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Triad of Resistance, Defeat, and Reconciliation: The Production of Historical Meaning in the Performances of Czech Military Reenactment through the Example of Estonian SS Units (Petr Wohlmuth)
Czech Historical Reenactment of the Early Middle Ages: Initial Research Problems and Concepts (Přemysl Vacek)
The Past in an Uncertain Present: The Place of Collective Memory at Demonstrations for an Independent Judiciary in the Czech Republic (Eva Šipöczová)
Contemporary Research on the Czech Compatriots in South-Eastern Europe (Lenka Jakoubková Budilová)
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Petr Wohlmuth
This study explores several military reenactor performances through the optics of reenactment studies after the affective turn and post-positivist oral history. These are co-organized or independently produced by a Czech military history reenactment club, which is specific for its unique affectivity, experience, and production of historical meaning. In action and film reenactment performances, which we refer to as The West, The March, and Division 45, the reenactors focus on the reconstruction of the final phase of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) combat journey in the Czech lands in May 1945. In doing so, they produce meanings that conflict with contemporary Czech military culture and official memory, but they avoid historical revisionism. In this sense, the reenactor performances touch upon, among other things, the still highly conflicting local issues of the politics of memory – the so-called crimes of the victors of the summer of 1945, especially the crimes committed against prisoners of war of various types of the German armed forces, subjected to highly inhumane treatment. Until now, these crimes have been debated in the Czech historical community more or less only in relation to German civilians.
Přemysl Vacek
Military reenactment of the early Middle Ages is a hobby in which participants (re)construct and bring back to life technology and events related to the military culture of this period. In recent years, the interest of reenactors has broadened to encompass rituals, crafts, construction, farming, and trade, and could be more aptly described by the broader term of living history. This article, one of the first to examine the situation in the Czech Republic, presents a group of reenactors of the early Middle Ages with an emphasis on high material and experiential authenticity. Oral history in its post-positivist paradigm was the dominating method to reveal their subjective experiences. The representations contained in the interviews are a source for modulated personal experience that express the role, perceived by the actors, inside the reenactment movement as well as for the formulation of their self-concept in history. The text focusses on three analytic schemes – the paradoxes of “authenticity” in current reconstructions of medieval combat, the circumstances of negotiating authenticity, and the concept of Reinhart Koselleck’s “multiple temporalities” that is used here to explain the experiential “mental travelling” of the reenactors between the present and the past.
Eva Šipöczová
This case study focusses on an analysis of the place of collective memory at the For an Independent Judiciary (in Czech: Za nezávislou justici) demonstrations that took place in the Czech Republic in 2019. It combines the folkloristic approach of inscription folklore research with the theoretical approaches of memory studies. During participant observation of the protests, banners were documented, which the study understands as a specific verbal expression of a folklore nature, anchored in a text and balancing on the borderline between individually and collectively shared opinions regarding particular events. Frequent themes presented on the banners included references to historical events, prominent people, and periods. The past was put into a new context, as it became part of ongoing events and was thus (re)interpreted. This study observes which historical events, people, and periods appeared on the banners, how they were contextualized within ongoing political events, and what symbolic value was assigned to them. The secondary goal of the study is to continue the discussion about the place of research on written expressions of a spontaneous/situational nature in folkloristics, which was opened by Czech folklorists in the 1990s. Memory is seen as a multi-layere phenomenon that is permanently living, present, and re-formulated based on current needs. While analysing the materials, I considered the relationship between formal and non-formal components of memory and their political potential.
Lenka Jakoubková Budilová
The text summarizes results of contemporary research (after 1989) on Czech villages in south-eastern Europe. It analyses research lines that follow the former scholarly interest in Czech communities in south-eastern Europe, and presents new themes, theoretical approaches and conceptualization of this issue that have emerged since 1990s. It indicates how latest theoretical and methodological approaches have changed the “Czech compatriot discourse”. Although the author focuses mainly on ethnological and cultural-anthropological works, she also pays attention to historical, linguistic, and political-science research. An overview of the Czech language scholarly texts on Czech communities and Czech cultural heritage in the Balkans is presented. The influence of concepts like multisited ethnography, national indifference, memory studies or transnationalism is emphasized.
Studies on the Subject of “Humans Landscapes”
Reclamation in the Czech Lands from the Mid-19th Century to the End of the 1950s (Libor Svoboda)
Alleys and the Participant Reflections of Their Significances (Using the Example of the Contest for the Alley of the Year) (Klára Ondrigová)
Public Goods in an Ethnological and Evolutionary Anthropological Perspective (Michal Uhrin)
Boundaries of Other Worlds: Transitional and Representational Functions of Czech Theatre Curtains (Václav Hájek)
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Libor Svoboda
Between 1948 and 1989, large-scale drainage and improvement works were carried out every year in the former Czechoslovakia, which ultimately completely changed the face of the Czech Lands’ landscape. Streams, rivulets, baulks, field shrubs, dirt roads, “useless” meadows and pastures, small ponds, wetlands and swamps disappeared. In its first part, the study focusses on a brief description of the development and characteristics of land reclamation in the Czech territory from the 19th century to 1948. In its second part, it pays attention to a quite short but - from the point of view of the development of land reclamation works in the former Czechoslovakia - a very important period from 1948 to the end of the 1950s. During this time the Czech countryside experienced enormous and revolutionary property and social changes as a result of totalitarian communist policies. The private sector was, with few exceptions, liquidated, agricultural production was controlled, centralized and gradually industrialised. The way was opened for massive amelioration interventions, which became one of the symbols of the Communist regime's rule over the Czech and Moravian countryside, was open.
Klára Ondrigová
The Czech Republic is criss-crossed by thousands of kilometres of alleyways, which have been part of this territory since the late Middle Ages and which inseparably co-create the local typical landscape character. Their functions and significances make them an element that is important not only for the countryside, but also for people themselves. The nationwide survey “The Alley of the Year”, organised by the Czech non-profit organisation Arnika since 2011, reveals how the alleyways are currently perceived by individuals. The contest offers an exploration of the subjective relation of specific groups of the public to the alleyways. The article focusses on the analysis of particular nominations, meaning on the texts giving reasons for which specific local alleyways entered the contest. Using the analysis, the significances are identified which the alleyways have for nominating individuals and communities. The treatise defines seven basic identified groups of significances (historical and cultural; aesthetical and landscape; natural; personal; psychological; social; spiritual), which are thoroughly deals with.
Michal Uhrin
Human life is characterized by cooperation of individuals but also by cooperation in large groups. People cooperate in pursuit of common goals and carry out activities beneficial to both the individual and the group. The issue of public goods, meaning resources that can be potentially used by entire society or a group within society, has been systematically studied since the sixties of the twentieth century. Since there is a risk of free-riding on and over-exploitation of public goods, there must be social mechanisms, rules, and norms to regulate their use in any society. In this text, the author draws attention to the analysis of public goods and common-pool resources from a broader evolutionary anthropological and ethnological perspective, focusing on local public goods and common-pool resources. Evolutionary anthropology provides insightful theories from which empirically testable hypotheses for ethnological research can be derived. The author concludes that long-term ethnographic research combined with the theoretical concepts of evolutionary anthropology can effectively contribute to the understanding of successfully managed and administered public goods and common-pool resources.
Václav Hájek
Painted stage curtains from the Czech territory represent a great convolute of specific artistic, media and ideological expressions. A number of pictorial and visual strategies are repeated and varied here over long periods of time – for example an appeal to the audience through stereotypical compositions, recycling of popular pictorial prototypes, hierarchical relationships between the profane and the seemingly transcendent environment, etc. This text is based on two cross-sectional publications (Painted Stage Curtains from the Czech Lands, Volume 1 and 2), in which a large amount of hitherto overlooked artistic material is collected. In the case of theatre curtains, the formal image strategies played a key role, through which this image apparatus influenced the audience. Methods of appealing to the audience and their illusory drawing into the action, and the strengthening of their attention are found on curtains in repetitive forms from approximately the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. We analyse several typical visual tools using the examples where it is not so much the authorship and aesthetic qualities that are important, but rather the typicality that is characteristic of the given period and the given medium.
Studies on the Subject of “Transformation of Popular Culture”
Dammed, or Adored Music? Reception of Pop-Folk Music in Czech-Austrian Cultural Contacts in the Early 1990s (Ondřej Daniel)
“Sunny Grave” and “Odyssey”: Restrictions and the Creative Process in Socialist Czechoslovakia Using the Cases of the Blue Effect and Atlantis Bands (Oldřich Poděbradský)
Satanic Elements in Czech Black Metal: Subcultural Style and Identity (Miroslav Vrzal)
Slavic Pop(Culture)? Introduction to the Issue, Using an Example of Poland (Gabriela Maria Gańczarczyk)
To the History of the First Comprehensive Ethnographic Expeditions in Ukraine (Iryna Dovhaljuk)
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Ondřej Daniel
The primary objective of this article is cultural-historical interpretation of the social impact of the production of musical genres on the borderline between folk and popular music. The investigation aims to illuminate the reception and cultural significance of these musical hybrids in the Czech context, with a particular focus on their cross-border interaction with Austria. The study examines intersections of age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and gender, associated with the preferences for musical genres on the borderline between folk and popular music in Austria and the Czech lands in the 1990s, meaning a period characterized by an abrupt and intensified integration of global cultural influences. Relying predominantly on empirical evidence and the current state of expert knowledge, the research identifies several contextual and model roles in which this music may have served as a divisive or unifying factor. The identification of the intersections between the consumption, production and circulation of pop-folk music is discussed here in three aspects: age, class, and geography.
Oldřich Poděbradský
This article focuses on the state-forced changes in the musical creative process in 1960s communist Czechoslovakia. Using historical sources and narrative interviews with famous musicians of that time (Karel Kahovec, Viktor Sodoma, Josef Laufer…), it examines how musicians perceived the effects of state repression e.g. having to translate English lyrics into Czech, being persecuted for playing a specific musical genre, and being banned from the media due to inappropriate themes or topics used on their records. These repressions are evidenced in two example cases: the song “Slunečný hrob” [Sunny Grave] by the Blue Effect band, which became famous in the Czech movie Pelíšky only in the late 1990s, and the unjustly forgotten album Odyssea [Odyssey] recorded by Atlantis, a Petr Ulrych’s music band, in 1969. The article shows how the perception of music and lyrics by the state’s repressive apparatus changed over a short period of time and how artists negotiated with the regime according to the changing circumstances.
Miroslav Vrzal
The article focuses on satanic elements within the subcultural style of black metal. The text is based on own long-term qualitative research, in particular the analysis of interviews with Czech black metallers aged 21–33, supplemented by ethnographic findings from 2010 to the present. The study shows the function of satanic elements both as a source of resistance through style to what is perceived by the participants as mainstream, and also their connection with the formation of anti-Christian ideology, which must also include an anti-social and anti-cultural aspect. From the point of view of the use of satanic elements, the participants particularly emphasized the period of adolescence, when for them, within their own image, satanic elements played an important role as a subcultural code communicated to the surrounding society. At the same time, Satanic elements played a role in shaping the participants’ own religiosity, specifically Satanic identities.
Gabriela Maria Gańczarczyk
The Slavic world in present-day Poland is a remarkable conglomerate of post-Romantic interest in the roots of their own culture, profit-aimed marketing and several other factors one of them being Russian political influences. Slavic motifs have appeared in Polish culture, and not only the folk one, at least since the era of Romanticism. However, only in the last decade we can speak about a very wide range of Polish popular culture’s fields referring to Slavicism. These include diverse literature, plays of all kinds, film and TV production, music, fashion, and physical exercise. The article maps particular areas of this part of Polish popular culture, providing also the corresponding secondary literature dealing with them. It presents material for general introduction to the topic, while also presenting relevant material for further research.
Iryna Dovhaljuk
In 1896, the first private village local history museum in Ukraine and Eastern was opened in the town of Horodok. Its founder and owner was the Ukrainian socio-political and cultural figure, diplomat, philanthropist Baron Theodor von Steinheil. A few years after its opening, the museum became an important center for studying of the traditional culture of the Ukrainian historical and cultural region – Volyn. This was achieved by inviting leading scientists of various fields to work in the museum, as well as by using the latest approaches in the work of the museum (for example, the use of a phonograph to collect exhibition material). Among such innovations, for the first time in Ukraine, was the holding in 1899 and 1900 of two complex ethnographic expeditions with the aim of a large-scale, multifaceted study of Volyn: its history, archeology, ethnography, folklore, flora, fauna, geology, etc. The study presents the list of the participants of the expeditions led by Theodor von Steinheil, traces the routes taken by the researchers, considers methodological groundwork in conducting complex field researches, analyzes the achievements and shortcomings of such expeditions taking into account the conclusions of Theodor von Steinheil himself, observes the further history of complex ethnographic expeditions in Ukraine.
Studies on the Subject of “Everyday Culture in the 16th–19th Centuries”
Pious Pilgrimages to the Virgin Mary of Chlum in the Life of People of the Baroque Period (Markéta Holubová)
Treasure Books in Moravia in the 18th and 19th Centuries: An Analysis of Spell Texts (Anna Grůzová)
Black Shirt: An (Un)Known Garment Worn by Mountain Shepherds in the Western Carpathians (Václav Michalička)
The Success Rate and Most Frequent Mistakes of Journeymen at Master Tailor Examination in the 17th and 18th Centuries on the Example of the Guild of Tailors in Česká Kamenice (Josef Svoboda)
Guild Tailors at the Pardubice Manor in the 16th Century and the Intergenerational Transfer of Their Production Experience (Martin Šimša)
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Markéta Holubová
The culture associated with pilgrimage sites was undoubtedly one of the most significant phenomena of spiritual life in the Czech lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the basis of a thorough excerpt of official sources and hand-written or printed miraculous answers of the Virgin Mary of Chlum from 1651–1768, the study reflects pious pilgrimages to Chlum Svaté Máří (translated as St. Mary’s Wooded Hillock - TN) during the Baroque period. Pilgrimages were pious journeys to a particular destination, the purpose of which was to ask for a blessing or to give thanks for received grace. They were an indisputable mean of re-catholicisation, which was supposed to strengthen the faithful inwardly and gift them with spiritual graces for their penitent deeds, among which pilgrimages were rightly included. Large gatherings of the faithful increased the sense of belonging together, deepened the awareness of ecclesial community and imprinted an indelible experience on the souls of the participants for along time. The frequency of pilgrimages depended on the liturgical calendar, the weather, and the course of farm works in a particular year. Miraculous healings of the pilgrims were an important impetus to undertake the pious journey to the worshipped Madonna in Chlum Svaté Máří.
Anna Grůzová
Texts using magical practices formed an important part of everyday life, especially for the lower classes of society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Spellbooks straddle the boundary between prayer (i.e. a permitted expression) and magic (i.e. a not permitted expression). The text of a manuscript book often changed with the person of the scribe. The analysis of the different phases of the search has shown the variety of treasure texts content, which is usually not defined by the magical means used, the localization, the scribe, the subject, or the title. Nor do similar types of books show similarities: texts addressing the same saint (e.g. Saint Christopher books), texts following a similar theme (so-called edvartky), texts from the pen of the same author, or texts using the same “search” means. The text schematization is only manifested in the basic parameters, i.e. the search for treasure through establishing a relationship with otherworldly entities using various means. However, the texts make abundant use of fundamental aspects of traditional religiosity and belief in God. Thus, despite the presence of incantations and other practices, the treasure books are a manifestation of pious behaviour affirming man´s submission to the divine destiny.
Václav Michalička
The study focusses on black shirts, soaked with animal fat and smoked, worn by Carpathian shepherds in the 17th-19th centuries. The author focuses on sources from the area of the present-day Czech Republic, taking into consideration the wider context of the use of this garment also in the area of the present-day Poland and Slovakia. The chosen theme has been dealt with based on the study of period sources and professional literature as well as on a series of experiments aimed at the technique of making this shirt and at practical issues related to its common use. The functionality of this garment, which featured a special treatment - impregnation with animal fat and smoking - is addressed as well. Due to this treatment, the shirt was more resistant to moisture, cold, wind, and insects. The study also presents results of experimental research which explains the process of making the black shirts, confronting their real properties with historical records. In the conclusion, the author points out the pitfalls of experimental verification due to the unfamiliarity with detailed procedures and production customs, and opens up the possibility of further laboratory research in collaboration with technical disciplines.
Josef Svoboda
The protocols recording the course of master examinations are a unique source to understand guild issues, yet historical and ethnological research has not paid much attention to them. From the environment of tailor guilds in the Czech lands, three quite large sets of these protocols were found; these were conceived as books in the cities of Aš, Krnov, and Česká Kamenice. While the first two books contain brief protocols that do not allow for a too deep insight into the course of the examination, the one from Česká Kamenice is unique in terms of its thorough nature and connection to other and similarly rare sources (the book of patterns), and it offers a detailed insight into the course and complexity of the tailors’ master examination. When analysing mistakes mentioned in the case of presented garments, we can imagine the demanding character of particular master pieces, when some of them were beyond the abilities of four of the five journeymen tested. The frequently repeated mistakes indicate insufficient preparation and the inability of journeymen to access drawing and measuring of cuts - the greatest secrets of master tailors. The conclusion of the treatise raises the question of the success rate of master and non-master sons, whereby the limited sample of tailors from Česká Kamenice demonstrates that the second group was more successful during the examination.
Martin Šimša
The producers of garments and the intergenerational transfer of their experience were always among important tools to mediate new clothing trends and innovations. Based on the quantitative research into archival sources from the 16th century, the study tries to outline basic contours of this process, and - using several quantitative examples from the Pardubice manor - present their participants. In the region under study, tailors settled mainly in the city of Pardubice, and in small towns of Sezemice, Dašice, Přelouč, Bohdaneč, and Holice. However, individual masters also worked in several villages. Tailors formed a diverse social structure that included owners of city houses, farmers, gardeners, and poor farm hands living in rented rooms. Many parents considered apprenticeship to be a suitable way of securing the future for their children. In addition to quite a small group of young men from tailor families, it was primarily children from gardener and farmer families whose inheritance shares helped them to pay high costs associated with the apprenticeship and the subsequent journey. The employment prospects of the newly trained tailors are as yet unclear. While the sons from tailor families mostly joined the trade easily, for the others we know only that they farmed on one of the farmsteads, but there is no evidence that they operated the tailoring trade.
Studies on the Subject of “Contemporary Dancescape”
Development and Current State of the Folk Dance, Using an Example of the Slovácko Verbuňk and the “Královničky” Ceremonial Processions (Jarmila Teturová – Jan Blažek)
Folk Dance, City, and Lifestyle (using an example of Prague, Brno and Bratislava) (Laura Kolačkovská)
Ervín Varga and Implementation of the Elements of Particularism in the Practice of Folklore Revival Movement in Slovakia after 2000 (Martina Hrabovská)
Spaces of Folk Dancing Beyond the (Slovene) Folklore Ensemble Stage (Rebeka Kunej)
Liminal Fragility of Rave – an Autoethnographic Study Reflecting Insider’s Stay in the Field (Eduard Adam Orszulik)
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Jarmila Teturová – Jan Blažek
The study deals with the development and current state of the folk dance, using an example of two significantly different motion expressions: the ceremonial “Královničky” [The Little Queens] processions in central and western Moravia and the Slovácko verbuňk in southern Moravia. These two dance expressions, appreciably differing in their type, are presented in the context of the environment where they are currently practised. The verbuňk is a distinctive representative of male folk dances, while the “Královničky” processions represent a girl element integrated in the calendar cycle. Both expressions are currently living and they fulfil their cultural and social functions. Based on archival research and analysis of available literature, an image of the historical development of these expressions from the first mentions about them up to present days has emerged. Main historical milestones are depicted graphically for comparison. The results of thorough field research have revealed the importance of the verbuňk and the “Královničky” processions for particular communities. In the case of verbuňk, the functions are competitive, identifying and representational, in the case of ”Královničky” processions, the core function is presentational, while the ceremonial function persists in both expressions. The summarization of the findings has made it possible to update the definitions of expressions’ bearers and the description and role of the audience looking on contemporary dance and ceremonial occasions.
Laura Kolačkovská
The wide spectrum of folklore activities organized regularly in the urban environment confirms the stability of folk dance position in the contemporary society. The study presents current forms of folk dance, using an example of selected folklore activities, such as dance houses, dance parties with cimbalom music, and folklore aerobic. Although these folklore activities have different contents and stories, they share their essential participatory feature. The basic methodological starting point consists in the perception of the dance as a cultural product, not only as a physical phenomenon that takes place in a certain time and space. The research was carried out in three cities: Prague in the Czech Republic, Brno in Moravia, and Bratislava in Slovakia. Events associated with the environment in which folklore activities take place are lively and growing in their intensity (e.g. new events develop). The author is interested in the importance of these activities in the urban environment. In her treatise, she also deals with the issues of identity and conscious relationship to folklore, which result in the development of so-called folk-love communities. The text is based on ongoing field research.
Martina Hrabovská
The study deals with the development of dance folklorism in Slovakia after 2000. Attention is mainly paid to Ervín Varga (1955–2013), a leading choreographer and dance teacher, whose artistic activities started in the 1980s the process of implementing the elements of particularism in the performance, teaching and choreographic practice. He was a mentor and partially also a primary role model for the incoming generation of dance teachers, choreographers, and performers of two influential Slovakian civic associations – “Dragúni“ from Bratislava and “Klub milovníkov autentického folklóru“ from Košice – in their teaching and artistic practice. The study is based on the theoretical concept of essentialisation and particularisation by the American dance theorist Anthony Shay (2002). Using this concept, he replaces the traditional way of thinking about stylisation in dance and its theoretical reflection in three stages – quotation, imitation, and re-composition - which were introduced into the professional discourse of Slovak folkloristics by Milan Leščák and Svetozár Švehlák in the 1970s. The study elucidates the contribution of Ervín Varga to the choreographic, teaching and performance practice in folklore revival movement in Slovakia after 2000 and defines basic features of particularism in dance folklorism after 2000.
Rebeka Kunej
The article presents spaces where Slovene dance folklore is danced, or better yet represented today, beyond the established stages of folklore ensembles. The author first brings attention to local terminological issues and quandaries, exposing how folk dance in Slovenia has experienced repertoire and contextual changes. The article does not focus on the main activity of folklore ensembles, but explores other spaces and venues of dancing folk reflective dance or ethno-identity dance outside the existing stage productions of the folklore ensemble. In this it showcases its position in artistic performances, analyses the competition of pairs in folk dancing, presents the institutional transfer of knowledge within the education sphere, evaluates dance folklore's commodification for tourism and market purposes, and looks critically at the attempts to implement the Hungarian táncház in the Slovene space and dance feasts. All these attempts at engagement with new settings share the aspect of seeking transformed contextual horizons to folk dance, reshaping its form in search of new expressive possibilities.
Eduard Adam Orszulik
The study deals with the phenomenon of rave culture in the Czech Republic, to which only little social attention is currently paid. The article in particular reflects an insider’s stay in the field, while applying prevailing autoethnographic method. Attention is paid to questions exploring raves from the perspective of ritualism, which is conceptually framed in the theory of liminality, as discussed by Victor Turner. Emphasis is also put on the situation of the rave, which for many participants provides space for spiritual and transcendental experiences through which it is possible to authentically discover one’s own identity and to find one’s place in the world. The basic attribute, forming a genuine rave, is to construct a safe-space for all participants, so that a space with an absolute respect can emerge. The ravers strictly define themselves against the mainstream club entertainment, a party that lacks implicit rules and the philosophy of rave. A significant feature of the rave is its long duration and excessive behaviour, when, within a collective experience, the ravers repetitively dance all night to produced electronic music.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Studies and Materials on the Subject of “Agriculture Transformation”
Farming as a Counterculture. Family Farms in Central Bosnia (Andrej Mentel)
Post-War Life and Collectivisation of the Moravian Countryside through the Eyes of Actors – Small Farmers (Miroslav Válka)
The Impact of Mining on the Adaptation Process of the German Minority around Nitrianske Pravno with an Emphasis on Agriculture (Marián Žabenský)
Quo Vadis? Czech and Moravian Agriculture between 2000 and 2020 (Pavel Novák)
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Andrej Mentel
The study analyses the position of family farms in Central Bosnia as one of the strategies of adaptation to the economic and social decline associated with the transformation of heavy industry. The basic argument is that, in addition to the pragmatic motivation to provide a livelihood for their families, contemporary farmers are also engaged in a purposeful pursuit of an alternative to a society that these actors perceive as corrupt and fundamentally unreformable. Against the generalised distrust of the population towards institutions, they advocate the strengthening of personalised networks of trust. Food produced by family farms has, in addition to its immediate utility, an important symbolic value as ‘authentic’ or ‘real’. This value is linked to the values associated with environmental protection, but it differs from the discourse of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ food. The restoration of family farms in Central Bosnia can be seen as a counterculture that aims to provide an alternative to the negatively perceived dominant trends in society by strengthening local communities. ‘Authentic food’ becomes the unifying materialised symbol of this counterculture.
Miroslav Válka
In the second half of the 20th century, the Czech countryside experienced two discontinuities in its development. The first one related to the collectivisation after 1948, while the other one led to the liquidation of unified agricultural cooperatives and the formation of owners’ agricultural cooperatives and agricultural enterprises of various sizes. The collectivisation of the village fundamentally changed village life, first in the economic and productive sphere, but it also interfered with the social structure of the village and the cultural sphere. It followed a well-established pattern: intensive agitation, coercion, intimidation, liquidation of large farms, but also confiscation of modern agricultural equipment (e.g. tractors). It did not only affect medium-sized peasants, and farmers, but also small farmers, the ‘progressive’ ones among whom were often at the origin of the local unified agricultural cooperative. The study uses the example of a family from the village of Závist (District of Blansko) to document the economic background of a small farmer, his everyday life and the circumstances that influenced his joining the unified agricultural cooperative.
Marián Žabenský
The study deals with the issue of the impact of mining on the process of adaptation of the German cultural minority with an emphasis on agriculture. A multi-temporal analysis of sections of cultural and landscape layers was used to monitor these processes, which compares the state of the cultural landscape with an emphasis on selected land-use classes. Emphasis is placed on the non-urban area of Nitrianske Pravno, which was colonized by German-speaking inhabitants in the 14th century. The conclusions are aimed at defining specific factors influencing the adaptation of the agricultural landscape. These include, in particular, the shape of the land as a remnant of emphyteutic colonisation, the exploitation of the non-urban area for mining, the unsuccessful development of agriculture, the development of livestock production and crafts, and the stagnation and extinction of viticulture. Other conclusions are focused on changes in the social-organizational structure of the township and on the assessment of the adaptation process. For more relevant assessment of the issue in question, the analysis of land-use classes was also used. Its results confirm some of the conclusions presented in this paper.
Pavel Novák
The study, made using statistical and historical methods, provides hard statistical data for ethnological research. The presented work proves that, despite the reduction in the sown area and livestock quantity, the agriculture of the Czech Republic is food secure due to the increase in hectare yields and productivity. New specializations of agricultural business have developed, especially landscape maintenance, production of crops for non-agricultural use, agro-tourism and organic farming. In the course of the monitored period, privatisation of state farms and restitution of property of persons affected by the communist regime were completed. Church restitution is still ongoing. The share of agriculture in the gross domestic product and employment is still declining, and agriculture is only very slowly reducing the gap with industry in labour productivity. Farmers have difficulties in selling their products in hypermarkets owned by foreign companies, and imports exceed exports in foreign trade. It is no longer worth running business in agriculture, despite the high level of subsidies, and due to low wages it is nor profitable even for employees to work in agriculture. The Czech Republic is average in European comparison. From a long-term perspective, the subsidy-based agricultural policy of the European Union and the Czech Republic is unsustainable.
Studies on the Subject of “Cultural Heritage”
From Folklore to Living Heritage: On the Development of UNESCO’s Contribution to the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Rieks Smeets)
Languages and Dialects as Part of Regional Identity and Cultural Heritage (on the Example of the Czech Republic) (Marta Šimečková)
On Research and Access to Cultural Heritage in Slovakia on the Example of the Process of Writing an Ethnochoreological Monograph (Katarína Babčáková)
Off-Topic Studies
The Economic Impact of the First Two Years of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Czech Culture (Jaroslav Novák)
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Rieks Smeets
The adoption in 2003 of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was the major milestone in UNESCO’s action concerning intangible or living heritage (initially called folklore) that started more than fifty years ago. That Convention replaced the not entirely successful 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore, the first UNESCO legal instrument in this domain. This study presents aspects of a large number of dedicated expert and statutory meetings that contributed to these texts and in UNESCO programmes such as the Living Human Treasure programme and the Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. It tries to give an insight in the changing objectives and discourse with which experts, states and UNESCO contributed to this long history. That evolution is illustrated by the constant change in name and definition given to the subject matter itself (from “folklore” to “living heritage”) and by the changing objectives of all this action. Special attention is given to the preparation of the 2003 Convention, to its implementation after its entry into force in 2006, and to the new objectives that its Governing Organs, guided by UNESCO, have been trying to provide it with. Where appropriate, reference is made to contributions from Czech experts and the Czech Republic.
Marta Šimečková
The aim of the paper is to determine whether languages and their territorial dialects are intangible cultural heritage or not. Excerpts from the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage have been argued, as well as specific entries on the UNESCO lists, in which languages and dialects appear as intangible cultural heritage independently or as part of more complex items. The definition of intangible cultural heritage, as formulated in the aforementioned Convention, has been found to entirely correspond to the nature of dialects – these are considered by the general public as part of cultural heritage, passed down from generation to generation, reshaped by various threatening factors, and they provide people with a sense of identity and continuity. Several options for the preservation of dialects in terms of their documentation and presentation by dialectologists and laypersons were presented. At the same time, attention was drawn to potential consequences of active protection through legislation channels, especially to the undesirable conservation of a certain state without taking into account natural language development and to the need for canonization leading to the creation of an artificial language hyper-standard.
Katarína Babčáková
The paper presents an example of methodological approach to ethnochoreological research and exploitation of material in a monographic publication in the field of applied ethnochoreology. The methodological approach was based on ethnochoreological and ethnomusicological archival, rescue and return qualitative field research on dance-singing expressions that are functionally connected with the calendar cycle and that disappeared in Slovakia during the 20th century. The research results were subjected to a contextual analysis inspired by the methodological approach of dance and symbolic anthropology. In order to potentially apply scientific knowledge to the practice of formal and non-formal education, it also presents a proposal for a methodological procedure by implementing the knowledge of constructive dance pedagogy. The introduction reflects the broader context of the state of ethnochoreological research and education in folk dance in Slovakia.
Jaroslav Novák
The article deals with negative economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related countermeasures on the Czech culture. It proceeds from statistical data treated by the National Information and Consulting Centre for Culture (NIPOS) and the Czech Statistical Office. It compares 2020-2021 economic achievements of culture with the period before the pandemic. It demonstrates that the biggest losses caused by the drop in attendance to cultural activities were suffered by performing arts and cultural heritage. The immediate cause consisted in the restriction on the movement of people, which had a negative impact particularly on tourism. In view of the fact that domestic and inbound tourism affect the attendance of cultural events roughly equally, the article also pays attention to the relationship between culture and tourism. Culture is not a homogeneous entity. Along with activities aimed at the audience in a given place and time, it also includes market-oriented industries (press, media), and for this reason the impact of the pandemic on culture is not unambiguous. In contrast to the financial and economic crisis of 2011-2013, when market-oriented cultural disciplines were affected more than performing arts and cultural heritage, the opposite is the case during the pandemic. In the Czech Republic, the decline in total financial resources entering culture was accompanied by a decrease in household spending and, conversely, an increase in public spending on culture. In the case of both sources of finance, however, the portion of spending on culture in total expenditure decreased. Analysis of available data shows that the economic impact on cultural heritage and performing arts in the first two years of the pandemic is more than CZK 10 billion.
Studies on the Subject of “Taboo in the Past and at Present”
The Motifs of Taboos and Their Functions in Czech Traditional Prosaic Folklore (Adéla Adámková)
The Holocaust/Shoah as a Tabooed Component in Czech Society’s Memory after World War II? (Blanka Soukupová)
“Don’t Tell Anyone”: Family Secrets, Sense of Uncertainty, and Navigating “Otherness” Among the Jewish Minority in Slovakia (Katarína Očková)
Breastfeeding in Public as a Social Taboo (Example from Slovakia) (Silvia Letavajová)
Off-Topic Studies
There Will Be Dancing, Even Though There Is No Holiday! Explicit and Implicit Messages
in Czech Socialist Cinematography (Petr Lozoviuk)
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Adéla Adámková
The article analyses motifs of taboos contained in traditional folk tales and legends recorded in the Czech lands, and focusses on functions that these motifs exercise in relation to the social reality of that time and the narrative itself. Folklore studies include many theories related to the approach to taboo. Some of them perceive prosaic folklore as a space in which it is possible to break taboos and express anxieties that cannot be talked about in everyday life. According to others, folklore taboos correspond to those in force in society and cannot be broken with impunity. Thus, taboos in folklore material, like those in socio-cultural reality, reflect society's relationship to tabooed phenomena, and some of them change over time, in dependence on the social and cultural development. Traditional narratives illustrate the function of tabooed elements as these were established by institutionalized religion (e.g. sinful behaviour) and folk belief (e.g. motifs associated with demonic beings); in some cases they are also supported by the legal system (e.g. murder). They affect everyday life, but they are also linked to the liminal states of an individual (most often with puerperal women and children). The taboo, or at least the punishment for breaking it, often retains its supernatural character, which implies the frequent association of taboo motifs with demonic beings.
Blanka Soukupová
The text analyses the thematization of a key phenomenon of 20th century history and the axis of post-war Jewish identity - the Holocaust/Shoah in the Czech lands with overlaps to Central Europe. In contrast to propositions of the well-known political scientist Pavel Barša (the Holocaust became the cornerstone of Jewish identity only at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, when the State of Israel argued for it within its policy in regards to the occupied Arab territories and the moral category of innocent victim became crucial for Western mind-set), it tries to prove that the Holocaust, for which the Hebrew term Shoah is used in this case, became the pillar of Jewish identity already after the end of World War II. It was also at that time that the growing communist propaganda, which completely dominated the public space after the February coup (1948), began to use it for its own interests. In parallel, the treatise denies that the thematization of the Shoah/Holocaust was dominated by Jews as victims; in the post-war decades both minority Jewish and majority Czech representations worked with two categories: victims of racism and fighters against fascism, even though the communist representation (including the Jewish communists) from the beginning marginalized the Jewish resistance on the Western fronts and also the theme of the uniqueness of the Holocaust phenomenon.
Katarína Očková
Many young Slovak Jews, belonging to the third post-war generation, learned about their Jewishness only later in their lives, when outer triggers – whether a classmate’s comment or a history lesson about the Holocaust – raised questions to which they received unexpected answers at home. This study focuses on family secrets and their productivity, and on social taboos on information about Jewish descent, in the context of perceived insecurity across three generations of Slovak Jews. Exploring how young people discovered their Jewishness and how it was presented to them by their closest kin – who had previously kept it secret from them – along with the warning not to tell anyone about it, this study shows the formative power of this information for a sense of self, as well as for their relations to others. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Jewish community in Bratislava, the author shows how contemporary young Jews – the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – navigate their uncovered family secret, and how they negotiate the disruption in the continuity of their life stories and the intergenerational transmission of uncertainty and mistrust, which encourages the use of strategies of careful concealment of “otherness”, affecting their everyday life and relationships.
Silvia Letavajová
The treatise deals with breastfeeding as a significant socio-cultural phenomenon. It studies public breastfeeding and ambivalent attitudes toward it in the contemporary Slovak society. It is based on theoretical background of the study of cultural taboos, gender, intimacy, sexuality and physicality, and use of public space. It focusses on the public pressure and the interpretation of the phenomenon of “good mother”. It traces back the historical aspects of breastfeeding and its forms and significance in traditional culture, as well as changes in the contemporary Slovak society. In particular, it pays attention to media, political and institutional influences on breastfeeding practices, and it analyses public activism in this realm. The focus of the work is on the Central European socio-cultural space. The study presents findings from research carried out using the method of content analysis of posts on Internet discussion forums. It subjects the texts of these posts to a qualitative analysis, whereby it focusses on the contents of the statements as well as the ways of expressing oneself on the topic.
Petr Lozoviuk
The article presents a semiotic-ethnological analysis of two Czechoslovak feature films (“Zítra se bude tančit všude”, 1952; “V pátek není svátek”, 1979) which were made and also are set in the period of so-called real socialism. At a more general level, the article attempts to answer the question of the extent to which the film production of the socialist era can be seen as a specific source for the study of the everyday culture of that time. In thecontext presented, socialism is interpreted not only as an ideological-economic system, but as a culturally formative era. That is, as a particular way of life, which manifested itself in specific cultural expressions of the people who were forced to live in this order. The study further systematically focuses on the analysis of both films in terms of the functionality of implicit and explicit messages which are encoded in the researched outputs of socialist cinematography.
