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The following article is based on a research on the prom night in Pernik region, Bulgaria. Some of the main problems illustrated in the article are related to the different ideas about the preparations for the prom. The main accents are the male and female points of view as well as the stereotypes deriving from the gender differences. The society perceives this phenomenon mainly as a female ritual, thus one of the main goals of the study is to show that the prom night is as important to the boys as it is to the girls. The article will focus on the gender specifics and the symbols typical of the ritual behaviour of the participants. Thus, we can understand the reasons behind the seniors’ practices during this celebration.
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After the restoration of the rights of the Turks in Bulgaria in the beginning of the 1990s, they again received the opportunity to develop culture in their mother tongue. Over the time the Turkish chitalishta (culture centers), which had existed in the past, were re-established and new organizations pursuing various educational, creative and informational activities appeared. Already for several years on end, the Turkish cultural associations in Bulgaria have been organizing events and staging traditional and modern musical and dancing performances. The article studies the functioning of the Turkish cultural organizations in Bulgaria as well as the Turkish community’s self-representation by means of folklore performances in front of the other communities.
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The article presents in brief the history and the present of the Rusyns – one of the many European peoples “without a state”. They are an indigenous population of the Northern Carpathians inhabiting a territory in the geographical centre of Europe; however, during their millennial historical development they had their own state only once and for one day. Today, their historical region, Carpathian Ruthenia, is divided between five countries. In Ukraine, where the majority of the Rusyns lives, they do not have adequate political and cultural minority rights. In the rest of the countries, although they have different degrees of cultural and administrative autonomy, the Rusyns are facing the danger of assimilation because of their small number. Even though they are a geopolitical and ethnocultural reality, their future is at stake.
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Scientific Life; Scholarly Conference
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The text analyses the entanglements between the commemorative and the festive aspects of the events organized as anniversaries of the so called “Revival Process” (the forced assimilation of Bulgarian Turks in mid- to late 1980s) and the protests against it. Following the example of the Day of Dzhebel, the study tracks the various forms of remembering the past. On the one hand, it is the “top-down”constructed official memory of the traumatic events presented in the well-established discourses and cultural practices of the commemoration, while on the other hand is the recollection of the shared everyday life that transforms the event into a fest, reviving the memory of the lost social relations in the community.
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In this article I present the potential of the Wild Flower Festival in the area of the villages of the upper bank of the Arda River as a new type of ‘production’ and an alternative non-agricultural way for development in the rural context. The article follows the history and mission of the festival in its development, the specialized events and the interactions between the main social actors – external NGO specialists and local stakeholders. It reflects the impact of the festival on the local communities through the mobilization of knowledge and experience, the appreciation of local cultural specifics, targeted actions for preservation of the natural and cultural wealth of the Rhodope Mountains. The article explores how local natural and cultural resources are being used as a new type of production in rural areas.
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The Roman Mithraism is an Occidental variant of the cult of the ancient Iranian deity Mithra. The article explores the Iranian origin of some of the main mythological motives found in this Mystery religion and their interpretation through the prism of the Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism in the Late Antique Rome. A hypothesis is formulated about the fundamental significance of the concept of the logos or ratio in the context of the numerological and musical-astronomical allegories of the cult, derived from the Chaldean-Persian teachings and the science of ancient Sumer, permitting to reconstruct yet unsuspected aspects of its esoteric doctrine.
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From an anthropological perspective, the world of childhood is a combination of the world of children as well as the world of adults and it includes a process of cultural learning, which does not end with childhood. The present article seeks to answer the question where and under what conditions these processes take place in the light of the various spaces and their uses during holidays. Using visual narratives, the article presents case studies from the Roma neighborhood in the village of Belozem,Plovdiv District, and a micro neighborhood in the residential district of Stolipinovoin the city of Plovdiv.
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The article is an attempt to compare the customary law system of inheritance in the Bulgarian rural traditional society with that of France. A parallel is made with the customary law system of the Berbers in Morocco as well. The significant difference between the Bulgarian and the French customary law systems of inheritance is that the first one is uniform as a whole, while in the second case is characterized by the existence of different types of customary law systems of inheritance in various regions of the country.Another important benchmark for the comparative analysis is the fact that according to the Bulgarian customary law system of inheritance only the sons have the right to inherit the estate of the deceased. It is pointed out that this peculiarity of the system of inheritance is also characteristic of some areas in France and the reasons for this are discussed. The principle of inheritance in question is also characteristic of the customary law of the Moroccan Berbers – local, pre-Arabic population of Morocco. In support of this, some information is given about their customary law of inheritance.
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The article presents and analyses the relation between the chitalishta and the municipalities on the basis of the municipal programs for the development of the activities of this specific institution. The data used is able to demonstrate the resources of the chitalishta, the rich variety of the activities accomplished there, as well as to make more concrete the appeals for support, to show the attitude of the municipalities as cultural institutions participating in the realization of public policies. Having in mind the importance of the chitalishte institution for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage, the content of the programs is analysed from the point of view of the activities and measures for the safeguarding of this kind of cultural heritage.
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The paper analyses that vocabulary of certain medieval Bulgarian written monuments which is related to mythological notions and religious believes of the pagan antiquity. It is part of a series of studies on specific lexical-semantic groups of words in the history of the Bulgarian language, both united and differentiated on the basis of their subject-logical links in relation to reality, which have been done with a view to collect material for the Thematic Dictionary of the Medieval Bulgarian Language. Analysis is based on language data of the earliest written monuments – of the 10th to 14th centuries – which are reflected in the Palaeoslavonic lexicographic editions. The following thematic units are studied: names of pagan religious buildings and facilities, terms of pagan religious practices, names of persons involved in pagan practices, sacred words and names of mythical characters. The study reveals the existence of a large and detailed thematic union covering numerous word items related to pagan culture.
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Folk Orthodox Christianity in Bulgaria is a product of Bulgarian Orthodox mentality: this is the canonical knowledge that partially alters its form in time under the pressure of extreme external factors but retains its core relatively unchanged. It has indirect expression in all folk forms while the direct one is in the Christian prayer, rituals, and different beliefs. An interesting manifestation of folk Orthodoxy in the Orthodox temples of the town of Samokov is the practice that could hardly be defined as “canonical” or “non-canonical”: in the chairs, which are also called the thrones in the churches, are placed paper plates with names of pa¬rishioners. These are people who paid a certain amount of money to the temple so that the church board put their names and they could use these chairs during the liturgy: they stayed each in front of his/her chair and sit down when it was allowed to sit. It was considered to be especially pres¬tigious to have a throne (chair) in the temple and the deprivation of this privilege was regarded as a major insult. As a rule, people who took care of the church, donated money and worked as volunteers had such chairs/ thrones. Name plates are always present in the temple space, so the person symbolically “always attends” the temple and liturgy. The beginning of this practice can be placed after the end of the fifteenth century when bishop thrones were placed in the Orthodox churches. Its ubiquitous dissemination dates back to the second half of the 18th century. The peak was in the 19th century, when after the age of the Tanzimat (1839) began the intensive construction of orthodox churches in the Bulgarian lands. It should be borne in mind that the name plates on the chairs in the churches could play their role only when the literacy among the Bulgarians became widespread in the first half of the 19th century and there was a public that could read the names.Folk Orthodox Christianity in Bulgaria is a product of Bulgarian Orthodox mentality: this is the canonical knowledge that partially alters its form in time under the pressure of extreme external factors but retains its core relatively unchanged. It has indirect expression in all folk forms while the direct one is in the Christian prayer, rituals, and different beliefs. An interesting manifestation of folk Orthodoxy in the Orthodox temples of the town of Samokov is the practice that could hardly be defined as “canonical” or “non-canonical”: in the chairs, which are also called the thrones in the churches, are placed paper plates with names of parishioners. These are people who paid a certain amount of money to the temple so that the church board put their names and they could use these chairs during the liturgy: they stayed each in front of his/her chair and sit down when it was allowed to sit. It was considered to be especially prestigious to have a throne (chair) in the temple and the deprivation of this privilege was regarded as a major insult. As a rule, people who took care of the church, donated money and worked as volunteers had such chairs/ thrones. Name plates are always present in the temple space, so the person symbolically “always attends” the temple and liturgy. The beginning of this practice can be placed after the end of the fifteenth century when bishop thrones were placed in the Orthodox churches. Its ubiquitous dissemination dates back to the second half of the 18th century. The peak was in the 19th century, when after the age of the Tanzimat (1839) began the intensive construction of orthodox churches in the Bulgarian lands. It should be borne in mind that the name plates on the chairs in the churches could play their role only when the literacy among the Bulgarians became widespread in the first half of the 19th century and there was a public that could read the names.Folk Orthodox Christianity in Bulgaria is a product of Bulgarian Orthodox mentality: this is the canonical knowledge that partially alters its form in time under the pressure of extreme external factors but retains its core relatively unchanged. It has indirect expression in all folk forms while the direct one is in the Christian prayer, rituals, and different beliefs. An interesting manifestation of folk Orthodoxy in the Orthodox temples of the town of Samokov is the practice that could hardly be defined as “canonical” or “non-canonical”: in the chairs, which are also called the thrones in the churches, are placed paper plates with names of parishioners. These are people who paid a certain amount of money to the temple so that the church board put their names and they could use these chairs during the liturgy: they stayed each in front of his/her chair and sit down when it was allowed to sit. It was considered to be especially prestigious to have a throne (chair) in the temple and the deprivation of this privilege was regarded as a major insult. As a rule, people who took care of the church, donated money and worked as volunteers had such chairs/ thrones. Name plates are always present in the temple space, so the person symbolically “always attends” the temple and liturgy. The beginning of this practice can be placed after the end of the fifteenth century when bishop thrones were placed in the Orthodox churches. Its ubiquitous dissemination dates back to the second half of the 18th century. The peak was in the 19th century, when after the age of the Tanzimat (1839) began the intensive construction of orthodox churches in the Bulgarian lands. It should be borne in mind that the name plates on the chairs in the churches could play their role only when the literacy among the Bulgarians became widespread in the first half of the 19th century and there was a public that could read the names. Folk Orthodox Christianity in Bulgaria is a product of Bulgarian Orthodox mentality: this is the canonical knowledge that partially alters its form in time under the pressure of extreme external factors but retains its core relatively unchanged. It has indirect expression in all folk forms while the direct one is in the Christian prayer, rituals, and different beliefs. An interesting manifestation of folk Orthodoxy in the Orthodox temples of the town of Samokov is the practice that could hardly be defined as “canonical” or “non-canonical”: in the chairs, which are also called the thrones in the churches, are placed paper plates with names of parishioners. These are people who paid a certain amount of money to the temple so that the church board put their names and they could use these chairs during the liturgy: they stayed each in front of his/her chair and sit down when it was allowed to sit. It was considered to be especially prestigious to have a throne (chair) in the temple and the deprivation of this privilege was regarded as a major insult. As a rule, people who took care of the church, donated money and worked as volunteers had such chairs/ thrones. Name plates are always present in the temple space, so the person symbolically “always attends” the temple and liturgy. The beginning of this practice can be placed after the end of the fifteenth century when bishop thrones were placed in the Orthodox churches. Its ubiquitous dissemination dates back to the second half of the 18th century. The peak was in the 19th century, when after the age of the Tanzimat (1839) began the intensive construction of orthodox churches in the Bulgarian lands. It should be borne in mind that the name plates on the chairs in the churches could play their role only when the literacy among the Bulgarians became widespread in the first half of the 19th century and there was a public that could read the names.
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