The making of a collection of carved birds by Andrew Zergenyi, a Hungarian immigrant to the United States : a bio-ethnographic study

Ladenheim, Melissa (1993) The making of a collection of carved birds by Andrew Zergenyi, a Hungarian immigrant to the United States : a bio-ethnographic study. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This study considers the making of a collection of carved birds by Andrew Zergenyi, a Hungarian immigrant to the United States. The data was gathered over a period of four years through an examination of the collection and through extended conversations with Zergenyi, members of his family, and various friends. The collection serves as point of entry into the exploration of Zergenyi's life history and worldview, both of which are informed by his engagement with the natural world as a hunter, amateur ornithologist, collector of ornithological specimens, manager of a large agricultural complex, and later as a carver of birds. -- Carving and creating the collection is interpreted in the context of Zergenyi's life experience as a strategy for dealing with personal and cultural crises. Displaced from home and culture, Zergenyi turned to carving first as diversionary tactic and later, I contend, as a means of fostering integration in a life fragmented by displacement. This study also addresses the manner in which ethnography is conducted and constructed. While folklorists may be prepared to acknowledge the provisional nature of their interpretations, they arc often less willing to discuss the conditional nature of their research. Describing the process by which ethnographies are made provides the reader with the context for the ethnography itself, an account that is too often presented as seamless: and uncontested. As such, this study not only examines Zergenyi as a maker of carvings and collections, it also reflexively considers my role as a collector of ethnographic material and a maker of ethnographic documents.

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