Volume XVIII (2013), no. 2

Collective memory, despite its status as patrimonial notion within sociological tradition, recently escaped this rigid disciplinary straitjacket, becoming a cardinal concept in the contemporary discourse of social sciences and humanities. Understanding the nature of collective memory cannot be reached before clarifying the relation between memory and history. This paper analyzes the different configurations under which the relationship between history and collective memory evolved throughout time. The central argument advances the idea that collective memory crystallizes at the area of confluence between history and mythistory, taking historical facts from the former, and organizing them according to the mythical logic of the latter. [1]

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[1] This work was possible with the financial support of the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/107/1.5/S/76841 with the title „Modern Doctoral Studies: Internationalization and Interdisciplinarity.”

The present article analyzes a selection of Romanian memoirs of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) in order to reveal the images of our fellow participants in the conflicts and sources of identities and representations that have been formed along the years. The study of these writings in the context of the gripping subject of alterity brings original insight in a matter that is still particularizing South-Eastern Europe. Considering the diversity of perspectives in the selected memoirs, we can paint an overall picture of the conveyed representations that may still overshadow the collective mentality. [1]

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[1] This work was possible with the financial support of the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/107/1.5/S/76841 with the title “Modern Doctoral Studies: Internationalization and Interdisciplinarity”.

The Romanian traditional village, within a historical reality that validates the concept of “tradition” regarding the entire rural geospace with a multi-millenary, as well as multicultural habitation, is abruptly eradicated, during the middle of the 20^th century, synchronously, the millenary values of the community fading away in increasingly dim touches, assumed by censorship and self-censorship, coordinates of a “hygienic mentality”, shaped from conventions, rules, customs and common laws. Two of the major categories responsible for the functional capacities of censorship–self-censorship, likened one to another, enter within an area of vulnerability. These two categories are equally impropriated by the official institutions (the church, political and administrative structures), respectively by the levers of the community (the council of the elders, evening village sittings, group work, the fair, to become the talk of the village, customs and traditions characterized by a significant and crucial impact…).

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In the current study, I analyze cultural tendencies, preconceptions about cultural differences among Hungarians from Romania that are present in the virtual space. I have tried to explore the way this community treats different situations, conflicts resulted from cultural differences. The examined interface is a community blog written by Hungarians from Romania, where users share their stories considered typical for Balkanic culture. Because of the negative pejorative meaning, the site functions as a book of complaints, but also gives place to heated debates about Balkanic identity. As a result of the three years of research (from November 2008 to October 2011) I have tried to describe the trend of westernization in the Eastern European cultures, taking into consideration the characteristics of online communication as well. [1]

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[1] This work was possible with the financial support of the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/107/1.5/S/76841 with the title “Modern Doctoral Studies: Internationalization and Interdisciplinarity”. I would also like to express my thanks to Márta Fingermann for the correction of the text.

The article describes urban marginality in Cluj (Romania) as it has developed in recent years and has transformed the town’s landfill into an inhabited area that hosts today approximately 1500 persons. The author observes that Anti-Gypsy racism becomes an important building block of neoliberalization as it “justifies” evictions and residential segregation by racializing ethnic Roma. She states that in cases when residentially segregated spaces are located nearby polluted areas (landfills, water treatment plants, chemical factories or deposits) the analysis of the phenomenon should observe how environmental racism dehumanizes poor Roma and pollutes the milieu where they are forced to live. [1]

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[1] This article is linked to the author’s presentation at the series of events organized by the doctoral school “European Paradigm” at Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, with the topic “University for a just society”. The series aimed at offering occasion for critically discussing on the social role of knowledge production, on university education as public good, on the function and positioning of the university in today’s society, but as well as about the public intellectual who practices his/her academic carrier assuming social and moral responsibilities. On April 23, 2013 our debates focused on the topic “Landfill and environmental racism” (with the participation of Mihaela Beu, expert in environmental protection, sociologist dr. Cristina Raţ and anthropologist dr. Enikő Vincze, university teachers at BBU, founding members of the Working Group of Civil Society Organizations). By this very event the organizers were also marking the World Day for Safety and Health at Work (28th of April), observing the inhuman conditions in which informal landfill workers labour, among others in the city of Cluj, Romania. Most importantly, this article builds on experiences gained by the author from her involvement into local civic activism against segregation (www.gloc.ro) and into research concerning spatialization and racialization of social exclusion (www.sparex-ro.eu).

Starting with a theoretical approach, the presentation will focus on the new environment which we shape in order to respond to our newly born needs. Buildings do not focus anymore on cultural or local identity, instead they become an interactive environment that can be controlled and reshaped through a touchscreen; it is a sophisticated environment, but at the same time, it lacks identity – in the traditional sense of the word. We are designing intelligent buildings, which are more likely to focus on inventing their own fictional identity, rather than on the context. These multifunctional buildings, which host a wide range of functions – starting from coffee shops up to airports – are designed in such a way that from the moment that you set foot in them, they take over the control. The building actually decides for you.

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The premise of the present study is identifying the main characteristics that render the haiku poem perceptible as “artistic peak” of Japanese language potentialities. By turning poetic and cultural-semiotic perspectives to advantage while discussing a literary text, the following analysis tries to probe the way in which haiku retrieves a world of concentrated emotion and of creative spark created by trivial facts, and transforms them in poetry capable of orienting the spirit towards satori, or Zen enlightenment. All this is done using an extremely reduced lexical inventory. Through the diffuse and ineffable, but especially through silence, a unity between the never ending, varied and complex “seen”, and an enlivening, simple and impenetrable “unseen” is realised within the haiku. Also called “a model for an aesthetic of silence”, the haiku proposes living and intuitively discovering reality which unfolds infinite silences by recording a graceful moment, and thus offers the reader considerable freedom in his own intervention to create meaning. Only a language characterised by “ambiguity” and “high dependence on context”, together with a culture highly imbued by Zen philosophy could create, we believe, a favourable context for the birth of a type of poetry whose shortness could guarantee formal perfection and whose simplicity could stand proof for semantic depth.

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