Nova shvaćanja regije i kulture
New Perceptions of Region and Culture

Summary/Abstract: Region and culture are both constructions, which today result in a new reality of its own. The region is today filled up with a set of cultural images which have been selected in a more or less public discourse, created by the media and supported with material from the folklore and ethnological archives. While the pre-modern region was defined and shaped by legal norms, the legal regularities of pre-modern jurisdiction, concerning for instance dress, wedding ceremonies, access to musical instruments, food and rituals in general, have been transformed and interpreted anew as "cultural" and described as a regional colouring. This regional colouring functions as an opposition to the interpretation of the big cities and the world as "uniformed", "grey" and "too complex", as dangerous and as a place of crime and the mafia. Ethnology becomes a part of that game by a practising exotism at home, by describing the self-evident which has not been discussed before in its new function as being something very special and distinctive. So the self-evident which, by the way, was produced in a historically formed process, now has to be regarded as very special, as clearly different from others, and subsequently can be investigated like the exotics from abroad. It can be talked about as "history" or as story. We refer to the differences mainly as to "culture". So the connection between the region and its culture is a man made one — and also, for example, the idea of "belonging" (Jonas Frykman) to a localisable community as a counter-strategy towards Europeanisation, globalisation or whatever. Europeanisation again argues mainly with a history which has been declared as the cultural capital of Europe. It functions as counteridea against the fear of the Americanisation of Europe and the world.

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