CONTENTS - NUMBER 2, DECEMBER 2002

SYMPOSIUM

THE POWER OF MEMORY: REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

GABRIELA KILIÁNOVÁ: Introduction
LUTZ MUSNER: Vienna –– Urban Memories and the Reification of Culture
PIA OLSSON: To toil and to Survive: Wartime Memories of Finnish Women
HEATHER HOLMES: Remembering Their History: Memories of Irish Migratory Agricultural Workers in Scotland
GABRIELA KILIÁNOVÁ: Lieux de mémoire and Collective Identities in Central Europe. The Case of the Devín/Theben/Dévény Castle
TAMÁS FARAGÓ: Seasonality of Marriages in Hungary: Church Rules and Local Customs
BORUT BRUMEN: Transmission of the ”Good Old Times” and the Power of Imagined Tradition

ARTICLES

VLADIMÍR BAKOŠ: The Coexistence of Scientism and Surrealism in Slovak Culture
KATARÍNA POPELKOVÁ: Towns in Slovakia from the Perspective of an Ethnologist. Background and Results

CALLS FOR PAPERS

VIENNA -- URBAN MEMORIES AND THE REIFICATION OF CULTURE
LUTZ MUSNER

E-mail: lumusner@duke.edu

Central-European cities with a significant historical heritage materialized through an architectural landscape that does not only consist of housing quarters, museums, archives, boulevards, squares, palaces, and memorials, face a specific paradox. Though the economy, new political premises such as a common European market of commodities and capital, and the imperatives of technological change demand far-reaching interventions into the urban topography by implementing new infrastructures, potentially abandoning or at least reshaping the material remains of the historical heritage, growing numbers of urbanites mobilize against such interventions and articulate their anxieties that the unique character of their city could be destroyed.

pp. 111-126

TO TOIL AND TO SURVIVE: WARTIME MEMORIES OF FINNISH WOMEN
PIA OLSSON

E-mail: pia.olsson@helsinki.fi

The article concerns the way women have remembered their wartime experiences in Finland almost 50 years afterwards. Special attention is paid to a certain group of women called the Lottas, who worked voluntarily both on the home front and in the theatre of operations supporting the military forces. The organization was suppressed by order of the government after the war, but despite this some stereotypical pictures of it have persisted to this day. I will discuss how these women themselves have responded to this public revaluation of wartime and to women's role during it. The material referred to in the article is a set of written reminiscences collected at the end of the 1980s. The memories are shown to be linked both to a generation and to a gender, and they speak out not only for the time of war but also for the years after it.

pp.127-138

REMEMBERING THEIR HISTORY: MEMORIES OF IRISH MIGRATORY AGRICULTURAL WORKERS IN SCOTLAND
HEATHER HOLMES

E-mail: heather.holmes@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Autobiographical accounts are important constructs of the past and past experiences. They account and present what happened in the past. The written document presents select events, which its author considered was important and played a central role in their personal history, development and identity. The cross-examination of a number of accounts which draw on personal experience shows how groups chose to remember, and also to suppress or forget aspects of their past history. This collective memory is especially important for minority groups of ethnic workers, especially those which occupied a marginal role in society and found it difficult to become integrated into their host society. An example of this phenomenon can be seen in the case of Irish migratory workers who travelled from the west of Ireland to undertake seasonal agricultural work in Scotland each year during the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Such workers spent only a few months of the year in Scotland, and were seen as figures that formed part of an "underworld" that was not always easy to locate. This paper examines aspects of the migration and employment conditions of the Irish seasonal migratory workers in autobiographies and autobiographical novels. It discusses the way in which these works created a memory of the migration through their authorship, in the published text as a material object, which can transfer memory and through the reader of the published text. It assesses the memory which was left of the migratory work by one of the groups of seasonal workers, the potato workers, and questions how representative was the record of their experiences of the migratory work.

pp. 139-152

LIEUX DE MÉMOIRE AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES IN CENTRAL EUROPE (THE CASE OF DEVÍN/THEBEN/DÉVÉNY CASTLE)
GABRIELA KILIÁNOVÁ

E-mail: uetgk@klemens.savba.sk

The paper discusses the significance of Devín Castle for the collective memory of different ethnic groups/ nations - the Hungarians, the Germans/Austrians, the Slovaks and the Czechs in the 19th and 20th centuries. It studies the construction of collective (national) identities in Central Europe, in the multiethnic and multicultural environment, where enforcing the principles of nation states and of the political and/or cultural concept of nation clashed against problems. The author argues that the same place could serve for several lieux de mémoire of different groups, but these groups wanted to occupy the place themselves and if possible only for themselves.
The second outline in the paper is the question of frontiers. Devín is discussed as an important point on the state border, a symbol, where one can symbolically or in reality erect, gain, win or loose the frontiers. The other assumption lies in the importance of the border as a mainly imagined and constructed demarcation, which serves as group self-determination and at the same time works as a defining element and assists separation from the other group. Collective identity is born and maintained by comparing with other identity/identities, it is based on the separation and isolation from the others. The paper follows the birth of monument at the beginning of the 19th century, continues with the construction of lieux de mémoire, changes of the meaning and significance of the place in the second half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century.

pp.153-165

SEASONALITY OF MARRIAGES IN HUNGARY: CHURCH RULES AND LOCAL CUSTOMS
TAMÁS FARAGÓ

E-mail: tamas.farago@econhist.bke.hu

According to the ethnographic research in traditional Hungarian society the customary time for marriages was the late fall and the end of winter. Although this norm is widely known, nevertheless it does not correspond to the results of local studies in historical demography and does not fit the patterns identified through the analysis of official statistical data on marriage seasonality. There were at least half a dozen such regional patterns in traditional Hungarian society and these were defined much more strongly by religious denominations than by a connection to agriculture. The formation of regional seasonality patterns was also influenced by the level of urbanization and literacy, by the strength of traditional mentality, and of course by social and occupational stratification. The author is working with vital statistics/parish register records, which represented the real actions. He contrasts the figures representing the marriage movements and the beliefs/norms in the collective memories about the timing of the marriage picked up by ethnographers during their fieldwork. The weight of the work is on the processes but it also depicts the contrasts between the norms contained in the collective memories and the activities.

pp.166-176

TRANSMISSION OF THE "GOOD OLD TIMES" AND THE POWER OF IMAGINED TRADITION
BORUT BRUMEN

E-mail: borut.brumen@mail.ljudmila.org

In the ethnology and anthropology of local communities there are innumerable statements about the "good old times". Through their analyses we can ascertain that the "good old times" were usually neither as good, nor as old as they have been presented to us. In the context of local communities these times generally appear as references of selective remembering, with which the local communities shape their "authentic" past, which reflects in the present and influences future strategies. We are therefore dealing here with social memories and social times whose contents are presented as the traditions of local communities. In this paper, I would first like to draw attention to the problem of multiplicity of memory narratives in which the "good old times" are recalled. The next step is comparison of the data from Mediterranean ethnographies and determination of the factors, which influenced the constructions of social times. With the "good old times" local communities certainly attempt to restore the continuity with the adequate past. The contents of the "good old times" are above all based on continuous remembering and comparison with the present. The "good old times" and the traditions connected with them cannot be placed into the framework of Hobsbawm's concept of invented traditions. In the conclusion I therefore try to define the concept of imagined tradition as an analytical tool for the understanding of such social times.

pp.177-185

THE COEXISTENCE OF SCIENTISM AND SURREALISM IN SLOVAK CULTURE
VLADIMÍR BAKOŠ

E-mail: fubakos@klemens.savba.sk

The co-existence of scientism and surrealism in the Slovak context was defined by the demarcation of their functions based on the distinction between art and science. Our hypothesis postulates a certain closeness between scientism and surrealism on the level of perception, or on the level of empirical basis, but we have emphasized that their aim at their own levels (of science and art), was not an increased degree of closeness, but the coexistence upon the demarcation of conceptual thinking and imaginative creation. They perceived these fields as equal parts in their effort to comprehend the complexity of reality. Their aim was to integrate these parts in their creativity and avant-garde activity.

pp.186-197

TOWNS IN SLOVAKIA FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF AN ETHNOLOGIST. BACKGROUND AND RESULTS
KATARÍNA POPELKOVÁ

E-mail: uetpopka@klemens.savba.sk

The present study deals with the development and the future trends of urban research in Slovak ethnology. Traditionally, the town has not been a part of original area of interest in this discipline. Today, urban studies have started to develop even on a national level.

pp.198-204

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