Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.25984
Diana Mihuț, Otilia Hedeșan
The article raises questions related to field research methodology in a specific context. The authors take into consideration mainly the context of uncertainty, generated by Covid-19 pandemics which forced them to reshape the field research methodology as previously known and commonly used by Romanian ethnologists. The authors provide a brief presentation and analysis of the first steps done as part of what later would become a larger field experience in terms of investigating Romanian food heritage. It relies on five examples represented by five interviews conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interviews that compose the case study have a special value. The negotiation to set up the meetings, the arguments of each of the parties, the conditions in which the discussions were organized are all angles that deserve to be discussed as source of what we might call ethnological motivation. What can determine the people, members of a specific culture, to share their knowledge and their life experience about a certain topic, when the very act of speaking might be a dangerous one? In each of these examples, the informant was responsive when informed that we were conducting research related to local traditions, specific family cuisine, without producing television shows, and without overexposing themselves. We notice the existence of a need to tell, a real duty to tell relevant information about one’s own culture, a vector that characterizes communities just as, for the researcher, there is a work ethic which implies his obligation to make all necessary efforts to find out information.
{"title":"Rethinking fieldwork: researching food in the aftermath of lockdown","authors":"Diana Mihuț, Otilia Hedeșan","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.25984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.25984","url":null,"abstract":"The article raises questions related to field research methodology in a specific context. The authors take into consideration mainly the context of uncertainty, generated by Covid-19 pandemics which forced them to reshape the field research methodology as previously known and commonly used by Romanian ethnologists. The authors provide a brief presentation and analysis of the first steps done as part of what later would become a larger field experience in terms of investigating Romanian food heritage. It relies on five examples represented by five interviews conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interviews that compose the case study have a special value. The negotiation to set up the meetings, the arguments of each of the parties, the conditions in which the discussions were organized are all angles that deserve to be discussed as source of what we might call ethnological motivation. What can determine the people, members of a specific culture, to share their knowledge and their life experience about a certain topic, when the very act of speaking might be a dangerous one? In each of these examples, the informant was responsive when informed that we were conducting research related to local traditions, specific family cuisine, without producing television shows, and without overexposing themselves. We notice the existence of a need to tell, a real duty to tell relevant information about one’s own culture, a vector that characterizes communities just as, for the researcher, there is a work ethic which implies his obligation to make all necessary efforts to find out information.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140976005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.26137
Gabriela Bodea
Multiculturalism implies social acceptance: it does not involve consensus, but social awareness. As witnesses of diversity, we identify change itself, as a continuous process, relativised by aspects of heterochromy and socioeconomic heterochrony. The dichotomy of differentiated development does not follow a particular pattern. Simultaneously, it seems dual: it seduces through a certain degree of freedom (discernible, perceptible, or apparent), but it also makes itself guilty through the reticence that singles it out. In the end, differentiation brings advantages and requires sacrifices, but it is as much a part of the spirit of the individual as it is of the way economic entities act.
{"title":"Economia și societatea sub lentila multiculturalismului. Contraste: heterocromie și heterocronie economico-socială","authors":"Gabriela Bodea","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.26137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.26137","url":null,"abstract":"Multiculturalism implies social acceptance: it does not involve consensus, but social awareness. As witnesses of diversity, we identify change itself, as a continuous process, relativised by aspects of heterochromy and socioeconomic heterochrony. The dichotomy of differentiated development does not follow a particular pattern. Simultaneously, it seems dual: it seduces through a certain degree of freedom (discernible, perceptible, or apparent), but it also makes itself guilty through the reticence that singles it out. In the end, differentiation brings advantages and requires sacrifices, but it is as much a part of the spirit of the individual as it is of the way economic entities act.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140973512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.25976
Sorin Ciutacu
Professor Cousineau demonstrates an impressive original scholarly kind of comprehension of modernist texts, submitting them under scrutiny with an archetypal critical lens and thus reveals “the uncanny return of the Manole Complex in nine masterpieces of literary modernism”. The intellectual spark that inspired Professor Cousineau was Mircea Eliade’s Commentaires sur la Légende de Maître Manole where Eliade’s claims that Manole’s wife does not actually die: “She is, rather, transformed; her soul leaves her body of flesh and bones and goes to live in the stone and plaster body of the monastery”. (Eliade, 1994, p.168) In each of the chapters of the volume under discussion, the author further elaborates on Eliade’s concept of architectural body, finding it under sundry metamorphoses in the iconic literary modernist works from Europe and USA.
Cousineau 教授对现代主义文本的原创性学术理解令人印象深刻，他以原型批评的视角对这些文本进行了审视，从而揭示了 "九部现代主义文学杰作中马诺情结的不可思议的回归"。激发 Cousineau 教授灵感的思想火花是 Mircea Eliade 的《Commentaires sur la Légende de Maître Manole》，其中 Eliade 声称，Manole 的妻子实际上并没有死："相反，她被转化了；她的灵魂离开了她的骨肉之躯，进入修道院的石头和石膏躯体中生活"。(Eliade, 1994, p.168)在本卷的各章中，作者进一步阐述了埃利亚德的建筑体概念，发现它在欧洲和美国的标志性现代主义文学作品中经历了各种蜕变。
{"title":"The Séance of Reading. Uncanny Designs in Modernist Writing by Professor Thomas Cousineau","authors":"Sorin Ciutacu","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.25976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.25976","url":null,"abstract":"Professor Cousineau demonstrates an impressive original scholarly kind of comprehension of modernist texts, submitting them under scrutiny with an archetypal critical lens and thus reveals “the uncanny return of the Manole Complex in nine masterpieces of literary modernism”. The intellectual spark that inspired Professor Cousineau was Mircea Eliade’s Commentaires sur la Légende de Maître Manole where Eliade’s claims that Manole’s wife does not actually die: “She is, rather, transformed; her soul leaves her body of flesh and bones and goes to live in the stone and plaster body of the monastery”. (Eliade, 1994, p.168) In each of the chapters of the volume under discussion, the author further elaborates on Eliade’s concept of architectural body, finding it under sundry metamorphoses in the iconic literary modernist works from Europe and USA.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140977374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.26016
Alexandru Ofrim
Folklorists, ethnographers and anthropologists have dedicated few studies to the night, and they especially emphasized its negative representations: an interval of darkness, of anxiety and fear, a time of intensified activities of evil supernatural forces. By favoring imaginary and mythical components, night was taken into consideration as an exceptional and extraordinary time, as a negative counterpart to the day, and not as a natural reverse of it. For a long time, the night did not draw the attention of historians, being perceived as a time when nothing happens, a time for rest and sleep. Starting with Jean Verdon’s pioneering book (“La Nuit au Moyen Âge”, 1994), historians have become increasingly interested in night habits, and explored the nightlife of people in ancient societies, bedtimes and waking times, sleep duration. The history of sleep has become a new field of research, opened by the American historian Roger Ekirch (2001, 2005), who advanced the theory that people in pre-industrial societies used to sleep differently. During the night, the sleep was biphasic (or segmented), divided into two moments and separated by a period of wakefulness (watch) at around midnight (between the first sleep and the second one). In our study we intend to verify if the results of Ekirch’s research are also applicable to the realities of the Romanian society in the 18th-20th centuries. We must recognize the difficulties of a history of nocturnal time, the fragmentary nature of the sources, the lack of direct and explicit testimonies (few people have been able to subjectivize their experience of sleep and transmit written testimonies). Therefore, we investigated sources such as chronicles, judiciary documents and literary texts, in search of the segmented sleep pattern. We have identified direct or indirect references to the two periods of sleep, and the intervening period of wakefulness. These references allow us to cautiously advance the hypothesis that this sleep pattern also existed in pre-modern Romanian society, in rural and urban environments. The future researches, based on teamwork, will more accurately determine the validity of this hypothesis.
{"title":"Représentations et pratiques nocturnes dans la société roumaine (XVIIIe – XXe siècles)","authors":"Alexandru Ofrim","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.26016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.26016","url":null,"abstract":"Folklorists, ethnographers and anthropologists have dedicated few studies to the night, and they especially emphasized its negative representations: an interval of darkness, of anxiety and fear, a time of intensified activities of evil supernatural forces. By favoring imaginary and mythical components, night was taken into consideration as an exceptional and extraordinary time, as a negative counterpart to the day, and not as a natural reverse of it. For a long time, the night did not draw the attention of historians, being perceived as a time when nothing happens, a time for rest and sleep. Starting with Jean Verdon’s pioneering book (“La Nuit au Moyen Âge”, 1994), historians have become increasingly interested in night habits, and explored the nightlife of people in ancient societies, bedtimes and waking times, sleep duration. The history of sleep has become a new field of research, opened by the American historian Roger Ekirch (2001, 2005), who advanced the theory that people in pre-industrial societies used to sleep differently. During the night, the sleep was biphasic (or segmented), divided into two moments and separated by a period of wakefulness (watch) at around midnight (between the first sleep and the second one). In our study we intend to verify if the results of Ekirch’s research are also applicable to the realities of the Romanian society in the 18th-20th centuries. We must recognize the difficulties of a history of nocturnal time, the fragmentary nature of the sources, the lack of direct and explicit testimonies (few people have been able to subjectivize their experience of sleep and transmit written testimonies). Therefore, we investigated sources such as chronicles, judiciary documents and literary texts, in search of the segmented sleep pattern. We have identified direct or indirect references to the two periods of sleep, and the intervening period of wakefulness. These references allow us to cautiously advance the hypothesis that this sleep pattern also existed in pre-modern Romanian society, in rural and urban environments. The future researches, based on teamwork, will more accurately determine the validity of this hypothesis.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140972271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.26049
Cristina Nicolaescu
The goal of this paper is to present the characteristics of Eugène Ionesco’s dramatic texts, a reason why the genre of avant-garde and theatre of the absurd are also considered, with a view to revealing their major ways of functioning. By pointing out the different dimensions of dramatic language, the emphasis is on those elements that differ from current oral and written language. Starting from the times of decadentism, a crisis of character can be noted in the theater around a type of individual who, as an alienated individual, cannot find his identity in a hostile surrounding world. One of the direct consequences of this crisis will be the impossibility of interpersonal communication, which will be best demonstrated with the concept and tenets of the theater of the absurd. In this context, the study of the theater of the 20th century is done from the perspective of cognitive semantics, as an autonomous level of language. The approach is organised around two notions: dramatic conventions and the actual language of the dramatic texts. The interpretative theory rooted in semantics is applied while analysing Ionesco’s short plays. The starting point is the linguistics of the text as described by Eugen Coşeriu. Capturing the meaning and the means by which it is constructed is one of the objectives in accord with the main principles of cognitive linguistics. The way of analysing the meaning in a text is given by the presence of some textual functions, as possibilities provided by language through relationships that the linguistic sign establishes in the discursive act. The specificity of the discourse comes from the combination of verbal and non-verbal elements, in order to highlight the playwright’s original style. The particularities of this type of language based on an ontological representation of the actional nature in human existence are also investigated. There are two dimensions recognisable in the language of literature: one is specific to the genre and the other one is particular, giving originality and uniqueness. The textual meaning in between these dimensions needs to be reconstructed from all their constituents identifiable at different levels of analysis. Ionesco distanced himself from the conventional and traditional theatre, finding a new formula for the dramatic genre in his own vision of what drama should be like. Ionesco’s dramatic work includes short plays and extensive plays in which the author expresses his adversity against totalitarian regimes. He is the representative of the theater of the absurd and anti-theater. The corpus for this research is composed mainly of the plays The Bald Soprano, The Lesson and The Chairs, the most representative plays for the avant-garde spirit, short plays on the theme of language emptied of meaning and non-communication. Language has an impact on thinking and the resulting actions, which relates it to the ontology of human existence. As dramatic language is preponderently structured on dialog
{"title":"The semantics of language in Eugène Ionesco’s plays","authors":"Cristina Nicolaescu","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.26049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.26049","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this paper is to present the characteristics of Eugène Ionesco’s dramatic texts, a reason why the genre of avant-garde and theatre of the absurd are also considered, with a view to revealing their major ways of functioning. By pointing out the different dimensions of dramatic language, the emphasis is on those elements that differ from current oral and written language. Starting from the times of decadentism, a crisis of character can be noted in the theater around a type of individual who, as an alienated individual, cannot find his identity in a hostile surrounding world. One of the direct consequences of this crisis will be the impossibility of interpersonal communication, which will be best demonstrated with the concept and tenets of the theater of the absurd. In this context, the study of the theater of the 20th century is done from the perspective of cognitive semantics, as an autonomous level of language. The approach is organised around two notions: dramatic conventions and the actual language of the dramatic texts. The interpretative theory rooted in semantics is applied while analysing Ionesco’s short plays. The starting point is the linguistics of the text as described by Eugen Coşeriu. Capturing the meaning and the means by which it is constructed is one of the objectives in accord with the main principles of cognitive linguistics. The way of analysing the meaning in a text is given by the presence of some textual functions, as possibilities provided by language through relationships that the linguistic sign establishes in the discursive act. The specificity of the discourse comes from the combination of verbal and non-verbal elements, in order to highlight the playwright’s original style. The particularities of this type of language based on an ontological representation of the actional nature in human existence are also investigated. There are two dimensions recognisable in the language of literature: one is specific to the genre and the other one is particular, giving originality and uniqueness. The textual meaning in between these dimensions needs to be reconstructed from all their constituents identifiable at different levels of analysis. Ionesco distanced himself from the conventional and traditional theatre, finding a new formula for the dramatic genre in his own vision of what drama should be like. Ionesco’s dramatic work includes short plays and extensive plays in which the author expresses his adversity against totalitarian regimes. He is the representative of the theater of the absurd and anti-theater. The corpus for this research is composed mainly of the plays The Bald Soprano, The Lesson and The Chairs, the most representative plays for the avant-garde spirit, short plays on the theme of language emptied of meaning and non-communication. Language has an impact on thinking and the resulting actions, which relates it to the ontology of human existence. As dramatic language is preponderently structured on dialog","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140971723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.25927
Alexandra Olteanu
The lifespan and popularity of a subgenre are determined by the inventiveness with which novelists develop and innovate the standard formulas. The judicial novel emerges as an extension of the popularity of the outlaw novel, adding a technical dimension to the misdeeds committed by wrongdoers. The outlaw and judicial novels are anthropomorphized subgenres that set in motion symbolic models, with a central figure dominating the entire course of events. The judicial novel reconfigures the perspective of naturalism, transforming the social milieu into a triggering factor for reprehensible acts. Shocking acts, such as crimes or suicides, and their mysterious circumstances, are analyzed from multiple angles, akin to using a set of parallel mirrors, while the brisk steps of investigations are fascinatingly reconstructed within the eloquent phrases of the novelists. One of the central ideas that the judicial novel seeks to develop is the sacrifice as a social practice, whether symbolic, articulated in the imposition of precarious living conditions leading to extreme gestures. Spatiality and temporality constitute the central pillars that compose the dramatic scenes of the Romanian judicial novel. Crimes are plotted and committed in the moonlight, in neighborhoods or on winding streets. The schematism of gloomy settings and the rudimentary nature of character profiles are countered by allusions to an undefined darkness, the contours of which elude discernment. The judicial subgenre utilizes conventions from the detective novel formula, involving the exaggeration of a cause-and-effect relationship as inevitable and the conquest of a reassuring imaginary, complementary to the moral imperatives discussed by Romanian novelists determined to rehabilitate the reputation of the genre through fictional digressions on morality. In its dimension of historical crime fiction, the Romanian judicial novel not only accentuates its documentary aspect, showing how the institutions responsible for investigations and judicial processes function but also the expansiveness of historicizing interpretations of the analyzed bloody events. Within the context of a dynamically structured novel distinguished by thematic configuration and ideological significance, the incorporation of illustrations transcends mere decorative intent. The judicial novel strategically incorporates illustrations as a highly effective extratextual approach. This not only disrupts the linear narrative trajectory and heightens suspense but also concurrently bestows substance upon the ethereal images adeptly invoked by the literary text.
{"title":"Romanul judiciar. Către un nou subgen al romanului istoric românesc","authors":"Alexandra Olteanu","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.25927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i2.25927","url":null,"abstract":"The lifespan and popularity of a subgenre are determined by the inventiveness with which novelists develop and innovate the standard formulas. The judicial novel emerges as an extension of the popularity of the outlaw novel, adding a technical dimension to the misdeeds committed by wrongdoers. The outlaw and judicial novels are anthropomorphized subgenres that set in motion symbolic models, with a central figure dominating the entire course of events. The judicial novel reconfigures the perspective of naturalism, transforming the social milieu into a triggering factor for reprehensible acts. Shocking acts, such as crimes or suicides, and their mysterious circumstances, are analyzed from multiple angles, akin to using a set of parallel mirrors, while the brisk steps of investigations are fascinatingly reconstructed within the eloquent phrases of the novelists. One of the central ideas that the judicial novel seeks to develop is the sacrifice as a social practice, whether symbolic, articulated in the imposition of precarious living conditions leading to extreme gestures. Spatiality and temporality constitute the central pillars that compose the dramatic scenes of the Romanian judicial novel. Crimes are plotted and committed in the moonlight, in neighborhoods or on winding streets. The schematism of gloomy settings and the rudimentary nature of character profiles are countered by allusions to an undefined darkness, the contours of which elude discernment. The judicial subgenre utilizes conventions from the detective novel formula, involving the exaggeration of a cause-and-effect relationship as inevitable and the conquest of a reassuring imaginary, complementary to the moral imperatives discussed by Romanian novelists determined to rehabilitate the reputation of the genre through fictional digressions on morality. In its dimension of historical crime fiction, the Romanian judicial novel not only accentuates its documentary aspect, showing how the institutions responsible for investigations and judicial processes function but also the expansiveness of historicizing interpretations of the analyzed bloody events. Within the context of a dynamically structured novel distinguished by thematic configuration and ideological significance, the incorporation of illustrations transcends mere decorative intent. The judicial novel strategically incorporates illustrations as a highly effective extratextual approach. This not only disrupts the linear narrative trajectory and heightens suspense but also concurrently bestows substance upon the ethereal images adeptly invoked by the literary text. \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140973718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.25951
Ioana Alexandra Lionte-Ivan
This paper analyses the ways in which Romanian culture struggles to forge, at the level of historical and cultural discourse, an identity, a “personality”, and a specificity. It observes, within the process of forging its identity through a series of avatars, the discursive strategies through which specificity is revealed as an essential form of national uniqueness as well as the compensatory trends of identity fabrication. The paper also attempts to highlight the forms of historical and literary mystification through which, over time, Romanian culture responded to complexes related to its age, identity, belatedness, heredity, legitimacy, etc. Thus, the analysis reveals that, in essence, all the efforts, complexes and myths through which an identity was negotiated at the level of the histories of literature and Romanian historiographical texts betray, in fact, the same spectrum of the Identity-Otherness dialectic. Romanian culture, like other emerging cultures, was forced, first to survive and, later, in order to have a potential for prosperity, to define itself as a distinct entity by relating to the surrounding cultural reality, its growth and evolution taking place either under the sign of antagonism (i.e. a refusal of allogeneic import), or under that of synchronism (as permeabilization with regard to foreign influence), but, necessarily, as a reference to the Other. Moreover, the paper highlights, at the discursive level, the two main poles that have obsessively polarized the questions of descent and heredity within Romanian culture: its Roman and Dacian ancestries. The nuanced intentions underpinning the cultural need for international recognition by means of belonging as well as differentiation are discussed in the process.
{"title":"Historiographic imaginary and hypotheses of heredity in the configuration of Romanian cultural identity","authors":"Ioana Alexandra Lionte-Ivan","doi":"10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.25951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v7i1.25951","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses the ways in which Romanian culture struggles to forge, at the level of historical and cultural discourse, an identity, a “personality”, and a specificity. It observes, within the process of forging its identity through a series of avatars, the discursive strategies through which specificity is revealed as an essential form of national uniqueness as well as the compensatory trends of identity fabrication. The paper also attempts to highlight the forms of historical and literary mystification through which, over time, Romanian culture responded to complexes related to its age, identity, belatedness, heredity, legitimacy, etc. Thus, the analysis reveals that, in essence, all the efforts, complexes and myths through which an identity was negotiated at the level of the histories of literature and Romanian historiographical texts betray, in fact, the same spectrum of the Identity-Otherness dialectic. Romanian culture, like other emerging cultures, was forced, first to survive and, later, in order to have a potential for prosperity, to define itself as a distinct entity by relating to the surrounding cultural reality, its growth and evolution taking place either under the sign of antagonism (i.e. a refusal of allogeneic import), or under that of synchronism (as permeabilization with regard to foreign influence), but, necessarily, as a reference to the Other. Moreover, the paper highlights, at the discursive level, the two main poles that have obsessively polarized the questions of descent and heredity within Romanian culture: its Roman and Dacian ancestries. The nuanced intentions underpinning the cultural need for international recognition by means of belonging as well as differentiation are discussed in the process.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140974492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Rural Voices","authors":"Iuliana Cindrea-Nagy, Roland Clark","doi":"10.3828/jrns.2023.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/jrns.2023.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134909380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aim of this article is to explore religiosity in an urban Turkish Muslim Roma community from the Dobruja region of Romania. The article is based on fieldwork research consisting of semi-structured interviews, life histories, and participant observation in the post-socialist town of Medgidia. The research is an emic study which seeks to describe the representations of Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia and the way they understand, negotiate, and practice Islam. I draw on Arolda Elbasani and Olivier Roy’s definition of religiosity as the way an individual believer experiences his or her relationship to religion and faith. Considering Islam an essentially emotional category, I investigate what Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia feel it means to be Muslims, the dynamics of their agencies within their environment, and the emotional elements of their personal narratives. I observe how they perform identity to maintain a certain coherence between their autobiographical selves and the environment in which they live.
{"title":"Practicing Islam among a Double Minority in Dobruja (Romania): The Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia ( <i>Mecidiye</i> )","authors":"Adriana Cupcea","doi":"10.3828/jrns.2023.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/jrns.2023.12","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is to explore religiosity in an urban Turkish Muslim Roma community from the Dobruja region of Romania. The article is based on fieldwork research consisting of semi-structured interviews, life histories, and participant observation in the post-socialist town of Medgidia. The research is an emic study which seeks to describe the representations of Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia and the way they understand, negotiate, and practice Islam. I draw on Arolda Elbasani and Olivier Roy’s definition of religiosity as the way an individual believer experiences his or her relationship to religion and faith. Considering Islam an essentially emotional category, I investigate what Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia feel it means to be Muslims, the dynamics of their agencies within their environment, and the emotional elements of their personal narratives. I observe how they perform identity to maintain a certain coherence between their autobiographical selves and the environment in which they live.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134908161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the interwar period, forestry emerged as a powerful tool through which state institutions attempted to shape social and natural environments in rural Romania. This article evaluates how criminality, poverty, surveillance, exploitation, and labor intersected in Romania’s forests through the figure of the forest ranger, responsible for a range of tasks from managing forest ecology to serving as the state’s representative in the woodlands. Using a microhistorical approach, the article recounts the story of a Zlatna ranger investigated for theft in the late 1920s. His story and the individuals involved offer important insight into the asymmetrical power relations and local social factors that negotiated the forests’ legibility. Rangers served as part crucial asset, part embarrassing liability, existing in a liminal space between the state and local society. Through local forestry agents, their informal networks, and the “involuntary monitors” these invariably created, state forestry officials had valuable points of contact with rural society. This article demonstrates the value of rural perspectives in historical studies, challenging prevailing notions that conceptualize rural people as simple, irrelevant, or singlemindedly opposed to the encroachment of the modern state.
{"title":"“I Am a Poor Man with a Family”: Rangers, Social Welfare, and Monitor Networks in the Forests of Interwar Zlatna, Romania","authors":"George Andrei","doi":"10.3828/jrns.2023.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/jrns.2023.10","url":null,"abstract":"In the interwar period, forestry emerged as a powerful tool through which state institutions attempted to shape social and natural environments in rural Romania. This article evaluates how criminality, poverty, surveillance, exploitation, and labor intersected in Romania’s forests through the figure of the forest ranger, responsible for a range of tasks from managing forest ecology to serving as the state’s representative in the woodlands. Using a microhistorical approach, the article recounts the story of a Zlatna ranger investigated for theft in the late 1920s. His story and the individuals involved offer important insight into the asymmetrical power relations and local social factors that negotiated the forests’ legibility. Rangers served as part crucial asset, part embarrassing liability, existing in a liminal space between the state and local society. Through local forestry agents, their informal networks, and the “involuntary monitors” these invariably created, state forestry officials had valuable points of contact with rural society. This article demonstrates the value of rural perspectives in historical studies, challenging prevailing notions that conceptualize rural people as simple, irrelevant, or singlemindedly opposed to the encroachment of the modern state.","PeriodicalId":36723,"journal":{"name":"Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134909392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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