The author wants to give an account on the calendar customs of a csango village in Moldova. The key motive of her analysis are customs as modes of organizing, maintaining, and functioning cultural information. She believes that the customs of hungarian csangos go beyond that, they show the ethnic specificity of the local culture, and these „ethnic” customs act as distinguishing features of the community. The custom system in this reading differentiates communities doubly, on a formal plain differentiates them towards the exterior, in its content this system offers internally a pattern of orientation for those inside it. Finally customs act as a frame for the whole of life and community (individual–the other–the dead and God), as well as the three temporal experiences (Past–Present–Future). The author brings up-to-date information to back her theoretical insights.
This paper aims to present the system of punishment in moldavian csango villages. Upon comparing westeuropean, szekler and csango examples, we will focus on outlining a common european set of punishments which took its shape during early modernity and modernity too. The typology of csango punishment practices thus outlined will throw a light on the archaic forms of reestablishing order, and the retaliation of norm deviance, in short the cultural-historic rootedness of norm reestablishing. The typology of these specific csango cultural ways of social sanctioning and social retaliation can be set in the backdrop of community law.
The present study follows the interpretation of the discourse on the Moldavian Csángós from one particular point of view and based on one particular corpus. At the beginning of the new millennium the Hungarian press from Transylvania regarded the Csángós as one of the main topics and that resulted in a process of narrative colonization. Based on the model of culture nation, the Csángós became a part of the Hungarian nation, being represented as the most hard fated ethnic group, a true symbol of fate.
According to the Munich based scholar the history of moldovan csangos was much more influenced by major european events, then it was earlier thought. One has to mention here their (i.e. csangos) strictly defined frames by the two known totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. One key event of matter to csangos from the hungarian side was the resettlment project on the summer of 1944 that eventually failed. This clearly shows the ideological positions of both the hungarian and rumanian government of that time, as well as the role of Nazi Germany on the csango issue.
The paper aims to describe phenomenas of modernization in Moldavian csango villages in the context of religiosity. It interprets the most significant shifts in the lifeforms and traditional religiosity, the change of central values, tendencies of secularization and the emergence of sectarianism. The author argues that the religious experience gradually evades community and (Church) legitimation, so that the ever larger individualization of religious experiences and conceptualization leads to the pluralization of worldviews. The impersonalization of social control, the changing norms that affect everyday life, the rolechange of religious values, the individualization of communities, basically the transforming forces of modernization on society disable the catholic church to fully integrate the csango village population, who in rising numbers attend new teachings that offer an updated worldview, as well as a brand new set of community/religious norms. The author argues, that sectarianism/sectarianization is a part of modernizational strategies, and that as a consequence of transnational lifeforms, sects have become part of social mobility.
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