Grasping the volk

Among many historical accounts on the development of the German Volkskunde, the process of institutionalization remains a crucial criterion of periodization. From a historiographical point of view, the institutionalization of the discipline as a pattern of epistemic legitimacy and thus a scientific discipline begins when it takes an institutional form. Was there an epistemic legitimacy in the German Volkskunde pre-institutionlizaed research practices? According to my argument, during pre-institutional times an intensive Volk-oriented inquiry took shape and extended over a period of approximately 20 years (ca. 1875-1895). Such inquiry was a genuine system of field research even during instituional precarious times fotr the discipline as it triggered the constitution of a characteristic pattern of epistemic legitimacy, namely the physical, bodily presence of the inquirer on the field. In order to give an account of such genuine field inquiry, I put foward the examination of a corpus of manuals for scientific explorers, most of which were published during the last third of the 19th century within the German-speaking and predominantly in Germany. Such research strategy allows the unveiling of the social space in which the above-mentioned manuals circulated and were actively received.