"The Reds" and "The Blues": Sociocultural Change from the Perspective of the Combat between "The Conquerors" and "The Invested" Cover Image

Červení a modrí: sociokultúrna zmena cez perspektívu dvojpólového zápasu "dobyvateľov" a "obľahnutých"
"The Reds" and "The Blues": Sociocultural Change from the Perspective of the Combat between "The Conquerors" and "The Invested"

Author(s): Jurai Podoba
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Ústav etnológie a sociálnej antropológie Slovenskej akadémie vied
Keywords: sociocultural change; combat between ”The Reds” and ”The Blues”; Vladimír Páral; Soňa Švecová; highlanders and ”Krekáči”;

Summary/Abstract: The study is dealing with the sociocultural change issues in connection with social conflict. In the introductory part, the author attempts to sketch a concise theoretical approach of sociocultural change and social conflict issues. First of all, in the connection with phenomena concerning opposite economic interests, inequality patterns and priviledge barriers, with income and status differences, and also in the relation to questions focusing continuity and discontinuity of sociocultural changes. The author emphasizes the problem of social agency and it´s position in the attempts to understand the dynamics and the character of sociocultural changes.One of the possible attempts in catching the never-ending combats of the mankind, conflicting tensions in inter-group and inter-personal relations is the novel of the Czech writer Vladimír Páral Milenci a vrazi (Lovers and Murders). The construction of the Páral´s novel is based on the model of combat between “the conquerors” and “the invested”, “The Reds” and “The Blues”. Of course, the novelist submitts a perspective, which is different than the social science´s perspective; inspite of the fact that it is going on the same problem, which is in the centre of the story, interpreted by his brilliant literary style. Around the time of the first issue of Vladimír Páral´s novel, Soňa Švecová started her long-term field research of the rural settlements in the Krupinská planina highlands: region characteristic by dispersed settlement (lazy). Švecová analysed ethnographic data directly related to sociocultural changes with very similar character to Páral´s expressive interpretation. The study is an analysis and an interpretation of Soòa Švecová´s scientific publications, based on her long-term ethnographic research of dispersed settlement in the Hont region, which deal with sociocultural processes connected with the transformation of the dispersed settlement from seasonal settlements situated in the village boundry into sedentary homesteads.

  • Issue Year: 57/2009
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 289 - 299
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Slovak
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