Dincolo de un fenomen social: ia și valorificarea unui tipar identitar
Transilvania, 2022
The paper aims to explain the concept of “identity” by drawing the intricate cultural and politic... more The paper aims to explain the concept of “identity” by drawing the intricate cultural and political history of an important piece of the Romanian peasant attire. Involved and instrumentalized within various political and cultural identity programs, traditional clothing was exhibited by ethnographers, anthropologists, cultural activists for a long time as an identity landmark meant to display racial differences, national stereotypes, and social hierarchies. The Romanian peasant attire was thus transformed from a community internal practical and symbolical object to an ethnic and then national identity tool. More recently, the national project of inscribing the traditional Romanian female blouse with embroidery on the shoulder on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is an opportunity for various stakeholders and promoters to reuse and commodify this clothing piece within their own cultural and commercial programs and to redefine and redesign the concept of “heritage community”.
Laminorul observației. Tehnica cercetării de teren în concepția lui Henri H. Stahl
Transilvania, 2022
The paper presents the book of Henri H. Stahl, The Technique of the Sociological Monograph (1934)... more The paper presents the book of Henri H. Stahl, The Technique of the Sociological Monograph (1934) and delineates the author’s main achievements within the fieldwork methodology from the point of view of Romanian ethnology and folklore studies. As an important member of the interwar sociological school of Bucharest led by D. Gusti, Stahl was thoroughly interested in developing a comprehensive research methodology ready to be applied by the new members of the large research teams of the monographic campaigns. His method includes the attention devoted to getting in touch with the life of the village and the peasants while building psychological trust and empathy between interviewer and interviewee; this complex protocol of accommodation proves to be one of the first and the most sympathetic strategy in the history of anthropological fieldwork. Another aspect of primary interest in Stahl’s methodology is the fact it is drafted simultaneously with the development of peasant studies and rural sociology in the U.S., and the challenges that western anthropology faces in having to adapt its methods to studying peasant societies. Though Stahl often opposes in his studies the sociological school and the Romanian folklore studies, his contribution to Romanian folklore research was undoubtedly acknowledged and appreciated.
Memorialistica românească: teorie și istorie literară, 2020
In Search of a Romanian Poetics of Ethnography
The paper is intended to define a Romanian anthro... more In Search of a Romanian Poetics of Ethnography
The paper is intended to define a Romanian anthropology in the Western sense as a fieldwork study of exotic peoples. As opposed to nations of Western Europe that experienced a rich tradition of colonial administration and the related opportunities for extensive travel, exploration and later on of ethnographic research, Romanians and Eastern Europeans generally postponed with centuries the actual experience of the so-called primitive places and peoples. In the absence of the “savage outside”, Romanian anthropologists were propelled to examine the “savage inside” – i.e. their rural traditional compatriots. Among the restricted number of Romanian travelers in exotic cultures a few of them proved an anthropological vision or employed ideas, methods and clichés specific to this discipline in its Western sense. Mihai Tican Rumano and Hanna Bota, travelogue authors of different time periods and intellectual profiles, are analyzed here as appropriate representatives of an “invented” Romanian ethnography which combines the Western tradition of the genre with an autochthonous perception of distant cultures.
The paper presents Sanda Golopenția’s professional paths in relation to the main theoretical and ... more The paper presents Sanda Golopenția’s professional paths in relation to the main theoretical and methodological perspectives explored by the Brown University professor during her remarkable career. Attracted early on to foreign languages both within her family and at school, Golopenția became a linguist and a folklorist and navigated easily between the two disciplines. During the 1960s and 1970s, fieldwork undertaken in various rural Romanian regions aroused an interest in language dynamics, conversational memory, and the nature of speaker creativity in linguistics innovation. The village of Breb in Maramureș becomes the locus amoenus of her anthropological fieldwork, where Golopenția discovers and conceptualizes the speech acts of a close-knit community. In the field of linguistics, the professor of French Studies is drawn to the theory of structural linguistics, generative grammar, and pragmatics, while also analysing folklore texts and literary works with the help of linguistic tools. Within folkloristics, she is mostly interested in the study of charms and charming from a general anthropological and pragmatic point of view, highlighting the special type of intelligence that folk magic reveals. One of the main concepts that she proposes, intermemory – grounded in the conversational histories of the people of Breb – accurately defines many of her intellectual interests and also the deep structure of the content of her edited works. In Romanian sociology, Golopenția is appreciated for publishing the books of her parents, Anton Golopenția and Ștefania Cristescu – two principal members of the Sociological School that was led by D. Gusti, thereby recovering a lost connection with interwar sociology. Finally, the author describes her encounter with the works of Sanda Golopenția, as well as a personal meeting with the esteemed professor. Given the occasion of this paper – the celebration of Golopenția’s 80th birthday – the text is a general appreciation of her many contributions to Romanian culture, which could be defined appropriately in terms of what Claude Levi-Strauss called a “humanist anthropology”.
"Anuarul de Lingvistică și Istorie Literară”, 2018
In an increasingly multicultural world due to globalization and intense mobility of people, resea... more In an increasingly multicultural world due to globalization and intense mobility of people, researchers of a nationʼs cultural heritage should seriously take into account the migrants' own heritage. Migration becomes also a way of interrogating the sending cultures, the nature of identity itself, and an input of reconfiguring it in a new context by combining diverse cultural elements. The personal items, stories and values that the migrants move across the political borders become symbols of the intricate process of acculturation and enculturation. The paper examines the cultural institutions such as museums or NGOs created especially to accommodate, encourage and popularize this specific transnational heritage.
„Buletin Științific. Revistă de Etnografie, Științele Naturii și Muzeologie”, Chișinău , 2019
In order to reveal Eugen Bâzgu’s contribution on the exegesis of functional and symbolical featur... more In order to reveal Eugen Bâzgu’s contribution on the exegesis of functional and symbolical features displayed by traditional wells, the paper analyses the ways these ancestral mechanisms of acquiring water play in the social and cultural imaginary of traditional Romanian society. The first section offers a historical view on the evolution of different types of wells built on Romanian territory, suggesting the connections of these particular types with the broader landscape of vernacular architecture and the oldest universal tools for water digging. In the second section, the ritual aspects of wells are explained within the context of symbolical and mythological significance of the main materials from which they were traditionally constructed in this area: wood and stone. The association of water, tree and Christian symbols provides a profound understanding of the well as a spiritual place and as a centre of the village community.
The paper reviews the bibliography in the field of psychoanalytical analyses of fairy tales since... more The paper reviews the bibliography in the field of psychoanalytical analyses of fairy tales since the instrumental works of Sigmund Freud to today's approaches. Folk and fairy tales as well as mythological narratives were analyzed by the proponents of the psychoanalytic study of fairy tales through two main approaches: the psychoanalyst could either analyze the fairy tale creator's psychology, or examine the psychological motivations underneath the fairy tale's characters narrative behavior. From the post-Freudians and post-Jungians to feminist revisionists, the recent fairy tale scholarship is apparently losing its connection with the actual content of these texts created according to a certain worldview and folk imaginary.
Clasic şi modern în cercetarea filologică românească actuală, 2019
Seasonal games acted out in Romanian villages by groups of men costumed as domestic or savage ani... more Seasonal games acted out in Romanian villages by groups of men costumed as domestic or savage animals, similar with the more known English Mummersʼ Play, were considered by several generations of interpreters as pure relics, ancient curiosities, or serious rituals, life-cycle dramas proving a deep-rooted religious behavior with parallels in primitive and ancient societies. Leaving aside the actual relevance of the mythological theories meant to explain these zoomorphic masquerades in premodern and modern Europe, going back to the oldest available documents that scarcely describe this cultural phenomenon seems to be the most suitable undertaking. These scattered mentions coming from the early medieval times should therefore be appropriately connected with the available data in contemporary folk archives with the care of respecting the historical and geographical characteristic of the sources.
Getting into the Spirit of the Season: Winter Customs between Magic and Religion in Rural Romania
Concerning socialist Romania, native and foreign anthropologists and folklore scholars noticed th... more Concerning socialist Romania, native and foreign anthropologists and folklore scholars noticed that the Christian Orthodox church rituals are often accompanied by informal, unofficial practices related to the observance of important moments of the folk calendar or addressing individual needs. In order to study the religious ideas and mentalities of Romanians related to this on-going reality, researchers already proved that inefficiency of the old bi-polar model which contrasted primitive, rural, unreflective expressions to intellectual, urban, rational ones. The paper will underline the changing differences between religion as prescribed and religion as practiced as it is expressed in traditional celebrations of winter holidays in modern and contemporary Romania, aiming to provide an accurate view on how laypeople make sense of the transcendent in relationship to their lives.
Descriptions of magic and sorcery in exotic societies provided by early anthropologists at the be... more Descriptions of magic and sorcery in exotic societies provided by early anthropologists at the beginning of the 20th century generated the attention of psychologists and psychoanalysts. The most famous among them, Sigmund Freud, associated magical thinking and animistic beliefs with mental disorders. The father of psychoanalysis also inspired the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss to compare verbal magic performed by shamans with abreaction techniques. The paper analyses various critical opinions reviewing both Freud and Lévi-Strauss' theories, and their adequacy for studying Romanian folk verbal magic.
A substantial number of travel diaries, picturesque descriptions, administrative or ecclesiastica... more A substantial number of travel diaries, picturesque descriptions, administrative or ecclesiastical reports, but also extensive holistic ethnographic monographs, were written by Western scholars about Romanian peasants over the last centuries. This interest in “the primitives amongst us” was materialized in different ways and from different political and ideological perspectives or theoretical stances, and in terms of language and rhetorical conventions from the use of essayistic travel impressions to that of discipline-specific jargon. Therefore the paper plans to map the attitudes and scholarly claims of some of these traveler-ethnographers of very different kinds, starting with early modern times to the present. For this purpose, it will take into account the critical view that modern anthropology applies to travelogues and some questions on the self-sufficient ethnographic authority of Western scholarship pertaining toof East European peasantries.
The paper explores the mechanism of discovering a source and building a rural well in traditional... more The paper explores the mechanism of discovering a source and building a rural well in traditional communities from Moldavia. The mystical explanation informing ritual sacrifices, symbolic gifts, protective gestures, divinatory practices is related to archaic ideas about the existence of a maleficent supernatural place owner. The analysis also follows the connection with rituals involved by the process of building a house, the ones by which a priest blesses the fields or expels evil spirits from a human territory. Being both a ritual, a social place, and a natural resource, the well is always surrounded by care and reverence from the moment of choosing its place to the special Christian service performed at the end, when the community acknowledges its sacred nature.
This paper explores the concept of folk religiosity within rural space in Romania, taking into ac... more This paper explores the concept of folk religiosity within rural space in Romania, taking into account the secularization theories and the contemporary shape of ritual practices in small traditional communities. The reference to some quantifying sociological results destined to measure the religiosity of Romanians reveles the necessity to determine the special situation of folk ceremonies in the synthetical approach of sociologists of religion. With the help of ethnographic data provided by our recent field research, we try to elucidate the social functions of religious communal rituals in their traditional settings. A typology of social motivation of these unsysthematic rituals affected of lack of "religiously correctness" is drawn from the original confessional motivation, to the contemporary ones, such as the hedonistic and social solidarity motivation of the calendaric and parish level ceremonies. The ethnological background offers a qualitative, applied and neo-durkheimian alternative of the general sociology of religion in its rural case studies. Not following accurately the Western paradigma of secularization, rural realities in Romanian still traditional society are related to environmental and economic challenges, one of the widespread reason for appealling the supernatural forces, such as we investigate in a Moldavian rural community, with conservative lifestyle. In a structured comparison with that one, a village near the Danube river, in southwestern Oltenia proves that ritual life is maintained by young generations, even though the performers generally ignore the belief system and the religious imagery that generated the ritual action. The paper proposes an interdisciplinary view on a specific aspect of rural life, envisaged in its historical and functional features, an important item in the contemporary struggle between globalism and localism. More related to the "belonging without believing" model of approaching religiosity, the Romanian rural community tends to much less a community of faith and more a community of practice or ritual.
Anuarul Institutului de Etnografie si Folclor "Constantin Brailoiu", Bucuresti, Editura Academiei, Dec 2012
Romanian Magic Patterns in the Context of the Oriental Roman World
In the corpus of Romanian m... more Romanian Magic Patterns in the Context of the Oriental Roman World
In the corpus of Romanian magic charms, some functional patterns relate both with the Latin lexical base and with some Oriental incantation themes. The two influences could be studied starting from specific cases of poetic magic that have the narrative part developed as in the Eastern tradition and survivals of Latin language forms. The argumentation is based on a magic pattern used to cure an eye ailment (Rom. urcior, Engl. hordeolum or sty). The materials are drawn from the Romanian magic corpus coming from Moldavia and that of the Aromanians, as well as from the Medieval English magic folklore. In the Medieval Western world, Latin magic is mostly composed of Christian elements (liturgies, hagiographies, litanies, prayers). Unlike the Western handbooks, the Romanian magic did not show a preference to Christian Latin formulas from the late Middle Ages, but the old variants of vulgar Latin related to ancient incantations.
În spaţiul român tradiţional, ritualurile calendaristice sunt bazate constant pe două sisteme de ... more În spaţiul român tradiţional, ritualurile calendaristice sunt bazate constant pe două sisteme de credinţe: cea creştină şi cea păgână. Prezentăm în această lucrare o practică rituală puternică văzută ca Epifanie, şi analizăm atât elementele care justifică teologic obiceiul ca aparţinând vieţii comunităţii creştine, precum şi acele trăsături care au apărut şi s-au dezvoltat în societatea tradiţională. Analiza noastră este bazată pe numele procesiunii, făcută de preot în casele sătenilor, pentru a proclama sărbătoarea creştină a Botezului lui Iisus, şi anume, Chiraleisa. Formula liturgică grecească Kyrie eleison a generat în limba română termenul Chiraleisa, care a apărut întâi în lumea rurală românească din nord. În aceste regiuni, celebrarea Chiraleisei este sinonimă cu pelerinajul preotului care duce crucea sau cu Iordanul, ceea ce pare a fi un fel de a colinda colinde creştine care sunt duplicate ale colindelor laice. În cele mai vechi variante atestate de literatura etnografică românească, acest proces este indicat a fi avut şi rolul de alungare a demonilor de către preot, care era anunţat de copii strigând Chiraleisa, prin sunetul clopoţeilor şi prin mişcările de înconjurare a spaţiului domestic. Indicându-se o legătură cu ritualurile acvatice antice, se investighează sensurile termenului liturgic, ca procesiune prin care se invocă ploaia, ca nume a unui demon de apă. Analiza noastră este susţinută de exemple din alte limbi europene, în care formula liturgică greacă a fost preluată şi adaptată în context ritual folcloric. memoria ethnologica nr. 40 -41 * iulie -decembrie 2011 ( An XI ) 74 1 Academia Română, Iaşi, România
This paper seeks to explore in a common framework micro-spaces of secular life and macro-spaces o... more This paper seeks to explore in a common framework micro-spaces of secular life and macro-spaces of natural environment, both categories sharing a transcendental significance in Romanian folk religious Orthodoxy. The natural space on which this research focuses is the water source, seen as an ancient location of collective sacrifices and offerings, seasonal rituals and social gatherings. Given this sacred identity of rural wells and streams, rituals performed here were considered as a necessary contribution to general welfare of traditional communities, from the first centuries of our era. The Romanian situation offers a particular development due to the communist atheism which prohibited public celebration. The revival of expressed vernacular religiosity and its re-enchanted nature will be considered in connection of economic changes suffered by Romanian villages. On a more general view, the current research tries to verify ideas about secularization and lasting ritualism in an eastern conservative Christian area, and also to explain the lack of ecological concerns expressed by this population of agriculture-working peasants, despite their growing interest to the divine harmony of their environment.
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Papers by Ioana Repciuc
The paper is intended to define a Romanian anthropology in the Western sense as a fieldwork study of exotic peoples. As opposed to nations of Western Europe that experienced a rich tradition of colonial administration and the related opportunities for extensive travel,
exploration and later on of ethnographic research, Romanians and Eastern Europeans generally postponed with centuries the actual experience of the so-called primitive places and peoples. In the absence of the “savage outside”, Romanian anthropologists were propelled to
examine the “savage inside” – i.e. their rural traditional compatriots. Among the restricted number of Romanian travelers in exotic cultures a few of them proved an anthropological vision or employed ideas, methods and clichés specific to this discipline in its Western sense.
Mihai Tican Rumano and Hanna Bota, travelogue authors of different time periods and intellectual profiles, are analyzed here as appropriate representatives of an “invented” Romanian ethnography which combines the Western tradition of the genre with an autochthonous perception of distant cultures.
two disciplines. During the 1960s and 1970s, fieldwork undertaken in various rural Romanian regions aroused an interest in language dynamics, conversational memory, and the nature of speaker creativity in linguistics innovation. The village of Breb in Maramureș becomes the locus amoenus of her anthropological fieldwork, where Golopenția discovers and conceptualizes the speech acts of a close-knit community. In the field of linguistics, the professor of French Studies is drawn to the theory of structural linguistics, generative grammar, and pragmatics, while also analysing folklore texts and literary works with the help of linguistic tools. Within folkloristics, she is mostly interested in the study of charms and charming from a general anthropological and pragmatic point of view, highlighting the special type of intelligence that folk magic reveals. One of the main concepts that she proposes, intermemory – grounded in the conversational histories of the people of Breb – accurately defines many of her intellectual interests and also the deep structure of the content of her edited works. In Romanian sociology, Golopenția is appreciated for publishing the books of her parents, Anton Golopenția and Ștefania Cristescu – two principal members of the Sociological School that was led by D. Gusti, thereby recovering a lost connection with interwar sociology. Finally, the author describes her encounter with the works of Sanda Golopenția, as well as a personal meeting with the esteemed professor. Given the occasion of
this paper – the celebration of Golopenția’s 80th birthday – the text is a general appreciation of her many contributions to Romanian culture, which could be defined appropriately in terms of what Claude Levi-Strauss called a “humanist anthropology”.
the mythological theories meant to explain these zoomorphic masquerades in premodern and modern Europe, going back to the oldest available documents that scarcely describe this cultural phenomenon seems to be the most suitable undertaking. These scattered mentions coming from the early medieval times should therefore be
appropriately connected with the available data in contemporary folk archives with the care of respecting the historical and geographical characteristic of the sources.
In the corpus of Romanian magic charms, some functional patterns relate both with the Latin lexical base and with some Oriental incantation themes. The two influences could be studied starting from specific cases of poetic magic that have the narrative part developed as in the Eastern tradition and survivals of Latin language forms. The argumentation is based on a magic pattern used to cure an eye ailment (Rom. urcior, Engl. hordeolum or sty). The materials are drawn from the Romanian magic corpus coming from Moldavia and that of the Aromanians, as well as from the Medieval English magic folklore. In the Medieval Western world, Latin magic is mostly composed of Christian elements (liturgies, hagiographies, litanies, prayers). Unlike the Western handbooks, the Romanian magic did not show a preference to Christian Latin formulas from the late Middle Ages, but the old variants of vulgar Latin related to ancient incantations.