Studies and Materials on the Subject of “Lifestyle”
Life in an “Ideal Socialist City”: Narrative Representations of Nová Dubnica’s Past (Juraj Janto)
Social Singing as an Aspect of the Twentieth-Century Lifestyle through the Eyes of Antonín Doležal, a Czech Obstetrician and Singer of Everyday Life (Zita Skořepová)
Czech Tramping as a Lifestyle (Karel Altman)
The Transition to Motherhood and Fatherhood and Its Impacts on the Everyday Life and Identity of an Individual (Olga Nešporová)
Studies Outside the Main Topic
Pigments on Rural Buildings in South-East Moravia: Example of the Finding Situation in the Village of Hrušky (Martin Novotný, Dalibor Všianský, Aleš Frýbort)
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Life in an “Ideal Socialist City”: Narrative Representations of Nová Dubnica’s Past
Juraj Janto
The study deals with narrative representations of the past of the Slovak city of Nová Dubnica that was built on a green-field land in the 1950s as an “exemplary socialist city” to accommodate workers of the engineering plant in Dubnica nad Váhom. While interpreting research data within the theoretical framework of collective memory, the author addresses memories of the first and long-term residents (60 years old and older) who look back on their life in the city in the 1950s-1980s. Based on ethnographic research, it was (1) industrial plant and work, (2) city construction, and (3) family and social life that were identified as major areas of narrative representations. These areas feature similar contents of individual interpretations of the past, and their intersection is formed by themes that can be qualified as the above-mentioned group’s collective memory of the life in Nová Dubnica in the past. Collective memory, as a socially conditioned category, is formed in Nová Dubnica, among other things, by important factors - regular events (celebrations of the foundation of the city, lantern parade) and mutual meetings of seniors. The study is to present Nová Dubnica as a "place of memory", which shapes the inhabitants' ideas about the past and which is also formed by local memories of the years of the socialist regime.
Social Singing as an Aspect of the Twentieth-Century Lifestyle through the Eyes of Antonín Doležal, a Czech Obstetrician and Singer of Everyday Life
Zita Skořepová
The study is based on the complementarity of ethnomusicology and oral history; it introduces Antonín Doležal, a leading Czech obstetrician, amateur singer and bearer of the tradition of social singing. His biographical narrative relies not only on his memories of particular songs. Doležal is also a prominent witness to the transformations of forms and meanings of singing situations and occasions for social singing as an aspect of the twentieth-century lifestyle. He is a good example to demonstrate the functions of songs as possible key vehicles of memory that—in the course of his story—help recall significant contents of communicative memory, referring also to collective cultural memory concerning Czechoslovakia in the 1930s-1980s in this case. The study shows how the personal repertoire and remembering the occasions to sing and their reflections can stand out from the background of the biographical line as a meaningful mirror of the relation of a contemporary to the family, sociocultural environment, and region, as well as to the interpretation of essential stages of and events in the Czech history and everyday life in the twentieth century.
Czech Tramping as a Lifestyle
Karel Altman
Czech tramping can seem to be a mere leisure-time activity of a selected segment of the Czech population (especially young people but by far not only of them), but its essence is much more complex and its importance usually bigger. Tramping does not only consist in unrestricted wandering through freely accessible nature (usually at weekends), in camping and development of peculiar festivities, but it also demonstrates its specific material and spiritual attributes, significantly influenced by scouting and woodcraft. It was mainly the tramps´ code of ethics, applied not only to tramping itself, that defined ethical attitudes of the tramps towards the environment and members of the majority society. Over the last one hundred years, Czech tramping has become a real lifestyle of its bearers not only in the period of their youth, but often also later in their life, often until their death. This lifestyle has always been a specific, even in the context of a certain space, non-consumption-oriented, and alternative way how to spend leisure time.
The Transition to Motherhood and Fatherhood and Its Impacts on the Everyday Life and Identity of an Individual
Olga Nešporová
This article monitors the transition of women and men to their first-time parenthood based on their own accounts. It is based on longitudinal research conducted in the Czech Republic that observed sixteen heterosexual couples from pregnancy and over several years after the birth of their child. The analysed interviews made up the second wave of the research and were conducted when the first-born child was one and a half to one and three-quarters years old. While the women described their transition to motherhood as crucial, significant and clear, the transition to fatherhood was rather bland, gradual and hazy in men's narratives. The mothers depicted the impacts of parenthood on their everyday life as great and often pervasive, while the fathers tended to see them as minor or even non-existent. The difference in mothers' and fathers' accounts is interpreted as a consequence of different conceptions of identities by women and men and their gender roles. While motherhood is an important part of femininity and for this reason it is an important central identity for women, the hegemonic concept of masculinity does not include fatherhood; it is the work identity that is the central identity of both men and fathers. The distinct roles of the mother as caregiver and the man as breadwinner contribute to the fact that the men usually do not describe their transition to fatherhood, in the first two years after childbirth, as a significant life turning point.
Pigments on Rural Buildings in South-East Moravia: Example of the Finding Situation in the Village of Hrušky
Martin Novotný, Dalibor Všianský, Aleš Frýbort
The research on pigments used on rural buildings is part of the research on the diversity of colours in vernacular architecture. This is a topic to which the Czech ethnology has not paid much attention yet. The industrial production of pigments, which began to spread especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, offered a broader variety of colours and their easier availability even in the countryside. The case study is primarily based on a material analysis of the finding situation in the village of Hrušky in south-east Moravia (Czech Republic), in the Slovácko region. The research focused on powder paints found in the depository of the Open-Air Museum of Rural Architecture in South-East Moravia in Strážnice in 2020. Unfortunately, the set did not include any building numbers that could help to reconstruct the form of colour development on a particular building. Almost all of the paints, some of which have survived in their original packaging, came from post-war Czechoslovakia. The material included sixteen samples of pigments and powder paints. In addition to the description of a particular set of samples, the treatise demonstrates the potential of scientific methods applied to analyse and paints, which are common in materials science and used in restoration works and for ethnological studies.
