SELF-REFERENTIALITY AND INTER-REFERENTIALITY IN ROMANIAN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (1964–2012)

Abstract

The bibliographic retrospective of the practice of cultural anthropology in Romania is significant for the actuality of a process of changing and renewing the scientific interest and the inquest “field” of Romanian researchers. More precisely, the self-referential or “intra-cultural” knowledge about Romanian communities or groups of population currently appears to be turned into a inter-referential knowledge, with a cross-cultural content. It is through such theoretical and methodological metamorphosis that the study of minority ethno-linguistic communities in Romania takes part to a contextualized understanding of Romanian cultural identities in relation to the groups of Magyars, Germans, Roma, Russian-speaking Lipovans, Turks, Croatians etc. As a result, my text attempts to evaluate the inner dynamics of Romanian cultural anthropology in terms of a critical synthesis of the local specialized literature, in the context of anthropological disciplinary evolution in Central and Southeastern Europe