Villages on Stage: Folklore and Nationalism in the Republic of Moldova by Jennifer R. Cash (review)

In Villages on Stage: Folklore and Nationalism in the Republic of Moldova, Jennifer Cash explores the contemporary construction of national identity through amateur folk dance performances in Moldova, a former Soviet republic and now independent country. She concludes that Moldovan ethnographers construct a village-based identity, versus a nation-based one, by drawing on Soviet-era legacies, casting themselves as experts, and deploying authenticity. The book deals with topics solidly in the realm of folklorists, although in this study Cash approaches them through the anthropology of post-socialist Eastern Europe, a growing literature.

Villages on Stage opens with an overview of folklore displays, nationalism, boundaries in identity-creation, and critical ethnography, all as addressed in the North American literature on the anthropology of Eastern Europe. This chapter points clearly to the book’s disciplinary grounding in that field. Chapter 2 usefully moves to an introduction to Moldova, its historical ties to Romania and the USSR, Soviet nationality policies, and post-1991 Moldovan state identity policies. With the exception of region specialists, readers will find the historical information in this chapter central to understanding this study, although it is occasionally clouded by ambiguities.

Chapter 3 introduces the folcloric and etnofolcloric dance ensembles that are the focus of the remaining chapters. The chapter outlines continuities between the pre-1991 Soviet period and the 2000s, particularly the troupes’ multi-faceted relationship to the state as state-sponsored, but non-professional, organizations. Interestingly, the chapter also notes Moldova’s lack of a clear cultural policy regarding these folkloric performances of identity. Chapter 4 opens with a brief history of the 1980s folkloric movement, outlining how it unfolded between state-sponsored spheres and informal ones, and resulted in the establishment of numerous children’s amateur folk dance groups. The chapter then focuses in detail on folk dance festivals in the 2000s, which are really competitions, exploring the deliberate construction and evaluation of “authentic” folklore, the authorial voice of the folklorist-judge, and the link between the aesthetically authentic and the moral. Cash closes the chapter with a discussion of the political influence of the state and nationalism. Like the previous chapter, the majority of this one presents descriptive material, here from children’s amateur folk dance festivals.

Cash continues the focus on ethnographic materials in chapter 5 as she details her fieldwork trips with local, well-established folklorists and their related intellectual work. The ethnographic descriptions of these “expeditions” read as among the most compelling portions of the monograph. The chapter traces out Moldovan ethnographers’ conceptions of ideal fieldwork, their deliberate construction of future repertoires for amateur troupes they work with, as well as relations between ethnographers and with locals. As Cash examines Moldovan ethnographers engaged in what she likens to US/British salvage anthropology, her analysis suggests the “critical ethnography of folklore” that is mentioned in chapter 1. Chapter 5 contains perhaps one of the most interesting findings in the book: Cash notes the significant role that arbitrary circumstances created by state structures and personal networks played in enabling students from small villages to develop into professional folklorists during Soviet times. In this connection, Cash points to the centrality of the village in multiple facets of ethnographers’ lives.

Chapter 6 turns to the inclusion and exclusion of different ethnicities in contemporary folklore festivals. Focusing on Moldovan ethnographers’ construction of amateur dance performances, Cash argues that ethnographers do not strive to portray a single, culturally unified nation, but rather an array of village-based identities. The chapter presents examples of ethnic Moldovan, Turkic Gagauz, and more rare Jewish folklore, and it explores ethnographers’ professional beliefs that underlie the construction of “authentic” folk dances. Cash concludes that despite relations of obligation and cultural borrowings, ethnographers regularly construct displays through exclusion.

In the conclusion, chapter 7, Cash relates her findings to questions of authenticity, ethnographic authority, and nation-building, all well-known themes...