Talking with Dunja

For the past ten years I have shared my office at the Institute with, among other colleagues, dr. Dunja Rihtman-Augustin. Our desks lean against one another, we sit across one another. In front of me there is a person of unusually lively spirit, whose observations are penetrating and reactions are keen. She likes to think aloud about the problems that preoccupy her. The talks in our office have been motivating in both directions, and very often productive for all of us. One of our common professors had told us during his course on the history of ethnology that there were ethnologists whom we ask the facts, and there were ethnologists whom we approach for the light. Dunja is among the latter, the ones who continuously re-thought the very core of our science. Supported by current European and world-wide ethnological/anthropological tendencies, she questioned the substance and scope of their subject, the applicability of their methods and the validity of the gained results all the time. Her critical mind did not allow her to limit herself within one theoretical orientation, to place herself within its methodology, and to spend her entire working days following it. She has always been searching — and she still is -for the new horizons. Following systematically different movements in our profession, she would immediately employ new approaches on the issues she was dealing