Projects / Programmes
HOLIDAYS AND CONSTITUTION OF NATIONAL COMMUNITY IN SLOVENIA
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.04.00 |
Humanities |
Ethnology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H000 |
Humanities |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.05 |
Humanities |
Other humanities |
holidays, communities, identity, social memory, cultural heritage, transition
Researchers (19)
Organisations (3)
Abstract
Until the last two decades, holidays were in the Slovenian ethnology investigated mainly in the context of the cultural and historical paradigm of folk culture research. This trend has accumulated the rich heritage of knowledge on folk festivals and customs which are included in the synthesis published in The Festive Year of Slovenians (Niko Kuret 1965–1971). Since then, the Slovenian festive landscape changed radically. It has been affected by the restructuring of the society, changes in political, social and economic systems. The changes not only affected the official holiday calendar which usually marks the events the national community should identify itself with. Particularly since Slovenia independence, some religious holidays gained their former position again, some have been withdrawn from the calendar of state holidays and were replaced and joined by other state holidays and European holidays. Others are novelties related to the flows of cultural globalisation with the mass, popular and consumerist culture. In the last decades, particular attention is given especially at the local level, to the former folk and locally specific holidays. Moreover, some of the important days of the previous political system are unofficially being celebrated. Thus, holidays are conquering new venues, touch different generations in various ways and acquire new meanings. They are constitutive at the level of political and cultural, local, generational and other layers of social and cultural identity, but not uniformly and with the same intensity.
The focus of our research interest is mainly to examine the complex and multifaceted relationships of mutual constituitivity of the holidays and identities of social groups. More generally, it is about identifying and relating the factors that constitute the holidays, and the answers to the questions of how specific social groups are involved in the process of constitution of the holidays, how they identify themselves with them and what those values are that make sense of the holidays, ie., which “make” them national, state, international, local, family, etc. In the holidays, we see a medium for discourse about the social reality and diverse collective identities.
These aspects were developed mainly in the research practice of modern anthropological orientations, and also in cultural studies. In this research project for the first time, a rich production of ethnological knowledge about the traditional processes and practices is connected with anthropological thematisations of political aspects, and the discourse analyses of mass culture and its political-economic aspects, refined by scholars in cultural studies.
The ongoing process of (re)creation of group identities is of interest to us from the diachronic, as well as synchronic perspective. Therefore, the study is in the analytical sense designed on two levels.
1. On the historic axis between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, we will explore the role and importance of holidays that were constitutive for the creation of Slovenian national and/or state community within the multinational Habsburg Monarchy (1848–1918), in Yugoslavia as a national state of Southern Slavs (1919–1941) and in Yugoslavia as a multinational community (1945–1991). In the independent Slovenia, the traces of socialist holidays will be examined. At the end, we are going to reflect how the Slovenian version of the European consciousness is expressed in the modern inaugural and commemorative holidays.
2. Sample survey of contemporary holidays and festive practices will connect festive practices with concrete social groups and individuals. The research will focus on how public holidays and festive practices re-produce a series of identities between the urban and the rural, traditional and global, and how the festive practices transcend gender identities.
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Significance for science
From the outset, the content and organisation of the research group's work was planned so as to include research institutions with different approaches: researchers from the department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology from the Faculty of Arts, the Institute for Slovenian Ethnology from the multidisciplinary Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the cultural sciences research group of the Faculty of Social Sciences. In addition, participating researchers used a spectrum of various research methods (analysis of primary and secondary resources, fieldwork, etc.) and various epistemological approaches (ethnology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, religiology). All this contributed to the advancement of the scientific field in Slovenia.
Significance for the country
The work of the research group is not only of academic value to a better understanding of public holidays in the context of community building, but with the publication of two scientific monographs, several scientific articles, the members of the research team appearances in the media, etc., it also resulted in a wider cultural and social value. Better understanding of holidays in this context are relevant to the conservation of national heritage and tourism development.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2011,
2012,
2013,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2011,
2012,
2013,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
