THE LONG ROAD: 55 Years of a Transylvanian Village

The article deals with a popular image in traditional peasant culture, that of a supernatural being that is believed to be stealing milk and dairy products, and bringing them to its (usually female) owner, thus enhancing her wealth. In Lithuania, this milk stealer figure is called aitvaras/kaukas , in Latvia pūkis , in Finland para , and in Sweden bjara. despite the different names and some other discrepancies in origin and nature, all these images are shown to be essentially similar. The author considers all of them to be rooted in the traditional peasant culture and mentality, which can be characterised to a considerable degree by the concept of ‘limited good’ (Foster 1965). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ab.v15i1.16

The basic goal of ecovillages is to create a sustainable lifestyle and community. Many residents of Hungarian ecovillages consider traditional peasant culture the example of an ecological lifestyle; for them, traditional peasant ecological knowledge and practice is an important reference point. Therefore, the pursuit of ecological ideology and an eco-conscious, sustainable way of life naturally leads ecovillagers to peasant material culture. In this study, I present the revival of handicraft heritage in rural eco-communities. I provide an insight into how traditional artifact-making activities come to life, how the old tools of Hungarian peasant culture are used, collected, and copied, and I present the place and interpretation of these old trades and their masters in these communities. The study is based on my ethnographic-anthropological research conducted in Hungarian ecovillages since 2007.

Estonian ethnography as one of the Estonia-related disciplines was tied with Estonian nationalism from the very beginning. Defined as a science investigating mainly the material side of vanishing traditional peasant culture in the 1920s, it fitted rather well with the Soviet understanding of ethnography as a sub discipline of history. Thanks to the major cooperation projects initiated and coordinated by ethnographers from Moscow, Soviet Estonian ethnographers could continue studying Estonian traditional peasant culture. Their favourite research topics (folk costume, peasant architecture and traditional agriculture) supported Estonian national identity, but also suited the framework of Soviet ethnography. Studying contemporary (socialist) everyday life was unpopular among Estonian ethnographers because the results had to justify and support Soviet policy. They did so unwillingly, and avoided it completely if possible. Despite of some interruption during the Stalin era, ethnography managed to survive as a science of the nation in Soviet Estonia.

The article examines the five expeditions made by Aleksei Peterson, director of the Estonian Ethnography Museum, and his colleagues to the Southern Veps villages (Leningrad Oblast, northeastern Russia) in the late 1960s. These research trips marking the rebirth of the Finno-Ugric direction in Estonian ethnography (ethnology) constitute an important part of disciplinary history. The article, based mainly on fieldwork diaries, focuses on the everyday life during the research trips (logistic challenges, relations with local authorities and the Veps) and analyses the attitudes and knowledge production practices of Soviet Estonian ethnographers interested, above all, in traditional peasant culture.

The island of Ruhnu is an ancient area of Swedish settlement in Estonia. As a result of the emigration of the people of Ruhnu during World War II, the traditional peasant culture has practically disappeared along with the farms and furnishings. Today, no relevant information or precise answers can be found concerning the carpenters who created the furniture that is specific to Ruhnu, including about those who made colourfully decorated furniture. Previous knowledge suggested that the furniture of Ruhnu was created by the farmers themselves mainly by following the examples of the Swedish farmers’ so-called ‘high-status’ furniture. However, detailed visual observation suggests that the fine farm furniture characteristic of the island is recognisably similar in style, and that not all the inhabitants of Ruhnu could have possessed such technical and artistic skills in carpentry. This assumption has been confirmed by Leila Pärtelpoeg, an interior designer who has studied the furniture and furnishings of Ruhnu, and who believes that the fine barn cupboards have either been made by a small group of artisans or perhaps even by a single person.
 This article gives an overview of a study concerning the connections between carpentry tools and the furniture of the island in order to provide possible answers regarding the carpenters who were working in the farms in Ruhnu. In order to get these answers, the remaining furniture details were compared with the carpentry tools from Ruhnu still to be found in Estonian museums and private collections. The research material contained catalogued pieces of furniture and carpentry tools from the Estonian National Museum, as well as from the island of Ruhnu. Information gathered during fieldwork proved useful too. Initial observations revealed that similar techniques had been used for creating the barn cupboards of the farm buildings in Ruhnu, thus supporting the earlier hypothesis suggesting that the compatibility between carpentry tools and profiled wood pointed to a particular Ruhnu artisan (or to specific farms where highly skilled carpenters worked). In order to gain confirmation concerning particular artisans or farms where especially skilled carpenters worked, the catalogued pieces of furniture had to be compared to the carpentry tools of Ruhnu, all of which bore a farm or property mark. Using such property marks (by carving them on the artefacts) was the only way of distinguishing between the carpentry tools from different farms. This gave me the opportunity to place every single tool into the context of a specific farm. In order to find Breadwinner these connections, the similarities between the shape of profile planers’ cut and the laths of the pieces of furniture were compared with the property marks. Mapping the tools on basis of the farms made it possible to compare them to the remaining pieces of furniture and uncover the connections between specific farms and the carpenters’ work.
 Arriving at answers to my research questions was nevertheless difficult as there were few remaining pieces of furniture and carpentry tools that could be used in comparisons. The similarities between the altar of Ruhnu’s old wooden church and the profiles of the cupboard at Korsi farm were the only ones that were really certain. Based on these results, we can suggest that local carpenters and artisans who worked on Ruhnu’s wooden church might have been the same people using the same tools, or that the church furniture only served them as an example. The possibilities of finding apparent similarities between the wooden profiles of the furniture of Ruhnu and the remaining carpentry tools was limited because there was not enough reference material, meaning the results were not as clear as had been expected.
 Keywords: Ruhnu, barn cupboard, farm furniture, carpentry tools, property marks, carpenters

Peasant Society and the Perception of a Moral Economy - Redistribution and Risk Aversion in Traditional Peasant Culture

This chapter examines the connection between food and the senses in the modernizing Finland of the early 20th century. Finland began to seek a place in the concert of European by modernizing the country and its inhabitants. The benchmarks were the countries of Western Europe and their ideal citizens. As technology was driving the world, a scientific view of humanity described the human body as a machine. Food appeared as a fuel. Discussions on the senses bore the mark of these developments. During the first decades of the 20th century, the sense of taste was often seen as very primitive. The proponents of evolutionary theory claimed that the sense of taste would eventually disappear with humanity’s progress. At the same time, modernization and urbanization put pressure on the senses in the form of new kinds of food products and beverages. There was a flipside, though. Industrial foods seemed to ruin the senses. A Finnish newspaper wrote in 1909 that ‘modern cooking’ was likely to provide plenty of work for gravediggers: ‘Nowadays, everything that stimulates taste even to some extent, is considered as a good food.’ In contrast, traditional peasant culture was glorified for its ‘healthy, unspoiled sense’.

Purpose. Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) has been practiced in mainland China for over three decades. This study reviews the development of CBR and describes its practice in Chinese communities in order to discuss current controversies within CBR practice internationally and in the Chinese context.Method. Review of literature. Development of CBR, its principles and controversies internationally and in the Eastern world is reviewed. CBR practice in Chinese communities is examined.Results. Shifting ideology and practices mean many different activities are labelled CBR. Variation across contexts has led to many controversies, specifically: the lack of evidence to support practice; ownership of programs; conceptual differences surrounding autonomy and participation and cultural issues. Contemporary Chinese cultural values and Chinese CBR are shaped by traditional peasant culture, traditional Chinese philosophy and socialist ideology.Conclusion. The review indicates that Western CBR concepts and philosophy cannot be directly applied to the Chinese context. An appropriate model or framework is needed to fit the unique Chinese cultural context and to guide practice in Chinese communities.

The idea of a close relation between the work of the original Kostroma artist Efim Chestnyakov (1874-1961) and the traditional peasant culture has been expressed repeatedly. However, there were no direct parallels between the images and plots of his works and the folk rituals of the calendar cycle characteristic of the Kostroma land. In this regard, the purpose of this study is an attempt at a source analysis of the famous paintings by Efim Chestnyakov Our Festival and Festive Procession with a Song. Kolyada and verification of the previously stated hypotheses. For the first time, ceremonial rounds of courtyards on Yuletide and Saint George’s Day, as well as the carols (koliadki) and folk poems (prigovory) performed by their participants, are considered as the authentic basis of the fairy tales, paintings and clay figurines by Chestnyakov and at the same time as the context of the existence of his works when working with local children. Special attention in the article is paid to mummery as a game technique most in demand by Chestnyakov. According to his countrymen, the artist used disguises and masks traditional for mummery both inside folklore rituals, in which he involved his pupils — peasant children, and in theatrical productions based on folklore subjects invented for them.

Guest workers have been part of the economic and cultural landscapes of the United States since the founding of republics across the Americas, evolving from indentured servants to the use of colonial subjects to foreign nationals imported under a variety of intergovernmental agreements and U.S. visas. Guest worker programs became institutionalized with the Bracero Program with Mexico, which ran from 1942 to 1964, and with the British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program, which began in 1943. Both of these programs were established under the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program to address real and perceived labor shortages in agriculture during World War II. Both programs were structurally similar to programs employed to import colonial subjects, primarily Puerto Ricans, for U.S. agriculture. Although the U.S. Departments of Labor and Agriculture oversaw the operation of the programs during the war, control over guest workers’ labor and the conditions of their employment increasingly became the responsibility of their employers and employer associations following the war. Nevertheless, U.S. government support for guest worker programs has been steady, if uneven, since the 1940s, and most new legislation addressing immigration reform has included some sort of guest worker provision. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, for example, H-2A and H-2B visas were created to import workers primarily from Latin America and the Caribbean for low-wage work in agricultural (H-2A) and non-agricultural (H-2B) seasonal employment. In the Immigration Act of 1990, H-1 visas were added to import guest workers, primarily from India and China, for work in computer programming, higher education, and other skilled occupations. Although an unknown portion of the guest worker labor force resists the terms of their employment and slips into the shadow economy as undocumented immigrants, the number of legal guest workers in the United States has increased into the 21st century.

This study focuses on international migrants from two small villages: Hse Gyi and Yone Ngu. These two villages are flooded during the rainy season. Wikipedia defines human migration as “the movement of people from one place to another with the intention of settling temporarily or permanently in the new location. The movement is often over long distances and from one country to another, but internal migration is also possible; indeed, this is the dominant form globally. Migration may be by individuals or family units.” National Geographic (2005) defines migration (human) as the movement of people from one place in the world to another for the purpose of taking up permanent or semi-permanent residence, usually across a political boundary. An example of “semi-permanent residence” would be the seasonal movements of migrant farm labourers. People can either choose to move (“voluntary migration”) or be forced to move (“involuntary migration”). Return migration is the voluntary movements of immigrants back to their place of origin. This is also known as circular migration. Jessica Hagen-Zanker (2010, p. 9) wrote: “Migration is the temporary or permanent movement of individuals or groups of people from one geographic location to another for various reasons ranging from better employment possibilities to persecution.” This chapter examines these movements of people and their effects on two small villages in Pantanaw Township, Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar.

The Joint UN Program on AIDS reports that India has more than 3 million adults infected with HIV, more HIV-infected adults than any other country in the world. By the year 2005, India will have more people infected with HIV than does Africa. Having sex with a Bombay housewife today is at least twice as risky as it was to have sex with a prostitute in the city's red light district in 1988. 2-3% of all women in the city are infected with HIV. There is ignorance, apathy, corruption, and lack of commitment at all levels with regard to HIV/AIDS. Accordingly, India's lackluster campaign against AIDS launched 10 years ago has lost momentum just as the epidemic is exploding and at a time when traditional beliefs about cultural barriers and the sexual behavior of Indian males are being called into question. Considerable homosexual behavior occurs in India. However, the most important factor contributing to the spread of HIV throughout India is the virus' spread from urban areas into small villages, often through migrant laborers. Ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty in villages will make AIDS prevention especially difficult. Indian government policy forbidding the distribution of condoms in prisons, needles to injectable-drug users, and free drugs to AIDS patients further contributes to the spread of HIV.

To gain comparative insights into middle-class Americans’ child-related values and practices, Grove’s How Other Children Learn examines children’s learning and parents’ parenting in five traditional societies. Such societies are those have not been affected by “modern” – urban, industrial – values and ways of life. They are found in small villages and camps where people engage daily with their natural surroundings and have little or no experience of formal classroom instruction. The five societies are the Aka hunter-gatherers of Africa, the Quechua of highland Peru, the Navajo of the U.S. Southwest, the village Arabs of the Levant, and the Hindu villagers of India. Each society has its own chapter, which overviews that society’s background and context, then probes adults’ mindsets and strategies regarding children’s learning and socialization for adulthood. The book concludes with two summary chapters that draw broadly on anthropologists’ findings about many traditional societies and offer examples from the five societies discussed earlier. The first reveals why children in traditional societies willingly carry out family responsibilities and suggests how American parents can attain similar outcomes. The second contrasts our middle-class patterns of child-rearing with traditional societies’ ways of enabling children to learn and grow into contributing family and community members.

In this paper I will analyze Serbian documentary films about guest workers dating from the last decade of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st century, using the perspective of visual anthropology. I question the popular cultural notions about guest workers in films Весеље у Ждрелу (A Celebration in Zdrelo) by author Kamenko Katic, Звона позне јесени (The Bells of Late Autumn) by author Zoran Milenovic, Кад је Милорад удавао ћерку (When Milorad Gave His Daughter in Marriage) by author Vladimir Milisavljevic, Странац тамо, странац овде (A Foreigner There, a Foreigner Here) by author Sandra Mandic and 242 метра живота (242 Meters of Life) by author Novica Savic. The films deal with a number of issues: the economic aspects of guest workers’ lives, their liminal character, the issues of the second and third generations of guest workers, going away “temporarily” to work, and religious rituals. Even though the films were made recently, they all follow the lives of Vlach and Serbian, or rather Yugoslav guest workers who left to find temporary work abroad in Western Europe in the 1960’s and 1970’s. This serves the purpose of avoiding to deal with contemporary reasons for emigrating from Serbia and thus the possible critiques of current regimes or policies in power at the time the films were made.

The global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe economic, social, and cultural impacts. In India, it has uncovered the harsh reality of the rural migrant labourers, by exposing the risks of their working and living conditions and the chronic homelessness they face in the city. The sudden enforcement of the lockdowns during the pandemic intensified the pre-existing vulnerabilities of the rural migrant labourer force living in the cities. Homeless and forced to return to their villages, the rural migrant workers and their families faced yet another form of marginalisation in their native hometowns as ‘vectors’ of the disease. In light of this context, this paper attempts to explore and understand the experience of migrant labourers during COVID-19 towards issues concerning their livelihood, health, social security, and their experiences of stigma. Furthermore, it also delves into finding the kinds of alternative strategies adopted by the State to resolve and care for these communities. This study critically looks into these aspects through primary empirically collected data, in Muda, a small remote village in Damoh district in the northern part of Madhya Pradesh, a socio-economically backward region of India, with the help of existing secondary information about the region and communities. The study identified that migrants faced significant food, shelter and security challenges at both their place of employment in the city as well as their hometown in the remote village of Muda.