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Tobacco City is a case which has attracted significant public attention; at the same time, it is also an example, which combines various discourses. In order to identify what distinguishes this case of industrial heritage from others, this article examines three examples, which in their geographical and historical aspects are appropriate for comparative research regarding the issues at hand. They are commensurable in reference to their size and the significance of their location for cultural and industrial traditions, as well as in the relative date of their establishment and their geographical and economic representativeness. The research questions that the study attempts to answer are analytical as well as completely practical, reflecting real management and political decisions. From an anthropological point of view, there are two problems; first, the correlation among various aspects of the project such as the site’s pore functionalization; the goal of reviving the space; attracting investments and the public; and updating the site’s use and access; and, secondly, the narrative, which the very space presupposes as heritage and the extent to which it should be preserved.
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The experiences the Roma underwent during World War II were not only complex, but alsoas diverse as can be. In order to fully grasp this complexity, one must understand thelegislative framework, bureaucratic practices, their impact on the Roma, as well as the waysin which the Roma themselves tried to cope with these measures. Oftentimes, the criteriato identify the “undesirable” Roma were very vague and subjective, leaving a lot of leewayto the local authorities and allowing them to act outside a controllable legal framework.The same formal criteria used by the authorities to deport the Roma were later used by theRoma to prove that their deportations were abusive and that the deportees deserved to berepatriated. Interestingly, those who had the best chances of survival were not, in fact, thosewho only used the legal measures available to them, but rather those who fled Transnistriaillegally. Once they arrived back home, they could use the loopholes of a complicated legaland bureaucratic system to get help and, eventually, to save themselves.
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The paper presents observations on the pilgrimage of Bulgarians in Romania. On the one hand, the research interest focuses on pilgrimages of representatives of the Bulgarian communities in Romania to famous monasteries and churches in the country. At the same time, the tendencies in the crossborder pilgrimages of Bulgarians from Bulgaria visiting churches and monasteries in neighbouring Romania are presented. Personal observations and field interviews, as well as materials in the media on the topic under consideration, are used as source material. Bulgarians visit in Romania religious topoi popular among the Christians, especially places related to Bulgarian history. In this sense, these pilgrimages are an expression of religious feelings and of national identity. Observations on pilgrimage as a religious practice show that this traditional form offers to believers meaningful messages for their spiritual world and social life.
More...Атанас Шопов (2015). Панагюрци в Цариград през Възраждането. Справочник. 2-ро преработ. изд., Панагюрище, 127 стр.
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The Greeks of Tsalka is a sub-ethnic group, whose ancestors originated from the Pontus and Erzurum regions and lived for several centuries under the rule of the Ottomans. Therefore they absorbed cultural elements of many peoples of Asia Minor – Turks, Armenians, Persians, Assyrians, etc. That can be traced in their language, folklore, and rites. As a result of the Russian-Turkish wars, they were resettled to the territory of Georgia – to the Tsalka region. The migration to the territory of the Russian Empire was accomplished in several waves – after the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 until the end of the 19th century. At the time of the resettlement, most of them forget their native language and switched to Turkish.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in Georgia, the inter-ethnic issue became very acute. In conjunction with the economic crisis, the situation forced many Greeks to leave Tsalka. Currently, the Greeks of Tsalka have a little more than 50 thousand representatives, living mainly in Greece and in southern Russia. Those who moved to Greece almost immediately faced an identity crisis, as the Greek society did not welcome them well. As a result, many Greeks of Tsalka ceased to identify themselves as Greek and tried to forge new hypotheses about their origin.
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The word “monastirya” is not just a dialect variant, meaning a place (an old place), relative to the knowledge of a monastery that existed or still exists. It has a generalizing emotionally-assessing aspect, regarding the place and the function of the religious Christian monastery in the local memory. The stress in it is the statement that these are monasteries from the age of the Bulgarian kingdom.The topos “monastirya” dynamically produces the process of the ethnic and religious identification and self-identification on the grounds of a particular cult. In this same sense, there is also a variant of designation not only of Christianity. Even places, related to the Islam and most often – tekkes – are also referred to as monasteries. The cult has specific dynamics in time and grows with numerous legends and traditions. They motivate its vitality in the past by the particular character of its realization in sites that have really existed and which, in many cases, have been obliterated in the real space. Nevertheless, even today they still have their place and vitality namely as knowledge.The information that has been preserved and the local knowledge about the Little Sliven Holy Mountain confirm the place and function of the topos “monastirya” in the cultural space. Today, it is the vitality of this knowledge that lies at the root of re-creation of sites which have once existed.
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The present article is an attempt to reveal the everyday diaspora nationalism of the Bulgarians who live beyond the national borders of their country. Using the methodological advantages of the live history, the author throws light on the relations between the personal and the community dimensions and of the personal and the national in particular. The aim is to find the transection of these trajectories as far as they have their conceptualization and articulation in the narrative sequence. The life history of a Bulgarian migrant – the basketball coach Hristo Kostov – is analyzed following the different thematic nuclei in his personal autobiography and their relations with the themes of Bulgaria, the Bulgarians and the Bulgarian. Thus the article outlines from the one hand, the personal dimensions of the national as a subjective experience, and, from the other hand – the interpretation of the personal choices and of the human fate within the national.
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In the focus of the present study is that part of the so-called Edirnes’s or ThracianGagauzes who in the period after the Balkan wars settled in the town of Yambol and whose new location fully corresponds to one of the characteristic features of these people (especially of the groups in the Balkans) – urban manners, clothing, way of life. Thus, it is particularly important to study, this time in the context of the national state, the place and role of the town with its specific environment as a factor in the formation and restructuring of the collective memory of the Gagauzes; in the development of their communal strategies for survival and adaptation; as well as in their relations with other ethnocultural groups in Yambol, the public and cultural institutions, etc. All this will be studied through several emblematic life stories. However, their representative character and, to some extent, their exclusiveness is not only due to their instructive and factological value. The process of search, registration and study of each case, as well as their interrelations, are also of significance.
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Ethnic entrepreneurship is a peculiar mechanism for manifestation of ethnocultural identity and a specific resource for the preservation of cultural heritage. The topic is relatively unexplored in Bulgaria but the authors have experience in its study in general. The article attempts to clarify the terminology related to the problem and systematizes and typologies the manifestations of Russian ethnic entrepreneurship in the country. Thus, on this basis as well as with the help of the fieldwork interviews and the research of Internet publications devoted to owners of various Russian entrepreneurial structures and their staff (Beryozka and similar retail stores as well as representatives of various types of individual businesses) the study searches for and finds (or does not find) manifestations orientated towards preservation of the Russian cultural heritage in the Bulgarian social environment.
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The Roma people joined the general migratory flows a bit later than the other ethnic groups; however, the mobility patterns and routes do not differ significantly compared to those of the rest of the population. For the Roma communities, this is one of the few opportunities for employment. For the present, the financial transfers help break the vicious circle of unemployment – poverty – lack of education in the sending communities, which circle many families have entered. Along with better financial security, migrants bring back new ideas and knowledge which stimulate social development in the encapsulated neighbourhoods. The crossing of the physical borders symbolically destroys the mental boundaries of the communities. The stress is put on the opening to the world which creates opportunities but leads to two main risks: complete dependency on labour mobility and loss of human capital(brain drain) in the Roma communities; this could hinder the processes of social development at a later stage.
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The article presents a case study of a particular part of the Bulgarian-North Macedonian border – the border regions of Petrich, Republic of Bulgaria, and Strumica, Republic of North Macedonia. The study is focused on the level of everyday experience. Its aim is to study how in their everyday life and transborder experience the people from the border regions adapt to the changing border regime and do this alter their“traditional” forms of contact. After the setting of a state/political border between the regions of Petrich and Strumica, the people adopt a pragmatic approach to this border and the life in the context of borderness. The pragmatism in the transborder contacts is not a particular form of relations rather one of their features which expends its range and significance in the course of time. The various layers of relations transform into tools for solving pragmatic issues in everyday life in the border regions, i.e. the pragmatisation turns into a peculiar form of adaptation to the border. At the same time, the pragmatic attitude towards the border rearranges to a certain extent the different layers of the traditional relations putting the family, kin, friend and cultural ties aside. Nevertheless, as long as they function as tools for solving pragmatic issues, they remain and revitalize.
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This work presents the consecutive fourth part of gathered primary material on the topic of the natural trade and service payments in Bulgarian lands through the second half of 19th and the first decades of 20th centuries. I hope that the represented materials can serve for a good basis about further researches as the distant goal is to reveal the system of paying in kind in Bulgarian lands and to reconstruct the economic models from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
More...Mela Iancu, Director of the Jewish Center for the Protection of Mother and Child, as a Case Study
Although the war and the Holocaust struck men and women equally, there are reasons to discuss the fate of the women and their specific problems, in order to fill in a missing linkin describing Jewish life and to offer a fresh perspective that would give us better tools to write the history of Jewish life at that time.This paper will discuss the Romanian Jewish Women’s activity during the Holocaust and will particularly look into the activity of “The Jewish Center for the Protection of Mother and Child”, founded in Bucharest by Mela Iancu. What was the center’s contribution to the Jewish children and mothers during the war in Romania and to the orphans rescued from Transnistria? What can be learned about the women’s role during periods of crisis and war? “Mama Mela”, as the children of the center used to call her, was a symbol of determination,inspiration, wisdom, and hope. Finally, by including her story in the historical discourse, this paper aspires to shape and contribute to the large framework designing a reviewed historical approach and a gender-sensitive agenda.
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The purpose of the following text is to show the local variant of after funeral custom “Fii marturia”, which was realized in the village of Harletz in the region of Vratza during the second half of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty first century. The accent is on the algorithm of the custom which was discussed in two directions – outside – the stories of the local Harletz citizens and inside – the childhood memories of the author. In this research, the geographical, culture and historical, lingual and demographic sides of this occurrence are well shown and discussed. Ethnological analysis of the Hurletz’s version of this custom can also be found in this work.
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