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The purpose of the following article is to deconstruct multiple meanings of the presence of a Jewish female dwarf in Albert Cohen’s novel „Belledu Seigneur”. The key moment of the narrative, where this character appears, does not allow us to ignore her. Her presence is so enigmatic and the scene so oneiric that we are forced to find intertextual connections, seeking a wider historical and literary context which will help us understand this figure.
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Cilj teksta je razmotriti igru kako je shvaća engleski psihoanalitičar i pedijatar Donald W. Winnicott te primijeniti njezin potencijal na novo (za hrvatske akademske prilike) interdisciplinarno područje koje predstavljaju djevojački studiji. Proučavanjem igre kroz prizmu djevojačkih studija te izdvajajući djevojački diskurs i djevojačku kulturu kao jedinstvene pojave, nastoji se suočiti s moralnom panikom koja se tiče kulturalnih normi i njihovih potencijalnih dokidanja, kao i općenito anksioznosti kojom je povijest modernog djevojaštva nabijena. [...]
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The article deals with the concept of Europe in Russian. Tah analysis is performed on the basis of dictionaries, the Russian National Corpus, the legal and philosophical discourse, media and everyday conversations. A scrutiny of dictionaries reveals the cultural component in the figurative understanding of the name of the continent. Questionnaires have shown that young Russian speakers associate Europe with economically developed Western countries: Germany, France, Britain, Italy. An analysis of the RNC shows that within the concept of Europe, originally the notion of “education” was formed, which then gave way to the notion of “culture”. Slavophiles and Westerners, in their philosophical discourse of the 19th c., formulated contrasting assessments of Europe, found in metaphors of Europe and Russia in the language of media and everyday usage.
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This year is the 100th anniversary of the publication of the book The Mystery of Easter Island: The Story of an Expedition by British traveler and ethnographer Katherine Routledge. However, the aim of this article is to draw attention to her contemporary, Latvian artist and theoretician Voldemārs Matvejs’ (1877–1914) study of Oceanic art Искусство острова Пасхи (The Art of Easter Island), published in Russian under the pseudonym of Vladimir Markov in St. Petersburg in January 1914 with a print run of 500 copies. Both publications feature one of the British Museum’s most popular exhibits – the photograph of Hoa Hakananai’a. Therefore, the author has gathered information on the British photographer Stephen Thompson (1831–1892) who created this image. The article also presents the first comparative analysis of both publications, emphasising common as well as different elements in both researchers’ activities, each having their own aims, interests and opportunities to familiarise themselves with the cultures of the world. Katherine Routledge graduated from the University of Oxford with honours in 1895, specialising in modern history. When the Second Boer War was over, Katherine went to South Africa as a member of a women’s committee in 1902. In 1906, aged forty, she married the ethnographer, anthropologist and traveller William Scoresby Routledge (1859–1939). In 1908 the couple arrived in the British protectorate in East Africa (now Kenya), settling on the territory of the largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu people. They later donated their collected ethnographic materials to the British Museum as well as to Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. They described their impressions in a jointly written book With a Prehistoric People. The Akikuyu of British East Africa (1910). Voldemārs Matvejs did not have the opportunity to visit the African continent in person and so made it his aim to inspect the ethnographic collections of Western European museums. From 24 July to 15 September 1913, together with a close associate, Varvara Bubnova (1886–1983), he visited Kristiania (now Oslo), Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, Paris, Cologne, Leiden, Amsterdam, Leipzig and Berlin. In the course of less than two months, he gathered rich material on African and Oceanic art as well as took photographs of certain objects. The artist’s notes have not come down to us, so there is no information on how the works were selected. Therefore, Matvejs’ original photographs of sculptural examples from Africa and other regions published in his books as well as the few pictures of individual exhibits taken by other photographers provide an insight into his research work. When analysing Matvejs’ photographic method, it is important to spot analogies and thus the author’s attention was drawn to the work of Stephen Thompson who took the photograph of Hoa Hakananai’a and photographed over 5000 museum exhibits from December 1869 to early 1872. The London publisher W. A. Mansell & Co issued the album British Museum Collections with his photographs. The catalogue represented Greco-Roman and medieval art while the last seventh volume dealt with the overseas territories of the British Empire. Thompson became the first photographer who had the opportunity to capture more than 150 ethnographic objects – artefacts and sculptures from the region of Polynesia as well as the masks of Peru Indians, Aztecs and other native American peoples. Thompson also photographed new acquisitions, including two stone figures Hoa Hakananai’a and Moai Kava donated by the Queen to the British Museum in 1869. The photographer probably took pictures of these moai in the period between 1869 and 1872. Especially significant is Thompson’s photographic documentation of Hoa Hakananai’a from behind, as he had the rare, exclusive opportunity to capture the forms, contours and finish of this monumental sculpture at eye level. Many later researchers did not have this opportunity, as Hoa Hakananai’a was often located in places and heights ill-suited for viewing and taking pictures. It was placed either too low and close to the wall in the colonnade outside the British Museum where Matvejs photographed both the aforementioned figures in summer 1913, or on a pedestal too high, thus not even allowing one to see important details from the correct distance and angle. Therefore, the value of Thompson’s photograph is understandable along with the reason why both the British ethnographer Routledge and Matvejs used it in their publications. Katherine Routledge acquired all the necessary information herself on Easter Island where she stayed for 17 months. Her experience was later described in detail in the weighty volume of 400 pages The Mystery of Easter Island: The Story of an Expedition with its 166 pages focusing on Easter Island. Routledge described the island’s landscape and flora, local people’s way of life, beliefs, religion, living conditions, eating and dressing customs, the family model, property relations, legends, the cult of the Bird and the dead, burial traditions, ancient names of the island as well as the origins of its language and writing. Routledge’s contribution to the description and photographic documentation of artworks, especially stone sculptures, is immense. Only 105 images from the huge photographic archive, now in the collection of the British Museum, were included in the book. Artist and theoretician Voldemārs Matvejs’ interest in world cultures is related to his searches for a new ideal of beauty typical of early 20th century modernist art. At the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts where Matvejs studied the basics of painting, the classical Greco-Roman ideal of beauty was still prevalent. However, the budding artist took up theoretical and research activities. Familiarising himself with sculptural examples “of all peoples and periods”, Matvejs came to realise that outside Europe, an artwork is not just an artwork, it could also fulfil certain social and ritual functions. To understand better the specificity of sculpture, its place and role in the spiritual organisation of society in the Pacific region and on Easter Island in particular, he carefully studied the notes of the few travellers and art collection catalogues of European museums. Especially useful were travel notes and eyewitness accounts of such visitors to Easter Island as the British Captain James Cook (1728–1779), French pastor and missionary Eugène Eyraud (1820–1868) and German seaman, Lieutenant Wilhelm Geiseler (1847/48–1891). The first chapter of Matvejs’ study also made use of the information from the album of wooden sculptures by the first Catholic Bishop of Tahiti, French missionary Étienne Florentin Jaussen (1815–1891), known also as Tepano; an essay on Easter Island published after the missionary’s death proved useful too. In the second chapter of his book that dealt with the art of Easter Island, Matvejs carried out artistic analysis, comparing stone and wooden sculptures, and he formulated 11 characteristics common to both groups and 4 that set them apart. The book’s textual part is complemented by only 22 black and white images of 5 stone and 11 wooden sculptures from the Oceanic region; the specificity of Easter Island is exemplified with photographs of only 2 stone and 7 wooden sculptures. However, even such scarce visual information reflects the artist’s attempts at establishing the specificity of regional sculpture. Matvejs hypothesised that the unifying element of both stone and wooden sculptures on Easter Island was the facial construction and its characteristic formal features. This was the reason why he took close-up photographs of wooden sculptures. According to Matvejs, Easter Island was the origin and centre of the traditions of Oceanic art, spreading its influence over the entire vast Pacific region. Therefore, he looked for analogies and photographed some 20 sculptural examples from Tahiti, Hawaii, New Guinea and the Marquesas Islands both from one angle and from several angles with the aim of confirming his theoretical assumptions. Matvejs looked for analogies not as an ethnographer but as an artist who focused not just on the characterisation of “another beauty” widespread there but also on similarities and differences in the continuation and interpretation of this tradition by a particular region or artist. He possibly took over his interest in characteristic details from the 19th century photographers. Nevertheless, Matvejs thought that it was important to single out the peculiarity of each region and so he varied the composition of the frame and often framed the original in line with his conception, emphasising the totality of formal means not typical of European art in the interpretation of the figure and especially its head. Each image has the additional task of serving as a negation of the European classical artistic tradition. Easter Island was for Matvejs “Classical Greece” in the Pacific. He considered the Easter Island sculptures to be of higher value than those of Classical Greece. Although there are obvious reasons why Stephen Thompson, Katherine Routledge and Voldemārs Matvejs never met during their lifetimes, each of them took part in a prolonged process of aesthetic education in their respective fields of expertise. Routledge left us outstanding examples of documentary photography, preserving a unique chance for the next generations to view the sculptures of Easter Island in their natural environment. Voldemārs Matvejs as an artist not only discerned the role of Easter Island and Oceanic art in the 20th century cultural context but also somewhat envisioned a more distant perspective of artistic development. The trend of Surrealism whose emergence he did not live to witness has recognised the art of Easter Island as one of its strongest sources of inspiration.
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The article analysis „Bulgarian embroideries“ as a specific case of a construction and usage of the cultural heritage. The text presents the diversity of actors, active in the use of this heritage and aims to interpret the modes and practices for negotiating the relations between ethnic-national-global. The thesis is that „ethnic“ invades the national and the global at the same time, being constructed as „natural“ and non-political, and at the same time suitable to be transformed into a commercial commodity. Shortly, the text presents the „ethnic“ as an „assemblage“ and argues that in the process of constructing „cultural heritage“ conservative definitions of the world turn into public consensuses.
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This article presents and discusses a once widespread rite associated with the birth of a child. On the one hand, the data are drawn from ethnographic sources(archival, literary and personally collected field material), presenting the custom in its traditional version, and on the other hand, they come from research conducted through the method of participant observation and semi-structured interviews during contemporary manifestations of this custom. Analyzing specific ritual elements and focusing on gifts/presents received by the child, the author develops the idea that this custom gradually loses its characteristics as a rite of passage. Furthermore, the lack of knowledge or its laic presentation and interpretation has resulted in the development and approbation of a ‘scenario’ of the custom, which leads to a process of its deritualizationand transformation, so that the custom becomes primarily a festive moment, a party, a visit, an occasion for the gathering of people who, through their presence and especially through their gifts, support the new-born and his/her family.
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Review of: Sharifian, Farzad [ed.] (2015), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, New York: Routledge.
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The purpose of the article is to analyze the concept of the image of G. Boehm as a cultural practice. The main attention is paid to the ways of production and consumption, semantics and pragmatics of the image. The methodology of the research consists of using analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, as well as semiotic, hermeneutical and historical approaches. This let us reveal the formation of peculiarities of the cultural practice of the image in the logic of interaction between the presentation and the representation of the depicted. Scientific Novelty. The study is novel in defining G. Boehm 's image as a cultural practice of de-differentiation of a series of artifacts, a spectator community and cultural senses. The line between art studies, sociology and philosophy of culture seems to be fading and loosing the disciplinary autonomy of specified branches of science. Conclusion. It is proved that the cultural practice of the image is a medium between aesthetic values, a spectator community and separated works of art, and at the same time, it acts as a medium between high culture and the world of everyday life. The existence of such a cultural practice allows not only masterful "manufacturing" (Modern accent), but also "domestication" (ie, behavior, consumption, transformation) of images. The image simultaneously returns to what was, and at the same time, transforms the past, adds a new one with the power of the showing, actualizing it in the present. Cultural practice of the image is at the same time an ideal model of ordering the world of human existence in general and a real process of interaction of things and human, as well as the basis for the formation of an anthropological model of Homo Pictor.
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The purpose of the article is to carry out a discursive analysis of a post-communist culture in the context of metamodern. The methodology consists of theoretical-interpretational models of discourse analysis of post-communist culture, which is carried out in the article as a poetic and rhetorical interpretation of the discourse of the power of Soviet and post-Soviet culture. The monism of the use of the increasing synecdoche in the "Soviet culture" in the post-Soviet culture has multiplied, the synecdoche is replaced by metonymy, which, in turn, represents the metaphorical transformations of speech. Scientific novelty consists in revealing the features of the imaginative constellations of the rhetoric of the post-Soviet discourse, which have a composite, mannerist character without clearly defined ideological, ethical, aesthetic priorities of interpretation and description of cultural values. Conclusions. The discourse of post-Soviet culture demonstrates the traditional rhetorical instrumentality characteristic of the Soviet culture because the monism of increasing synecdoche is pluralized, the speech has signs of a mannerist discourse, in which the composition as cultural integrity is formed by a composite mixture of syntagm without prioritizing combination definition. Metamodern, as a widely stated paradigm of cultural creation, describes the grammatical whole only as relativistic syntax – a-topos, which even by the models of the Liege school of neo-rhetoric is a fragmentary and overly metaphorical description of cultural creation. The "completion" of the rhetorical model of discourse to the cultural provides adequate horizons for discursive analysis, which must be cultural and be formed on the basis of a reconstruction of postcommunist culture as a manneristic (composite) integrity. Therefore, the problem of the post-communist culture functioning in the contemporary space of cultural creation requires the instrumental discursive analysis regarding the presentation of meaning, figurative and cultural constants, and transformative mechanisms of the text.
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The purpose of the article. The purpose of the article is to find out the place and role of culture in the process of forming the foundations of constitutionalism in the state, and in particular the Constitution as the Basic Law of the state. The methodological basis is the post-positivist methodology of research into the problems of contemporary Ukrainian constitutionalism, which is an orderly system of mutually agreed ideological principles and methods that allow to study comprehensively and comprehensively the legal properties of constitutionalism and to determine the essence and content of legal links between its basic elements. The scientific novelty is that the work is a comprehensive scientific study of modern Ukrainian science, which substantiates a comprehensive scientific theory of cultural factors in the Basic Law, designed to understand and explain the science of constitutional law based on certain conceptual foundations. Conclusions. It is the Constitution that determines the formation and development of the legal culture in the state. Therefore, we must follow the rule: what are the Constitution of the country and its legal culture. In addition, we believe that, unfortunately, the constitutional process is too politicized today. In our view, the fiercest political struggle to adopt a form of constitution suitable for one party is ongoing. And in fact - for power - everyone wants the maximum of power. Including through its own Constitution, which was somehow implemented. However, the Basic Law must be adopted not for reasons of political expediency, but to be a fully legally valid document, taking into account the achievements of world law, with the strictest adherence to all legal procedures. After all, the constitution should be the main document of the state for at least a decade.
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The purpose of the article is to present the advertisement phenomenon aimed at stimulating certain actions by presenting the elements that are the indicators of ethnic mental peculiarities of Ukrainian national culture to the recipients. The methodology consists of works by foreign and domestic authors covering philosophical, cultural and psychological aspects of advertising. Among the methods chosen for the disclosure of the stated topics, the support was made on the general methods of scientific knowledge: analysis, synthesis, generalization. The scientific novelty of the article is that it makes an analysis of Ukrainian advertising products as a combination of universal advertising genres and elements that are based on ethnic mental peculiarities and values. Conclusion. It was stated that the advertising genres existing in modern social and cultural space present a synthesis of universal and ethnic mental components to a recipient. The paradoxical nature of advertisement is considered to be its reason. This means that: despite the tendency to produce the values of popular culture, it by ―rooting‖ into the national culture, an important element of which is a nucleus, is a means reflecting ethnic mental peculiarities of Ukrainian national culture.
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The purpose of the article is to determine the specifics of the implementation of workers' rights in the cultural and artistic sphere in the conditions of the information society. The research methodology is based on a complex combination of theoretical approaches of a number of sciences, in particular philosophy, cultural studies, psychology, law, as well as general scientific methods of system analysis, synthesis, abstraction and generalization. The scientific novelty is connected with the description of the theoretical and practical aspects of creation the results of intellectual activity by workers of the cultural and artistic sphere and the possibilities of using them in the context of the impact of the information society. Conclusions. In the conditions of the development of the information society, it is necessary to protect the rights of cultural workers associated with the creation of service works, as well as with the access and use of the results of the intellectual activities of others. The concept capable of ensuring the legitimacy of the use of intellectual property in information systems may be a free paid use model, which provides the possibility of creating a digital version of a work, placing it in information networks without the consent of the author with the payment of remuneration.
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The purpose of the article is the study and formation of a tourist product and tourist destination based on the use of cultural heritage and the image of the territory. The methodology is based on the concept and theoretical conclusions in the field of cultural studies, aesthetics, philosophy, and tourism science and art history. The scientific novelty of the article is the development of a new model of cultural tourism, where the production of services is transformed by the technology of servicing and increasing the comfort of acts of acquaintance with certain objects into the technology of providing the sum of impressions based on the emotional, sensual and active experience of understanding the culture of destination. Conclusions. Studies of recent decades have highlighted the growing search for cultural ―experience‖ and the development of various segments of the demand for cultural tourism and the growing integration of cultural tourism with other tourism sectors such as religious tourism, gastronomic tourism, and literary tourism.
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The purpose of the work is modeling and forecasting the management of intercultural communications and to find ways of increasing their effectiveness with the position of the Ukrainian management. Methodological basis of research is the dialectical principle of cognition, systemic and cultural approaches, statistical survey methods, expert assessment, analytical groupings, mathematical modeling, analysis and forecasting management, intercultural communication, and the fundamental provisions of the theory of management in an intercultural environment. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is the determination of quantitative ratios and patterns of different types of intercultural management communication that enables cultural predictions of the behavior of Ukrainian managers in the management cultures of different countries and reasonable to develop appropriate strategies in these countries and thereby to improve the efficiency of management communications. Conclusions. Management-communications – multicultural phenomenon. Therefore, in carrying out international business communication, the managers cannot afford to be guided by the view of the world solely through the prism of their own values. It is established that the right to maintain international business relationships and implementing intercultural management-communication is an approach that is based on the equal value of different cultures and recognition of cultural differences as a benefit that ensures the harmony of human existence. However, these differences bring disappointment, because of the difficulty of their perception, confusion and unpredictability. Suggested in the article development based on statistical and mathematical measurements and models to minimize confusion and allow a quantitative feeling for intercultural differences and communication predictable reactions from the standpoint of Ukrainian culture management.
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The purpose of the article is to provide theoretical substantiation and development of a model for teaching students of Ukrainian higher education institutions in other language communicative negotiation skills. The methodology involves the comprehensive use of general-scientific philosophical and cultural approaches to the realization of the purpose of scientific intelligence and a set of methods of linguistics; pedagogy and cultural studies. This research is performed in the framework of the integration approach to the communication process, from which the success of communication is largely determined by the awareness of the linguistic, cultural and communicative-communicative features of communicants that are manifested in strategies (methods) for achieving practical goals. The scientific novelty of the obtained results consists in considering the formation of professional communication skills in a foreign language as a conglomerate of professional communication, the identification and description of linguistic, stylistic, sociocultural, communicative and behavioral characteristics of the negotiations, as well as the further development of a phased model for students of nonphilological specialties, to carry out an effective process of intercultural communication. Conclusions. Mastering intercultural, professionally meaningful communication involves the learning of professional concepts, socio-cultural values and communicative norms of the foreign cultural community as intercultural interaction, and, first of all, in international negotiations, the role of awareness of their own culture and cultural specificity of the partner, as well as the degree of readiness adequately, from the standpoint of ethnic-liberalism, perceive the professional culture of another community. The main components of the content of learning the skills of constructing a communicative process in a foreign language are: structural organization of communication; meta-communication tools, secured at each stage of communication; strategies and tactics of the communication process at each stage of its implementation; communicative acts, most typical for the negotiation process; style of communication, taking into account non-cultural specifics for the preparation and successful implementation of a communicative act.
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The purpose of the article is to analyze the current state of national minorities‘ rights ensuring in the Slovak Republic. The methodology of the study is interdisciplinary combining analysis and synthesis, description, regulatory analytical research. Scientific novelty of the received results lies in the complex analysis of legislation ensuring national minorities and ethnic groups' rights in the Slovak Republic. Conclusions. Slovak Republic legislation on national minorities' rights are based on the UN, European Council and OSCE documents. Basic national minorities' rights are enshrined in the Constitution and the laws of the Slovak Republic. All the citizens of the Slovak Republic have the same rights regardless of nationality. The government provides comprehensive support to the development of the material and spiritual culture of national minorities. So Slovak Republic citizens that belong to national minorities and ethnic groups enjoy the opportunity to develop their material and spiritual culture, exercise state-guaranteed rights and bring to life opportunities provided by the legislation of Slovak Republic.
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The paper “I wouldn't go to the doctor anyway!” presents a study of alternative medicine practices among Estonians, who are allegedly the least religious people in the world. Only 6 percent of Estonians consider religion important in their lives and only 2 percent attend church weekly; 1/3 profess to never having had the experience of the sacred, and another 1/3 have difficulties expressing when and in connection with what they have felt anything being holy. One of the world’s leading researchers of New Age, Paul Heelas, has called Estonia “a golden land” for studying trajectories of changing spirituality: “over and above serving to exemplify the ‘shattering’ retreat of Christendom … Estonia calls for the transformation of the study of religion … to the comparative study of sources of significance: their various promises … or their failures”. The present study is based on 34 life-story interviews, recorded digitally in the years 2008–2019 and stored in the Estonian Folklore Archives. Although the sociological theories of religion consider alternative medicine as the New Age spirituality by default, the interviewees perceive their activity as non-religious. The label ‘New Age’ is even regarded with hostility. There are some who identify themselves as Christians, and some who see the profitability of using the Buddhist language or Taoist images, but faith per se in any religious doctrine is hard to find. Soviet ideological brainwashing during the occupation trained Estonians to hang on to thinking for themselves and antagonism-buttressed self-preservation. In a basic values survey, Estonians put autonomy and self-sufficiency (equals autarchia in church terminology) in a very high position, the third among 21 values. This defiance is visible against the church as well as the New Age ideologies, and the state medical system. This might, thus, explain the great support for heterodoxy and the cultic milieu both in the census statistics of the 21st century and the large numbers of Estonians pursuing yoga. Whoever can afford it prefers finding help in Google search and not showing up in a doctor's office. Among the interviewees there are some who use in their job such oriental body techniques as yoga, acupuncture, Thai massage, and reiki. One person is a close family member of a long-time legendary folk-healer who used forest herbs and had a reputation as a clairvoyant, but in fact had higher education in biology and chemistry and advised clients skilfully by reading chemical elements in blood tests and applying knowledge about chemical content of the plants in the home forest. One woman whose rheumatoid-arthritic daughter was treated with modern medicine without satisfactory results for many years turned to Byzantine blood-letting cupping therapy that has been practiced for centuries by Scandinavian folk medicine. After sauna suction cups are placed on the skin to force the superficial capillaries to dilate, and then skin is cut intentionally in order to cleanse the organism of toxic residues. She defines herself as believing “in nothing except in herself” – “no witchcraft whatsoever in these therapies”, according to her own words. As Bronislaw Szerszynski has noticed, feral sacrality of the split transcendental axis – “abroad natural and cultural landscape freely roaming around religious symbols and actions” – is floating in society as a free cultural resource for private use in the creation of identities. At least, something similar can be detected from some life stories in this paper: one interviewee confesses that the job of an oriental body therapist allows to “get ever closer to God, the Creator, Buddha, the Intelligent Energy – whatever it is that has created, and keeps creating the Universe and us”. By the 21st century, after breaking free from the Soviet occupation, Estonia has successfully joined not only the European and North Atlantic alliances, but likewise embraced globalisation and started eagerly to “collect exotic experiences” as a landmark of post-modernist lifestyle, according to Zygmunt Bauman. We became Westernised in an Easternised West; for vacations and career enhancement we go to Westernised East. Szerszynski's idea of the hiding place for “roaming religion” in sports, education, and medicine allows posing questions to people from the realm of belief, while totally leaving aside Christianity. I am assuming that in those explanations about why people choose one or another solution for their health or psychological problems, the “roaming religion” phenomenon expresses itself without having to ask whether a person believes in God, Intelligent Energy, self-realisation, or whatever. Thorough quantitative research is definitely needed, but first, by qualitative methods, the diverse self-describing statements should be found, by which it would be easier for us to identify ourselves.
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