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There are testaments from the 16th century preserved in Kremnica state archive. They are written in Latin, German and in one sample also in Slovak language. Last wills prepared a man for a death in spiritual and secular (division of property) way. Testaments eliminated conflict between secular property and desire for an eternal life. Formally testaments consist of several parts – invocation, intitulation, profession of faith, passages about human mortality, composing of the last will and redress of sins, heritages of property, confirmation, corroborating and date formulas. The content of the testaments is an important historical source for economic, law, culture, regional history and also history of material culture and everyday life.
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In the last decades, despite some pessimistic prognoses, shamanism is experiencingrevival. In the course of this process, shamans are adapting their practices to theclients’ expectations and new profile; as a result their own traditional view of theБългарска етнология, world is undergoing significant changes. One of the newly-emerged features ofcontemporary shamanism in Buryatia is dividing the inhabitants of the sacred worldinto „prestigious“ and „non-prestigious“ and offering them gifts corresponding tothis new status, all this with the active participation of the shamans themselves. Thearticle presents such practice which the author observed and assumes that there is alsoa process of transmission of respective ideals and values in the sphere of the sacredworld.
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The Areca nut is one of the products found in South Asia, Southeast Asia, andSouthern China. In China, being an exotic product that can be grown only in tropicalclimate, the Areca nut used to be highly appreciated and considered as a precious giftamongst the nobles in the past, especially during the Tang and Song dynasties. Whilein Vietnam, throughout its history, the Areca nut, because of its inherent spiritualvalue, has been an indispensable object of sacrifice in Vietnamese ancestral worshipas well as their lifetime rituals such as weddings, funerals and during childbirth. Apartfrom being an essential offering in rituals and ceremonies, the Areca nut traditionallywas also a means of mobilizing Vietnamese people’s social interactions (includingcourting between young boys and young girls).After doing a short description on how the Areca nut was used as a gift and as asacrificial object respectively in China in the past and in Southeast Asia, this article,from a historical point of view and with the author’s first hand materials from herfieldwork in Vietnam, attempts to show and explain both why and how the Arecanut has been functioning as a core indispensable object in sacrifices as well as ritualsand also as a means of social interaction in Vietnam. Thus, the article emphasizesthe important role that the Areca nut plays in Vietnamese people’s spiritual life andculture.
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The article analyses the process of choosing different strategies of identification bythe Bulgarians in Ukraine. The present state of the “identification processes” againstthe background of the “war of memory” and the “invented traditions” places themamong the priority problems of science and politics.The subject of analysis are the specifics of the formation of collective memorywhich are at the root of the choice of identification strategy: commemorative practices,mechanisms for memorialization of the past, the correlation between the localgroup history and the national strategies of Bulgaria and Ukraine. The conclusionis that the choice of identification behaviour is influenced by the efficiency of thesocial adaptation under the specific historical circumstances. The social resources atdisposal of the group in any particular moment influence the choice of vectors of thecollective memory and predetermine the formation of defensive practices aiming topreserve the group.
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According to Wahrig Deustsches Woerterbuch the concept of the “road” refers to a place which you have to walk in order to obtain your wish, to change some life situation in a positive or negative way; there the desired result of the act is achieved. Therefore, in our traditional culture the road is the place where people most often perform all sorts of magical actions including “white” and “black” magic. The crossroad has the same meaning; in a sense, it outlines the model of the horizontal division of the world which finds expression in four main directions – east, west, north, south. The article shows some of the most common “white” magical actions which aim at positive results – mostly various healing practices against diseases such as “gorska mayka” and “vankashna bolest” as well as customs dedicated to the mythical master-guardian of the village such as “Kokosha cherkva” and customs against drought. The article also examines some “black” magical actions aiming at doing harm: “binding” of newlyweds, stealing the milk of somebody else’s cows.
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This article aims to trace the migratory movements of Bulgarian population from the Western Outlands to Bulgaria from the Spring of 1941, when as a result of the accession of Bulgaria to the Tripartite Pact, the country regain some of the ethnic Bulgarian territories lost during the Balkan wars (1912 – 1913) and World War I (1915 – 1918). The main factors that determine the migration process are outlined: economic and financial difficulties; voluntary labor migrations; forced economic mobilization and others
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Conversation analysis is an interdisciplinary research programme assuming an innovative theoretical approach and unique methodology. The present article follows its origin in sociology in the 60’s and 70’s of the 20th century, its conceptual grounds and the factors of its formation and consequent development, its gradual and difficult confirmation and its broad application in the close humanities and even in natural sciences. This review outlines the points of contact between conversation analysis and its direct predecessor, ethnomethodology, situates conversation analysis in the field of discourse analysis and mentions its contribution to foreign language teaching.
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The paper offers a new interpretation on Rousseau in the context of Richard Rorty’s concepts on the philosophy of language and the linguistic turn developed at the end of the 20th century. The classical interpretation of Rousseau’s ideas of freedom in view of upbringing as a rule juxtaposes nature and culture. The present paper argues that this opposition can be overcome through the application of the metaphor approach to both upbringing and the value-neutral character of language. In this sense the question to be answered is how the languages of the teacher and of the student co-exist in Rousseau’s ideas and what the mechanism is that turns these languages into means of upbringing. The research employs arguments in favour of the hypothesis that in terms of the metaphor of “upbringing” created by Rousseau in Emile or on Education, the concepts language of nature and language of society overlap.
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Writing is a main component in second language acquisition. Writing skills are basic and include creating texts, which are assessed acording to the following criteria: content, organization and cohesion, range, register, target language, accuracy of language. The writing task, which results are analysed in this article, is partially constrained by presenting foreign students with initial and final sentences. The students were instructed to write several sentences in between those two which, when taken all together, would form a good text.
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Although belonging to the corporate tradition of the Ottoman Empire, the relationship between patrons and clients continue to play a role in modern Balkan countries. This article presents and analyzes examples of this vertical type of social networks in order to explain some peculiarities of the way in which Bulgarian politics operates in the late nineteenth century.
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The article presents the first results of a pilot study in the field of social gerontology. The key features of two groups of retirees in the post-socialist period (a metropolitan city – a small town), derived from radically opposite families (communist elite – middle hand peasants), are traced and analyzed. A special emphasis is placed on the political influence that members of both groups have in their local space.
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Political reality often changes human life. It gives opportunity to make unchangeable choice. Life on the border or between two borders sometimes becomes a habitual event. The dynamic transformations in human life are presented through the prism of the personal fate of two significant figures of the Bulgarian public life from the middle of the XX century - Esto Vezenkov and Boyan Mihailov.
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The study examines the contributing moments in the scientific work of Assoc. Prof. Vesselin Tepavicharov, DSc., concerning the approaches developed and approached by him for education in a multiethnic environment. Data from a survey conducted in educational institutions in the municipality of Straldja are analyzed.
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In the last years, the “Roma topic” attracts an increasing interest and takes a fopemost place in the public sphere of united Europe; hence, the Roma policies become a significant challenge on national and European level. Before analyzing the contemporary political discourses about the integration and the social inclusion of Roma, however, it is obligatory to know very well the previously existing state policies toward the Gypsies from the time of their arrival in Europe in the Middle Ages until today. Since a great number of the Roma population continues to live in the countries of Eastern Europe, the policies of the states which formed the “socialist camp” after World War II are very important. The analysis of the existing main political discourses about the Gypsies/Roma (and mostly of their results) should be the basis for the analysis of the contemporary national and European discourses about the Roma policies. Based on this, the achievements and the failures of those policies may find explanation and some prognoses about their results (or the lack of such) could be made.
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Тhis study aims to present the results of the pilot evaluation of the training system application. The aims is to inform PE teachers and coaches on identifying underlying problems of discrimination, racism and violence, train them on innovative approaches for preventing these phenomena and provide them with educational tools. The training platform is composed by 6 modules that work to prevent incidents of violence, racism and discrimination in sport. The evaluation is done through questionnaires-interviews to 30 mentors. The conducted surveys revealed that the game and the comic present the main messages and mechanisms for tackling incidents of discrimination in sport in an interesting and attractive way. Another key point of the training process has been the self-reflection in relation to the practice carried out by the trainees, as well as the participation and interest that they showed along the entire formation process. The modules in the e-training platform present good practices, documents and programmes in a very accessible and interesting way. They are directed towards development of teachers and coaches’ skills for dealing with accidents of discrimination and violence in informal education in partnership with colleagues, students, parents and specialists in the field of grassroots sports.
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