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It was immediately after the Second World War that the costume from Maramureș and Oaș regions drew the attention of the specialists in ethnography and traditional art. In the same period, Romanian nationalism reclaimed the value of this traditional costume. Until the instauration of the communist regime, the profile of the peasant from these two regions was vague and partially unknown to the Romanian intellectuals. The first part of the study is concerned with the role of the male's costume in the Romanian protochronist discourse. I demonstrate how it evolved from a hazy image emerging during the 19th centruy, to a hypothetic and falsified „Dacian costume" able to contribute to the Romanian nationalist discourse during Ceaușescu's rule1. In the next three sections of the paper I refer to the design and the evolution of this costume, emphasizing the local, unique and differentiating elements. I particularly insist on the attire' elements that were borrowed from different ethnic gropus and various geographic areas which finally had an influence on the Maramureș and Oaș Romanian costume. In the first section of this paper I took into consideration the effects of the contemporary emigration phenomenon in Oas area on the evolution of the traditional male costume. One of the consequences of migration is - perhaps paradoxical - that this local costume does not disappear, but adapts to the contemporary world, evolves and specializes more and more strictly, becoming a ceremonial costume by excellence. The next two chapters are a reconstruction of what the "recent man's suit" and the "old man's costume" meant, highlighting the parallels, influences, takeovers and morphological similarities between the Romanian costume of Oas and Maramures and that of the Slovaks, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Serbians and Croatians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assesses the intellectual profile of Romanian ethnologist Mihai Pop, from the doublefold perspective of theoretical thinking and institutional work in his field. Lettered in Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism during the inter-war period, Mihai Pop managed to accomplish his formation in a remarkable structuralist-semiotic setting in postwar Romania, in a theoretical stance which remained singular in Romanian research during communism and acquired a well-deserved international recognition. Among others, this stance enabled Mihai Pop to rebuild the domain of Romanian Folklore studies, after the 1948 education reform, and safeguard the field against ideologization, which was about to return in full force after 1971 and after his 1975 retirement . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper approaches from an epistemological perspective (and in relation with contemporary theories in the area of literary history, historical anthropology, sociology, evolutionary biology etc.) the theory of "synchronism" developed by Eugen Lovinescu in the 20s of the 20th century in order to re-construct its main statements and ideas. Thus we were able to determine the true meaning this theory holds for the romanian culture: that it is a part of a larger theoretical paradigm in romanian modern culture, a paradigm to which the theory of "forms without substance" proposed by Titu Maiorescu in the last decades of the 19th century and the idea of "protochronism" formulated by Edgar Papu in the 70s of the 20th century equally belong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the analysis of the historic evolution and social changes the model of traditional christian family is called into question. But the sociological, ethical or anthropological analysis presents the family as a social phenomenon detached by its sacrality. This perspective opened the way for the devaluation of the traditional christian family model and expelled it in a drawer of history. Therefore it is necessary to show that the christian understanding of family transcends the different alternatives which are more embedded and adapted to the contemporary social realities. The study analyzes the crisis of the concept of family today from an anthropological point of view. The purpose of the paper is to show that the fidelity to the christian model of family is not a restriction, but a liberation from „the spirit of the times” which generate changes and challenges to the idea of family (i.e. the transition from agrarian society to an industrialized one, the gain of individual freedom, women's empowerment, the economic crisis, etc). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]