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In the contemporary festive ritual system continuity acquires outstanding importance for theory as well as for practice. So far continuity has been interpreted only in its relationship between the old and the new, and this is a rather narrow concept, one-sided and incomplete as well. The article considers the most important trends in continuity in the contemporary festive ritual system, trends that define both its 'vertical' and its 'horizontal' aspects. The article also considers the good qualities of our traditional feasts and rituals which should be made meaningful and used. Individual forms of the manifestations of continuity are concretely presented. On the basis of a scientific and critical approach to the old feasts and rituals, they are divided into three main groups, which have a different fate in our time: 1) existing ones; 2) these which have remained only as a memory of the past and 3) those which have outlived their time. The continuity of the Soviet festive ritual system played an important part in the socialist way of life in our country. The importance of continuity of the feasts in the other socialist countries is also emphasized, as well as that of those which are of international significance.
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Reviews, Criticisms, Books
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In the researches carried out so far by Bulgarian ethnographers (Hr. Vakarelski, Zh. Vuzharova, V. Marinov, etc.,) the form of the beam served as the basic classification sign in the typology of ploughs. The two main groups of Bulgarian ploughs, straight-beam and crooked-beam, are determined by this sign. This article gives preference to a complex typological criterion: the framework of the plough formed from the following basic constructive elements: beam, handles, ploughshare, beam support. The basic structure of the plough is considered as being placed in a co-ordinate system, the beginning of which (p. O) coincides with the tip of the angle, formed by the handles and the ploughshare. According to this criterion four types of ploughs are differentiated: (1) Two-frame or single-angle plough, the beam of which is attached to the back-end of the ploughshare and has no support (open plough, double frame, monan-gulum=iMo); (2) Three-sided or triangular plough, the beam of which is attached to the ploughshare in the angle (p. O) between the handle and the ploughshare (Triangulum-0=To); (3) Three-sided or triangular plough whose beam is attached to the ploughshare at p.X (Triangulum-Х =Tx) and (4) Four-sided or quadrangular plough, whose beam is attached to the handles at p. Y (quadrangulum = Qy). According to the data collected so far, all of these types are to be found in the Bulgarian ethnic territory. The respective conceptual-terminological apparatus is introduced with a view to the territorial characterization of the ethnocultural phenomena.
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The author has turned her attention to a problem which has not, as yet, been sufficiently studied from an ethnographic aspect. The research was carried out on the basis of written sources of the end of the 19 th century, and terrain material, sought out among the population of the Central and Western sections of the Rhodope ethnographic region of the Bulgarian ethnic territory. The author's conclusions are that the settlements in this region came into being in the process of acquiring land by cultivating it without leave. Regardless of its contradiction with official law, this practice is in harmony with the norms of the traditional Bulgarian customary law. The organization of their agricultural territory influenced the formation of the settlements, and so did the forms of ownership and the social relations on which production was based. Particular attention has been paid to elucidating the question of the mingling of related and unrelated families within the boundaries of the individual settlement and their localization in its territory. The direct effect of farming and stockbreeding on the structure and the development of the mountain villages is studied in the concluding pages of the article.
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The author considers the essence and the special features of the home farms in Samokov at the time around and after the Liberation from Ottoman bondage, and the first three or four decades of the present century. Activities around making full use of the not particularly large courtyards around the dwelling as market gardens, planting fruit trees and flowers are elucidated, as is the essence of the care taken in the breeding by almost every family of a cow, a pig, chickens and in many cases horses and donkeys. The good care taken to keep everything clean and orderly in the home farms is emphasized; it was chiefly due to the women, who made very rational use of the abundant water flowing from fountains and obtained from wells. Attention is also paid to the wise use made of natural resources for the needs of the households: fruit and herbs growing wild, as well as supplying themselves with wood for heating purposes from the nearby forests. Although they did not fully meet the material needs of the families, the home farms in Samokov were of vital importance for the life of the town population. This became particularly apparent in periods of crisis, such as were experienced after ore mining and the tailoring industry declined, and particularly during the wars. At present, when efforts are being made to activate personal farms in the system of meeting one's own needs, the author hopes that along with the ethnographic interest, the system he describes can well give certain ideas in the sphere of economics, regardless of the very great difference between living conditions in the past and today.
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An analysis is made in the paper of the most general specificities and characteristic features of Bulgarian rituals, connected with the day of the summer solstice and the Christian holiday in honour of St. John the Baptist. Special attention is paid to the remnants of the pagan solar cult in the beliefs and notions of the Bulgarians. Due to the connection of Enyovden (Midsummer Day) with a very important astronomical and natural transition, this day is also considered to be a peculiar transition from summer to winter, which is evidenced by a rich tradition of popular beliefs and a rich system of soothsaying and magic acts. Special attention is also devoted to the pre-marital maiden's customs, known as Enyova Bulya, Enyovche and Ivanka. In conclusion, the author points out that until the beginning of the 20th century the Enyovden rituals have persistently preserved their pagan basis.
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REVIEWS. CRITICISM. BOOKS
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The paper traces some of the mechanisms underlying the processes of mythologization of the actual historical personality in folkloric history. The problem of the historicism in legends and folk songs (on the evidence of the folk song cycle about Indze Voyvoda) is considered from two aspects: (1) Coincidence or discrepancy with actual events; (2) The problem of time in folklore. The paper presents a parallel rendering of actual historical events (on the basis of documentary source material) and their variants in folklore. The main conclusion ensuing from this comparison is: mythical relation (secondary, tertiary, etc. myth), immanently present in the human consciousness, irrespective of the stage of historical development, is particularly intensified during periods of political decline. The historical personality permeates into the ready mythological structures and starts acting following the laws of mythical relations. The character — the culture hero — is related to history only in the sense of a historical necessity: the popular consciousness mythologizes it in accordance with the needs and the orientation of the concrete historical moment. The problem of time in folklore is examined from three points of view: (1) Equivalence of "once upon a time" and "now"; (2) Mandatory adherence to the epic distance; (3) Interdependence of the cyclicity (time in a circle) and the sacral numbers. Finally, the idea of the parallel existence of three types of consciousness - mythical, folkloric and logical - at every stage of the historical development is pointed out. Folkloric convention plays the mediating role among them.
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The author discusses some negative aspects of the family life of the modern rural population, formed as a result of the economic and socio-demographic processes that took place in the village after the collectivization of the land. These processes have led to the destruction of the old production function of the rural family and to the alienation of its members from the land and from farming labour; to violation of the family demographic and generation structure, thus deeply affecting the reproductive activities of the Bulgarian rural family. An analysis is also given of the processes of transformation and modification in the structure of the rural family, which are connected with a change in the status and in the roles of its members. Although the changes in this sphere can be generally assessed as positive, nevertheless it is here that some of the most negative phenomena in family life, resulting mainly from actively reproduced norms of authoritarianism in the family. The paper also outlines some of the most typical changes in the sphere of the family material and cultural life in the villages, which also betray a number of contradictions. In terms of its material and cultural life, the rural family lags behind more and more from the urban population with serious social differentiation within the rural society itself and inhomogeneity in satisfying the cultural and everyday needs of the different social and class strata, resulting primarily from the incorrect state economic and social policy with respect to the village.
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An attempt is made in the paper for ethnographic interpretation (predominantly based on Bulgarian material) of the concept of the interrelation between a definite breed of sheep and the variety of shepherd culture functioning with it, starting from the premise that the different breeds have different spatial localizations and require different breeding methods. This has led to the differentiation of zones with their own production, social, cultural, everyday life and other characteristics within the context of sheep-breeding as a whole. On this basis the right of ethnography to include the problem of the breed structure of the domestic animals is proved. In spite of the limited empirical material, the author claims that the breed structure of Bulgarian sheep-breeding was formed during the remote antiquity and was basically preserved until the mid-20th century. Within the framework of traditional Bulgarian sheep-breeding, the author distinguishes five breeds with clearly differentiated habitats. The first zone comprises the western mountainous and semi-mountainous regions, reaching the central part of Northern Bulgaria, the western regions of Sredna Gora Mountain and the eastern part of the Rhodope mountains. The second zone is located to the east of it and covers Northeastern Bulgaria, Dobrudja and Thrace. The third zone (of the so-called copper-red sheep) occupies an intermediary position with respect to the first two. The fourth zone includes the Strandja Mountain region and Southeastern Thrace. The last zone covers the Aegean region. The breeds in the different zones are of different origin: local or imported from the Middle East, Egypt and Libya, or from the Northern European area. In the author's opinion, the five zones with the different breeds correspond to five variants of traditional Bulgarian sheep-breeding.
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This paper makes an attempt to analyse the influence of Evangelism among the Turkish Gypsies in Bulgaria. The Turkish Gypsies are not a homogeneous community and have intricate identity, differentiated at various levels (owing to the watering down of the borderlines of the individual groups) and with different orientation (to the Gypsy or to theTurkiush ethnic community, respectively). Four types of groups of the Turkish Gypsies can be defined on the basis of language used, identity and religion (in the past and today). Depending on that division, the paper analyses the influence of evangelism in every one of the four types. Two trends have been considered, determined by Evangelism: the development of the Gypsy/Roma identity and preservation of the Turkish self-consciousness.
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The article analyses problems associated with the socialist everyday life in the Bulgarian village. For the first time, as far as Bulgarian ethnological literature goes, recordings, made by a folklorist during field research in informal conversations with informants during the 1960-1980 period, have been used as source material. Since the material has not been purposefully collected, it is most varied, in terms of subject matter and regions, not selected in advance. Whenever the informants, digressing from some questions, subject to a specific investigation, have confided their thoughts and views, their life stories, revealing the socialist everyday life in the Bulgarian village. The collection of a great number of single cases, like small particles of a puzzle, paint the picture of a parallel reality. Hidden under the surface, it existed alongside the official one proclaimed. The establishment of the cooperative farms; the pre-socialist past; the attitude to religion and to the esoteric – these are individual problems, which are subjected to analysis. It has also been pointed out that the accumulation of as many recordings and observations as possible, made by ethnologists during the period of real socialism, would contribute to the more complete presentation of its essence, and will make it possibe to make comparisons and draw conclusions correlated to those, made in the wake of 1989.
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Scientific Life - Eighth International Symposium on “Methodological Problems of Studying Traditional and Contemporary Culture”, Soko Banja, Svrlig, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro
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