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An Imaginary and an Alternative. A Critical Approach to Modernizing Moldavian Csángó Local Societies

Lajos, Veronika (2015) An Imaginary and an Alternative. A Critical Approach to Modernizing Moldavian Csángó Local Societies. In: Culture, Language and Globalization among the Moldavian Csángós Today. Finno-Ugrian Society, Helsinki, pp. 111-135. ISBN 978-952-5667-68-4

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Abstract

It is widely known that the comprehension of the scholarly findings in an ethnographic field is significantly defined by the actual discourse of the discipline. In my paper, I attempt to show the interrelatedness of the scholarly discourse on the Moldavian Csángós, the researcher’s preliminary presumptions encoded in the academic discourse, the social studies’ stereotyping of the Csángós and the results of a fieldwork study. Two fundamental readings of modernizing Hungarian local peasant societies, including the Csángó ones, are dominant in both Hungarian social sciences and the public view: one, considering modernization as culture loss, and the other, holding the image of a successfully resisting culture. Nevertheless, a third possibility seems to be valid to approach the issue of modernization; one that emphasizes various types of cultural resilience and adaptation, while not denying the possibility of developing modernization skills and flexible responses to macro-level changes. In my paper, I wish to argue that there is reason for this alternative reading of peasantry capable of adapting. I wish to support my statement with examples demonstrating resilience and adaptation derived from the life of an elderly woman (born in 1947) from a Moldavian Csángó settlement, Lujzikalagor/Luizi-Călugăra in Bacău, Romania. I base my findings primarily on the experiences of my ethnological fieldwork in Lujzikalagor from 2005.

Item Type: Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords: moldvai csángó, modernizáció, kritikai megközelítés
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation / földrajz, antropológia, kikapcsolódás > GR Folklore / etnológia, folklór, kulturális antropológia
Depositing User: Dr Veronika Lajos
Date Deposited: 23 Sep 2016 08:51
Last Modified: 04 Apr 2023 11:41
URI: http://real.mtak.hu/id/eprint/39917

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