A Sami ethnography and a Seto epic: Two collaborative representations in their historical contexts (Johan Turi, Anne Vabarna, Stephen Greenblatt, James Clifford)

This dissertation explores the process behind the creation of two Sami and Seto representative texts by examining the contingent interactions and products in their sociocultural contexts, disputing the marginality accorded to these collaborative efforts and hybrid texts. The analysis reveals the existence of a multifaceted ethnographic “voice” in the two cultural landmarks examined, a voice in which a personal repertoire was broadened to encompass an entire people, a process which entailed an intended ethnographic representation and expression of identity.; Johan Turi's Muitalus sámiid birra (1910), an ethnographic text which is celebrated today as the first published secular book by a Sámi author written in Sámi, was born of an antithetical process of collaborative ethnographic writing. In it, Turi takes an active role in reconstituting self and society, establishing himself as a narrating subjectivity reflecting the experience of his people. The creation of the Seto epic known as Peko, composed by the Seto singer Anne Vabarna in 1927 represented a complicated collaborative interaction between folklorists documenting Seto tradition and a singer/poet constructing personal and communal identities. The resulting text can be seen as a negotiation between invented symbolic representation and the establishment of a personal voice through a combination of creativity and traditional repertoire.; The dissertation explores the collaborative frameworks in which these two texts were produced, probing the circumstances and individual relations as well as the representational agencies involved. The analysis applies an interdisciplinary anthropological and folkloristic approach, informed by hybridity and the blurring of disciplinary boundaries in historicizing inquiries into cultural documentation and textual practices. The examination of the observable poetics of culture and poetics of ethnography are informed by the interpretations of Stephen Greenblatt and James Clifford. The study furnishes an illustration of how we can rewrite and shift centers in cultural research to explore collaborative projects in the creation of texts which aim at providing a cultural representation, while re-examining the process and products within their historical contexts, discerning the voices produced and authorities contested within such works.