scholarly journals BEHAVIORAL PROHIBITIONS IN FUNERAL AND MEMORIAL RITES OF THE CHUVASH

Author(s):  
Igor G. Petrov

On the basis of literary, archival, folklore sources and expedition materials, the article examines such a little-studied genre of Chuvash folklore as prohibitions (taboos). Special attention is paid to the systematization and analysis of behavioral prohibitions that have long existed and continue to exist in the funeral rites of the Chuvash. By behavioral prohibitions, the author means a set of well-established and generally accepted prescriptions and rules that regulated the everyday and ritual behavior of an individual and a collective within the framework of a funeral and memorial rite – family members, relatives, as well as other members of a rural community. Their observance was due to the fear of the society members before the deceased and death, the desire to appease the deceased and secure his protection, as well as the desire to protect themselves from the deceased and ensure his safe transition to the other world. By adhering to the prohibitions, people ensured their own safety and well-being, and in general secured the protection of the deceased as a representative of the ancestral world. Despite the superstitious nature of most of the prohibitions, they still exist nowadays. On the one hand, this indicates the antiquity of their origin, on the other – their stability in time and space.

Author(s):  
Darin Stephanov

‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’ This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial intrusion into the everyday lives of people across the Ottoman Empire, which the annual royal birthday and accession-day celebrations constituted, had multiple, far-reaching, and largely unexplored consequences. On the one hand, it brought ordinary subjects into symbolic contact with the monarch and forged lasting vertical ties of loyalty to him, irrespective of language, location, creed or class. On the other hand, the rounds of royal celebration played a key role in the creation of new types of horizontal ties and ethnic group consciousness that crystallized into national movements, and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies. The book discusses the themes of public space/sphere, the Tanzimat reforms, millet, modernity, nationalism, governmentality, and the modern state, among others. It offers a new, thirteen-point model of modern belonging based on the concept of ruler visibility.


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The most important conclusions of this summarizing chapter are the following: The religious landscape of Eastern Europe is more diverse than that of Western Europe. The cases of Poland and the GDR confirm the hypothesis that there is a link between the diffusion of functions and the growth in the importance of religion. The strong processes of biographical individualization that occurred in the post-communist states did not necessarily intensify individual religiosity. The economic market model cannot be confirmed for Eastern Europe. There is in Eastern and Central Europe a demonstrable link between economic prosperity and the loosening of religious and church ties. What can act as a bulwark against the eroding effects of modernization is church activity on the one hand, and the everyday proximity, visibility, and concreteness of religious practices and rituals, symbols, images, and objects on the other.


Author(s):  
Ю. А. Абсалямова

В статье анализируются особенности восприятия лесного пространства башкирами. На основе языковых, фольклорных материалов сделана попытка раскрыть различные аспекты взаимоотношений лес - человек, образ леса в картине мира башкир. Как и в большинстве традиционных культур, в целом мифологический образ леса носит отрицательный характер. В фольклоре он часто описывается как тёмный, мрачный, неизвестный, таящий опасности, противопоставляясь обжитому и освоенному пространству селений. Лесной пандемониум также представлен в основном отрицательными персонажами. В целом образ леса в традиционной картине мира башкир предстаёт довольно неоднозначным. С одной стороны - это категория, связанная с потусторонним миром, неизведанная, «чужая» территория. С другой - лес издавна являлся источником различных благ - в виде строительного материала, пушнины, различных продуктов питания, укрывал от врагов. The article analyzes the features of Bashkirs' perception of the forest space. On the basis of the materials of the epos, folklore, folk ideas, an attempt was made to reveal the various aspects of the relationship between forest and man, the image of the forest in Bashkirs' world view. As in most traditional cultures, the mythological image of the forest as a whole is negative. In folklore, it is often described as dark, gloomy, unknown, fraught with danger, being contrasted with the inhabited and developed space of the villages. The forest pandemonium is also represented mainly by negative characters. On the other hand, in the domestic perception forest is valued for the benefits derived from it: shelter, food, protection from enemies. In addition, Bashkirs, distinguished by a developed aesthetic perception and contemplative thinking, appreciated its beauty, which is also reflected in folklore. In general, the image of forest in the Bashkirs' traditional view of the world appears rather ambiguous. On the one hand, it is the category associated with the other world, unknown, «foreign» territory. On the other hand, the forest has long been a source of various benefits - in the form of construction materials, furs, various food products, and it sheltered them from enemies.


Author(s):  
Vlad Glăveanu

This chapter addresses why people engage in creativity. This question can be answered at different levels. On the one hand, one can refer to what motivates creative people to do what they do. On the other hand, the question addresses a deeper level, that of how societies today are built and how they, in turn, construct the meaning and value of creativity. Nowadays, people consider creativity intrinsically valuable largely because of its direct and indirect economic benefits. However, creative expression also has a role for health and well-being. Creativity also relates to meaning in life. The chapter then considers how creativity can be used for good or for evil.


Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Grabka

Two ideas, the Divine and the Other-World, seem to have dominated much of the life of the ancient Greeks and Romans and to have claimed their best energies. To a great extent the culture of classical antiquity is the natural expression of these two predominant religious convictions. When Christianity entered the Graeco-Roman world and gathered its adherents from among both the cultured class and the unlettered masses, it made no violent break with ancient culture but preserved whatever was best in it. On the one hand, the Church sought to suppress whatever militated against its own teaching in these matters; on the other, it readily embraced a number of purely folk customs and practices of virtually spontaneous growth and gave them a new orientation in conformity with Christian principles. In a word, some of the pagan usages and rites were purified and, whenever possible, adapted to Christian worship.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-453
Author(s):  
Sadhna Dash

As organisations deal with the evolving nature of the new normal, the role of the human resources (HR) is getting redefined to meet the ongoing needs of its workforce. Designing employee–HR experiences in an uncertain and ambiguous work world emerges as one of the top challenges for HR leaders. On the one hand, employee well-being initiatives like employee mentoring, virtual mindfulness workshops, health tips and free consulting and counselling services are becoming the norm. On the other hand, the HR function is itself being re-crafted for the emergent workplace. Technology plays a pivotal role, fuelling the need for scaling HR activities to provide next-gen employee experiences. As the war for high-tech talent increases, organisations are re-crafting an all new HR playbook to differentiate themselves as preferred employers. Within the transforming work and workplace context, the worker continues to be in the eye of the storm and demands both attention and action.


Author(s):  
Mercedes Gómez-López ◽  
Carmen Viejo ◽  
Rosario Ortega-Ruiz

Adolescence and emerging adulthood are both stages in which romantic relationships play a key role in development and can be a source of both well-being and negative outcomes. However, the limited number of studies prior to adulthood, along with the multiplicity of variables involved in the romantic context and the considerable ambiguity surrounding the construct of well-being, make it difficult to reach conclusions about the relationship between the two phenomena. This systematic review synthesizes the results produced into this topic over the last three decades. A total of 112 studies were included, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines. On the one hand, these works revealed the terminological heterogeneity in research on well-being and the way the absence of symptoms of illness are commonly used to measure it, while on the other hand, they also showed that romantic relationships can be an important source of well-being for both adolescents and emerging adults. The findings underline the importance of providing a better definition of well-being, as well as to attribute greater value to the significance of romantic relationships. Devoting greater empirical, educational, and community efforts to romantic development in the stages leading up to adulthood are considered necessary actions in promoting the well-being of young people.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Adrijana Marčetič

Just after the end of the Great War Miloš Crnjanski wrote a poem dedicated to Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo, on 28 June 1914. The title of the poem is “A Tribute to Princip” (“Spomen Principu”), and it was first published in Crnjanski’s early book of poetry Lyrics of Ithaca (Lirika Itake, 1919). Forty years later Crnjanski wrote a commentary on the poem, a sort of its prose paraphrase, and entitled it “On the Poem about Princip” (“Uz pesmu o Principu”); it was published in his Commentaries on Lyrics of Ithaca (Komentari uz Liriku Itake, 1959). Although by no means as significant as his famous poem “Sumatra”, and equally famous “Explanation of Sumatra”, that is considered a kind of Crnjanski’s personal poetic manifesto, as well as a poetic manifesto of Serbian modernism in general, “A Tribute to Princip” and its explanation represent an equally important testimony to Crnjanski’s poetic sensibility and his literary inspiration. The subject of the poem, the manner of poetic expression, on the one side, and the prose style of its commentary, on the other, clearly indicate what was considered by young Crnjanski the main role of the new, modern poetry he was advocating for: the break with the tradition, the rejection of the old and no longer productive poetic and national myths, and the affirmation of the new role of poetry in the everyday life. Therefore, opposing the standard interpretation of the poem, in this paper I argue that “A Tribute to Princip” is not a political poem but a “poem about poem”, which we could read as metapoetry or a poetry poem, providing that we apply the term with a little more freedom.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Hawkes

By the end of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s an estimated 22,438 people were unaccounted for. Their whereabouts were unknown or their remains were missing. The clarification of the fate of the missing is a fundamental component of transitional justice processes. Taking as its focus two photographic projects—one with forensic identification purposes and the other with a memorialisation focus—this article explores the juridical and memorialisation contexts in which these photographs circulate, asking how photographs might be, on the one hand, practical tools for the identification of remains, but also, at the same time, act as visual vehicles for raising awareness and action around the broader justice questions concerning the clarification of the fate of the missing.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Schoina

Abstract Considering the largely unacknowledged connection between Byron and Mary Shelley on the logistics which pertain to the experience of crossing-over cultures, this paper investigates the notion of authentic Italianisation as exemplified in their related texts, and discusses its problematics in the context of the dominant themes and preoccupations in Romantic culture. Thus, on the one hand, my paper examines how the Romantic anticipation of being immersed in local culture and of “going native” is articulated – or rather, performed – by Byron himself, by considering specific rhetorical strategies and figures of filiation he used to ground his relationship to Italian place. More specifically, I contend that although Byron’s polymorphic identification to Italian place is constructed in the imagination, it is also grounded in time- and space-bound actions and involves a structure of social relations. On the other hand, the paper delineates how Byron’s idiosyncratic immersion into Italianness is theorised by Mary Shelley and counted on as a model of second culture acquisition.


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