The Pro Ethnologia 9 issue examines different phenomena of urban and rural lifestyles. The collection mostly involves reports held in the 40th annual conference of the Estonian National Museum called "On Rural and Urban Areas", held on 14. 15 April 1999. In addition, the present issue also includes some other papers on relevant subjects.
The examination of folk culture emerged when learned people living in cities started to research rural lifestyle. In time the traditional peasant (or heathen) way of life is moving away from urban researchers, thus becoming more exotic and sacred for them. On the other hand, together with the present process of cultural changes, the emergence of the "global village" has been proposed. The "remote" peasant or heathen lifestyles are gradually losing their sacredness that would not ease the understanding of them. The gradual profaning of traditional cultures, however, has turned researchers to various aspects of the urban way of life.
The foundation of the Estonian National Museum on 14 April 1909 was also related to the aspect that researching the traditional peasant lifestyle by the first generation urban learned people in Estonia reached a new stage, assuming the qualities of scientific research. The ENM provided a systematically supplemented collection of material culture and written records. Also, the interest of Estonian ethnologists and folklore researchers in various aspects of the urban way of life has increased considerably within recent years.
The somewhat greater emphasis on urban phenomena at the present moment is very appropriate, as there are only a few papers on urban subjects published in Estonia so far. In this respect, this collection could be regarded as an initiator of possible research on urban anthropology and ethnology in the future. The papers published in this issue can be seen as "deviations" from the authors' traditional research subjects.
Gbor Wilhelm from Hungarian Ethnographic Museum reports in his article "Living in a Flat: A House in Europe" on the international research project "A House in Europe". The project was carried out during the years 1994. 1996, with the Netherlands, Germany and Hungary participating in it. The author analyses the reasons behind the project, as well as goals and achieved results. The present paper mostly includes materials of Budapest. The described experiment is very interesting, especially considering ethnological aspects, and might inspire researchers of other cultures to initiate similar projects examining urban way of life.
In her article "About the Study of Birth Customs in Towns and in the Country" Marika Mikkor discusses changes in birth customs of Estonians within the last 50 years. The article is noteworthy for it examines some shocking cultural phenomena for the first time in Estonian ethnology. The author's existential and intimate viewpoint reveals the curiosities of maternity hospitals in the Soviet period.
Mare Piho's article "Setu Silver Decorative Jewellery in the Context of Town Culture" is dedicated to the analysis of one of most distinctive characteristics of Setu women culture. Nowadays different aesthetic and semantic changes are underway in the world of Setu jewellery. The study of silver jewellery in towns is connected with the identity problems, collective memory and religious matters of town Setus.
Heiki Prdi examines in his article "The Crumbling of the Estonian Peasant Time Concept" changes in the attitudes of Estonians to time during the 20th century. According to Prdi, the modernisation of the time concept of Estonians has taken place only recently. This indicates that even today the "official" time concept based on the clock need not be predominant. The topic is a cultural phenomenon involving diverse aspects that this paper only starts to pursue.
Art Leete's article "Dramatic Urban Experience of the Khanties" is based on Tatyana Moldanova's, a Khanty ethnologist, accounts of the impact of urban culture on Khanty fishermen or hunters' state of mind, when they move from seasonal settled areas to large settlements. The paper examines briefly some changes in the traditional worldview of Khanties. The approach is subjective, showing adaptability of the individual, as well as choices within the rapidly urbanising world.
In his article "Town and Country among Finno-Ugrians" Heno Sarv gives a thorough survey, considering both time and space aspects, of the ethnohistory of Finno-Ugrians living in an area around the river Volga. The author considers urban and rural cultures as a cultural-ecological symbiosis that has not effectively worked among Finno-Ugrians in the 20th century. The main reason for this, according to the author, was the predominantly town-oriented objectives of the Soviet power.
Stefan Bohman's article about the collection and analysing of autobiographical materials deals with aspects of collecting biographies of workers in the Nordiska museet, Sweden since the 1940s. The author analyses relations between facts and opinions in biographies, as well as people's preferences when telling or putting down one or another story from their past and the representative quality of biographies. According to the author, an important aspect is to consider the informants' attitude to the story, his relationship with the researcher, and the researcher's relation to the people who read the result.
Ilmari Vesterinen's article "Dependency Analysis as a Tool for the Study of Village Culture" is an account of dependency analysis as a tool for the study of the totality of a village culture. Dependency is the key conception underlying the analysis. The target is the relationships which exists between the village's various households. The main goal is to discover how the village functions, and how the inter-familial relationships . which are often not well understood, even by the principal actors themselves . between the households make up the village as a whole.
The ENM thanks the Estonian Cultural Endowment whose help has been essential for the carrying out of the 40th conference of the Estonian National Museum and for the publishing of this issue. We are grateful to our authors and reviewers who have contributed to this edition.
