conceptual translation of the
longue dure and the view of the good life, which
is relevant when analysing the complex adaptation of
new lifestyles or routines, is the notion of neoculturation as developed by the Danish ethnologist Tho
mas Hjrup in the context of his theory of life-mode
analysis (1983, 2003). Here, the point of departure
is the understanding of a population as culturally
heterogeneous. However, rather than dividing the
population into classes or an infinite number of subcultures, Hjrup argues for an (analytical) division
into a number of life-modes; fundamentally different forms of practice, ideology, social organisation
and ways of structuring everyday life. The empirical examples that are used to illustrate the different
life-modes are seldom concerned with individuals,
but rather focus on families and households. These
collective subjects (with the same or aligned lifemodes) do not necessarily pursue the same universal
goals. Even if they use the same words, their understandings of the central aspects of everyday life are
culturally diverse; each life-mode corresponds to a
specific ideology, teleology or version of the good
life that people try to practice.5 The central point
here is that the bearers of a certain life-mode will attempt to live their version of the good life as well as
possible under their given living conditions. In that
sense, the good life is like an obstinate structure of
everyday life.
Being inherently distinct, the life-modes each define the specific, necessary preconditions for their
reproduction. If these preconditions are threatened,
they must be defended (2003: 15), as life-modes are
always striving for the necessary conditions. Every
bearer constantly struggles to maintain, re-establish
or create in new forms the conditions of possibility for their own life-mode. This process is called
neoculturation (2003: 28). As conditions of living
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singular users needs, and the future as a hidden unknown. The configuration we passed on was also an
experiment on how to render genuinely ethnological
knowledge into a form that could be accessible and
usable to the subsequent phases of the innovation
project, and which would eventually have a recognisable impact on the resulting innovation. Our argument for a performative tinkering approach to
everyday life was not based on the idea that everyday
life does not change. Nor did we, as ethnologists,
want everyday life to be fixed or remain the same;
on the contrary. As we have mentioned, we identified seven rationales in the ethnographic material. A
rationale should be understood as a relatively stable
pattern of practice that households and individuals
enact and to which they relate. A rationale never exists alone; there is always more than one rationale
in play and, in practice, they align or clash in multiple ways. Furthermore, we argue that the described
rationales are not only stable patterns of practice in
specific households, but that they are also longue
dure in the sense that they will probably also exist
in ten years. They may well be articulated, materialised and combined in slightly new ways, but they
are not likely to evaporate or change radically. Thus,
we dispense with the idea of abrupt movements towards future scenarios and instead point to an understanding of innovation as an ongoing tinkering
with and within an established order. Thus, any innovation in the field of grocery shopping should take
these rationales into consideration in order to create
sustainable innovations.
In the process of handing over the ethnographic
findings, we chose to package our material in
quite a specific way. For each of the rationalities,
we created a portfolio containing both a conceptual
description of the rationale and a collection of quotations, observations and images, which illustrated
the rationality. The portfolios were meant to serve as
a source of inspiration and point to new potentials,
which could bring the everyday practices and diverse
ideas of the good life into the innovation project.
Conceptualised and packaged in this manner, the rationales became a distinct ethnological contribution
that drew upon classical notions such as households,
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Notes
1 We visited a total of 36 households over a period of
three months, using methods such as participant observations, qualitative interviews, visual ethnography,
walk and talks, surfing conversations and design
games (see also Jespersen et al. 2010; Jespersen & Breddam 2010).
2 Our translation of the following statement in Danish:
en uheldig holdning til fremtiden, fordi de antyder, at
fremtiden er noget, man kan kende (hvis man er klog
nok), dvs. at fremtiden for s vidt er fastlagt.
3 The sample is highly subjective and selective, and
consists mainly of some of the Danish and Swedish
ethnological studies that formed the backbone of our
education in the 1980s and 90s at the Ethnology Section, University of Copenhagen. Thus, although questions of change and everyday life have been thoroughly
discussed outside Scandinavia (e.g. by Bausinger and
Schtz), our focus remains the Scandinavian perspective on the discipline in our revisit.
4 The description of the peasantry was mostly undertaken by the clergy, partly in the format of parish-topographies. Vicars and curates were familiar with the outlook and everyday life of the peasants, and the priestly
call also involved popular education in both religion
and the agrarian economy (Hortsbll 1983).
5 Hjrup does not refer to Redfields understanding of
the concept of the good life. However, in spite of the
differences in their theoretical background, the inspiration may very well stem from Redfield and his significance in Danish ethnology of the 1970s.
6 The aim of this analysis of societal change is to explore, calculate, and specify the conditions for adding
new features in a given social formation and excluding
others (2003: 153).
7 Eventually, individual subjects work to maintain their
mode of existence, and the necessary innovations in-
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