Lud
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The inhabitants of present day Malaysia form a deeply divided community, with respect to social status and socio-economic position. The factors, which lead to the strongest divisions, are of ethnic and racial nature. Malaysia is a country, which is inhabited by at least three separate communities – Malayan, Chinese and Indian. Ethnicity, as is shown by Zakaria Haji Ahmad, a Malayan sociologist, is...
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In Japan, tradition is constantly interspersed with modernity. Despite the fact that in the past this country evolved into an economic power, the traditional culture is still cultivated. The Japanese tradition of today is a mixture of samurai and bourgeois tradition (which derives from the chonin movement). Despite its origins in the past ages, the tradition as it is today has mostly been shaped by...
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The article describes Kvens, a little known ethnic group inhabiting northern Norway. In 1999 the group was granted the status of national minority and in 2005 the Norwegian government recognized Kvenian as a separate language. Not all the people of Finnish origin in Norway are Kvens. Generally, the name is used to denote Finnish-speaking emigrants from Finland or northern Sweden (the biggest migration...
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The article describes a residential house with a campanile, a very rare design in rural housing, and the history of an extraordinary bell-ringer living in Lubomierz, a village bordering on the Gorce and Beskid Wyspowy. This village is inhabited by highlanders who belong to the Zagórzanie group. In 1954 Franciszek Niedospial (called a highlander after the elements of the traditional highlanders' costume...
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The Polish University in Exile has had a long and complex history. It was established on 1 December 1939 in Paris. When Germany invaded France and came to Paris, the university was moved to Great Britain; at that time there were Polish faculties at the universities in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Oxford and London. In 1947 all the fields of Polish academic education were taken over by the Polish University...
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Settlement of emigrants from Bamberg in villages near Poznan started in 1719 and continued until the 1860s. The colonists became the permanent feature of the cultural landscape of Poznan and its outskirts. They have contributed new elements and have strengthened those, which have been dominant here for a long time - diligence, frugality, and religiousness. The similarity of Bamberg colonists to the...
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The article presents the achievements of the International Committee for the Investigation of Folk Culture in the Carpathians (MKKK), an international and interdisciplinary institution established forty years ago. First contact was made between the scholars of IHKM PAN (Poland) and Národopisny Ústav SAV (Slovakia) in 1958, followed by joint research projects conducted with other countries (Romania,...
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This is a review of classic publications, mainly English and Polish, written in the course of 130 years (from 1871 to 2001) on the mutual relations between the concepts in question. At the beginning (more or less until the mid 20th century) anthropology believed that religion (mainly Christian, but not only) is superior to magic. However, in light of new anthropological studies, religious and magical...
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The article attempts to reconstruct the views of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) about the nation and nationalism and their influence on modern research. Durkheim did not create any cohesive and systematic theory of the nation. These problems were not the most important of his interests and have poor connection with the main line of his theory. Moreover, Durkheim seemed to associate modern societies with...
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The word 'skansen' (an open air museum) belongs to words that have been assimilated and are well known in the Polish language. In museology it has a theoretical and practical meaning, which for over a century has been used in the study and institutional protection of historical wooden buildings. When the idea of A. Hazelius was popularized in Poland and when favourable conditions for the development...
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The culture of Polish peasants before 1918 is characterized by mass illiteracy, and for this reason the peasant community can be called an 'oral' community. The author analyses problems connected with the 'orality' of the village, such as regional linguistic differentiation, problems with the propagation of writing and the influence of national language concepts advanced by the intellectuals about...
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The article addresses the life cycle of a contemporary north Sudanese peasant. The author, based on his own experience and interviews, describes the achievements of the local folklore, showing it against the background of the most important events in human life, such as birth and circumcision. The article provides a description and explanation of basic rituals and beliefs of the inhabitants of the...
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Mirosława Zakrzewska-Dubasowa's publication of all the witch trials found in the Lublin town records (1947) remains one of the best and most complete sources for the study of witchcraft in Poland. However, a 17th century court book returned to the Lublin archives as late as the 1960s, and thus unavailable to Zakrzewska-Dubasowa includes one trial for witchcraft and theft of the Eucharist. In this...
