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The Functional Sites of “Sites of Memory” in Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School in Budapest
55-66Views:49Various aspects of the culture and educational practices of the bilingual school in Budapest’s 15th district, including educational materials, educational drama, and educational rituals, among others, reflect the functional sites of Pierre Nora’s memory sites. These sites are crucial in shaping students’ cultural identities and connecting them to their heritage. By incorporating sites of memory into their school life can help students understand and identify their cultural roots, develop a sense of belonging, and acquire the linguistic and cultural competencies needed for cross-cultural communication. In this paper, based on related memory theories, I explore the definition of functional sites in the sites of memory in schools. Combining the fieldwork in Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School, it is believed that there are many functional sites of the sites of memory in the bilingual school. The representative functional sites are educational textbooks, dramas, and rituals. This article studies the three main functional sites of memory. It examines how these sites are used in bilingual schools to enhance cultural understanding, promote linguistic and cultural competence, and foster a sense of belonging among students. We will also discuss how these functional sites of memory sites reconstruct or reinterpret Chinese cultural memory.
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Cultural Heritage or Traces of the War? A Case Study From Oblivion to Memory and ’Heritagisation’
139-154Views:140The paper explores the memory of the internment camp in Tiszalök (Upper Tisza region, Hungary) in selected social, historical, and ethnic contexts. After a brief theoretical overview of key concepts such as heritagization, the author highlights some significant facts and events from the history of the camp. This camp was established after the Second World War, and deportees of German origin, who could not go home to their families after returning to Hungary from Russian captivity, were held there. Furthermore, the paper outlines how the history of the camp was first concealed in public, then gradually discovered by scholars and memorialized through commemorative events and a monument which was erected by the local community and former inmates. Subsequently, the author presents the case study of a deceased Hungarian woman who used to work in the camp’s kitchen. Based on several interviews with her relatives and after the careful examination of a wooden box from her estate, the author demonstrates that her family history and the history of the interned members of the German minority are closely intertwined in a way, which had been unknown to her family. Finally, the author argues that similar personal objects may reveal further untold stories and entangled memories from the postwar years.
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Marginalized Texts of a Glorified Genre: The Valorization of the (Folk)tale in Hungary
23-42Views:141Attention towards and interest in the genre of the tale began rather belatedly in Hungarian culture. The paper provides a concise overview of the history of assigning value to this narrative genre: how it transformed from a trivial genre of idle amusement of the uneducated people into a precious cultural item that is an essential part of national heritage being safeguarded and studied from a number of perspectives. Parallel with the rise of the genre, a decline of the earliest known tales has taken place due to certain authenticity criteria retrospectively applied by newly formed disciplines as well as the standardization and naturalization of a specific mode of narration.
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The Saddle: Our Eastern Cultural Heritage
149-193Views:91The study summarizes the most important knowledge about the saddle, the eastern heritage of Hungarian culture, based on the results of the research and an exhibition. Animal husbandry, especially keeping horses, has always played a very important part in Hungarians life. Saddling horses was significant up until the middle of the 20th century in Hungary, we have information about it from noblemen, the aristocracy, the upper social stratas, as well as from peasants and market town inhabitants. Objects and memories connected to riding culture, riding as a way of life, were present in the memory of the upper social classes and in folklore. There were different types, varieties of saddles, just as there were varieties of almost all the objects in our culture, depending on who used them and for what purposes. In general we can say that as the terms and conditions of life changed so objects were transformed and developed. The same is true for saddles, they belong to a group of objects which gained their final, almost perfect shape very early in time, so very few changes were made to them. The saddles used by Hungarians were very suited to riding. The big advantage of wooden saddles is that they spare horses. There are two basic types of saddles usually known as the western and eastern types. From a professional point of view, on the basis of examined material, we speak of the pommel-sole/panel type and the fork-side panel/bar type. The Hungarian saddle belongs to the Eastern type. A unique and famous variety of the Hungarian saddle is the Tiszafüred saddle. Light cavalry equipped with Hungarian harness spread around Europe, so Hungarian type saddles (Hussar saddle ) were an essential part of military equipment. Nowadays there is an increased interest in the riding tradition, and the historical past, and attention is focused on the Hungarian wooden saddle that has been used successfully over the centuries.
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Post-UNESCO Effect: Chhau’s journey from Cultural Sentiment to Commercialization
69-88Views:123Chhau, a traditional masked dance form of West Bengal has been enlisted as ‘UNESCO- Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, 2010’. In 2015, UNESCO along with the MSME of Government of West Bengal developed a ‘Rural Craft Hub’ in Chorida village of Purulia district centring Chhau. Consequently, tourism in the area got international and national patronage. This entire phenomenon encouraged the commercialization of the traditional dance and craft form associated with Chhau as a result of heritagization. Unfortunately, the implication of the heritagization happened in a flawed fashion which eventually led to folklorization and institutionalization while compromising their contextual significance. The paper explores how heritagization ensures the sustainability of intangible tradition like Chhau while leading to folklorization and institutionalization of performance and craft. The paper also documents the history and ritualistic significance of Chhau to draw a lucid comparison between the traditional form and the form which is the result of folklorization. The paper establishes that the Heritagization- Folklorization- Institutionalisation are intertwined with each other in the context of Chhau. From the interviews of the tourists and locals associated with Chhau, it is evident that the organization concerned with policy making should keep it in mind that an enormous distortion of craft and performance comes along when the target buyers in the market are alien to the traditional context. In such a scenario, the contextual significance of a craft form can be kept intact if the targeted buyers can be made aware of the contextual and functional relevance of the folkloric element that they are consuming in its modernized version.