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The Use of National Minority Culture in Tourism Development
7-25Views:34In our tourist travels, we seek experiences in locales distinct from our places of residence or work. Tourism developments strive to fulfil this desire by showcasing and making tangible some unique local characteristic, thus attracting visitors to a specific place. In resource-poor areas, one of the simplest and least investment-demanding ways to achieve this is by turning a unique element of local culture into an attraction and celebrating it. This does not require costly infrastructure development, but it can still attract tourists. Our study focuses on these local celebrations, which are most often referred to as festivals, feasts or competitions. In the first part of this paper, our goal is to draw attention to a specific group of local festivals, events that focus on the culture of national minorities. Along with examples from Hungary, we present in more detail two festivals: one in Southwest Hungary’s Feked and the other in Southeast Hungary’s Deszk. In the second part of the study, we categorise local festivals based on the cultural elements they highlight. According to my research, four basic categories can be determined. Festivals can be created to celebrate a well-identifiable local cultural or economic phenomenon. There are local celebrations aimed at preserving or reviving disappearing or vanished local cultural elements. There are festivals that emphasise newly invented traditions. Finally, events based on humour or randomness can also be the basis of a tourist attraction.
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Considerations Regarding some Transylvanian-Saxon Manuscript Collections from the Folklore Archive of the Sibiu Socio-Human Research Institute
189-207Views:14The archive of the Association of Folklorists and Ethnographers of Sibiu County, currently in the patrimony of the Sibiu Socio-Human Research Institute, was founded in 1977, at the initiative of Professor Ilie Moise. The archive contains collections and recordings, questionnaires, manuscripts, studies and ethnographic works, carried out by more than one hundred researchers of traditional culture in the main folkloric and ethnographic areas of Romania, since 1950 until today. The study presents the most important manuscript collections from the archive's inventory, with a focus on materials of some minorities, especially the Transylvanian Saxons, proof of the cultural interferences so evident in the southern Transylvanian area.