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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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Conversation between Dr. Anatoli Kanev and Prof. Ilia Todev about the role of historians and more specifically the history of Batak.
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An attempt has been made to search for an explanation of the existence of a rock relief depicting animal heads near the town of Sliven through ethnology point of view. Initial specious speculation has been made in accordance with the se¬mantics of the depicted images. They were possibly part of an ancient rock sanctuary. The ancient origin of these depictions has been brought into question because of the lack of preserved information in the local knowledge, their topographic position, which distinguishes them and its immediate vicinity to the town of Sliven and to an ancient settlement. The appearance of an eventual contemporary “author” claiming that it is his work puts many questions for discussion.
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The subject of the article concerns the reconstruction of the Midsum¬mer Night’s ritual. The author gives answers to the questions: What is a ritual? How should it be studied? What should be the methodology of description and interpretation of its complicated morphology? Regional variants of the rite are analysed and on the basis of them a model ritual (its invariant) is reconstructed. The article is based on archive materials and accounts collected personally by the author, mostly in Poland, in the years 2009–2014. The period of the most intense activity of the sun, falling on the second half of June, was generally regarded as extraordinary time in the folk tradition. The culmination of ritual activities took place on the night preceding the holiday of the nativity of St John the Baptist, usually celebrated on the 24th of June (also on the 7th of July in the Orthodox tradi¬tion). This time was marked by many ritual practices resulting from the system of traditional beliefs and views on the world. The article discusses the relics of beliefs and ritual behaviour connected with the summer solstice and their most important functions (magical, protective, purificatory, courtship and matrimonial, conveying beliefs, in¬tegrative and ludic). Furthermore, the article presents the main causes of disappearance, degradation and simultaneous modernization of the sum¬mer solstice rites.
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If we observe classical art of Ancient Greece, we should know surely that for their creator is not art, including for those who contemplate it. For them all it is cosmogonic expression of ideas. The proposed text presents the opportunity to recover cosmogonic notions of traditional, non-literary communities through the plastic expression. In this sense, for traditional culture from antiquity to today’s it is better not to talk about art, but for the visual expression. By means of the plastic language may be bound the cosmogonic thinking with living antiquity and/or with the relict reality, and even with all substantial sources. The plastic expression gives opportunity for the expression of the cosmological structure stored in ethnical culture. Cosmological structure does not allow fully understand while attempting to do so. This kind of expression announce possible cosmogonic model, which also directly formed social interactions. In any sense, the Cosmogonic model is also mythological but the mythology is ideological system, and even we can feel some synonymity between mythology and ideology. Therefore, in principle it is necessary to have two main object for the study of the non-literally reality – the songs and customary-ritual com¬plexes, but only in their unity. This unity is embodied in ritual perfor-mances, whose elements are liable to analyzed. Through that rather analyze we can observe and the social interac¬tions.
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The paper analyzes the symbolic layers in the major commemorative ceremony in Bulgaria – the roll-call. It is divided in two parts. The first one (Bulgarian Ethnology,2018, no. 1) interprets the symbolic actions comprising the basic tools for producing ceremonial meaning: saluting and rendering military honors, ritual silence and lack of action, battle cry, ceremonial mise-en-scène (monument, guards of honor, etc.) – these are recognized as specific devices for removing symbolically the border between the living and the dead, between heroes and descendants. The second part examines the ceremonial scenario as a prospectively unfolding narrative – each symbolic action is interpreted as a successive move in the overall plot. This approach acknowledges that the ceremony is made up of three parts: preparatory, commemorative, and triumphal,whereas the scenario as a whole embraces the following logic: listing and honoring the heroes in the commemorative part is succeeded by their posthumous enwreathing and symbolic immortalization as stars in the night sky through the use of fireworks.
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The author of the article “Romanian gard – An Old Germanic Loan and Its Linguistic-Historical Implications” aims to clarify the etymology of a much discussed Romanian term. About the origin of Rmn. gard (‘enclosure, fence, garden, wickerwork barrier for fishing’) three main etymological explanations have been proposed in course of time: (1) earliest of all, Diez considered that Gothic gards (‘house, household, family, courtyard’) could account for both Romanian gard and Albanian gardh (‘hedge, palisade, dam’); later it was only Scriban and Gamillscheg who were definitely in favour of an Old Germanic origin for Rmn. gard; (2) most other scholars followed Miklosich’s authoritative (but hardly credible) opinion according to which the Romanian word under discussion simply derived from Old Slavic gradъ (‘fortified settlement’); (3) and in more recent times, specialists like Russu and Brâncuş considered Rmn. gard to be a substratal (Thraco-Dacian) term closely related to Alb. gardh. The present author brings new arguments in favour of the Old Germanic etymology (which was credibly sustained in Gamillscheg’s Romania Germanica). One of the main arguments taken into account below is that O.Slav. gradъ itself is best explained as a very early borrowing from Germanic, that idea being archaeologically supported by the numerous traces of Old Germanic (even pre-Gothic) “enclosures” that have been found in now Slavic territories north of the Carpathians. In regard to phonetics, in Slavic (a satem language, like Thracian, for that matter), a word that etymologically corresponds to Phrygian -gordum (in Manegordum) and to Latin hortus ‘garden’ should have an initial z; and, in fact, Russian does contain such a native word: zorod ‘enclosure for haystacks’, a remote relative of Russ. gorod ‘city’ (the latter being an East-Slavic version of the Germanic loan gradъ). This author considers that, even before East-Scandinavian Vikings came to control East-Slavic territories that they designated as Gardar (on the Dniepr), earlier Slavs had come into touch with Old Germanic “enclosures” (as power-centres, and nuclei of cities to-be), of the kind designated by Goth. gards. Such a term also became known, independently, to pre-Roman ancestors of the Romanians (and to proto-Albanians) in Central-Southeast European regions controlled by one or another kind of Old Germanics (as Herrenvolk). That kind of early contact, which certainly preceded the Slavic expansion of the 6th–7th centuries, can account for the fact that Romanians have preserved the term gard with archaic-rural meanings, and (in form) without the specific Slavic metathesis, gar > gra (a feature that is manifest, for instance, in the Romanian term grădină ‘garden’, an obvious Slavic loan). So, Rmn. gard appears to come from pre-Roman substratal idioms (as several important scholars have assumed), but in those idioms such a term was an Old Germanic loan, a fact that is indicated by both its initial consonant g, and its vowel a (as regular Germanic development from an Indo-European o – cf. Lat. hortus). From the language of earliest Slavs (Sklavenoi) who moved south, Romanians subsequently inherited ogradă, grădină, and grădişte (themselves based on Old Germanic loans), but not also gradъ.
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The main topic of the article is the transformation of the local food into cultural heritage. Examining specific examples, it reveals the actions of big and small agribusiness players who “re-discover their connection with tradition”, play the role of guardians of the local heritage, and engage themselves in private negotiation and public presentation of the food, by means of which to educate the public with regard to the “rediscovering” and cultural valuation of the local products. The specific ethnographic description includes information from two regions – the Municipality of Smolyan in the Central Rhodope Mountains and the Municipality of Ugarchin on the foothills to the North of Stara Planina mountain. The regions are presented in comparative perspective but also as a common ground of local food valuation. The“traditional” dairy products are at the core of the valorization in the first region, and the “local” truffles – of the second. In addition to the study of the relationships, which these products generate on the ground, the article examines two specific festivals (the yoghurt Festival in the village of Momchilovtsi and the Truffle Fest in the town of Ugarchin) that present the scene of the heritage and the relations between the various social actors symbolically and literally
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The article focuses on two forms of appropriation of the urban space by new forms of festivity organized around food consumption. Although the new forms intervene with public space and use its ideology, these practices rather question the general access to it. Usually, they are organized as private events but following the logic of new capitalism, they insist on a higher, often non-commercial, purpose that adds value to the experience. This may be the demonstrative struggle against wastefulness or aestheticization of food consumption in the public space as a form of creating experiences. The new media play a key role in the experiencing and producing of these events: from their disclosure and access to the organization of their visual identity.
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In the early 20th century, the Bulgarian anthropogeographer Krum Dronchilov, Ph.D. conducted field research in the 23 villages located near the road between Dragoman and Tran. His publication “Burel. Anthropogeographic Studies” is at the root of a second research which I conducted in 2017 – 2018 – “Burel a Century Later: Changes in the Region (a Comparison with an Anthropogeographic Research of 1923)”. The second research as well as this article mark the main changes registered in the region and my observations regarding the positions of researcher and respondents in the 21st century. In order to present the second research in a modern, efficient and intriguing way, the use of audio and visual methods in collecting and presenting the material should be considered a necessary element. The expectations related to the audio-visual established in the 21st century lead to changes in the structures and conceptualization of the scientific texts. In unison with this thesis, the selection of Burel’s photographs in the article is not a mere supplement but a foundation upon which I build my comments.
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The text presents the results from a research of professional periodicals dedicated to radio and radio journalism during the socialism period in Bulgaria. The research has following aims: to track the topics discussed by the professional community; to search the correlation between ideological and professional content; to ascertain to what extent the foreign experience penetrates into the radio related periodicals.
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The text interprets Khand Tatar and Todorka ballad by commenting the historical terms used from the one hand, and, from the other hand by doing a transformational analysis of the attributes and functions of the mediator in the plot. The situations connected with the Tartars as historical population are analyzed as potential sources of folk personages and motifs. Resultantly, the folklore situation is seen in the light of a possible reflection of the mythological understandings while at the same time the basic psycho-social functions of the ballad are outlined. Thus the reading combines historical and mythological aspects and compares the particular “Bulgarian” case with the universal models and structures of thinking.
More...Миков, Л. (2018). Джумая джамия и Имарет джамия в Пловдив (История, специфика и съвременно състояние). София: Мюсюлманско изповедание, Главно мюфтийство, 91 стр. ISBN 978-619-08-5
More...Le deuil au sein d’une communauté d’amateurs
This paper focuses on the specificity of interactions in a group of mourning created within a community of amateurs in a sociodigital network. it allows to observe that on the creation of a post-mortem digital identity of thedeceased constituting at the discretion of tributes is articulated with emphasis ofmemories, thoughts and affects also participating to the presentation of themselves and the bereaved. The comparison of the main results of analysis of this group with those of 4 other groups without community link, highlights that, in spite of the fame of the deceased, the collective dimension of the identity is more at stake than the individual dimension when the mourning is made within a community. *** Cet article s’intéresse à la spécificité des interactions ayant lieu dans le cadre d’un groupe de deuil créé au sein d’une communauté d’amateurs sur un réseausocionumérique. Il permet d’observer que la création d’une identité numérique postmortemdu défunt se constituant au gré des hommages s’articule avec la mise enavant de souvenirs, pensées et affects participant également de la présentation quefont d’eux-mêmes les endeuillés. La comparaison des principaux résultats d’analysede ce groupe avec ceux de 4 autres groupes sans lien communautaire fait ressortirque, en dépit de la notoriété du défunt, la dimension collective de l’identité est davantage en jeu que la dimension individuelle lorsque le deuil s’effectue au sein d’une communauté.
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While most studies of transnational processes are focused on the remittances inthe context of socio-economic development or on the transnational citizenship and the political mobilization across the borders, this article aims to explore the role of emotions in the migration experience and more specifically – their place in the negotiation of transnational family-kin life. The author proceeds from the assumption that the emotional dynamics are an important part of the analysis of the transnational kin relations. According to this approach, the focus of the study is not only on those who leave but also on those who remain in the villages of origin. Feelings of loss, sadness, longing, pain, guilt, but also expressions of happiness, excitement,gratitude, love, hopefulness etc., are experienced in both ends of the migration chain.Emotional encounters are related to family expectations and moral obligations, to mutual responsibilities and care giving within the dispersed families.These issues are addressed on the basis of ethnographic data personally collected by the author among representatives of the Kosovar Gorani – a community renowned in the Balkans for the decades-long intensive labour mobility which often involves two or even three generations within a family-kin group. The data presented show that transnational family-kin members may find ways to connect time and space so as to ensure (virtual and physical) co-experiences and to keep their emotional relationships viable and active. The tools and strategies used by people are various and include memories, imaginations, gifts and remittances, long-distance communication and mutual visits.
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The article aims to present the cultivation of fibrous hemp plants and the extraction of hemp fibers in the 1950s by studying the case of the village of Mezdreya, northwestern Bulgaria. The author describes in detail the process of hemp growing –sowing and plant care, harvesting and seed storage, preparation of the stem immersion equipment, drying, washing and processing of hemp stems and fibres. The emphasis is placed on the social relations arising in the cultivation and processing of hemp. The research has been set in the framework of regional and national studies and in the economic and political context of the period between the late 19th century and the end of the 1950s. Thus, it was possible to track the processes over a period of almost a century.
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This article is for priest Stoitsa from village of Relyovo, near Samokov town, member of a cabal, established in 1730 in the Gornolozenski monastery “Saint Spas,” head of which was the notable Bulgarian bishop Simeon Popovich. Priest Stoitsa prepared the people of the eparchy for uprising. He is captured in the monastery near village of Nedelishte. He is hanged on 21.08.1737 in Sofia together with/collectively with Bishop Simeon Samokovski and many others.
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