Feast as a Mirror of Social and Cultural Changes

Book excerpt: Feasting seems to be an inseparable element of peoples’—especially their collective—lives. ___|___ The proposed volume consists of original unpublished texts in which their Authors search for the answers to the following questions: How far have we gone astray from the primeval idea of celebrating the feast, from understanding tradition in terms of the Romanian historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, or the French sociologist, Émile Durkheim? Are there still any traditional, in its very meaning, feasts? If not—if they are invented (Hobsbawm and Ranger [1983] 1992)—why are they called “traditional”? What elements have changed and why? What has had the greatest impact on celebrating feasts? What are the new factors influencing the course of a feast’s celebration? ___|___ It was difficult to categorize the texts contained in this book because the subjects discussed in them very often overlap. Still, it was possible to recognize several accentuated aspects that served as the basis for the division of the book into three sections: 1) Culture and Identity; 2) Ritual and Cultural Values; 3) Culture and Policy. The contributors are scholars who represent various international institutions and fields of research, and use different approaches and methodologies to study the subject of the feast. This publication is an opportunity to bring the results of their research together in one book. The volume contains chapters in which various aspects of feasts, festivals, and festivities perceived as a mirror of social and cultural changes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are presented. It provides a unique and rich resource in the fields of culture, folklore, religion, anthropology, sociology, as well as politics and other cultural and social sciences. In the future, we hope to broaden the scope of our research and to include more ethnic groups and their cultures in order to see the changes they have undergone and factors that caused them. _____ TABLE OF CONTENTS _____ Frédéric Armao (University of Toulon, France), Uisneach: from the Ancient Assembly to the Fire Festival 2017 | Key words: Bealtaine, folklore, Irish festivals, mythology, Uisneach _____ Bożena Gierek (Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland), Lajkonik (Hobby Horse) as Theatrum of the Period of Corpus Christi in Kraków (Poland) | Key words: Corpus Christi, feast, Lajkonik, raftsmen, theatrum _____ Tatiana Minniyakhmetova (University of Tartu, Estonia), Manifestation of Various Values in Traditional Udmurt Feasts | Key words: “beestings,” feast, porridge-meat, symbols, Udmurts _____ László Mód (University of Szeged, Hungary), Grape Harvest Feast as an Attempt to Develop Local Identity and Cultural Heritage. The Hungarian Case | Key words: cultural heritage, grape harvest feast, invented tradition, local identity _____ Marek Moroń (Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland), The Use of Sacrifice Feast of Eid ul-Adha in Bengal as an Instrument of Promoting Communal Violence for Political Purposes. The Situation in the 1920s, 1930s and 2017 | Key words: Bengal, cow sacrifice, Eid ul Adha, Hindu, Muslim, politics _____ Ewa Nowicka (University of Warsaw, Poland), Performing Ethnicity: Buryat Ethnofestivals and a Rediscovered Tradition | Key words: Buryatia, cultural canon, ethnofestival, identity, rediscovered tradition _____ Alīna Romanovska (Daugavpils University, Latvia), Diaspora Festivals as a Way for Development of Cultural Identity in the Regional City: the Case of Daugavpils (Latvia) | Key words: creolization, diaspora, festival, identity, regional city _____ Monika Salzbrunn (University of Lausanne, Switzerland), The Swiss Carnivals of Payerne and Lausanne: Place-making between the mise en scène of Self and the Other(s) | Key words: Brandons, carnival, Othering, performance, place-making, wordplay _____ Tigran Simyan (Yerevan State University, Armenia) and Ilze Kačāne (Daugavpils University, Latvia), Transformations of New Year Celebration in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Era: the Cases of Armenia and Latvia | Key words: Christmas (New Year) tree, Ded Moroz, New Year, post-Soviet, Santa Claus, Soviet, transformation _____ Kiyoshi Umeya (Kobe University, Japan / University of Cape Town, South Africa), Feasts to Send-off the Dead: with Special Reference to the Jopadhola of Eastern Uganda | Key words: agency of the dead, feast, funeral rites, Jopadhola, modernity, Uganda