Journal of Ethnology 1/2018 deals with city festivities. Jolana Darulová focuses on modern-day festivities in the Slovak town of Banská Bystrica (Festivities in Urban Environment with Focus on Mineworkers’ Traditions in the City of Banská Bystrica). Jana Lochmanová explains contemporary historicizing festivities in three Moravian towns (City Festivals in Jemnice, Brtnice and Jihlava). Marta Ulrychová deals with the development of an urban festival in the German location of Furth im Wald, and especially with a part of it, which consists of scenes depicting the fight between Saint George and the Dragon (Slaying of the Dragon – Traditional Summer Festival in the City of Furth im Wald in Upper Palatinate). Barbora Půtová describes and analyses urban festivities in Morocco, which intend to strengthen national identity and legitimacy of the local monarchy (Moussems: Moroccan Urban Festivals). Helena Nosková submits the theme of the Russians in Czech environment and the development of its festivities in the course of the 20th century (Festivities and Everyday Life of Russian “White” Émigrés in Prague Exile in Blending of History and Memories).
Social Chronicle remembers the anniversaries of the ethnologist Alena Plessingerová (born 1928) and the script editor and script writer Naděžda Urbášková (born 1938); obituaries are written for the Czech historians Josef Petráň (1930–2017) and Ctibor Nečas (1933–2017) and also for the Slovak choreographer Štefan Nosáľ (1927–2017). Other regular columns include information about exhibitions, conferences, as well as reviews of new books.
The study focuses on modern-day festivities in the city environment. In its first section, it deals with theoretical definition of feast and celebration with two concepts - the epidemiology of representations by D. Sperber, and the invented tradition by E. Hobsbawm. In terms of space, the research is based on the city of Banská Bystrica in Central Slovakia, which tries to present the oldest and most significant events through selected historical events integrated in festivities. This concerns mainly mining industry, even though the development of Banská Bystrica has not been associated with the mining industry for several decades. Initiated by mineworkers’ associations and supported by the city, Emperor’s Visitations were held for three years. The festivity, at which representatives from different mining regions in Slovakia and abroad presented themselves, comprised several elements of ceremony, ritualized behaviour, dramatization, and mineworkers’ symbols. It was an attempt to establish a new tradition that was to remember the Emperor’s visits with the aim to complete the city’s image, to support tourism, and to reach economic benefits. It is the local self-government and the citizen’s interest that decide about its periodicity and cyclic repetition.
The study deals with modern-day city festivals in three Moravian cities (Jemnice, Brtnice and Jihlava). Those historicizing festivals emphasize specific features of their development and the history of the venue; they are based on self-identification, local pride and specificity. Although their origin reflects different geographic and historical circumstances, they share many common elements (long tradition; particular opportunity – a historical milestone to which the festivity´s development relates; very good support by local inhabitants who are organizers, parade participants and visitors). In the past, the festivals were strongly associated with Christianity. From the mid-20th century, the religious part was suppressed, however, it was at least partially renewed in all three cities after 1989. During the festivals, the cities experience a festive and extraordinary time and space separated from the everyday life. The organizing supports the perception of local identity, and it welds the community together. The residents of the cities feel compelled to organize the festivity. The festivals are important in terms of representation, economics and tourism, which is more and more emphasized. This puts stress on theatrics and rich accompanying programme.
The article deals with the development of a city festival in the Bavarian city of Furth im Wald, whose part also the Drachenstich (Slaying of the Dragon) play is. The play has evolved based on tableaus depicting the fight between Saint George and the Dragon, which used to be part of liturgical Corpus Christi procession. The first mentions come from the 16th century. In the 19th century, it was the German writers Alexander Schöppner and Maximilian Schmidt, and the Czech writer Božena Němcová who paid attention to the Slaying of the Dragon play. After repeated restrictions by the Church, which accumulated more and more from the 18th century, the scene got profane in 1887 – local amateur actors performed a new and longer text written by the teacher Heinrich Schmidt. He extended dialogs significantly and brought new characters to the play. His version survived until 1953 when Josef Martin Bauer replaced it by a new one, the story of which was set in the period of Hussite wars. The latest version, which was put on the stage in 2007 for the first time, was written by the professional theatre person Alexander Etzel-Ragusa, who also directs the play. The article observes the play’s development from a simple dramatic start to the present 80-minute-long performance, which is the principal axis of the two-week-long city festival. It pays attention to accompanying events, and – by means of a common characteristic of the location – it tries to find out the social conditions that have allowed this traditional phenomenon to be maintained for many years.
The subject of the paper is a description and analysis of the phenomenon called moussems – urban festivals that take place in Morocco from April to August. The current moussems, in comparison to their traditional sacral form, represent an international, secular and institutionalized festivity that is systematically modified and supported by the Moroccan king in order to develop tourism and to preserve local cultural traditions. The objective of the paper is to describe the creation of moussems, which originally celebrated the birth or death of saints in the rural environment and which offered an opportunity for nomadic tribes from the mountains to meet. Most importantly, it describes the transformation of moussems into an urban festivity whose current form and functions serve to enhance the national identity, the legitimacy and the power of the monarchy as well as to emphasize the diversity of Morocco´s tangible and intangible heritage. At the end of the paper, the transformation of moussems and the possibilities of how they could be used are exemplified by the Festival des Musiques Sacrées du Monde in Fez.
The study focuses on the history of the Russian white émigrés in the then Czechoslovakia. The author shows that the white émigrés were perceived by the then Czechoslovak government as the future intelligentsia for new free Russia and for independent and free Ukraine. The emigrants were offered the opportunity of completing their studies, continuing their creative activities, or extending their education. The emigrants founded their own professional institutions, organized social life even for the Czech majority to make it familiar with the Russian culture. To the Czech environment, they translocated some of their festivals associated with Orthodoxy and folk tradition. After the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of Alliance was signed (1935), the emigrants´ position got worse. The activity of domestic communists introduced Soviet festivities to Czechoslovakia. After 1945, new Soviet citizens arrived in Czechoslovakia, and the white émigrés became a persecuted group. Some of them were abducted to Soviet forced labour camps (Gulag) by Russian bodies. The domestic communists implanted new Soviet festivals, feasts and ceremonies – Great October Socialist Revolution celebrations, Grandfather Frost and others – with the help of the Association of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in Czechoslovakia. In 2001, the Czech Republic officially acknowledged the Russian national minority that got its historical rights as a minority thanks to the Russian white émigrés in the 1920s. Several associations within the minority try to renew original Russian traditions and feasts in the Czech environment.
The Journal of Ethnology 5/2017 publishes summarizing articles related to the knowledge of the development of Czech (and Slovak) ethnology and to the formation of their particular specializations. Marta Šrámková dealt with the history of the research into verbal folklore (Evolutionary Paths of Czech Prosaic Folkloristics from the Formation as a Scientific Discipline until the year 2000). Martina Pavlicová submitted the knowledge concerning ethnochoreological research (Czech Ethnochoreology in the Context of Time and Society). Martin Šimša assessed the experts’ interest in folk dress (The Research into Folk Dress in the Czech Lands: From Topography to European Ethnology). Zdeněk Uherek dealt with the research into ethnic themes especially in the Institute of Ethnology of the CAS (Ethnic studies in the Czech Republic). Gabriela Kiliánová explained the evolutionary stages of Slovak ethnology (Ethnology in Slovakia in Crucial Historical Periods /after 1968 and 1989/: From a Historical to a Social Discipline?). Miroslav Válka focused on ethnology and the university environment in the Moravian capital (Ethnology at Masaryk University in Brno. The 70th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Sub-Division for Ethnography and Ethnology).
The further section of the special issue includes the Personalia Column. It remembers the names of researchers who have left a significant trace in Czech ethnology and whose production reached the international level: Karel Dvořák (1913–1989), Jaromír Jech (1918–1992), Oldřich Sirovátka (1925–1992), Iva Heroldová (1926–2005), Josef Vařeka (1927–2008), Richard Jeřábek (1931–2006), and Jiří Langer (born 1936).
Two stages can be defined in the development of Czech prosaic folkloristics: the pre-scientific (it created the material basis of the discipline) and the scientific one (formation of the discipline, bounds to the social environment of European Romanticism, formation of theory and methodology). The study follows the discipline’s development and the principal representatives of the scientific stage until the turn of the millennium. In the second half of the 19th century, the revision of the Romantic conception caused the Czech folklore to have been integrated in the world context. The works by Jiří Polívka and Václav Tille were of essential importance – they showed wide knowledge of material, systematic nature, and broad cultural interpretation. Jiří Horák elaborated a comparative approach and laid the foundations of discipline’s theory. Frank Wollman interconnected folklore with the development of Slavic literatures. Piotr Bogatyriov’s works brought structuralism and functional conceptions into the discipline. After 1945, folkloristics as a scientific discipline spread to the Czech university environment and in 1954 the Institute of Ethnography and Folkloristics was founded. After the arrival of Communism the discipline and its task were required to correspond to the then ideology (coal-miners’ and outlaws’ folklore). Field research developed, and general properties of legends and folk ballads, function of folklore in regions, inter-ethnic aspects, types of fairy-tales disappearing, and development of artificial fairy-tales were studied. Attention was paid to memorates, contemporary folklore and folklorism. Works by Jaromír Jech, Oldřich Sirovátka, Antonín Satek, etc. were of significant importance. Czech oral folkloristics is a permanently developing discipline.
The history of Czech ethnochoreology follows the general development of the interest in traditional folk culture and formation of ethnochoreology in the European geographical space. At present, ethnochoreology is perceived as part of ethnology; however, it overlaps beyond this discipline, especially towards the art-historical study of dance and music. The beginnings of ethnology’s current dance specialization may be part of the abovementioned interest in traditional folk culture in the late 19th century. The work Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo [How People Used to Dance in Bohemia] (1895) with the sub-title Dějiny tance v Čechách, na Moravě, ve Slezsku a na Slovensku od nejstarší doby až do konce 19. století se zvláštním zřetelem k dějinám tance vůbec [The History of Dance in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia from the Oldest Times to the End of the 19th Century with Special Respect to the History of Dance in General] by the historian of culture Čeněk Zíbrt remains a hitherto unequalled Czech synthesis about the history of dance. The work was published again in 1960 as a commented edition. From the late 19th century, dances began to be collected in particular regions and the first collections with folk dances were published. The always stronger wave of the interest in folk dance was intensified by the disappearing dance tradition in the countryside. The intellectuals’ efforts did not focus only on recording the dance, but also on maintaining them. The folklore movement, which built its social position between the two world wars, became stronger in the second half of the 20th century. At that time, the institutionalized aspect of ethnochoreology developed in the Czech lands, and both levels, the practical and the theoretical one, complemented each other. Czech ethnochoreology became involved in international professional structures and the subject-matter of its interest began to spread beyond the borders of traditional folk culture. It focuses not only on folk dance, but on dance as a phenomenon that is one of the oldest expressions of people’s souls and emotions in human existence.
The text presents the development of the research into folk dress worn by the inhabitants of the Czech lands, beginning with the works by topographers focussing on a thorough description of particular countries and provinces of the Austrian monarchy and their inhabitants, to the development of an academic platform. This was preceded by the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague (1895) and the associated efforts to present festive and ceremonial clothing worn by rural residents. For the Exhibition, exhibits were searched for in the field, which were described and photo-documented. Many articles were published in special journals; these were supposed to support the collection of materials for an ethnographic encyclopaedia. The publication of monographs on particular ethnographic regions in the post-war period was a certain intermediate stage – folk dress was described in separate chapters of these monographs. The afore-mentioned efforts was crowned by the first volume of the publication Lidové kroje v Československu [Folk Costumes in Czechoslovakia], issued by Drahomíra Stránská in 1949. In terms of methodology, the publication became an inspiration for a generation of female research fellows who based on its spirit their struggle to assess the historical development of folk dress in particular regions. Marxist ethnography brought up new research theme in the 1950s – the interest in the life of the working classes and inhabitants in industrial areas. Later-on, the research got rid of political indoctrination, and the new methodological basis made it possible to focus not only on the historical dimension, but also on the social and cultural role of clothing in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The term ethnic studies is not frequently used in the academic community of the Czech Republic. It is predominantly connected to the name of the Ethnic Studies Department at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and with texts produced by Czech ethnologists dealing with migrations, minorities and adjustment processes to the new environment (in the Czech academic texts of the second half of the 20th century, occasionally called „etnické procesy” [ethnic processes]). The author of this text scrutinizes the meaning of the concept of ethnic studies in the Czech context and poses the question what types of enquiries there have been so far. He compares the concept of ethnic studies in the Czech Republic and the USA, where ethnic studies departments originated in the 1960s and 1980s, and concludes that in the Czech Republic, in contrast to the United States, the theme of ethnic studies relates rather than the ethno-revivalist movements with social anthropological research into the dynamics of human relations and intercultural contacts, which were frequently called interethnic relations in the 1990s.
The contribution deals with the history of ethnology in Slovakia at the time of Czechoslovak period of “normalization” (1969–1989) and after essential political changes in 1989. The author focusses on the history of ethnology within the Institute of Ethnography of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (later the Institute of Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences) as a leading workplace in ethnography / ethnology in the second half of the 20th and in the 21st centuries. The author relies on the premise that political changes created new social processes to which the actors in those processes replied and which they co-created. In this case, it is the Academy employees that are understood as actors. The author observes the following issues: What was the impact of political changes from 1969 and after 1989 on the institutional changes in the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the adaptation of legislative regulations and the organization of scientific work? What was the scientific orientation of ethnography/ethnology in the Academy in the two observed periods; that means under the conditions of two different political systems? What were the results of the scientific programme between 1969 and 1989 and after 1989? Was the discipline’s paradigm changed? Was the originally historical science converted to a social science?
Since its foundation in the academic year 1945/46, the ethnological (ethnographic) section at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) has taken part in the formation of the discipline in the former Czechoslovakia and – since 1993 − in the independent Czech Republic. It was Prof. Antonín Václavík (1891–1959) and his student who defined the teaching’s orientation, so one speaks about the Brno (Moravian) ethnographic school. After 1948, the discipline was declared a historical science and at the Faculty of Arts it became part of several departments dealing with history and history of art together. In 1964, an independent Department of Ethnography and Folkloristics was founded, which was chaired by Prof. Richard Jeřábek ¬(1931–2006), but in the period of Communist “normalization”, from 1970, the discipline was again part of the Department of History and Ethnography of Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. After social changes relating to 1989, the discipline became independent as the Institute of European Ethnology (since 1991). The teaching of the discipline gradually focused – as well as traditional folk culture observed within the Slavic context – on contemporary culture and society (working classes, countryside with cooperative agriculture, ethnic issues, folklorism, oral history, identity, and migration). The lectures on non-European ethnology were delivered by Richard Jeřábek. Domestic and international discovery trips became an integral part of the teaching. This line will be continued by the new study programme of ethnology, which is emerging in connection with the 2016 amendment to Higher Education Act.
Journal of Ethnology 4/2017 deals with the theme Contemporary Legends and Rumours. In her study Zuzana Panczová conducts a survey of selected Internet conspiracy theories in historical and international contexts (Apocalyptic Visions of Conspiracy Theories on Slovak Internet Antisystem Websites). Vladimír Bahna thinks about conspiracy theories from the perspective of their bearers (Argumentum ad hominem. Argumentation Strategies of Conspiracy Theories Advocates in Slovak Internet Discussions). Kateřina Dobrovolná pays attention to the treatment of contemporary research into demonological legends, the transmission of which is not bound only to oral tradition, but also to communication mass media, especially the Internet (Contemporary Demonological Legends from Western Bohemia and Their Categorization). Oldřich Kašpar explains results of his folkloristic research in Mexico in 2007–2014 (Several Notes on Contemporary Mexican Legends and Rumours). In further studies and materials - beyond the main themes – the treatises “New Speakers” in the Context of Minority Languages in Europe and Revitalisation Efforts (by Leoš Šatava) and Modern Dance Tradition in Popice near Hustopeče in the Context of Historical-Cultural Development of the Village (by Jarmila Teturová) are published.
Review Section submits a text by Gabriela Kiliánová, devoted to 100th birthday of the Slovak ethnologist Andrej Melicherčík (author Gabriela Kiliánová) and two texts by Oldřich Kašpar, which remember the Czech travellers Čeněk Paclt (1813–1887) and Josef Kořenský (1847–1938). Social Chronicle remembers the anniversaries of the Czech romologist Eva Davidová (born 1932) and the Slovak ethnomusicologist Soňa Burlasová (1927). It also publishes an obituary for Jean Rohe (1946-2017), an eminent personality in the international folklore movement. Other regular columns inform about exhibitions, conferences, reviews and reports from the discipline.
Conspiracy theories belong to rumours which are specific for their theme - they speak about secret coadunations that influence different spheres of public interest. Albeit the following may not be a rule, such theories often express negative attitudes toward the existing system, understanding official state institutions, media and authorities representing the official discourse as representatives of this system. Non-confidence against the system is connected with visions about approaching catastrophe, or about gradual planned decline of society. The increase in popularity of conspiratorial interpretations is also supported by specific features of the Internet communication. Current “conspiracy culture” spreads mainly in cyberspace, while absorbing a wide spectrum of themes and motives interconnecting different spheres of ongoing events with ideas going back to the past. It creates a platform for attitudes and persuasions being excluded, which moreover form coalitions of opinion through a picture of the common enemy. The article tries to explain narrative and argumentation strategies, which unite different types of ideological persuasions.
The article tries to analyse argumentation strategies of conspiracy theories advocates in Slovak Internet discussions. The goal is to comprehend the causes of persuasiveness and successful cultural transmission of conspiracy theories. The article is based on the presumption that arguments used by contributors in the discussion, are an image of what they consider to be persuasive, and for this reason, they reflect - to a certain extent - the successful cultural transmission. The results show that the pro-conspiracy argumentation in the discussions systematically repeats the “argument ad hominem”, which - instead of attacking the essence and content of arguments in official stories - attacked the sources of information or persons that supported them in a given discussion. The attacks accused them of intentional deception and participation in the conspiracy. Referring to cognitive-psychological literature, the author comes to a conclusion that this phenomenon can be explained by people´s natural tendency to prefer explanations that offer other people´s intentions as a cause of an event. Figuratively speaking, the conspiracy theories “sponge” on the natural property of human thinking to occupy oneself with intentions of other people.
The study deals with demonic beings and phenomena that appear in the documented demonological legends from contemporary Western Bohemia; furthermore, it studies the transformations in locations where these demonic beings are supposed to reside, as the narrators admit and if the locations in which frightening stories related to the demonic beings took part, as traditional demonological legends say, remained more or less unchanged, or if they have been transformed to the extent that the demonological legends are spread only in the urban environment today. The study presents several selected legends and similar narratives, which have been documented through semi-structured interviews with the inhabitants of the Pilsen Region and its surroundings, it categorizes them according to the venue, and catalogues them. The primary emphasis is put on the cataloguing of the collected legends and narratives using the catalogue of demonological legends by Jan Luffer.
The submitted study focuses on the research into contemporary urban legends in Mexico. In contrast to Europe and other regions, these are influenced by three basic factors – the pre-Columbian cultural heritage, the strong influence of the Catholic Church, which is a breeding ground for folk superstitiousness, and the hitherto unsolved problem of Mexican identity. The text contains particular examples to illustrate the above-mentioned facts and to exemplify the difference between the contemporary and the European (Czech) legend and rumour. The author also points out the fact that in Mexico the contemporary rural legends exist. These become known only slowly, because their narrators and audience have only limited possibilities of using modern media for their more mass spreading. It can be said generally (and it is nothing surprising), that the rural Mexican legend is much more conservative that the urban one. The study is supplemented by a voluminous bibliography, which draws attention, among other things, to the basic works of Latin-American authors on this theme.
Until recently the (socio)linguistic studies concerned with minority languages focused chiefly on “native speakers”. Equally, the (ethno)linguistic revitalisation efforts tried to strengthen or reinstall the intergenerational language transmission. Currently, however, a change is occurring within the context of the phenomenon of “new speakers”, i.e. persons who have acquired the language in a way different from their family background, or that of “postvernacular languages” or “xenolects” formed on this basis. The increase in the significance of (activist) “new speakers” (in many cases outnumbering the traditional users of the language) has become so important since the turn of the 21st century that at present the research on this phenomenon ranks among representative branches of the ethnolinguistic revitalisation issues. Despite the shift under discussion, the given framework still contains a number of yet unsolved and open levels, e.g. in connection with the flexibility and fluidity of the linguistic field´s boundaries, which seemed to be fixed until recently, with questions of legitimacy and authenticity of various types of the language, or a possible bridging of the dichotomous gap and the integration of both groups of the users.
The study presents the results of the field research into modern dance tradition, which was carried out in the village of Popice in the Břeclav area between 2016 and 2017. The village is situated in the South-Moravian borderland, and before the Second World War the original German population predominated there. After the war, during which the village was united with the German Reich, the occupied territory was given back to Czechoslovakia and the German-speaking inhabitants of Popice were displaced. From 1946, within a settlement programme controlled by the government, the village was populated by inhabitants from the Slovácko ethnographic area. The study deals with the formation of modern dance tradition and its development to date, accentuating particular dance opportunities monitored in the context and historical-cultural transformations of the village. The dance opportunities are thoroughly described with an emphasis on their content and the importance of the organizers´ position within the commenced intergenerational transmission of modern dance traditions. Attention is paid to the ongoing process of the construction of Popice inhabitants´ identity in connection with the transmission and adoption of folk-costume and customary elements from the ethnographic area of Hanácké Slovácko. The knowledge summarized in the study can serve as a basis for longitudinal research.
Journal of Ethnology 3/2017 deals with the theme “National Schools in Ethnology and Socio-Cultural Anthropology”. Vilmos Voight pays attention to the oldest period of Hungarian interest in the nation and folk culture, and to basic works which constituted Hungarian ethnography (Hungarian Ethnography – a Description of Hungarian Nation?). Giuseppe Maiello outlines the research situation in Italy in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries (The Political Unity of Italy and the Building of the National Demo-Ethno-Anthropology). Jiří Woitsch observes important milestones in the ethnological research in Sweden (From Folklivsforskning to European Ethnology and Anthropology, and Back: Swedish Ethnology in the 19th through 21st Centuries). Indrek Jääts and Marlen Metslaid describe the history of Estonian ethnology (Ethnologies, Ideologies and Powers: the Estonian Case). Martin Soukup submits an outline of the development in social anthropology in Great Britain (British Social Anthropology: the Origin, Development, and Key Concepts).
In the Methodology of Science column Oto Polouček publishes his contribution The Ways across Disciplines for the Further Use of Narrative Sources. An Example of Oral History and Ethnology. Social Chronicle remembers the birth anniversaries of the anthropologist Václav Soukup (born 1957) and the ethnologist Věra Kovářů (born 1932). The obituaries for the dancer and choreographer Miloš Vršecký (1950–2017), and Luděk Štěpán (1932–2017), a researcher in the field of vernacular architecture, follow. Other regular columns inform about conferences and festivals and submit reviews and reports concerning the discipline.
The contribution offers an overview of basis terms and a brief history of Hungarian ethnography including the history of Hungarian society (and nation) from the Middle Ages to the present. The author deals more thoroughly with more important authors and works that can be considered to be ethnographic. The most significant ones include Miklós Oláh (1537), Mátyás Bél (1735–1742), a statistics describing the theory of state, János Csaplovics (1822, 1829), Herder´s prophecy about the extinction of the Magyars (1791), collections and regional descriptions in the “reform period”, Ferenc Kölcsey and his “national traditions“ (1826), János Erdélyi who further developed the same theme (1847), new beginnings after the revolution (1848–1849), Pál Hunfalvy (1876), foundation of the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography (1872), general and industrial exhibitions, the book Österreichische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (1886–1902), publication of comparative journals, the National Millennium Exhibition in 1896, foundation of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society (1889), Lajos Katon´s suggestion for terminology (1889: ethnologia – ethnographia – folklore), the period before World War I and the end of the “golden age” after World War I.
The study describes the building of anthropology and the disciplines connected to it during the first years of the Italian state. The schools of thinking inspired by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and those of Darwinian inspiration are compared, and the text explains how Italian scientists discovered modern ethnography and folklore studies. The study focuses on several prominent personalities of what is now defined in Italy as demo-ethno-anthropology, such as Paolo Mantegazza, Giustiniano Nicolucci, Giuseppe Pitré, Cesare Lombroso and Angelo de Gubernatis. Less memorable figures are also mentioned in detail as well as their contribution to Italian and European ethnology. The study analyses strengths and weaknesses of Italian ethnology, as well as their development during the 19th century. Emphasis is placed on the perception of the substantial cultural distance between northern and southern Italy.These lands, after their annexation to the Italian Kingdom, became a field of research for ethnographers and anthropologists, and a place to experience the new racist theories that were at that time formed within the positivist science, too.
The chronologically approached essay outlines the development of Swedish ethnology from its amateur beginnings through establishing the museum and university scientific discipline in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Great attention is paid to the essential modernization of the discipline by Sigurd Erixon, which had all-European impact through the theoretical-methodological formation of the comparative all-European ethnology´s concept, as well as to the subsequent processes of sociologization and anthropologization of the discipline in the 1970s and 1980s, and the shift in the Swedish ethnologists´ focus from the study of the past to current social problems. The contemporary situation in Swedish ethnology, the example of which the so-called Lund School is, is described as a convergence of cultural-historical and anthropological approaches and the discipline is considered to be one of the most progressive in the all-European context. The essay mentions several profiling personalities of Swedish ethnology from the 19th century to date as well as key works, and it describes the past and the contemporary institutional basis of the discipline.
This article examines the inception and history of Estonian ethnography as it progressed various political regimes. The central axis is the connection between the discipline and the Estonian nationalism. The autors examine two periods at greater length, the interwar era and the Soviet period. The main research issue for Estonian ethnography up to the 1990s was the material part of peasant culture, while folkloristics dealt with the intangible side. In the interwar Republic of Estonia, ethnography was one branch of Estonian studies and helped strengthen the national identity and unity. During the Soviet period, Estonian ethnography was formally a part of Soviet ethnography and subject to Marxist-Leninist theory. However, in practice it did remain connected to Estonian nationalism and supported Estonian identity, especially since late 1950s. Estonian ethnography remained quite conservative in terms of research material and methods. A major change took place early in the 1990s as Estonia regained independence. Estonian ethnography became a part of European ethnology and name of the discipline changed accordingly.
The study deals with exploration of the origin and development of the British social anthropology. The author has defined its four principal features, which he considers to be, as follows: primarily deductive orientation, focus on the research into non-European societies, emphasis on applied anthropology and absence of standardized textbooks in the branch. The study aims at major schools and paradigms; simultaneously, the author deals with the analysis of key conceptions in the discipline, which include function and social structure in the British social anthropology. He also illustrates three dominating attitudes, which emerged in the discipline, by selected male and female representatives of the British anthropology. In particular, these include the diachronous (evolutionism, diffusionism), the synchronous (functionalism, structural functionalism) and the processual (Manchester School) attitude. He also demonstrates the narrow connection between the fieldwork concept and the dominating paradigm. In the conclusion of the study, the recent trends in the British social anthropology and its current situation are addressed.
Journal of Ethnology 2/2017 deals with the theme “The Urban Space”. Petr Lozoviuk documents on the example of the German traveller Johann Georg Kohl (1808–1878) and his study about Odesa, that the text concentrated on the town in terms of ethnology could be found as early as in the mid-19th century (Ethnographic Geognosy and Beginnings of Urban Protoethnology). In her contribution, Martina Bocánová pays attention to town outskirts as a space where the socially weaker and marginalized inhabitants are concentrated (Possibilities and Forms of Adaptation of Socially and Economically Excluded Inhabitants Living in Town Outskirts into the Majority Society /an example from Trnava/). Jan Semrád brings up the theme of ethnological research into prefabricated housing estates in the Czech Republic and he supports several aspects with his own research (Prefabricated Housing Estates as an Item of Ethnology´s Interest /an example of the Lesná housing estate in Brno/). Aleš Smrčka brings a view of an ethnologist – bus driver – on a social and professional group whose part he is (Bus Drivers: an Emic View on a Socio-Professional Group in Prague Urban Environment). In her contribution, Barbora Půtová introduces graffiti as part of the public space in towns and she analyses it from the point of view of anthropological conceptions (Graffiti, City, and Anthropology).
Review Section publishes contributions by Oldřich Kašpar “Homage to a Moravian Native in the Distant California in 2015” (about Wenceslaus Linck /1736-1797/, a Jesuit missionary) and “Ángel María Garibay Kintana – a founder of Nahua Studies”. The interview is conducted with Ladislava Košíková, a choreographer and dance teacher, on the occasion of her birth anniversary. Social Chronicle remembers the birth anniversaries of the ethnologist Milena Secká (born 1957), the historian Eduard Maur (born 1937), the ethnologist Stanislav Brouček (born 1947), the ethnologist Ludmila Sochorová (born 1942) and the amateur ethnographer Jan Pavlík (born 1937). Other regular columns include reports from exhibitions and reports concerning the discipline, as well as reviews of new books.
The objective of the submitted study is to point out the fact that examples of unusually mature protoethnological texts, which focus on the urban environment in a surprisingly modern way, could be found as early as in the mid-19th century. As an example for the aforementioned statement, a study from the year 1841 is analysed, which was written by Johann Georg Kohl (1808–1878), a German ethnographer and traveller. Kohl’s text deals with Odessa, a town which – due to its special features – drew attention of many Russian and foreign observers immediately after it had been found. Kohl’s hitherto unusual sensibility for the perception of the town as a specific social space resulted in an unusually modern synthesis. The texts of Kohl’s type can be viewed as valuable sources for ethnographically directed information which is relevant even today due to the diachronic analysis of populations thematised in them; in addition, those texts are important sources usable for the study of the history of European ethnology.
The study deals with the theme of town outskirts as a space where the socially, economically and otherwise handicapped inhabitants cumulate, and it uses the town of Trnava as an example. The study also analyses the possibilities and ways to convert that space into a locality of a different quality. The first section introduces the Kopánka location that was perceived as an outskirts in the first half of the 20th century. There used to live people there who were handicapped due to the problems based on their extreme poverty, and a closed group of Bulgarians who worked as farmers. Another large group included people who moved in from mountainous regions of Orava where they lost their homes when the Orava dam was built. The study highlights the factors which allowed the particular groups to cooperate and create models that gradually changed the character of that town district. In the conclusion, the author describes and analyses the problems in such a type of space, she points out the life and its typical problems in a socially excluded location as well as the processes of adaptation, becoming closer to majority, dynamical changes within that location and its gradual integration into the life of majority as an equal partner.
The study deals with the theme of ethnological research into prefabricated housing estates in the Czech Republic and the possibilities of ethnological research into this specific type of housing. The text shows different points of view of housing estates and contemporary life of their inhabitants. First, the study brings up the theme generally and accentuates its importance within the contemporary urban-ethnological research. Then the theme is specified through the research into the Lesná housing estate in Brno. In the last ten years, several clubs have been founded there whose aim is to enhance the life space of the housing estate, to safeguard its contemporary appearance and to create or improve neighbourly relations. Through activities developed by these clubs and their members, it is possible to illustrate in which way inhabitants can develop a close relationship with the place or space where they live. The research has shown that the people are aware of the value of their place of living as well as of their affiliation to the given locality, especially when the existing state is endangered. Another finding includes the fact that where strong leaders are available, a wider interconnected group of inhabitants within the neighbourhood emerges more easily. For this reason, a housing estates is not always a space of anonymity.
Bus drivers are a peculiar socio-professional group that is associated with certain social position, professional tongue, working habits, nutrition habits and way of clothing. However, a specific form of cohesion, which can be perceived in greetings, verbal and non-verbal communication and way of behaviour not only in the road traffic, is an interesting phenomenon despite the mutual anonymity of the members of that group. We could encounter that socio-professional group in Prague in 1908 for the first time, when the first bus line in the area of Lesser-Town Square and Pohořelec was put into operation. Currently, the urban bus transport services in the territory of the City of Prague are provided by the Prague Public Transit Company, Inc. as well as by several private transit companies with different number of employees. The way of organizing the driver’s shifts, the individual demands of particular employers, the look of uniforms and partially the work performance are different in many aspects and they influence the everyday way of life of bus drivers. The ethnological research on the theme is based mainly on the emic view by an ethnologist – driver; the author of the study has worked as an auxiliary driver in the territory of Prague since mid-2013 until now. His emic view is confronted with literature and interviews conducted with respondents of different age, who worked or still work as bus drivers in Prague urban territory.
The paper analyses and interprets graffiti as part of the urban public space. It focuses on the basic categories given by the motivation of their creators and the recipients’ ability to interpret and decode them. Special attention is paid to the discourses that are used not only to interpret, but also to determine the relation between graffiti and the public space and the degree of its inclusion or exclusion. The objective of the paper is to analyse graffiti from the perspective of anthropological concepts and categories, such as liminality, impurity and ritual. The paper includes a concept of no place that is not filled with meanings and can thus represent a spatial reference that is reflected in the mental map. The paper also accentuates the power context due to which graffiti may be viewed as communication of speech actions. Creation of graffiti (re)appropriates the counter-space that is not absorbed by the dominant standards. Within this meaning, graffiti represents a revolt against inferiority to the space of the majority society, as it generates an alternative space and creates new territories of shared communication. The paper describes how the creation of graffiti allows its makers movement within the liminal space, repeated performance and shared ritual act that may be part of the citizens’ right to change their city through art and visual production.
Journal of Ethnology 1/2017 deals with the theme Musical Folklore in Contemporary Research. In his contribution, Peter Obuch speaks about brass music bands in the Moravian-Slovak borderland and about tasks of individual brass instruments in such groups (Aerophones in Traditional Ensemble Music in White Carpathians). Tomáš Spurný pays his attention to bagpipe music in southern and south-western Bohemia (Several Comments on Folk Music Culture in the Regions of Chodsko and the Cheb Area and its Interpretation), while Marian Friedl concentrates on folk flutes in north-western Carpathians (What is the Origin of Long Flutes Ordered as 3+0 and 3+0+2 in Depositories of Moravian Museums?). Marta Toncrová a Lucie Uhlíková explain the importance and context of the collection Moravské písně milostné [Moravian Love Songs] by editors Leoš Janáček and Pavel Váša (Moravian Love Songs – an Unappreciated Milestone in Moravian Musical Folkloristics). Andrej Sulitka in his non-thematic study deals with the theme of ethnicity based on the research into Ruthenian minority (Ruthenians in the Czech Republic: the “revitalization” of a minority’s national identity).
The Transforming Tradition column publishes the essay It would be sad if we weren’t cheery… (by Josef Holcman). Review Section submits a view of the history of woman’s travelling – Beginnings of Woman’s Travelling in the World and in Our Country: from Ida Pfeifferová to Barbora Markéta Eliášová (by Oldřich Kašpar) and remembers the 100th birthday of the ethnographer Josef Beneš (by Josef Jančář). Social Chronicle is devoted to the anniversary of the theologian, ethnologist and historian Eva Melmuková Šašecí (born 1932); furthermore, obituaries for the ethnomusicologist Olga Hrabalová (1930–2017), ethnologist Ján Podolák (1926–2017) and the cultural worker and dancer Jiří Parduba (1923–2017). Other regular columns include reports from exhibitions, conferences and festivals as well as reviews of new books.
Modern aerophones permeated the rural musical traditions in the Slovakian-Moravian borderland in the last quarter of the 19th century. At that time, the boom of rural brass music bands began and clarinet and trumpet (as well as other brass instruments later-on) became stable parts of string and cimbalom music bands. After the World War I., the brass instruments formed music bands with 2 – 4 members and an accordion. This happened mainly on the Slovakian side of the borders; the music bands became part of “jazzes” – groups representing the rural form of town dance orchestras; the rural bands also included saxophone. From the perspective of the style of play, common regional earmarks can be found – despite individual peculiarities – in variations and mutual coordination of melodic voices. The clarinet players featured figurations that seemed to be deciding to create an own style; the trumpet players rather used time-proven melodic patterns for their variable heterophony. The play of melodic musical instruments in brass music bands is typical for its moderation in variants; peculiar is the deformation of several rhythmic patterns (the Trenčín area). From the perspective of polyphony, heterophony and tierce-parallelism dominate; the advanced style of playing the clarinets (the ethnographic area of Horňácko) features figurative contra-voice.
The contribution submits a thought about some phenomena which are connected with bagpipe music in southern and western Bohemia. In terms of methodology, it is based on an analysis of period sources as well as author’s own musical practice, and it tries to apply these on another analysis and the interpretation of bagpipe folk music in the regions of Chebsko and Chodsko. Based on catalogued hand-written records of German songs from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, which are stored at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, as well as printed Czech and German collections of songs from Bohemia, and the oldest voice records of Bohemian folk music, it is possible to map the continual development of bagpipe folk music in southern and western Bohemia since the beginning of the 19th century to date. The analysis of all the sources shows that the bagpipe folk music from the regions of Chodsko and Chebsko formed a compact culture despite all the language differences between both regions. Due to musical notations in the oldest collections of folk music and due to the oldest voice records, it is possible to interpret the bagpipe folk music from the aforementioned regions reliably and in an informed form even today.
The usage of long flutes with three to five holes ordered as 3+0, 3+0+2 or 5+0 is evidenced in an area going from Moravia, through northern and eastern Slovakia, southern Poland and Hungary to Romania and Moldova. Other similar instruments can also be found in Arabian, Persian and Turkish traditional music and in the Uralo-Altaic region. In north-western Carpathians the tradition of playing and making these instruments has completely disappeared, or it has been replaced by a possible successor of these instruments – the Central-Slovakian fujara. A research recently executed in museum depositories and private collections in the Moravian-Slovakian borderland caused several questions. Based on the analogy, the common origin of long flutes with three finger holes (3+0) is assumed to be in bass versions of so called tabor pipes (Trommelpfeife). Together with a one handed drum, these instruments created a typical entertainment instrumental group in the late Middle Ages. However, very similar instruments with five finger holes of the 5+0 type can be found in Romania under the name caval, and in Hungary under the name hosszú furulya. If these instruments are related to the Eastern-Moravian variants, the so called tuning holes can be rudiments of the earlier finger holes, and such long flutes an unknown evolutional step of the Central-Slovakian fujara.
The study sets out the first scientifically treated Czech edition of songs – Moravské písně milostné [Moravian Love Songs] prepared by the composer Leoš Janáček and the philologist Pavel Váša, and published in parts between 1930 and 1937. The authors assess the collection´s importance, explain the reasons why its publishing lasted for more than twenty years (and Janáček did not live to see it), set out an unusual structure of the edition as well as possible causes for the insufficient appreciation of the work. They state that within the Czech context, the publication is a unique event in publishing for more reasons: 1. it can justly be described as the first scientifically treated edition of one sort of songs in the Czech folkloristic research; 2. based on a peculiar conception, mainly by Leoš Janáček, the material is divided into groups of songs based on the relationship between the musical and the literary component as well as the psychic and the emotional effect; 3. it is the first scientific edition supplemented with a lot of registers, although that part of the work has not overcome initial difficulties yet and it has introduced many inaccuracies into the collection; as a collection of love songs from Moravia and Silesia, it represents an important stage of development on the way to a model edition of scientific type.
The contribution points to selected activities and their role that they play in constructing the national self-identity of Ruthenian minority. It is the Rusíni.cz – rusínská iniciativa v ČR (Ruthenians.cz – a Ruthenian initiative in the Czech Republic) association, founded in 2011, that initiates the regeneration of club life. In contrast to the members of the Společnost přátel Podkarpatské Rusi (Society of Carpathian Ruthenia Friends), who come from older generations, the members of the new association come from young generations of Ruthenians, immigrants from Eastern Slovakia. The Rusíni.cz association set themselves a target to develop the activity in the field of the community life of Ruthenians in Prague, to maintain and promote cultural traditions of Ruthenians and to inform the Czech public about Ruthenians. As resulting from the attitudes of the Rusíni.cz representatives, the revitalisation of “ruthenianism” is based on the safeguarding of customary traditions, calendar cycle and language in the form of Ruthenian dialects spoken in Eastern Slovakia. From the Rusíni.cz perspective, the national identity of Ruthenians is declared as a culturally and ethically determined matter-of-fact.
Journal of Ethnology 4/2016 deals with the theme “Migration Flows in Europe and Their Cultural Remnants”. In his study, Zdeněk Uherek devotes himself to various forms and aspects of migration with research into which ethnology can contribute in an inspiring way to the theory of migration in general (Migration in Czech Ethnology: topics to enrich the theory of migration). Alena Kalinová introduces a one-hundred-year long activity of the Anabaptist sect in Moravia. Anabaptists lived in Moravia in the 16th and 17th century and left their remarkable traces also in traditional folk culture (Anabaptists in Moravia and Their Cultural Legacy). Sandra Kreisslová writes about the issue in what manner the Czech society treats the theme of the forcible displacement of German inhabitants after World War II (“The Displacement“ of Germans in Czech Commemorative Culture). Jana Nosková introduces a case study devoted to the construction of cultural memory with displaced German inhabitants of Brno, settled in Germany after 1945 (The Unwanted “Yo!“. The Memory Politics of the Representatives of Forcibly Displaced Brno Germans at the Outset of the 1950s). Milena Šipková presents lexical material whose focus is on the words used for peddlers at the turn of the 20th century (The Vanished World of Peddlers in Dialect Denominations). Hana Goláňová analyses the dialectal lexicon in relation to Carpathian shepherds´ culture (Dialectal Lexicon in Eastern Moravia and the Carpathian Shepherd Colonization).
The Transforming Traditions column publishes a contribution Dance and Sing for a Better Life? Results of a Research into Folklore Movement in Estonia (written by Stanislav Nemeržitski – Iivi Zájedová). In Review Section, Helena Beránková remembers the 100th birthday of the photographer Karel Otta Hrubý (1916–1998) and Marta Toncrová writes about the identical anniversary of Jožka Severin (1916–1991), an important Moravian singer of folk songs. In Interview Section, Daniela Stavělová conducts an interview with the choreographer and teacher Eva Kröschlová (*1926) on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Social Chronicle is devoted to anniversaries of the ethnomusicologists Hana Urbancová (*1956) and Lubomír Tyllner (*1946), anthropologist Miguel León-Portilla (*1926) and it publishes an obituary for the archaeologist Zdeněk Měřínský (1948–2016). Other regular columns contain reports from the discipline and reviews of new books.
The article is based on an argument that in the Czech and Moravian ethnologies, there is quite a big amount of information about migration and adaptation of people to a new environment whereby those information have not been fully utilized and they are rarely used in the relation to the theory of migration. The data were often collected in the past with different intentions than to explain the issue of migration, and they comment on that rather by accident and in a non-systematic way. However, especially the older works can become a good source that can no longer be replenished with experience from the field. The author of the text mentions works of classics of the Czech ethnology, such as Karel Chotek, Antonín Václavík, Iva Heroldová, Olga Skalníková or Mirjam Moravcová, and he shows how several themes served well to their successor to complete the depiction of processes that are connected with the issue of migration, or that could serve for this purpose. In the conclusion, he draws attention to some of new themes which are in-process in the field of ethnology and social anthropology in the Czech Republic. Due to the publication activity in the discipline, those themes are examples, not a systematic enumeration.
In South Moravia, a sect of Anabaptists lived in the past, who were a product of the 16th-century reformation. The Anabaptists took a refuge in the Moravian environment that was tolerant of various religions, and they arrived in 1526 for the first time there. They lived in accordance with their principles in the farmsteads they founded in Moravia, and they practised a lot of crafts at an advanced level. Moravian lords admitted them helpfully at their domains. However, after 1622, the Anabaptists as non-Catholics were forced to leave their Moravian settlements. Most of them went to their brothers in today‘s southwestern Slovakia, where they continued their activities until the local Anabaptist communities fell apart. The one-hundred-year long activities of the Anabaptists indisputably contributed to the economic development of Moravia. The Anabaptists also left carefully written chronicles, literary works, spiritual songs and inspiring system of education behind them. However, it is the faience pottery that became the most tangible proof of their activity. Anabaptist faience expresses a level of handicraft at that time. The production of faience became a basis on which the production of peculiar folk pottery grew, which is an inherent part of folk culture in Moravia and Slovakia.
The focus of the study is on the issue in what manner the Czech society treats the post-war forcible displacement of German-speaking inhabitants. After decades of taboo on the side of Communist regime, opportunities opened up after 1989 to revise the Czech-German coexistence, and gradually the commemorative culture of the “displacement” was formed. The text follows both official political attitudes to the German past, and the public reminding thereof as well as its presentification initiated “from below”. It turns out that especially the commemoration of tragic events related to forcible persecutions of Germans during the so-called wild resettlements becomes a source for the dispute between the different imagines of the past and the all-societal tension; at the same time, however, such acts of collective recollections serve as a means to overcome the traumatic past and be equal with it. The complicated process of facing up to the “displacement” of Germans is illustrates with a particular example of the public reminding of the so-called Brno death march.
The case study deals with the politics of memory and the constructing of cultural memory within a group of forcibly displaced German inhabitants of Brno in Germany at the outset of the1950s. The study works with basic empiric material, which is a hit (song) Ich bin aus Brünn I am from Brno published in Brünner Heimatbote, a magazine of this group of inhabitants, in 1953, and four letters sent to the club Bruna, and to editors of Brünner Heimatbote. Authors of those letters, important representatives of the group of forcibly displaced Brno inhabitants and representatives of official organizations of the “Sudeten Germans”, responded negatively to the song text, whereby their major reproaches related to the use of Czech words in the song text (e.g. the slang word ´tě pic‘´ = yo) and the depiction of certain life conditions that were evaluated as being unsuitable and unrepresentative for the group of Brno Germans. The author of the study puts the analysis of empiric material (interpretations contained in it) into the context of the policy the organizations of “Sudeten Germans” applied in Germany after the Second World War. The study can be understood as a contribution to the research into the formation of identities of that group of inhabitants after 1945 and the role of their official organizations and journalism in this process.
When compiling the Dictionary of Czech Dialects, which has been arising at the Department of Dialectology of the Institute of the Czech Language of the CAS, v. v. i., in Brno since 2011, extensive linguistic material concerning vernacular names of the vanished world of peddlers was gathered. It comes from the Archive of Folk Speech founded in 1952 and the collecting of material excerpted from published, handwritten as well as electronic dialect sources, mainly from the all-national correspondence lexical survey carried out in the 1950s. Based on the example of names sorted into 5 semantic groups (l. common names, 2. names reflecting the local origin of peddlers, 3. names reflecting the kind of goods, 4. names reflecting the type of vessel (hamper, basket), and 5. names indicating the amount of goods), the author presents the denominations of peddlers from the turn of the 20th century, both in their dialect diversity and geographic projection. Each group has its specific feature. The change in the geopolitical arrangement of Europe, e.g., shows that some of the terms from the second group (grán, kočebrák) can currently be identified only with the help of the dictionary. The end of the First Republic, however, brought an end to the colourful world of the peddlers and hawkers; together with the evolving industrialization and electrification the peddlers were replaced by “travelling agents” selling already different type of products (vacuum cleaners, sewing machines etc.).
The focus of the contribution is on the analysis of dialectal lexicon in relation to the Carpathian shepherd culture. It also introduces the Obščekrapatskij dialektologičeskij atlas, 1987–2003 Carpathian Language Atlas which also displays Moravian and Silesian locations and which is a support to the author in her analysis of the chosen dialectal lexicon. This is connected with the Carpathian geographic area and mostly includes “carpathisms” recorded in Moravia and Silesia, and facts about Carpathian shepherd culture. For the lexical analysis, a group of words has been chosen that contains names of sheep (or other) milk products and foods made from it: the group consists of the following words: brynza, oščepek, žynčyca, čýr, domikát and kyselica. The linguistic material has also been drawn from the all-national Slovník nářečí českého jazyka (A–C) Dictionary of Czech-Language Dialects and from the Nářeční slovník jihozápadního Vsetínska Dictionary of Dialects in the South-Western Part of the Vsetín Area. The dialectal vocabulary in the above region contains diverse language layers of domestic and foreign origin.
Journal of Ethnology 3/2016 brings up the theme “Folk dress redivivus – the function of folk costume in the 21st century”. In her study, Eva Románková offers an overview of the development in folk dress in chosen European countries (From National Movement to Folklorism: a transformation in folk dress in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries). Simone Egger pays attention to the perception of folk dress as a social symbol (The “National Costume” in the Period of Post-Modernism. The Policy of Identity, Staging and Identification). In her contribution, Marta Ulrychová presents the life of folk costumes in German borderland (Function of the “Tracht“ in the Life of Inhabitants in the Northern Part of the Bavarian Forest (the present situation). Bjørn Sverre Hol Haugen describes the current existence of folk dress in Norway (Reconstructed times: a case study of Norwegian folk dress).
The Transforming Traditions column publishes a contribution by René Kopecký The Conciliation Cross in Jetenovice; in Review Section, Oldřich Kašpar deals with visual artefacts depicting panoramas of towns and nature (Cosmorama of the 18th and 19th Centuries as an Ethnographic Source) and Ondřej Volčík remembers the 100th birthday of the musician, teacher and folklorist Vladimír Klusák (1916–1991). Social Chronicle is devoted to anniversaries of the ethnologists Jiří Langer (*1936), Ludmila Tarcalová (*1946), Alena Křížová (*1956), Věra Frolcová (*1956) and Jiří Traxler (*1946). Other regular columns contain reports from exhibitions, conferences, and festivals as well as reviews of new books.
European society of the 19th and 20th centuries underwent a lot of changes which were caused by economic, social and political reasons. Due to this, European countries set their hopes on symbols of national safety which they often tried to find in the expressions of traditional folk culture. Folk dress was among the most important ones. In many European countries, the last quarter of the 18th century saw struggles to create a kind of national dress, especially in connection with the spread of Romanticism ideas. The need for national costume used to be determined by historical circumstances and the position of a particular country or ethnic group in relation to the nations surrounding them. In this way, for example, the connection of Dirndl and leather trousers in the German speaking countries, or the Norwegian bunad developed. In the sense of the Romantic opinion on the countryside, even Scottish noblemen accepted the dress coming from the Highlands in Scotland as a symbol of their political goals. In eastern-European countries, people stopped wearing folk dress on regular basis significantly later, often only in the 20th century. For this reason, regional differentness could be preserved there, which did not lead to the creation of a single type of national costume. This could not be pushed though even in the Czech lands even though the 19th and 20th centuries saw the struggles to create national dress with a strong identifying function. On the other hand, contemporary wearers and makers, while reconstructing folk garments, are more and more interested in the original local appearance and variability of folk dress.
The globalized present is significantly characterized by mobilities and an analogy of possibilities. The transmission of images through digital media plays a central role in the communication. The expressions which can be subsumed under the “label of that ethno-cultural” have not become obsolete in an aestheticizing world, but they have been drawing increasing attention since the 2000s. From the ethnographic point of view, the focus on the theme national costume can be anchored between the clichés policy of identity, staging and identification. The contribution will use diverse examples, especially those connected with the Alpine region, to explain which meanings are included in the treatment of specific cuts, traditions and typical patterns, and to which extent the coping with ethno-culturally encoded objects has something to do with the search after a time, spatial or social order.
Especially in the last decade, one can notice an increasing popularity of the festive dress in Bavaria, which claims its allegiance to traditional rural and town clothing in terms of its cut, colours, decorations and particular accessories. The residents of the monitored location – an area of the Bavarian Forest – use the term Tracht for it. Because the phenomenon has drawn only little attention of specialized literature to date, the author relies on her long-time fieldwork that is based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with local people. First, she tries to explain two basic used terms – Tracht and Dirndl, and continues with other garments after that. When describing men´s and women´s dress, she only sketches general and stabilized features because the limited range of this study does not allow her to probe different variants more deeply. These are not only a result of occasions on which the Tracht is worn, but also a consequence of fast changes in fashion as a result of fashion designers´ strategies. The author´s major focus is on the manner in which the Tracht carries out the function of a festive dress and club uniform. While its locally-representative function is nearly zero (except for music bands, the Tracht does not have any attributes to distinguish between inhabitants of particular villages and towns), the Tracht is an unambiguous indicator to define club affiliation. Because the northern part of the Bavarian Forest is a borderland bordering on the Czech Republic, the authors trie to point out mutual influences in terms of clothing. Czech residents do not wear the Tracht, however, they take over only everyday garments (e.g. the men like wearing the popular combination of a chequered shirt and jeans), maybe exceptionally the Murtalerhut, a felt hat with a wide brim, from their Bavarian neighbours. The afore-mentioned subject-matter calls for further continuing studies.
In many parts of Norway different folk dress developed during preindustrial time and some were still in use during 20th Century. Today they are sustained and in use for special occasions. Older folk dress is also revitalized as part of today’s cultural heritage. This paper presents the revival of folk dress in Norway and discusses how questions of time are represented in the work of revitalization. Folk dress of one particular area of western Norway serves as a case study for this survey. The main goal with this paper is to reveal how chronology and art history as well as trends and traditions are entangled in the complexities of folk dress.
Journal of Ethnology 2/2016 is focused on current issues of ethnomusicology. Zuzana Jurková in her contribution thinks about the status of contemporary musicology, the musical-anthropological approach and the study of music worlds in the urban environment (The research spectrum of contemporary ethnomusicology: The ethnomusicologists’ road to the town). The author of the adopted American study – Adelaida Reyes – brings a platform for the discussion about the sense and importance of ethnomusicology (What do ethnomusicologists do? An old question for a new century). Veronika Seidlová introduces a methodological conception of the “multi-sited ethnography” and its use in ethnomusicology (Multi-sited ethnography: examples of application in the contemporary anthropological and ethnomusicological research). The Slovenian ethnomusicologist Mojca Kovačič deals with the study of religious sounds (bells, chimes, calls for prayer) in town (on the example of Slovenian Ljubljana) (Conflicting religious sounds in an urban space: The case of Ljubljana religious soundscape). Zita Skořepová Honzlová submits a view of the music with the Czech minority in Vienna (Music as an anthropological mirror of a minority: An example of research on musical activities of contemporary Viennese Czechs).
Review Section is devoted to the life and work of the literary scientist and folklorist Orest Zilynskyj (1923–1976) (by Naďa Valášková). Interview by Lucie Uhlíková introduces the ethnologist Josef Jančář (born 1931) and remembers his 85th birthday. Social Chronicle is devoted to the following anniversary of the ethnologists Helena Beránková (born 1956) and Helena Šenfeldová (born 1936), the musical folklorist Věra Thořová (born 1936), the teacher and folklorist Alena Schauerová (born 1936) and the folk dance collector Milada Bimková (born 1926); it also publishes an obituary for the historian and ethnologist Jiří Setinský (1951–2016) and a reminiscence of the ethnologist Vlasta Suková (1936–2014). Other regular columns contain reports from exhibitions, book reviews and reports from branch activities.
The text aims to introduce urban ethnomusicology, an important direction in the contemporary anthropologically-oriented research into music. This direction is first set into the context of another ethnomusicological research. After a short look into the history of urban ethnomusicology, significant theoretical conceptions, used in or usable for the research into town music, are described. These include especially the conception of soundscape (Schafer and Shelemay), the connective structure with its two dimensions – the social and the time one (Assmann) and the conception of collective memory (Halbwachs, Kansteiner). The last section of the text introduces how the above conceptions have been applied on Prague music material. The categorization partially inspired by the Appadurai´s –scapes is used for the social dimension of connective structure. Two lines are obvious in the time dimension (to which, in this case, music and remembering relate): the first line includes music as an object of remembering, the other one is its medium. The text is pervaded by the empirically confirmed awareness of fluidity of all borders, which is especially obvious in the today´s big city.
Throughout ethnomusicology’s history, the breadth of the discipline’s field, its multidisciplinary nature, and its historical relations to other subdisciplines within musicology have raised questions of identity. Is ethnomusicology a discipline in its own right? “What is ethnomusicology?” is the form in which the question has persisted through changing contexts and contingencies. The resulting entanglement with definitional issues have distracted us from what historians and scientists such as Thomas S. Kuhn and Freeman Dyson have pointed to as the real repository of what gives a discipline its identity: what its practitioners do. To avoid the tendency to have the accomplishments of the discipline’s outstanding members dominate the narrative, and to focus on the activity of practitioners in general, this article explores the power of dialectics to generate new knowledge or new insights by creating a chain of questions and answers engaged in critical exchange and taking into account the oppositions and tensions that leave their mark on the work of practitioners. Addressing the issue that has stood most obstinately against a unitary identity for ethnomusicology – the issue of integrating what has been called “two ethnomusicologies” or a bifurcated discipline – the article first examines ethnomusicology’s problems of identity in historical perspective. From this base it looks at ethnomusicology from the perspective of the humanities and the sciences. Ultimately, the article aims to re-discover and re-articulate the bi-furcating elements in their particular time and place, the better to address issues of generalizability, upon which the discipline’s recognizability and identity stand.
The author aims to introduce and contextualize the model of multi-sited ethnography which was suggested by the American anthropologist George E. Marcus as a conceptual and methodological approach to the field research of mobile cultural phenomena and global cultural interactions. The author illustrates the concept with examples of the already implemented anthropological and ethnomusicological research which either inspired this model or used it, as well as with the design of her dissertation research, which deals with transnational musical flows of mantras from India to the Czech Republic. The text also indicates possible limits and challenges brought by this still experimental way that is an alternative to the traditional model of ethnography. Following the anthropologist James Fergusson, the author thinks that the multi-sited ethnography should not replace the “single-sited” ethnography, but rather extend the methodological spectrum.
The article focuses on a more recent area of interest within the field of ethnomusicological research – sound. It reveals how sounds of various religious communities in the contemporary urban space reflect, construct or stimulate conflict of socio-political relations. It focuses on the city of Ljubljana and discusses the experiences of the inhabitants with three religious soundings: Christian church bell ringing, Muslim call to prayer (adhan) and the new religious community´s soundings of small bells, pots and pans. Through epistemological dimension of religious sounding it places them in relation to other sounds in urban soundscape. Bell ringing as the sound of dominant Roman Catholic community is being mostly challenged because of its acoustic and ideological domination in the city. Adhan is the sound of minority which has not been not materialized yet in the city soundscape, but has already evoked a broader debate among the wider public. Their reactions reveal religious, identity and xenophobia issues in the society. The Trans-Universal Zombie Church of the Blissful Ringing is using the musical instrument – the bell and the sounding of small bells, pots and pans in the form of progressive spirituality that provokes other religious traditions as well as socio-political situation in the country. All presented examples show how a particular religious sound functions on the level of the symbolic presentation of religious ideology and how the socio-political conflict is produced through religious sonority of the city.
The study opens with an introductory section devoted to a brief presentation of the concept of minority and its definition. Based on comparison of the situation in Europe and the United States, as well as in different scholarly disciplines, the author aims to show main differences in its conceptualization and usage in the humanities, social sciences and law. On the background of the discipline´s development from comparative musicology to ethnomusicology, or musical anthropology, changes in the concept of minority and related research problems are outlined. At the beginning of the discipline, scholars focused on musical marginality embodied in non-European and predominantly rural European music in pursuit of its inclusion to the hypothetical timeline of musical development. While some scientists still continue documenting the music of endangered ethnic/national minorities, anthropology of music tends to study musical activities with respect to wider issues, such as music and identity negotiation among minority members, music and migration, etc. Finally, the author presents main questions, theoretical concepts, methodology and a summary of conclusions of her own research on musical activities of the contemporary Czech minority in Vienna, which was realized in the years 2012–2015.
Journal of Ethnology 1/2016 is devoted to the theme Humour and Comic. In her study, Barbora Půtová writes about the history of presentation of exotism in European countries, which developed in the 19th century in connection with the colonial expansion of the Europeans and which accentuated differences in native ethnic groups in terms of absurdity and comicality (Freak Shows in the Context of the Period Comic). Jana Poláková deals with printed humour in folk reading calendars (Women as Objects of Printed Jokes in Selected Volumes of Vilímek’s Calendar – a Supplement to the Humoristické Listy Magazine). Juraj Hamar analyses comic scenes and characters in the Slovakian traditional puppet theatre based on texts coming from the theatre of the Anderle family from Radvan (Structure of Comic Images in Traditional Puppet Theatre in Slovakia). The study written by the Polish ethnomusicologist Piotr Dahlig and included outside of the theme is devoted to music folklorism and its broader connections (Music Folklorism in Poland: a historical review).
In the Transforming Traditions column, Eva Večerková pays attention to the development of kermesse festivals in a selected location in western Moravia (St. Martin Kermesse Festival in Zubří near Nové Město na Moravě). Interview Section introduces the ethnologist Karel Pavlištík (born 1931) on the occasion of his life jubilee. Social Chronicle remembers jubilees of the ethnologists Alexandra Navrátilová (born 1946), Lubomír Procházka (born 1956), Mirjam Moravcová (born 1931), Mikuláš Mušinka (born 1936) and the architect Jiří Škabrada (born 1946). It also publishes an obituary for the ethnologist Štefan Mruškovič (1932–2016) and the singer of folk songs Václav Harnoš (1930–2015). Other regular sections inform about exhibitions, conferences, festivals and new publications in the branch.
The paper focuses on ethnologic and cultural-anthropologic analysis of freak shows. This was one of the forms of Eurocentric and inhumane approach to corporal and cultural dissimilarities in members of extra-European cultures, or physically handicapped people whose differences became a subject of exhibitions and other forms of public presentations. The freak shows accentuated particularly exotic features of different individuals, their morphological dissimilarities and any other deviations and anomalies differing from the standards related to European population. The paper describes, analyses and interprets historical, cultural, social and power factors and causes which made it possible to turn “the others” into a subject of amusement, astonishment and comic. The paper presents principles and strategies employed by freak shows, mostly determined by their impresarios (Phineas Taylor Barnum, Carl Hagenbeck, Albert Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, William Leonard Hunt). In addition to circuses, zoological gardens and wax museums, the paper does not ignore the influence these freak shows had on theatres, music halls and cabarets. The final part of the paper reveals the inhumane message of freak shows which were grounded on ideological and power construction of Eurocentric cultural standards and values. The aim of the paper is to draw attention to a frequently omitted field of ethnology and cultural anthropology, as well as to the negative consequences resulting from constructing “the others” in the context of mass entertainment and the comic.
The focus of the study is on nine volumes of selected folk reading calendars which were issued between 1889 and 1911. The essay offers an overview of basic types and forms of anecdotes and jokes which could be find in the chosen volumes of the calendar, and their graphical and language means. The contribution presents anecdotes, which were concentrated on women, and uses them to indicate the then society’s understanding of women and their position within the society and family. All selected volumes of Vilímek’s calendar gave a clear feeling of several rooted and only slowly changing stereotype images about women. Some storylines, figures or points had not changed for decades; some others change or cease to exist at the moment when they are no longer actual. While the oral tradition allows a joke to flexibly response to a change, the printed versions are preserved once for all. On the one hand, their relation to the time when they were published allows us an original insight. On the other hand, the point sometimes fully disappears without more detailed knowledge of period cultural and social relations.
The submitted paper is an aesthetic and ethno-theatrological reflection on the theatre repertoire offered by traditional folk puppeteers in Slovakia. It is grounded on an analysis of nearly thirty plays from the repertoire of a dynasty of traditional Slovakian puppeteers – the Anderle family from Radvan. Based on the material acquired through transcription and reconstruction of the corresponding texts, the author focused on the structure of comic images, especially on the comic of characters, the situation comic and the verbal comic. The author also defines the genre of traditional puppet theatre within a broader ethno-theatrological context, and classifies the typology of characters in traditional puppet theatre with the emphasis put on their semantic, visual and phonic sensual-semantic layer. Special attention is paid to Jung’s concept of archetype of a comic character (Trikster) that is represented by the character of Gašparko in the given cultural environment. A philosophical and aesthetical discourse about the comic is completed by an analysis of the comic image’s poetry illustrated by short fragments from selected texts.
The aim of the article is to show how the ethno/musicologists, folklorists, music teachers, broadcasting people a.o. have influenced traditional peasant culture in time of basic transformation during the 20th century, and how they have contributed to its documentation and understanding. This review has an exemplary character. Each European country has its own history in this respect. The text has three parts. In the first one, the folklore is confronted with a social history, especially with the process of withdrawal of the isolation in peasants communities and with the filtering of traditional music while it gained new realms of circulation. The second one is dedicated to generations of ethnomusicologists, who created and discovered new topics enlarging the range of ethnomusicology and concept of folklorism towards the cultural and social studies. The third part is connected with contemporary functions of music traditions and roles of ethnomusicologists with the stress on the applied ethnomusicology. The comments on the applied ethnomusicology summarize the author’s experience gained during field research since 1975 and try to present how the past in the realm of traditional culture and music is transformed in the contemporaneity or, rather, how the history becomes united within the contemporary time. The text is closed with a self-reflection of the ethnomusicologist, because “objective” folklore studies are hardly to be imagined, and the individual self-criticism remains as well useful as necessary.