Abstract This article will analyze some Estonian examples of increasingly popular contemporary rituals for creating spiritually meaningful ecocultural bonds. As one example, it offers a case analysis on contemporary beliefs and spiritual approaches related to the fly mushroom, providing an overview of shifts in its meaning compared to older folklore. The author will exemplify how the interest in using the fly mushroom for spiritual purposes has triggered a contested public image: practices related to the fly mushroom tend to be called “dangerous” in public discourse but are viewed by the practitioners themselves as a means to achieve a more holistic, spiritual, and healthy self. Thus, negotiated vernacular representations and media rhetoric that involve elements and keywords like ancient wisdom, divinity, intimate embodied connections with nature and self-development on the one hand, and stupidity, alienation from nature, addiction and danger on the other hand will be discussed. As another case analysis, the article scrutinizes the practice of attributing supernatural characteristics to real-life animals or pets and ways of communicating with them for spiritual guidance and wellbeing. The author concludes that rituals for creating or keeping such ecocultural bonds are in line with contemporary trends for experimenting with ritualized life and supernatural meaning-making but also with pursuits for coping better with insecurities and traumas and escaping boredom in the complicated liquid and technologized modern world.

Abstract Resilience, adaptation, survival, endurance, change, transformation, imbalance – these are all responses to crisis situations and social and economic stresses that are increasingly becoming the focus of academic and public interest. The Carpathian Basin is constantly exposed to strong external influences, to which the local communities, households, and individuals must respond in order to regain their balance, or to transition to a new mode of functioning. In the last three to four decades labor migration became one of the most prominent responses to economic and social pressures and a coping strategy. The convertibility of inequalities and resources between different regions is an opportunity for stabilizing the state of insecurity at home. For the last few years, it has been a common preconception in resilience theories that only strong entities are capable of resilience. Recent research shows that resilience and vulnerability are not mutually exclusive; I offer case studies which illustrate this point. I draw on 15 years of fieldwork with Central and Eastern European migrant women working as care workers in Western countries and Israel. These cases show that the experience of vulnerability and the skills and knowledge gained from it contribute to increasing flexibility, adaptability, and learning capacity, and thus practically lay the foundation for resilient behavior. My research also explores the controversial issue in resilience theories of how responsibility is constituted; i.e., whether the idea of resilience is related to the shifting of responsibility from the social classes in power to the vulnerable groups more prone to disequilibrium. In examining foreign women integrated into the low-level segment of the occupational structure, eldercare, I find that if their physical or mental condition deteriorates, and they are on their own, their vulnerability increases, and the disequilibrium resulting from systemic problems can no longer be corrected through individual resourcefulness alone.

Abstract According to demographic reports, while the marriage rate fell significantly during the pandemic worldwide, this was not the case in Hungary: despite the adverse circumstances, the number of marriages in fact increased, although, at the same time, the number of divorces also rose. What was the reason behind this? Is there perhaps a correlation between the two phenomena? Marriage “fever” during the pandemic, and the rise in the number of divorces, were a direct and indirect consequence of the pandemic and of the recently introduced family loans. The popularity of marriage and, at the same time, the rising divorce rate, and the related social criticism and crisis discourse in particular, triggered reflection on the part of those planning to get married. Engaged couples and newlyweds, contemplating their own marriages, began to formulate and circulate a variety of responses and opinions, albeit with common patterns, about their reasons for marrying and what divorce means to them. Through reinterpretation and innovation, they took concrete steps towards realization and ritualization. Among the main leitmotifs in attempts to reinterpret the meaning of marriage were the duration of marriage, the issue of divorce, and the ideals of individualism and conservatism. In the present paper, I describe marriage and divorce — or rather end-of-relationship — rituals during the pandemic based on the findings of the digital anthropological research (online questionnaires, digital ethnography, and in-depth interviews) that I conducted between 2019 and 2022. My main question concerned the extent to which the practices of reinterpretation and ritualization, observed at both community and individual level, can be seen as instances of community resilience.

Abstract In the following paper, based on a case study of a specific business sector comprising makers of Hungarian artisanal cheese, I examine the impact of radical changes in the external economic environment on individual economic practices. These changes are often experienced in the form of sudden shocks and crises, over which individuals have little influence. I present the complex situations these individuals face, their efforts to respond, and the potential innovations that may emerge as a result. Based on fieldwork among cheesemakers in Pest, Veszprém, and Baranya counties, the case study presents the complex impacts of two recent crises — the COVID-19 pandemic and the inflation crisis — on the different localities. Focusing on the notion of resilience, I demonstrate the varying responses of the studied cheesemakers to these diverse impacts. The fundamental differences between the two crises allow us to examine important aspects of the functioning of economic practices, including the practical benefits of the strategy of pursuing security and diversification in a crisis situation. The two crises highlighted in different ways the vitally important questions of personal contact and trust in the context of businesses that produce “local foods.” Such aspects represent an important advantage in terms of marketing, and a disadvantage when it comes to pricing. At the same time, the intensifying polycrisis makes the resilience of small-scale farms a key issue for the future.

Abstract In this paper I explore the kind of role that herdsman traditions associated with the Great Plain of Hungary (the puszta), a feature also over-represented in Hungarian ethnographic studies, play in the contemporary national consciousness by analyzing the results of a large sample questionnaire survey. I present my topic in its geographic and historical context, primary as reflected in the processes of symbolization and stereotyping during the 19th and 20th centuries. I have concluded that herdsman traditions and, within that, particularly the puszta and its most prominent representative, the region known as the Hortobágy, played an important part in capturing a sense of “Hungarienness” as far back as the 19th century, in the field of auto-stereotypes, hetero-stereotypes and exo-stereotypes alike. This was the result of such a profound process that even 20th century modernization, which in fact swept away the actual traditional lifestyle of the puszta, failed to shake the role that the peasant tradition of the Great Plain played in the field of national symbolization. Tourism, followed by the Hungarian heritage movement, successfully conserved the related cultural elements and shifted the center of tradition to such new areas as the revival movement and experience-consumption (festivals). At any rate, Hungarian society continues to look on the herdsman traditions of the Great Plain as the most authentic source of their national heritage.

Abstract The concept of resilience has been crucial in anthropological community studies over the past two decades. While it is a useful analytical tool, it also has its limitations—many studies on resilience focus on a superorganic entity, the society. By immersing in soft, qualitative data and fieldwork experience, presenting individual life paths and decision-making, anthropologists can gain a better local perspective of what resilience is about. The presentation and transmission of individual choices and intersubjective lifeworlds offer valuable insights into areas that systematic research on resilience often overlooks. In this paper, I argue that it is worthwhile to shift the focus from systemic research to emphasizing individual choices, voices, and life stories in anthropological research on resilience. This shift may gradually imbue the concept of resilience with local concepts and practices. The presentation and communication of individual choices and personal experiences shed light on those areas where systematic research on resilience seems to fall short, marking the beginning of the most exciting part of anthropological research.

Abstract This study examines the impact of the agricultural cooperative currently operating in Csanálos (Urziceni), a Swabian settlement in Szatmár (Satu Mare), on the local economy and society. Agricultural cooperatives played an important role at the beginning of the process of agrarian transformation after the regime change in Romania. Established on a voluntary basis, the successor organizations to the socialist agricultural collectives were able to offset the impoverishment brought about by re-peasantization or forced peasantization during the long transition period, provided a stable financial basis for communities in the difficult periods following the regime change, and, often taking over state responsibilities, represented social cooperation and trust-based social localism. On the other hand, they took advantage of their monopolistic position to hinder the emergence of individual and family farmers. The risk-averse, self-reliant economic model of the cooperatives evokes the self-sufficient organization of peasant farms. Cooperatives can thus be seen as a very specific form of post-socialist post-peasant production system.