Наслндие Константина де Лазари
The article reports about the meaning of source and ethnographic works of Polish artists and photographers who visited Kazakhstan in the XIX–XXth centuries, the photos of Constantine de Lazari in particular.
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The article reports about the meaning of source and ethnographic works of Polish artists and photographers who visited Kazakhstan in the XIX–XXth centuries, the photos of Constantine de Lazari in particular.
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This article is the second part of a longer writing about Hiiumaa older folk songs. Relying on the critical analysis of the folk song collections, which represent the heritage of the second biggest island in Estonia, Hiiumaa, as well as on manifold background information, the character of the singing tradition in the changing social and cultural context is drafted. The first part of the study was published in the previous, 67th volume of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore. It focused on the history of folk song collecting in Hiiumaa (from 1832 to 1979) and analyzed the representativeness of the collected material. The present article highlights the specific features of Hiiumaa older folk songs, which represent the historical styles of Baltic-Finnic alliterative songs: regilaul, transitional song, and archaic vocal genres. The settlement history of Hiiumaa is studied and related to the putative processes in folk song tradition. The analysis reveals regional western Estonian features and the process of historical changing, especially a pervasive impact of bagpipe music in Hiiumaa songs. The singing tradition has been influenced mainly by cultural contacts with the Estonian and Swedish population on Estonian islands and the western coast, and also by the contacts of local sailors.
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The Estonian earlier folk song, regilaul, about the singer indicates that the singer had a special position in the community, but the singing skill had rather just become attached to them, and was not acquired voluntarily (similarly to the knowledge of the Tibetan singers that usually comes about on its own, irrespective of the will of the humans). The songs indicate that one learnt to sing when attending weddings, working or being in contact with nature. Occasionally the talent for singing was acquired magically. Interesting are regilaul texts in which the singer says that she cannot sing because of lack of some objects, e.g. laululeht, sõnasõlg (a sheet of song, a brooch of words), etc. In some cultures singers of long epic texts believed in the help of supernatural beings and also used some helping devices like a bronze mirror, a sheet of paper, etc. for better concentration. In the article I try to point out that some formulas of Estonian regilaul like a sheet of song, a brooch of words, and the quill of the mouth may be distant memories of the singers who needed actual helping devices, believing in which aided them in a better recreation of their texts.
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The aim of this article is to compare Estonian burial-related runosongs (regilaul) to archaeological information. I introduce the runosong as a potential source of information about burials to archaeologists and give folklorists a new perspective by addressing the age and practises behind the motifs of runosongs. One runosong may contain elements from different time periods, and for this reason I have concentrated on dating the elements of storylines. However, I have also tried to match the idea of a whole song-type with one or another time period. The five biggest analysed song-types are as follows: “Daughter on her mother’s grave”, “Mother and loves”, “The burial of a boy and a girl”, “Open graves”, and “A coffin made of stones”, altogether 1654 songs. Two of them, “Daughter on her mother’s grave”, and “A coffin made of stones”, consist of a considerable amount of prehistoric elements (from the Iron Age, before 1225), which should prove the prehistoric origin of these song-types. Especially notable is the description of the land of the dead, rooted in prehistory, still preserved in songs collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the same time, the overall amount of prehistoric elements in the whole corpus is small, and most of the datable elements refer to historical burial customs.
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Every culture employs some motifs that are peculiar to its semantic world. These motifs have a vital importance for understanding some issues within the cultures in which they function as their codes. Some of these motifs that emerge in different cultures and eras have, surprisingly, very common meanings despite their varieties in time and place. One of these motifs frequently encountered in different times and cultures is ‘apple’. In this study, the motif of apple is discussed by pointing out its meanings in different cultures, and then the Abrahamic religions are examined in this context. Finally, this motif is analyzed in the context of Anatolian folk songs. In this way, the meanings that cannot be understood in a folk song text by means of ordinary reading are clarified, and the relations of this motif in Anatolian folk songs and other cultures are introduced.
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Hegely Klaus writes about the annual conference of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies and the 60th Kreutzwald Days at the Estonian Literary Museum on December 12 and 13, 2016.
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On January 4, 2017, Reet Hiiemäe defended her doctoral dissertation titled “Folklore as a tool of psychological self-defence: About the pragmatics of belief tradition” at the University of Tartu. Merili Metsvahi shares some of her thoughts provoked by the dissertation.
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Ana Stefanova. Khevi Met”l Kulturata: Izsledvane po analitichnopsikhologicheska antropologiia. Ruse: GAIANA book&art studio, 2017. 360 pp. In Bulgarian.
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Wendy Anderson & Ellen Bramwell & Carole Hough (eds.) Mapping English Metaphor Through Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 321 pp.
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This text deals with aesthetic aspects of right totalitarian ideologies, or more precisely, the function that kitsch as pseudoart has in their origin and maintenance. As affinity towards kitsch, which was established by art theoreticians a long time ago, is a characteristic of a complex structure of human experience and view of the world, the author also explores the ways in which it was exploited or manipulated in other, strictly speaking non-aesthetic spheres of life in Germany and Italy of the 1930s. Political symbolism, language of politics, offered forms of political identification and mobilization towards the projected political goal are the subject of her analysis in the central part of the text, which analysis is derived from that angle of research. The author concludes that the alliance between kitsch and totalitarian political regimes is not accidental, but that it is, on the contrary, founded on common and firm anthropological bases.
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Ethnodentistry (E), the branch of ethnomedicine, might be defined as the scientific discipline which deals with collection and study on the folk customs in the scope of the knowledge on the causes and treating of the oral diseases, teeth and gums and orofacial diseases and anomaly. E records the survived empiric dentist’s experiences, archaic terms and witchcraft elements and influence of magic elements to the oral hygiene. The first E research in Serbia were ran by Vera Gavrilović (1972), the professor-lecturer on the history of dentistry. There were no approved method for this pioneer research thus preliminary study resulted in many mistakes which pointed out to the construction of the adequate questionnaire valid for ethnodentistry research. Because of that and due to the political situation in the former Yugoslavia and later events (1991-2001), the polling was continued from 2002 to 2008. The aim of this research was to record the present folk dentistry knowledge (health culture) in 31 representative areas of Serbia and six of Montenegro (by the help of trained inquirers) concerning the data about treatment of oral and orofacial tissues (teeth, gums), dentist’s standing as well as magic and religious elements involved in. The data were collected through the authors and students of Faculty of Stomatology in Belgrade using modification of original method on the sample of rural regions on the old person who were non-professional or “professional’’ folk dentists and herbalists by the additional help of local physicians and dentists. Operation on 1125 survey sheets classified into five groups revealed the most data about toothache (61) and the least (7) of magic recipes. The most valuable obtained data considered to be about plants whose active ingredients has not been yet used in dental pharmaceutical industry. The valuable suggestions might be directed to the contemporary applied pharmacology and those herbs that are growing on the still unpoluted isolated spots. Collected data might be of use for some social sciences (ethnology, linguistics, history etc.) Analysis of data pointed out to the very few wrong methods of treatment in traditional dentistry whereas majority of them noted as beneficial ones what depicted the health culture level of every single investigated region.
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The term “alternative theatre” assumes the conscious adoption of a critical and rebellious attitude against the existing social and political status quo. What is more, it assumes a desire by artists of the theatre to supplant the existing methods of social communication with other, more creative ways, which better contribute to the self-development of individuals who participate in the process. Here, theatrical performance signifies the wish of theatrical artists to change the structure of their contemporaries’ perception and valorization of the world. Bearing in mind this preliminary assumptions the authors of the article focus on the selected topics: the concept of alternative theatre, the Polish alternative theatre experience as a part of universal countercultural movement, the outdoor and site specific theatre festivals as a tool for social change and the future prospects of the alternative theatre in Poland.
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The authors of the article focus the concept of alternative theatre, the Polish alternative theatre experience as a part of universal countercultural movement, the outdoor and site specific theatre festivals as a tool for social change and the future prospects of the alternative theatre in Poland. The term “alternative theatre” assumes the conscious adoption of a critical and rebellious attitude against the existing social and political status quo. What is more, it assumes a desire by artists of the theatre to supplant the existing methods of social communication with other, more creative ways, which better contribute to the self-development of individuals who participate in the process. Here, theatrical performance signifies the wish of theatrical artists to change the structure of their contemporaries’ perception and valorization of the world.
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The aim of the study is to present the concept of resettlement multiculturality. The multiculturality of displaced persons, the kind characterizing resettlement in Western Poland, was not brought about spontaneously and is governed by entirely different principles. At this point one should contemplate the methods that assisted in the management of a city that is multicultural in character due to residents having been resettled, a city whose identity has not fully formed. Such a measure could also bring empirical confirmation uprooting occurred in the fourth generation. Presenting the concept of resettlement multiculturality the author is making use of – among other things – memory studies, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital and his concepts of habitus, field and game, and the research of Geert Hofstede.
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The presented study introduces the exorcism of the Humenné Anthology of Sermons from the 17th century. It is an Old Church Slavonic text written in Cyrillic; so far its origin or any possible models were unknown. This study presents new findings concerning the text and in parallel introduces another Cyrillic text, preceding in time, together with ist Greek original; this latter exorcism could inspire the writer of the first one. The matter of exorcism and especially of an exorcist is described in detail as well.
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In Poland, research-related fanzines rarely include writings edited by Polish fans of science fiction, horror and fantasy. Active fans edited amateur magazines which were very important because they popularized fantastic literature and culture in Poland. The role of fantastic fanzines was not limited solely to the promotion of amateur creativity or publishing translations of foreign fiction not available on the market, but also consisted in the creation of creative bonds between writers and readers. The remnants of the activities of Polish fantastic fiction fans are about one hundred titles including “Quasar”, “Red Dwarf” and “Other Planets”. These three fanzines as effects of pure amateur work are also very similar to the professional magazines. Each of them has a different poetics and thematic dominant. They have also published stories written by famous Polish writers such as Ewa Białołęcka and Andrzej Sapkowski.
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The article aims to examine the extent to which the present day mobility of dance professionals and global, cultural flows hybridize Kathak art and practice in India. It focuses on innovative approaches and cross-cultural productions of selected Indian artists, highlighting the significance of their entanglement in the global networks of dance professionals and cultural markets as key factors of refashioning Kathak tradition. I shall explore the emerging pursuit of these artists toward pluralistic aesthetics, juxtaposing it with the phenomenon of the colonial mimicry (Bhabha 2004). I intend to address the following questions: What motivates the choreographers to use the hybrid language of dance? Is this language a strategy of innovation, consciously and willingly chosen by the artists, or rather the inheritance of colonial past, nowadays unwittingly reproduced through globalization? Does the cultural hybridity facilitates liberation of the dance from Orientalist and colonial discourses? What is its potential to reproduce national identity and to raise intercultural dialogues through the dance? Are these two objectives irreconcilable? This essay is based on fieldwork conducted primarily in Kolkata in 2015. Among several leading metropolitan centers of Kathak development, that I have researched (New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bangalore), Kolkata appears to provide an environment particularly susceptible to the infl ux of concepts, techniques and practices from other cultures. This is apparent in the stage productions of Padatik, Rhythmosaic Dance Company, and Anurekha Ghosh Company, which will be discussed here as examples illustrating the dynamics of cultural hybridization and contextualized against changing, socio-cultural and economic conditions.
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Article is a proposal of anthropological reflexion on the functioning of the Witness of History category, and process of collecting oral history, in the context of Cursed Soldiers commemorating practices. Study shows Witness of History figure and its memories as phenomena of not only epistemological, but also axiological meanings. It presents ideological and political background of presence people who experienced Second World War and after war period in the context of Cursed Soldiers commemoration movement. Author stress importance of reflexion on the functioning history and historiography artifacts in the space of social practices.
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In this article I try to characterize bio-power and bio-politics and show how these concepts can be useful in description and analyse of selected socio-cultural phenomena of the contemporary. I start from the terminological confusion that can arise here because of previous functioning of bio-power and bio-politics in the scientific and the political discourse. Then I move on to present the ideas of Michel Foucault, who created, somehow misty and sketchy, but still inspiring theoretical background based on these two concepts. Neo-Foucauldian researches (Paul Rabinow, Nikolas Rose, Thomas Lemke, Majia Holmer Nadesan, Mitchell Dean) took the work on developing this heritage.
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