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The Functional Sites of “Sites of Memory” in Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual School in Budapest
55-66Views:50Various 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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The Traditional Village Represented in Romania’s Open-Air Ethnographic Museums
205-216Views:51This paper work is a very brief presentation that brings the reader into the front of the most important open-air museums from Romania and tries to emphasize the value of their identity. This work is, in fact, a presentation of an extensive doctoral program, after which we will publish a book, and we hope that we will be able to develop certain topics right in the pages of the journal Ethnographica et Folkloristica Carpathica. The quick development of museums has generated a veritable Romanian school of museography, recognized both nationally and internationally. The source of this development is represented by the speech of museum; that is how the museum manages to revaluate its available potential and to get imposed in areas of interest from most various: scientific, educational, cultural, touristic, ensuring the representation of as many ethnographical areas as possible. Although the concept of ethnographical museum allows multiple approaches and definitions, this essay highlights the role of the identity of museums and their way of representing the traditional village, given the dynamics and the abandonment of traditions.
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Posthumous Culture of Montenegrins on a Timeline between Past and Present : The Pattern of Behavior
33-53Views:66Montenegro is a country with a valuable and long tradition of everything related to life, especially death. Posthumous culture is remarkably detailed and significant for the people, most importantly in the earlier period when it represented the only foundation that held society together in difficult historical moments. This type of partially morbid way of self-expression of people has its roots in the deep and troubled past, often difficult and cruel to the inhabitants of Montenegro. The attention was pointed at the many traditional aspects, unwritten rules, and customs different from place to place, but in general, preserving the same function. From the type of clothes for the deceased, the eulogies uttered at the gravesite, to the male and female roles at the commemorations – the article handles the typical funeral processes. The aim of this paper is to acquaint the reader with the manner of behaviour of the Montenegrins towards the phenomenon that occurs when a person in the community dies and how a typical family handles the situation. For the sake of the research, interviews with two subjects providing their own perspectives were conducted. The significance of the study is personified by the sometimes contradictory stances of the people on death and the inevitable merging of secular and religious life.
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The Interpretation of Strangeness and its Impact on the Local Society in Beregdéda, Transcarpathia
87-106Views:50My work focuses on the different patterns of experiencing strangeness. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in Beregdéda, Transcarpathia, Ukraine, I try to reflect on why the articulation of strangeness becomes necessary, and how does the appearance of the stranger modify, erode, rebuild or create symbolic boundaries between the Hungarian-Ukrainian-Gypsy ethnic groups living together. At the time of the fieldwork, in spring 2015, the Ukrainian-Russian war conflict provided a breeding ground for stereotypical perceptions of ethnicity, while the appearance of the stranger tourist also led to the strengthening of the relationship between Ukrainians, Hungarians and Gypsies in the local society, and to the formation of a united front. The understanding of the stranger is constantly changing in line with the various regional and global cultural and economic processes and is formulated with individual interests in mind.
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Alligators in the Sewers: Urban Legends about Terrifying Animals and Frightening Places
7-29Views:102The aim of the present study is to provide an overall picture of the nature of urban folklore using the “Alligators in the Sewers” urban legend type circulated in both the Hungarian and international press and by word of mouth. While contemporary legends have attracted only sporadic attention in Hungarian research to date, by illustrating the historical development of this legend type the aim of the present case study is to demonstrate how the phenomenon has existed in the Hungarian press for almost 200 years.
The present study attempts to identify the kind of opportunities for interpretation offered by these stories in the field of folkloristics; the extent to which they are relevant beyond their literal meaning; and the ways in which they shed light on modern-day understandings of the world. Giant reptiles that are not indigenous to Europe are terrifying to the average individual, while at the same time they evoke a yearning for the natural world in city dwellers trapped amid concrete walls. Urban sewers and storm drains hold similar terrors: on the one hand, they are there to remove filth and symbolize the more unsavory aspects of urban life, while on the other hand their hidden presence beneath the ground offers ample opportunity for the projection of numerous fantasies. Animals that lurk in the sewers, from where they emerge to attack people, are manifestations, contained within simple, traditional narrative frameworks, of the murkiness of highly structured societies and of the sense of danger that this opacity engenders in us. The emergence and persistence of such stories can be attributed to a number of social practices, such as circuses, sideshows, and the keeping of reptiles as pets, along with the respective press reports and rumors.