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The historic region of Bukovina, until 1918 a heavily multi-ethnic crownland of the Habsburg monarchy that was divided in 1940, is constantly being recreated in the stories and memories of its former inhabitants. Despite the dynamics of violence during the “short twentieth century,” the region serves as a central and primarily positive place of identification for many groups. In this article, we explore the question of how, and under which circumstances, this site of memory was designed, focusing on the stories of German and Polish resettlers. Specifically, we compare and analyze German and Polish interviews as well as written memoirs that were created between the 1950s and 2017. These stories reveal a distinct narrative pattern, what can be called “Bukovinian tolerance.” While in the early years of the Cold War this narrative still contained certain elements of Habsburg-era “Bukovinism”— a sort of regional patriotism—the construct of tolerance and multi-ethnicity was reshaped within the context of the changing political situation in Europe in the post-1989 era and the E.U.’s integration of parts of the former Eastern bloc.
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The objective of the article is to demonstrate the paradox of the spread of the Homeric epics: having been created by the descendants of the Achaeans in exile three or four centuries after the Trojan war, they became widespread among all of the Greekspeaking world, i.e. mostly among those who destroyed the Achaean civilization forcing the heroes' descendants into exile. The author poses a question: why do the Greek tribes, who have driven the Achaeans out and took their territory, accept a story of the Achaeans' great past as their own? To answer this, the article suggests a hypothesis that on a profound level the Iliad contains a philosophical idea of the world unity. This idea is not terminologically defined in the epics, however, it is presented as a philosophy-of-law concept of responsibility for one's own decision (free will). This answer is based on analysis of the long similes in Iliad and the instances of interrelation of gods and men and the decisions made by the former and the latter out of their free will.
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Dersim, an eastern province of Turkey whose name was changed to Tunceli by a 1935 law and whose borders were redefined for spatial control in the early Republican period, witnessed a bloody massacre executed by the Turkish army in 1937–1938. The massacre has become a “secret” over the course of time, and even critical Turkish literature has refrained from discussing the role of the Turkish state in it until recently. This paper aims to scrutinize the rise of oral history as a methodology used to study the Dersim massacre. In this paper, based on a review of the literature, the author argues that starting in the 1990s a new current using primarily oral sources has appeared.
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The start point of the article are two of the author’s experiences with oral sources. The first represented in total several dozen hours of recordings of the narratives of a dozen members of the underground Independent Students’ Association at Warsaw University in the years 1982–1989. In turn, the second was an unexpected “confession” of Edmund Łebek, an officer of the Security Services. Using these examples, the author provides a number of insights connected with the application of oral history in research into the recent history of Polish politics. The confluence of concrete research work and the methodology of oral history allows the researcher to achieve the advantages and dangers connected with the application of this type of source.
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The aim and scope of this research was to discover the games appreciated by Turkish Sephardic, American Sephardic and Turkish Muslim female children in the 1950s, their environmental teachings, and transnationalism. Old people teach children games, which can also be transnational and narrated in other countries. Oral history interviews were conducted with these three groups of women, and they were asked about the metaphors in their childhood games. These informal chats also led to the discovery of some games played by female children. Similarities of these metaphors were used to suggest a peace building theory based on environmental humanities. Accordingly, the metaphorical concepts in female children’s games were analyzed through the conceptual metaphor theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) for deciphering their environmentalist teachings and their impacts on the formation of children. As the transnational nature of games makes one understand that children would play together regardless of their creed and ethnicity in the 1950s, such games are recommended to be taught to today’s children who rarely play games outside their houses with other children. As a result of this study, it was found that conceptual metaphors based on the protection of the environment were similar in certain games regardless of children’s cultural backgrounds. The conceptual metaphors of “NATURE IS A MOTHER,” “ANIMALS ARE LOVE,” and “NATURE IS A SHELTER” were commonly used in these children’s games, and these similarities should be taught children by encouraging them to recognize and adapt the concept of unity in diversity. Consequently, the crimes committed by children against animals should be prevented, and children should learn the ways to preserve the environment and nature easily without damaging any plants or animals. It is crucial to teach children similar games with similar elements are played in different parts of the world. In these games, similar environmental, educative, and metaphorical objects and word games may also be used.
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He famous Turkish novelist Cengiz Dağcı, in one of his articles, says Dağ the language you call homeland is actually Dağ cı. As noted by the famous author, it is seen that the effect of language is important in transforming geographies into homeland. It is a folk poet / minstrelsy tradition from the institutions where the language lives / lives alive. The language of the people who lived in the geography of the region for hundreds of years, hearts and rising voice poets Turkish poetry, from birth to death of the time of the people lived in poetry, so that the oral culture together with the oral culture of his work has helped greatly to transfer and future generations of Turkish. In this respect, with this declaration, it is aimed to recognize the role played by the bardans of Hatay in the period they live and create the works that will be witness to the region where they live and to play the Turkish cultural identity and to transfer them to the future. With this study, the existence of Turkish cultural assets in Hatay and the effective and effective culture of Hatay as an eternal Turkish homeland will be taken over and will be processed. Among them, especially the Kirikhan district and especially Ceylanli village poets, such as the Miser Molla, Sefil Hasan, Sefil Ahmet, some of whom lived in Aleppo from there to Hatay, the poems of the lovers in the manuscripts will be discussed in the formation of a cultural treasure in Hatay.
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Hausa is one of the major world languages. It is spoken by approximately 60 million people across West Africa, mainly in Niger and Nigeria. Hausa folk tradition which includes proverbs, had been transmitted orally for a long time before the first writings in this language appeared around 17/18th century in the form of literary works in Arabic script. Modern Hausa literature in Latin alphabet dates back to the first half of 20th century and draws abundantly from oral tradition as the highly appreciated source of conventions, themes, symbols and sayings. The state of the art of modern Hausa literature can be considered fertile and vigorous comparing to the situation of the other native African languages. However, up to now the available Polish translations of Hausa literature are very few. The aim of the paper is to compare selected Hausa proverbs and their Polish translations in terms of the equivalence methods applied by the two translators: Nina Pilszczikowa and Stanisław Piłaszewicz. Hausa proverbs were translated into Polish as independent folklore forms as well as the elements of literary narrative. Therefore, the analysis covers two genres of texts: proverbs (as short literary forms) and novels.
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This study deals with the liquidation of a Roma colony from the Romanian town of Oradea during the 1970s. Colony life, as well as the process of removal, demolition of the houses, and relocation of the inhabitants into blocks of flats, is mainly grasped through Roma narratives collected from 2011 onwards. But here we do not narrow down remembering communism to a mere collection of untold stories from the past. Based on the framework developed by Maria Todorova for the study of remembering communism, the following questions are addressed: How is the pre-1989 condition of the Roma revealed through their narratives? What do these say about the condition of the Roma during state socialism? How do past events influence the present-day marginalization of the group? A comparison of the socialist and post-socialist conditions of the Roma could be considered an important issue in forming an account of this ethno-racial group in Eastern Europe. It is so, as—despite the current research, which is small in number, various interpretations exist, raising the demand for scholars to address this issue.
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Još u ranom djetinjstvu slušao sam “starinske” pjesme koje je moj otac pjevao u trenucima dobrog raspoloženja. I, zadržao sam ih u svom pamćenju, neke u cjelosti, neke djelomično. Jedna od tih koje sam djelomično zapamtio jeste balada o pogibiji Hifzi/Hivzi/Himzi-bega Đumišića. Kasnije sam u literaturi pronašao ovu pjesmu. U izbjeglištvu u Holandiji upoznao sam Selmana Sinanovića, rodom iz sela Urišići kod Srebrenice koji mi je kazao jednu od varijanata ove lijepe balade. Pjesme, dakle, stignu dokle i ljudi stignu. U teškim vremenima ljudi se raseljavaju, napuštaju svoj zavičaj, svoju imovinu, svoja ognjišta… Svoje pjesme, pak, nose sa sobom. Hivzi-beg Đumišić je historijska ličnost. Bio je poznat kao veliki junak i prije svoje pogibije. Njegova pogibija opjevana je kao djelo izdaje bijeljinskog komandanta Salih-paše. Od petnaest poznatih varijanata, u ovom radu je priloženo pet u cjelosti i početak jedne (prve). U radu se nastoji pojedinosti varijanata, kao i različitosti, mada ne sve, prikazati u njihovom uzajamnom odnosu.
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Since the arrival of Islam to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the fifteenth century, people of this country have, like in many other countries throughout the Islamic world, expressed their loyalty and devotion to the Islamic faith through learning the text of the Qur’an by heart and through the practicing its teachings in their everyday life. History and the oral tradition bear witness to a number of notable figures amongst the Bosnian u’lama, huffaz who left on Islamic heritage significant trail of our country. Islam and the love for the Qur’an have always played a special role in lives of Bosniaks. Even under the pressure of the ruling atheist regime of the former state there have always been a number of Bosniaks who memorised the Qur’an and who sought to spread the love of Islam and the Qur’an amongst their fellow countrymen. In the past three decades this trend has been strengthened resulting in fast growing number of people memorising the Qur’an and a significant rise in the progress thereof. Today in Bosnia and Herzegovina we have few hundreds of huffaz and that number is growing every day.
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The paper reconstructs the biography of archimandrite Benedict Ghiuș (1902-1990), former vicar at the Romanian Patriarchy, a close collaborator of patriarch Justinian Marina, and important member of the mystic-theological circle known as “The Burning Bush”, while corroborating relevant data from the files of the Securitate. At the same time, the paper also compares several chronologically different documents that contain the biographic information of Ghiuș and discusses the relation between various types of documents (such as records or informative notes) and the differences in the narratives they deliver.
More...cultural practice; cultural object; oven; function; signification
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Oral literature is an art of words that has been reflected on many human generations for centuries. In addition to being the oldest and longest- lasting form of artistic creation through a linguistic medium, it symbolizes every human being where the greatest domain is achieved by sensibility. This sensitivity is sealed in many lyrical songs, starting with love songs, ritual songs, poskočicama u kolu, lullabies, humorous songs, etc., and the greatest one is woven through the resulting records. Most of the narrations refer to oral lyric poetry, which is accompanied by oral-prose types and folk customs of the town of Žabljak near Livno. Through religious oral lyrics consisting of prayer songs, chants and verified legends, all through traditional customs, the genetic code of our people is visible through different times, and that is a precious heritage. The written narratives provide a kind of journey through the former life, which was enriched with various folk tales that are more open, freer and more elastic literary type, unlike fairy tales, which are the longest oral prose genre. The opus of oral folk literature is invaluable and extensive to such an extent that it is impossible to gather it all in one place, but it is possible to nurture and inherit it.
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In the summer of 1943, young members of the Shomer organization active in the Łódź ghetto carried out several interviews with random passers-by. It was a part of educational activity organized by Shomer tutors. The teenagers were tasked with interviewing and recording according to a preset format. The material thus obtained turned out to be a valuable source about many aspects of life in the Łódź ghetto: family and financial situation of the interviewees, their physical condition and, let us stress, their contacts (protection). Equally important is information about the Shomers obtained during the interviews, their level of education, how they formulated conclusions, their involvement in the group. The material is not very extensive, but it turns out to be an important source for further research of the activity of youth organizations in the ghetto.
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The paper is based on field records of koled’s from Dubrovnik littoral. Koleda songs belong to oral lyrical ritual songs, and a significant number of them have been Christianized. Usually each verse ends with a chours koledo, koledo. The structure is close to toasts and blessings. Although the motifs in the koleda poems are interwined with the motifs of Advent and Christmas oral lyrical religious songs, they are predominantly secular. Koleding is a traditional congratulatory procession in which koleds sing koleda. The custom of koleding has been preserved to this day, but in a slightly modified form and it is only performed on Christmas Eve. It used to be koleding for the New Year, as well as on the feast of the Three Wise Men or during field works. Koleds are an important part of tradition and identity of the inhabitants of the Dubrovnik area. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to preserve old customs and koledas. The emphasis is on koledas which have aesthetic value and take a special part in the intangible cultural heritage of Croatia.
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Considering ethnography as a public both process and results (written monographies, essayes, video or audio products), we can admit the fact that a private ethnography exists, too. In most of examples, the politics conduct toth is process. More often hidden, as a constitutive threat to the official power, beeing a subversion of imposed reality, those texts were never made public at their time, in order to avoid a danger for the one who wrotet hem, and for the community, also. Described also as „native anthropology” (by Bernard and Salinas, in 1989), auto ethnography is when a member of a cultural group describe his own group (autoethnograpy), as an untrained „folk ethnographer” (like Badea Cârțan was, for example).Wich are the implications of private folk ethnography, as an accurate depiction of cultural, social and above all, political conditions – there is a discussion to make. Autoethnography secrecy deprive ethnographer of his voice and his work of its political power, at that time when it was produced. But, for future, those documents are precious evidences. Political changes of regim make possible that people regain his voice and that why, in our case, postcommunist anthropology must integrate into its own canon, among all ethnographic genre, those indigenous accounts – folk ethnography (autoethnography), biography and autobiography and incorporate works „with a political resistence initial impetus” (as R. Rosaldonoticed, in 1989), created at that time purpose fully to elude official authority. In the worst epoch of Ceaușescu regim, a pensioned and nearly blind former employe of a village collective farm cooperative, near Făgăraș town, wrote over fifty volumes of family histories, autobiography, poetry and between them a large number of anticommunist poems, an accurate critique of socialist system. Firstly known only to his family members, his work was hidden in a fake window, in the basement of the family house, in order to prevent being discovered by the authorities. This unknown heroic autoethnographer died in May 1989 and, since Ceaușescu’s fall, his hidden work can be now discovered.
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O samă de cuvinte (Sundry Tales) is a collection of historical tales, varying in number from one manuscript text to another, written by the former first chamberlain of Moldavia, Ion Neculce († 1745), a work its author placed as a preamble to his chronicle, Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei de la Dabija vodă până la a doua domnie a lui Constantin Mavrocordat (The Chronicle of Moldavia from Prince Dabija to the second reign of Constantine Maurocordatos). This work is unusual in Romanian historical literature in terms of style and genre and has already been the focus of scholarly attention in Romania. Despite what has already been written, the author of this study demonstrates that the events Ion Neculce narrates in Sundry Tales do not belong to folklore, but to social memory, in other words to the dissemination of traditions. It is worth remembering that history begins where tradition trails off, where social memory fades or breaks apart. Under the pen of the Moldavian chamberlain tradition, listened to and heard previously, became historical evidence, a document incorporating memory made available for future generations to read and consult. During this process of transformation, the text acquired a stable form, it was no longer subjected to major interventions, and its content inspired a sense of permanence.With minor exceptions, Ion Neculce’s “tales” did not draw on a single set of sources. Oral communication and direct experience combined with old chronicles, complementing and sustaining each other in a work of a truly exceptional character. Neculce gave written expression to traditions which had survived in individual or group memory and had been transmitted predominantly via oral channels. In other words, he made the transition from memory to written records, a process which had started earlier in Western cultures. Yet, despite the time lag, the theoretical and methodological approaches of West-European scholars seem to offer promising avenues for the understanding of the meanings of a narrative written in early 18th-century Moldavia.Family traditions or traditions created and preserved in lay or monastic communities became pockets of resistance in the construction and maintenance of identity. Neculce extracted each of them from their local context and wrote them down, thereby completing the lengthy process of transition from personal memory to literature and from individual experience to historical event. In so doing, he implicitly caused a shift in the target audience of the narratives: whereas oral accounts had been addressed directly to a well-defined listener in a semi-literate society, the written tales engaged with a more diffuse, but more highly literate, audience. Ultimately, the writings of the Moldavian chamberlain created an official memory which became stable and endured because it drew on written records rather than on fluid oral contributions. In addition, we have found out that the Sundry Tales sits at the intersection of several temporal, historiographical and literary dimensions, a structure which fits the, by now classical, definition of Pierre Nora: Ion Neculce’s writing can indeed be read as a site of memory in Romanian culture.
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The authors discuss the role of participatory governance in safeguarding and developing intangible cultural heritage using the Nationwide Song and Dance Celebration (SDC) tradition as an example for an analysis. Although the surveys of the community show that the SDC tradition maintenance is considered to be satisfactory and the organizational system at the moment is working fine, for fostering the tradition and increasing the role of the tradition bearers’ stronger involvement and support for the bottom-up activities of the community would be recommended. This is also needed to develop a more democratic and sustainable approach to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, as recommended by the international standard setting instruments that introduce the concept of participatory governance. Moreover, occasional dissatisfaction with authoritarian and top-down governance of the SDC emerges in public and social media, implicitly indicating the need for a more bottom-up approach and greater involvement of community members in the decision making. In addition, the principles of participatory governance should be incorporated in the Song and Dance Celebration Law to be in line with the more recent Law on Intangible Cultural Heritage. Taking into account the activities of the most powerful NGO Latvian Song Celebrations Society, the overall direction can be considered as positive, although there is still a need for improvements.
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