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The objective of this paper is to present an interesting example from Bulgaria – the Rhodope Mountains, which abound in visible and invisible boundaries. The paper focuses on the cultural elements which are selected by the communities as identifiers to distinguish themselves from others. The three basic ethno-religious groups inhabiting the mountains (Turks, Muslim Bulgarians, and Christian Bulgarians) possess a complex of cultural characteristics including language, names, self-identification, marriage patterns, traditional and ritual systems, religious affiliation, clothing, and so on, which are instrumentalized with the objective of achieving closer relations or drawing dividing lines between different communities. The process of the eradication and establishment of new boundaries is especially dynamic with regard to Muslim Bulgarians. They perceive themselves as a boundary community, and in fact they are regarded as such by both Christian Bulgarians and Turks. In their attempts to overcome that border situation, the middle and younger generations of Muslim Bulgarians in the Middle and Eastern Rhodopes have started to express a Bulgarian identity more frequently. The elder Muslim Bulgarians in the regions of Gotse Delchev, Madan, and Rudozem, as well as the younger ones, place their Muslim belonging more frequently at the center of their personal and group identity, which finds expression in the drawing of cultural boundaries to distinguish themselves from members of the other groups.
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The focus of the article lies on the interpretations of folklore elements in the Bulgarian animated cinema as well as on the rationalization of main features of the Bulgarian national character in the period from the late 1940s to the present days. In the 1960s, the process which has begun with the ideological censorship of the Bulgarian folklore tradition quickly transformed into satirical film model directing its criticism on the national character of the Bulgarian. This model was also based on the nontraditional visual representation of the folklore through the modern black and white drawing and caricature, through the grotesque and the decorative drawing. The next stage of the transformation of fairy and mythological subjects was related to the radical neo-vanguard practices in our animated cinema which compared our tradition to foreign cultures and ideas on a global scale and in wide range – from the direct parallels in art to the psychoanalytical interpretations visualized in surrealistic stylistics. The last 25 years marked a peculiar identity crisis of the Bulgarian artists. The changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall created certain fear in the artists to turn to the rationalization of the national origin and character.
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Hüseyinzade Ali bey, 24 Şubat 1864’te Kuzey Azerbaycan’ın Salyan şehrinde birçok din adamı yetiştirmiş bir ailenin çocuğu olarak doğmuştur. Küçük yaşlarında annesini ve babasını kaybeden Ali, çocukluk yıllarını o sıralarda Kafkasyalı Müslümanların şeyhülislâmı olan dedesi (annesinin babası) Şeyh Ahmet Salyanî’nin himayesinde, Tiflis şehrinde geçirmiş, Rusça, Farsça ve Arapça öğrenmiştir. Zamanın meşhur ilim adamlarından Şeyh Ahmed’in evinde toplanan Tiflis aydınlarının sohbetleri, henüz ilk gençliğinden itibaren onda edebiyata ve felsefeye büyük ilgi uyandırmıştır.
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The article is focused on a very interesting pottery vessel called “podnitsa“ (flat earthen baking dish). On its surface it is written the year of its producing, 1866. The aim of the research is to publish the artefact, to study the rare rite connected to it, to describe the date and its deposition in the pit. The presence of an ornate pot, called podnitsa, marked with a specific year, as well as of other similar dishes without decoration bears record of a preserved old tradition of fertility and harvesting or of reminiscence of one practiced by a limited group of people (several families or a family) which is not a subject of mass tendency. This would probably mean that the personal life cycle of the people who created the podnitsa is deeply marked by sensitive events culminating perhaps on May 1, 1866, on the day of the Jeremiah holiday. The material projection of these processes is a ceramic vessel whose features characterize it as the only one studied so far. This artefact as well as the large set of findings during the archaeological excavations at the site in the region of the village of Velikan add a yet-unknown nuance to the ritual of the Jeremiah feast.
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The topic of analysis in this paper are lullabies. The idea is to compare and contrast some of the themes, imagery, and motifs of this specific genre within different folk traditions, as well as their inclusion and development in the Bulgarian lullaby. This paper is split into several small chapters: Growth and prosperity – Death; Forest – Crib in a Tree; Who Rocks the Crib? (motif “Everyone is at work”) and Animals (motif “Your mother is a fox,//your father is a wolf…“).
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Adamova glava - one of the most famous plant in Russian mythological herbarium. Plant name Adamova glava (and similar variants) is fixed in the Russian manuscripted herbals from the beginning of the XVIII century. The text analysis shows that it is not a single plant, but several different ones. The purpose of this report - to show what kinds of articles in herbals related to plant name Adamova glava and what folkloric motifs correspond with it. We identified five types of articles and the following groups of motives: a) the Rituals of Herb-Gathering: on the eve of Midsummer Day at dawn, to tear through silver and gold / with cross, with prayers; b) Nomination: plant is the king of all herbs; c) The functions of the plant: from porcha smertnaia, infertility, for favor heads; to cause water and air demons; assistance in the construction of dams, tall buildings; rapid healing of wounds; g) etiological legend: the plant appeared on the Jordan River under the holy tree cypress.
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One of the stages of the Czechoslovak history is the 1920s and 1930s period when Czechs settled with their families in Slovakia, driven by a long-term perspective and working as civil servants in state administration, or in the private sphere. MUDr.Viktor Sedlák graduated from the Charles University in Prague and worked at the Dermatology and Venerology Clinic of the Comenius University in Bratislava since 1919. He later opened a private doctor’s office for skin and venereal diseases and treated the employees of Slovak Railways. In the spring of 1939, he was forced to leave Bratislava and moved to Brno. While in Bratislava, he lived with his wife and two children in a small Czechoslovak villa colony on Lermontov Street (formerly Günther Street) in a house designed by Dušan Jurkovič, in the neighbourhood of other intellectuals. The narrated memories and documents preserved in the family archive together with other objects that were carried to Brno reflect the professional career and private life of the Czech doctor who had lived in Bratislava for twenty years, and show the daily life of his family and social contacts within the predominantly Czech population. The text depicts the family memory culture.
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This article discusses the culture of shaming – a perspective that appears where modernizing discourses on Polish society are confronted with the cultural experiences of villagers. Rakowski explores several possible ways of going beyond this perspective, referring, in turn, to the world of rural social subjectivity as it emerges from artistic and ethnographic projects, the conditions of belonging and the possibilities of performing an ‘inward turn’ in situations of intersocial encounter, and the potential to construct an alternative understanding of society – a proto-sociology. Thus artistic projects are linked with what is ethnographic and current, and above all with the possibility of an alternative social history shaped by rural communities.
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Položaj žene u društvu i porodici možemo promatrati samo u uskoj zavisnosti s položajem članova porodice oba spola, s razvojem porodice kao društvenog organizma i profilom tradicijske društvene sredine u kojoj odnosne porodične strukture postoje. Seoske smo društvene sredine donedavno mogli promatrati kao tradicijska područja, radi postojećih kulturnih, ekonomskih i socijalnih razlika u odnosu na veće urbane sredine i radi ujednačenosti tradicijskih karakteristika i normi. Tradicionalnost, kao pojam današnjice, ima izraženu komponentu patrijarhalnosti, uz neke druge karakteristike kao npr. relevantnost javnog mnijenja lokalne društvene sredine, pravni dualizam (tj. zadržavanje običajnopravnih normi uz prihvaćanje pozitivno pravnog sistema) i dr. U relativno zatvorenijim, a možemo reći i introvertnijim, društvenim organizmima te su karakteristike indikator socijalne integracije. Međutim, današnje stanje pokazuje da osim u seoskim i u manjim i većim gradskim sredinama ponovo nalazimo izvjesne tradicijske karakteristike života i norme ponašanja. Takvo je stanje nastalo uslijed činjenice da je rast gradova baziran uglavnom na doseljavanju, i to većinom seoskog stanovništva, a manje samim priraštajem žitelja grada. To znači da prethodni sloj tradicijskog sadržaja, kroz vremensku dimenziju, dobiva impulse za održanje bar jednog dijela tog sadržaja, što zavisi o brojnosti useljenika i ujednačenosti njihova tradicijskog profila. O intenzitetu tradicijskog kvaliteta u urbanim sredinama, kao i u ruralnim, ovisit će i održanje osnovnih društvenih i moralnih karakteristika, brzina njihovih modifikacija i prilagođavanje novim uvjetima, koji postaju osnova za dalji razvoj.
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In the ecclesiastical Christian calendar, Holy Trinity or Holy Ghost is a moveable feast and is celebrated on the Monday after Pentecost, in May or June. In the folk calendar, this holiday marks the beginning of the so-called Whitsuntide or Midsummer Week (in Bulgarian Rusalska nedelya). It is believed to be the period of wood nymphs’ special activity – during the week those supernatural creatures, who personify vegetation and greenery in the fields and the woods, provide the fertility of crops and vineyards. The analysis focuses on those notions and the respective practices, outlining that to a great degree Whitsuntide corresponds to the Dirty or Pagan days in the winter – the period between Christmas and Epiphany. As this is one of the most important periods in the agricultural calendar, it is bound with people’s efforts to ensure fertility and water balance in their inhabited territory by offering sacrifices and propitiating the supernatural powers who are owners and hosts of vegetation and water resources.
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The production of sea salt is a traditional occupation in Pomorie. Until the early1920s the town is the main centre of salt-production in Bulgaria and because of that, the salt-pans and the method of work are a subject of numerous researches, travel notes, and popular readings. Together with the well-known practice of production of sea salt, the descriptions in some of the historical sources of the size of the saltpans and their structure, the means of transportation of saltwater from one basin to another and of exportation of the salt produced differ from what is known about the Pomorie salt-pans in the period studied. The critical analysis of these evidences gives reasons to consider them reliable in some cases and insufficiently proven another. The characteristics of the salt-pans’ structure and the technologies used are most often ingenious decisions of the local salt-producers but some of them have analogues in the world production.
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The Lower Gran region accommodates a large number of polycultural sites from different historical periods, many of which we know only thanks to surface collections. In 2009, research was carried out for scientific and documentary purposes in the village Hronovce, part of Čajakovo, site Rúbaniská (Levice District). On the site were represented prehistoric (Stone Age, Bronze Age) as well as protohistoric finds (Roman period). The article refers to the protohistoric period, when a Germanic necropolis was located there from the end of the Early Roman period (stage B2, B2/C1). Three funeral urns were examined and many small artefacts (fibulae, buckles, weapons, belt components...) and fragments of undecorated and decorated pottery with various designs (barbotino, stamped decoration, toothed wheels, etc.) were discovered. The studied site in Hronovce confirms the intensive settlement of the Lower Gran region by the Quadi in the 2nd century AD, or more precisely at the time of the Marcomannic wars.
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This paper discusses the dynamics of the construction of culture from the viewpoint ofyoung adults. These dynamics can be identified both at a macro level, across cultures,and at a micro level, within cultures. Essentialist view of culture as monolithic entitywith fixed values, beliefs and behaviors is a construct that seems to reproduce inthe formation of the image of the Other. Subcultures are contrasted with the socalled norms of mainstream culture, a view which denies the fluidity of culture asa dynamic social construct which can lead to stereotyping and prejudice againstpersons (Holliday 2011). In the fields of sociology and cultural studies, Othernessis related to the construction of identities. It rests on social and cultural hierarchiesand relations of power. “Strangers” are socially produced (Bauman 1998) and theirOtherness reflects the established categories of race, gender and class.The presented study allowed us to unravel the tensions arising from the Us-Them divide, which often leads to discrimination and prejudice. This qualitativeinvestigation explores young adults’ perceptions of subcultures and cultural diversitywith the use of interviews and critical incidents to approach the interviews. In thediscussion of critical incidents, or short stories (Arthur 2001), Bulgarian and Mexicanstudents were seen to relate their own stories to those of the subcultural and foreignOther, thus creating a reflective vision about the cultural difference. The discussionsdemonstrate the invention of successful strategies for avoiding stigmatization,stereotyping and discrimination. On the contrary, their discussions were conduciveto acceptance of differences regarding cultural formation and cultural display(Delanty 2009). The participants raised their voices against discourses that deny thecosmopolitan value of openness and respect, and equal rights of freedom of persons.
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The article is a conceptual rationalization of live action role-playing games (LARP games) from the perspective of subcultural studies. The phenomenon of LARP games is addressed through the ideas of John Irwin and Gary Alan Fine, both representatives of the late Chicago School tradition, and defined as a scene of interaction or a leisure subculture. In the presentation of forms of social organization and cultural practices of Bulgarian larp players key terms borrowed from influential theories in the fieldof (post)subcultural studies are used, such as (neo) tribes and bricolage. Both thedynamics of values and attitudes among the active participants and the ideas producedin the perception of the subculture by outside members of society are discussed. Thequestion of the ethical engagement of the researcher to the studied subjects has beenraised and the position of the scholar as a mediator in a media environment oversaturatedwith representations has been questioned.
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