How did an African elephant reach a North European museum?
What makes fashion displayed in museums such a hot topic
today? Two of the articles in this issue of Ethnologia Europaea
deal with museum ideologies. Liv Emma Thorsen’s essay follows
the story of a museum elephant. What lessons can be drawn from
its death, transport and exhibition in a postcolonial world? Marie
Riegels Melchior looks at the intersection of the fashion industry
and nation branding as an arena for developing new museums.
These two articles tie in with Alexandra Schwell’s reflections
on ideological shifts in Austrian state officials’ concept of the
nation’s place on the political landscape, past and present.
Patrick Laviolette explores metaphors of emplacement to
understand regional character through its linguistic idiom.
Relying on extensive fieldwork, Vihra Barova employs classical
kinship scholarship to understand present-day Bulgarian village
ties as they are expressed in the festivities of extended families.