European Ethnography Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025, Birkalan-Gedik, Hande; Kikas, Katre; Kuhn, Konrad J.: Encountering Uncertainties in Ethnology and Folklore: Actors – Milieus – Strategies. An Introduction. In: Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture 23:1 (2025), pp. 1–9

A woman is working in a field. She is working with her hands, her gaze focused on the ground. Because the sun is low, the shadow of the woman working is silhouetted against the field. One can imagine, in the background, an agricultural environment with more fields. In the foreground, carefully cut and laid down plants are visible. But a second, larger shadow is dominant, and to some, this shadow may look irritating. This shadow has the shape of a person but is strangely conical towards the bottom. The shadow dominates the picture, and it almost seems as though the woman is looking away from it. Does the working woman know that someone is approaching? Has she noticed the person? Is the situation threatening? The shadow belongs to the Finnish ethnographic researcher and photographer Tyyni Ilma Vahter (1886-1969). A closer look reveals the camera in her hand, just when the picture was taken. Vahter took the picture and, perhaps accidentally or deliberately-we do not know for sure-also herself. The Finnish Heritage Agency's archival records reveal that the photo was taken in 1942 in East Karelia during field research. The woman working in a flax field is part of the project documenting "common people" in their everyday work. These work situations were often posed, suggesting that the case might be "staged." By showing the researcher as a 'ghostly' silhouette, it becomes clear that both the field partners and the researchers are always involved in the construction of ethnographic knowledge. On the other hand, in its ethereal uncertainty and latent menace, the image also refers to the general uncertainty inherent in every ethnographic research project. Even the specific field situation was shaped by great uncertainty, as the photo was taken during the so-called Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union, when ethnographic research was only possible in close relation to military conflicts-in the

2025, Gardens of Memory: Itineraries and Sanctuaries

his chapter explores the power of eating together as a symbol and
practice of social relations with powerful political implications in our
contemporary times of neoliberal austerity and xenophobia. Food
can be used for many purposes, of course, and nothing inherent in food prevents it from being turned to exclusionary practices or capitalist commodification. Nonetheless, food does bring people together throughout the world, and it would not be hard to suggest that something in food and eating affords connections between people. Here, I wish to take another look at a longstanding anthropological term, commensality, and suggest some of the ways that it can be reexamined in the present context.

2025

this section is mostly an outline of items to cover in greater detail in later installments that depict the cross fertilization of major earlier civilizations on Western European Metric Standards relationship with Astronomic cycles in... more

2025, Ethnographia

Ament-Kovács Bence: Kontextualizáció és mikroelemzés a 18. századi Dél-Dunántúl történeti néprajzi vizsgálatában. Ethnographia, 1345, 4, 683-699. (2024)

2025, Anthropology of East Europe Review

The Anthropology of East Europe Review Volume 22 Number 1 Spring 2004 ... Signifying Self in Plural Cultural Contexts: Subjectivity, Power and Individual Agency in North-western Greek Macedonia ... Ioannis manos Department for balkan... more

2025, Cornell University Press

Energy Talk disrupts the claims of institutionalized categories such as sustainability, green economy, climate change, and net zero that promote a shared consensus on energy transition. These concepts often conceal the intricate details... more

2025, Századok

In 1848 the feudal diet was replaced by a system of popular representation in Hungary. In
Pest county, dominated by the liberal reformist opposition that was determined to keep
the desired political direction, the electoral district of Dunapataj was organised with its
centre located at the Calvinist Dunapataj in order to counterbalance the influence of the
Roman Catholic archiepiscopal seat of Kalocsa. The paper explores the socio-communal
eﬀects of the opposition that was encoded in the new location right from the start, only
to present itself anew after the first phase of neo-absolutism. It also analyses the strategies
that the county administrative elite used to maintain its dominance. In doing so, it pays
special attention to the role of Imre Ivánka, former colonel of the Hungarian revolutionary
army, who belonged to the political circle of Kálmán Tisza and was a member of the
county elite, and had just started his political career that eventually took him to the
Upper Chamber of the Hungarian parliament.

2025, Hagyomány és változás a népi kultúrában : Ünnepi kötet Dám László 60. születésnapjára Nyíregyháza: Jósa András Múzeum, pp 35-53 ( Jósa András Múzeum kiadványai ; 58)

Vineyards of Nobles and Serfs in the Towns of the Domain
of Tokay in the 18t h
and 19t h
Centuries
Significant changes took place in the production and trade of wine in Tokay
in the 18t h
and 19T H
centuries. The changes affected the local and not local ("extra
neus") wine producers. Despite the negative processes there were wine growers
among the aristocracy and lesser nobility who obtained large grapewine planta
tions and sold their wines in local inns, and significant quantities of wine were ex
ported as well. The majority of the wine producers, however, were smallholders
who had a tiny piece of land only. These small vineyards were unsuited to profi
table cultivation, and an increasing number of smallholders abandoned the vine
yards. The crisis of wine production was demonstrated even more dramatically by
the fact that the rich burghers of the free royal towns of the Highlands also with
drew from grapevine cultivation.

2025, Első Század

„A suszter mit értett ahhoz, hogy hogyan kell szántani?” Kérdezte az egyik interjúalanyom. S valóban elgondolkodtató, hogy például a Szombathelyi Cipőgyár munkásai milyen gyakorlati segítséget tudtak nyújtani az általuk agitált, s... more

„A suszter mit értett ahhoz, hogy hogyan kell szántani?”
Kérdezte az egyik interjúalanyom. S valóban elgondolkodtató, hogy például a Szombathelyi Cipőgyár munkásai milyen gyakorlati segítséget tudtak nyújtani az általuk agitált, s később patronált nagytilaji termelőszövetkezet tagjainak

2025, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies

In the wake of the triumphant university student movement that took place 17 years ago, in defense of Article 16 of the Greek Constitution-a provision which stipulates that higher education should be accessible at no cost and should be provided exclusively by public institutions-the right-wing conservative government of New Democracy has enacted a new law for the establishment of private universities by circumventing constitutional processes. The objective of this policy is to implement the neoliberal strategy of transferring public sectors to private capital, thereby rendering them profitable entities. This paper describes how the neoliberal policy has been trying to be implemented in Greek higher education during the last thirty years and that this policy is an implementation of precisely this neoliberal principle. This paper also expounds on the struggles against neoliberal policies in Greece and the pivotal role of the movement in defense of the public university, emphasizing its militant nature and providing an account and assessment of the strategies being employed in order to prepare for a resurgence.

2025

Focusing on Sinti concepts of time, space, memory and respect, this paper explores the overlooked presence of Sinti in the Alps and their relationship to Alpine landscapes, which is closely linked to their relationship to their dead. Their way of making the world calls for a rethinking of concepts concerning the relationship between humans and land and opens up a different possibility for thinking about societies in the Alps.

2025, In: Kis József et al. (szerk.): Földügyi és hagyatéki szabályozás Magyarországon. Társadalmi gyakorlat a 16–20. században, Bp.

A 18. században országos tendenciaként jelentkezett az erdők allodizációjának folyamata, ami a településeknek adott urbáriumok bevezetése révén teljesedhetett ki. E folyamat jelentős hatással volt az erdőhasználati módok átalakulására is.... more

2025, In: Petrik Iván (szerk.): Helytörténeti tanulmányok. Válogatás a Pápai Levéltári Napok előadásaiból. Pápa

Az 1850-es és 1860-as években gyakran követték egymást az aszályos, szinte csapadékmentes időszakok. Így Magyarország agrártörténetében ez a korszak a rossz termésről, az ínséges időszakokról nevezetes. Az igazán nagy csapást az 1863. év... more

2025, Savaria a Vas megyei Múzeumok Értesítője

A magyar múzeumoknak a Kádár-kori (1956-1989) központosított pártállam alatt megvalósított intézményesülése a mai napig jelentős hatással van a hazai közgyűjtemények rendszerére, működésére, mibenlétére. Ez az időszak a regionális és helyi múzeumokban a néprajzi muzeológia sajátos virágkorát eredményezte. Ennek alapját egyrészt a 20. század második felében bevezetett szaktudományos igényességű, klasszifikáción és katalogizáláson alapuló módszertan képezte, másrészt, még lehetőség volt a mezőgazdaság szocialista kollektivizálása előtti hagyományos falusi népi műveltség dokumentálására, összeírására, az eredeti tárgyi emlékek összegyűjtésére. Harmadrészt pedig az országos társadalmi gyűjtőmozgalom megszervezése a néprajzi gyűjtemények létrehozásának, fenntartásának, gyarapodásának a támaszát jelentette. A múzeumi kollekciók, archívumok képzésen túl mindez jelentős mértékben együtt járt új kiállítóhelyek létrejöttével is. A globális keleti és nyugati nagyhatalmi politikai rendszereket elválasztó Vasfüggöny menti periférikus vidékeket is magába foglaló, a magyar nyelvterület nyugati peremvidékén fekvő Vas megyében a pártállami korszak néprajzi muzeológiájának kiemelkedő helyi alakjává nőtte ki magát Bárdosi János etnográfus, aki 1962-től egészen haláláig, 1983-ig a Szombathelyen működő Vas Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága-Savaria Múzeum Néprajzi Osztályának vezetője volt.
Kulcsszavak: néprajzi muzeológia, tárgyi kultúra, népi építészet, tudománytörténet, múzeumtörténet

2025, Levéltári Évkönyv. Új folyam

2024, La Mougeotte - hors série n°14

Le dossier s'intéresse à la période de la modernisation, avec le passage au
machinisme dans l'agriculture, de la charrue Dombasle à la tractorisation massive des campagnes dans les années 1950. La période 1820-1950 permet de regarder les stratégies de modernisation, les réticences, les
alliances, le rôle des pouvoirs publics. Ce papier permet aussi de présenter la méthode d'analyse systémique appliquée à l'agriculture et aux territoires.

2024, Literatura Ludowa

The aim of this article is to discuss the collection of texts of pre-modern folklore from Cieszyn Silesia (Teschen Silesia, Těšín Silesia), published by the folklorist and ethnographer Karol Daniel Kadłubiec. The article answers the question of how it was possible to collect texts of pre-modern folklore in a given area in the second half of the 20th century, that is, on the threshold of the epoch called post-modernity. The author of the article considers the possibilities of using the folklore material collected by Kadłubiec for the reconstruction of the pre-modern image of the world.

2024

This study falls into the category of Cultural Astronomy or Astronomy in Culture. It is focused on the research carried out by the American anthropologist Frank G. Speck in the 1930s and 1940s on the cosmology of the Algonquian people.... more

2024, Berettyóújfalu és Berettyószentmárton 19. századi társadalomtörténeti kérdései. Tanulmányok és források. Berettyóújfalu, 2024.

2024, EtnoAntropologia

Tracing the history of folk studies in Ukraine during the 20th and 21st centuries, one can notice multiple changes in the naming of scientific disciplines: ethnography, ethnology, anthropology. It was neither a mechanical nor an aesthetic step: it was due to deep crises in the humanities and, consequently, to academic transformation processes. The transition from the self-name "ethnographer" to "ethnologist" took place in Ukraine in the 1990s and marked a break with the Soviet scientific methodology. The crisis in the Ukrainian ethnology in 2010s led to the emergence of a new scientific discipline: anthropology. Both events took the form of a "quiet revolution". This can be explained by the lack of appropriate professional education: in Soviet times, neither ethnographers nor ethnologists were trained in Ukraine, and today there is no specialization as anthropologist in Ukrainian education. That is why new specialists appeared as a result of self-education and retraining from other scientific fields. This, in turn, led to a certain eclecticism of the research methodology in Ukraine.

2024

What you have before you is a copy of a talk I gave in Oxford, England, more than twenty years ago, entitled “Hunting the European Sky Bears: Reflections of ursine cosmological beliefs in English Mummers' plays and Pyrenean Basque performances.” The talk was a presentation at The Fourth Conference on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (INSAP 4). Magdalen College, Oxford, England, August 3-9, 2003. At that point in time, I had become intrigued by the following question, a question that no one else was asking: why do the costumes of so many European “bear impersonators” involve the use of straw in some fashion? These are performers who still today show up regularly in small villages and towns all across Europe. Whereas perhaps the best-known examples are the German “strawbears”, there many ingenious variants of the costumes. I recognize that the information I discussed in the Oxford talk was a very preliminary attempt to formulate an answer to this question and for the most part all I did was review the variety of the straw costumes without providing any solid explanation for why straw shows up so often in their confection. Since that time, I have explored this problem in far more detail and greater chronological depth, asking whether a diachronic oriented investigation into the changing nature of the costumes worn by these European “bear impersonators”, understood here as ritual practitioners, can provide clues about the way these actors dressed, but much earlier, that is, at a point in time for which we have no visual or written documentation. Over the past two decades the ethnographic and ethnohistoric evidence has been discussed in several additional works, such as the following: https://www.academia.edu/473481/Hunting_the_European_Sky_Bears_German_Straw_bears_and_their_Relatives_as_Transformers (2004); https://www.academia.edu/47735169/Concerning_Germanic_Straw_Bears_St_Nicholas_and_The_Last_Sheaf 2021); and finally, https://www.academia.edu/95747727/What_Makes_the_Early_History_of_European_Shamanism_and_Ritual_Healers_So_Unique_Some_Thoughts_on_a_Little_Studied_Question (2023)

2024

Greek crisis have pointed out that the Greek financial predicament is a byproduct of a deep and chronic political crisis. I propose that we view this political crisis as a crisis of the Social Contract, which generated multiple spheres of economic, civil and civic exclusion, engendering specific public concerns with sovereignty, democracy and asymmetrical relations of power (cf. Thodossopoulos 2014; Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2010). An anthropological approach to the analysis of crisis and democracy in Greece allows us to document local patterns of accountability, historical and political causality and to analyze them in context. The power of indigenous etiology -how people make sense of political affairs -provides us with unique insights into their preferred avenues of claiming and exercising political agency and participation. The qualitative characteristics of Greek politics and governance -especially after 1974 -have been discussed in the literature under the inclusive terms 'clientelism', 'populism', 'corruption', 'statism', and they have been deemed responsible for the inefficiency of the Greek state, the lack of competitiveness of the country as a whole, and ultimately for the lack of fiscal discipline that led to the present financial meltdown.

2024, Berghahn eBooks

This chapter examines an ethnographic paradox. Anti-globalization rhetoric in Greece is predominantly articulated in terms of conspiracy theory, mistrust of other cultures and strong nationalist feelings. The same rhetoric, however, reflects a strong empathy with people and nations that are imagined to be deprived of power, and communicates a global awareness of an imagined community in discontent. In other words, popular antiglobalization in Greece, despite its mistrust of multiculturalism and non-Greek cultural expressions, is paradoxically cosmopolitan with respect to its allegiance to what is perceived to be a community of the non-powerful in the world. To shed some light on this paradox, we look at Greek views of Turks and other ethnic groups as these are negotiated in the critique of globalization and cosmopolitanism. We explore how symbolic enemies (such as the Turks) and other peoples of the Middle East (e.g. the Palestinians) are approached, within the broader context of opposing Western ideological and political authority, with a certain degree of empathy, as fellow victims of the powerful and as disempowered human beings. Our interest in shared discontent with (and within) an imagined community of unhappy peripheral -with respect to power -individuals is inspired by Herzfeld's (1997) notion of cultural intimacy, the mutual self-recognition of shared familiarity, embarrassment and pride. We argue that anti-globalization ideas in Greece are shared with the implicit understanding that an alternative, culturally intimate audience exists, one that includes other disenfranchised peoples in South-East Europe, in the Middle East and more generally, in the world. This reference to a broader brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

2024, Studies on home-made pálinka. The culture and interpretation of home-made fruit distillate in the Lake Balaton region from the second half of the 20th century to the present.

2024, Honismeret 14

(1846) vázolják nehézségeiket: "Ezen irodalmi és művészi vállalat, melynek további megjelenését az idők viszontagságai gátolák, annak idejében ismét folytattatni fog." (Csak első kötete jelent meg. folytatása egészen 1873-ig, a Földrajz' Közlemények megjelenéséig nem, bár részben e vállalkozás folytatásának is tekinthető az 1853-ben elindult Magyarország és Erdély képekben című sorozat.) Céljának azt vallja, hogy meg akarja ismertetni az ország helységeit, várait, tájait, népeit. Természetes, hogy Fényes elmaradhatatlan statisztikája nyitja meg az ismertetést, de azután a kor legjobb írói vázolják fel romantikusan, s a kor ízlésének megfelelően, kissé fellengzősen az ország legérdekesebb helyeit, amelyeket kőnyomatos, nem éppen színvonalas rajzok is kísérnek. Az első magyar nyelvű földrajzi folyóirat nem reprezentálta híven a honismereti tudomány magyarországi fejlettségét, nemhogy még lépést tudott volna tartani a legmagasabb kortársi színvonallal. A XIX. század honismeretének tudományos nívója még nem tudta meghaladni az "államismék" rendkívül heterogén összetételű anyaggazdagságát, melyben megtalálható volt topográfiától, történelemtől, közigazgatási tudnivalóktól kezdve minden, egészen a jogtudományi fejezetekig. Az egész módszer abroncsa a statisztika volt, amely a centralizált irányítás háttérbeszorulásával fokozatosan elvesztette alapvető jelentőségét. Fényes Elek egymaga pótolta a korábbi hivatalt, ugyanakkor teret is nyújtott-kényszerűségből-az öngerincű földrajztudománynak, s benne a mindenkire hatni szándékozó honismereti leírások fejlődésének.

2024, Actas del IV ENCUENTRO DE BECARIES, TESISTAS, ESTUDIANTES AVANZADES E INTEGRANTES DEL IDACOR Y EL MUSEO DE ANTROPOLOGÍAS

En esta ponencia, les acerco algunos de los datos obtenidos de la tesis en producción "Notas sobre usos didácticos del cine en la enseñanza de Arqueología de cazadores- recolectores". La misma se desprende de la experiencia como ayudante alumna (AA) en la materia nombrada, donde se notaba una fuerte dificultad a sostener el ritmo de la cursada, muchas veces por la dificultad del lenguaje técnico utilizado en la bibliografía. Esta observación que atravesó mi experiencia de cursado por una materia de tronco común, fue el disparador para mi posterior postulación en la materia, dentro del rol de AA, esperando poder generar un aporte que facilitara la concreción de los objetivos de enseñanza-aprendizaje, dentro de un Plan Integral (le decimos así, ya que integra las tres grandes áreas separadas en los modelos de enseñanza anteriores a la institucionaIización de la carrera de Antropología en la UNC: Antropología Social, Antropología y Arqueología) de formación profesional.
Tratándose de una materia que por un lado se considera basal para la Arqueología, que es un área de especialidad, pero a la vez se reconoce en vinculación con otras materias, compartiendo temáticas con otras áreas. Y siendo también una de las primeras materias cursadas con enfoque experimental, el desafío de trabajar desde esta mirada y de la manera más democratizadora de conocimiento posible, encontró cierta dificultad en el período de Aislamiento Social Preventivo y Obligatorio, truncando las maneras de llevar el conocimiento a un laboratorio abierto, a la experiencia de talla experimental y a la participación de jornadas de intercambio con especialistas. Una de las opciones fue tomar el cine como recurso, y es a partir de allí que se destejen los siguientes resultados, enmarcándonos desde la Arqueología Pública: pues, no sólo contempla la relación entre cine y arqueología, a partir de la gestión de un sentido común de nuestra disciplina en públicos que no participan en una formación afín. Sino además comprende que una de las formas en que la Arqueología se relaciona con el público, es desde la educación. Aquí nos centramos en la experiencia didáctica, dado que este término acuña el fomento de miradas críticas sobre el conocimiento ya producido.

2024, Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia. Anthology of COST Action “CA 19131 – EuroWeb”

In 2022–2024, textile and fashion scholars came together to write an anthology sharing a new vision of European history as seen through textiles, in the COST Action EuroWeb. During this period, the continent was still dealing with the... more

2024, EtnoAntropologia

2024, Journal of geodesy

We became interested in investigating the origin of the length of the metre as a basis of the metric system after reading Ken Alder's 2002 book "The measure of all things", where we learnt that the metre we use in all our length measurements is about 0.2 millimetres shorter than it was supposed to be. That does not sound like being too far off, but when one realizes that the metre was supposed to be one ten-millionth part of the Earth quadrant, the 0.2 mm translates to a 2 km error in the Earth quadrant. Even with the instruments available at the end of the eighteenth century, when these geodetic measurements were carried out by a couple of French geodesists, the error of 2 km in the Earth quadrant was a little too large to expect. Particularly so as both these gentlemen, Méchain and Delambre, had a reputation of being excellent and very careful observers. When we read in the two geodesists' 1806 Opus Magnum, Base du système métrique décimal ou mesure de l'arc du méridian, that Legendre, when he compared their 1806 results with the results of their predecessors and contemporaries, said: "I'd suspect the irregularities of the local [gravity] attraction on the plumbline [to be at play here]", our interest was definitely aroused. Indeed, the analyses described in this paper confirm Legendre's suspicion: while the error due to the neglect of gravity field is responsible for about 95% of the total error, the error in the meridian length measurements amounts to less than 2% of the total error and the error due to a wrong assumption of the Earth's shape contributed about 3% of the total error. If the careful work of Méchain and Delambre was the only source of error, the metre nowadays would be too long only by less than 4 μm instead of being short by 197 μm. The bulk of the difference is made by not taking the effect of gravity field into account; that they could not have done because the needed gravity field features were not yet known.

2024, Italian American Review

2024, Kostyál László szerk.: Zalai Múzeum 25.

Complex family farms in the wine culture of Lake Balaton at the beginning of the 21st century.
After the change of regime, the establishment of small family wineries on the northern and southern shores of Lake Balaton became typical. After the cessation of state farms, former employees with local expertise
remained self-employed within a family setting. The adjective “family” here is not an economic category, but a greater or lesser degree of cooperation between family members, which involves a great deal of legal flexibility.
In family wineries, the primary source of income comes from winemaking. However, due to their small size compared to large agricultural companies, they have to resort to other solutions if they want to ensure their independence. Thus, in all the examined wineries we can observe the tendency to stand on several legs. They engage in independent commercial activities. The complex nature of the farm also provides other
experiences for the buyer and visitor.

2024, 2020, SSRN Electronic Journal BASIC RESEARCH PROGRAM WORKING PAPERS SERIES: HUMANITIES WP BRP 197/HUM/2020

This paper is focused on the issues of cultural hierarchies in early modern European imperial discourses in all-European discourse about Muscovy and Ottoman Empire and English discourse about Ireland, which have not been previously... more

2024, Gyanó Szilvia (szerk.): Tanulmányok a házi pálinkáról. A házi készítésű gyümölcspárlat kultúrája, értelmezése a Balaton vidékén a 20. század II. felétől napjainkig

2024, Global Journal of Human-Social Science

The traditional shirt/blouse, submitted in the traditional costume patrimony, is one of the most important elements that is valued by artistic and symbolic valences attributed to the creators that told, and still tell, with the help of a single needle and thread, their life stories, aspirations, explaining the connection between people and nature, the divine.

2024, Revue du MAUSS

« Pour les nomades traditionnels du désert, par exemple, l'eau n'est pas "rare", elle est précieuse, et cela, qu'elle soit abondante ou qu'elle vienne à manquer. » Michel Freitag 1. Il y a une quinzaine d'années, probablement un dimanche où il avait rareté de nouvelles, un grand journal américain rapporta, sur cinq colonnes à la Une, les résultats d'un curieux sondage : « America is running out of time ! » Grâce à l'une des questions que les Gallup Polls ressortent à intervalle régulier pour détecter les évolutions de L'American way of life, on apprenait alors que les usagers de la ressource temporelle étaient, d'une année à l'autre, de plus en plus nombreux à se plaindre de passer leur vie à manquer de temps.

2024, Curiosity and Commitment

In this essay I outline the intimate relationship between capitalism and coloniality. Drawing on Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality scholars, I argue that critiques of current European higher education also need to recognize the... more

2024, Journal of American Folklore

2024, Editions de Nicéphore

L'auteur propose plusieurs clés de lecture du mythe de Catherie Ségurane, l'héroïne issue du petit peuple qui participa à la défense de Nice assiégée par les troupes turques et françaises en 1543.

2024, 2010 - Special Issue: Performing Nordic Spaces

2024, Transnational French Studies

In 2015 France counted 1,239 museums. International visitors to France flocked to them in great numbers. The year before they had totalled 83.8 million.1 That is an impressive number for a land of 65.5 million inhabitants. What they, as well as French visitors, experienced in these museums on French soil transported them to many other worlds, and cultures. The museums of the Paris region are, of course, the most important in terms of visitor numbers. The Louvre, the Chateau of Versailles, the Pompidou, and the Orsay together welcomed more than 21 million visitors-foreign and French combined-in recent years.2 We know that the Louvre alone counted a total of 9.3 million entries in 2013, with 70% of them foreign tourists. Perhaps they come to see the art about which they had heard so much. Perhaps they come because one

2024, Träd i Sverige

The tree where the Devil skinned the goat
The common buckthorn, Rhamnus cathartica L., is native to Europe, northwest Africa and western Asia. In North America the species is naturalized, but considered invasive. Although the common buckthorn is still to some extent planted for hedging or grown as a solitary plant in parks, today it is a rather unknown tree in Sweden. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, this small deciduous tree or shrub was a
well-known species in the southern Swedish landscape. In Sweden, the peasantry had several folk names that indicated its appearance, habitat, usage or even worthlessness. In a legend recorded from south-western Sweden and Norway, the tree is associated with the Devil skinning a goat. The shape of the inner bark of the tree may explain this belief: if one peels off the bark of a common buckthorn, the bark becomes shaggy like
goatskin on the inside. The common buckthorn’s berries are slightly toxic, but in earlier times its bark and fruits were used for various purposes. For instance, a dye was yielded from the bark, while the berries were used as a purgative medicament. In folk belief, the tree was also credited to have apotropaic properties.

2024

Με τον όρο «μεταίχμιο» εννοώ το ενδιάμεσο διάστημα ανάμεσα σε αντίθετους ή διαφορετικούς θεματικούς και νοηματικούς πόλους, περιστάσεις, αφετηρίες ή επιλογές. Ανάλογα με το ποίημα, άλλοτε προβάλλονται οι δύο πόλοι, άλλοτε το μεσοδιάστημα και άλλοτε υπάρχει συνδυασμός, αλλά η ποιητική είναι ενιαία. Η ποιητική του μεταιχμίου ως στοιχείο ενότητας του καβαφικού έργου και ως κριτικό και ερμηνευτικό εργαλείο συστεγάζει κάθε λογής μεταιχμιακή διάσταση της καβαφικής ποίησης: χωροχρονική, θεματική, διανοητική, συγκινησιακή και ιδεολογική.Με ορίζοντα αναφοράς την ποιητική του μεταιχμίου, εξηγώ πώς ο Καβάφης επιλέγει και αξιοποιεί τις πηγές του και πώς αποδραματοποιεί αντιθέσεις που εγκυμονούν υψηλή ένταση και είναι δυνάμει συγκρουσιακές. Στην ποιητική του μεταιχμίου οφείλεται και το γεγονός ότι, όπως έχει ήδη παρατηρηθεί, η καβαφική ποίηση αφήνει κατά κανόνα μετέωρο τον αναγνώστη ανάμεσα σε αντίθετες απόψεις και κρίσεις που διατυπώνουν τα πρόσωπα ή ο ίδιος ο ποιητής.