Bulgarian Conference on the Ethnology of Socialism: The Senses in Everyday and Festive Life

Abstract

This review offers analytic information on the interdisciplinary conference held in Bulgaria (with participants from Northern Macedonia, Russia, Germany, India) on the socialist period as perceived through the fi ve senses. All the papers took into account relevant binary oppositions such as “self — others”, “socialist — capitalist”, “holiday — everyday life”, “home — offi ce space”, and “Bulgarian — Turkish”. There were many papers dedicated the sense of taste, and these discussed socialist-period tastes, culinary practices, and typical and non-typical menus at home and outside the home. The visual medium was approached using the contexts of fashion, interiors, and souvenir production, with or without an ideological aura. Discussions confi rmed the main thesis of the organisers that in ethnology the role of refl ection and personal experience is growing, and that obtaining analytic memoirs of those scholars who lived in the socialist period is also gaining importance, so that generations of younger scholars are provided with the context of the socialist epoch.