Towards a new ethnology

The previous issue of AJEC had ‘Ethnological Approaches to Cultural Heritages’ as its theme. As that issue was being produced, the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore (SIEF) held its 9th Congress, entitled ‘Transcending European Heritages: Liberating the Ethnological Imagination’, at the University of Ulster during the week 16–20 June, 2008 (see Fenske 2008 for details). This offered an opportunity to explore our theme further, and therefore the plenary speakers at that congress, representing a broad spectrum of backgrounds and approaches, nationalities and intellectual biographies, were invited to submit their texts for the present issue........