Romanian ethnology.

The making of the peasant

Vintila Mihailescu
The lecture presents Romanian ethnology and its ideological roots in the parallel making of
the peasant.
As in most of the countries of the region, Romanian ethnology was a nation-building one
(Stocking, 1982). Having to back up the building of modernity starting from an essentially
peasant society, it had to up-lift peasant culture to a national culture, turning the peasant to
the very image of its identity and prestige. In doing so, ethnology also built a sui generis
category of social facts: traditions. The lecture will follow the patrimonialization of peasant
culture and the theoretical and empirical implications of the commitment to traditions as
compared with the durkheimian social facts.