Search

This paper discusses the content of the cadre file of Henri H. Stahl preserved in the Archives of the University of Bucharest’s Rectorate. In the form in which it has been preserved after 1989, the personnel file of H.H. Stahl seems, from several points of view, atypical. If we compare it with the cadre files of the 1950s, it surprises by the apparent “goodwill” of the communist cadres towards H.H. Stahl. This ideological solicitude is manifested in the interpretation given to main cultural and political events in H.H. Stahl’s life. In other circumstances such political past could be labeled as unusable in a communist context. Equally curious and noteworthy is the issue of the ethnic origin attributed (and not necessarily real or assumed by the one described in the file), more precisely the issue of Stahl’s nationality ( Jewish) which was recorded in the file. Analyzing Stahl cadre file we can wonder if the integrity of this dossier has not been compromised by removing, extracting or modifying documents by the personel staff services or by someone else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses letters – some unpublished – from the mid-1940s and the second half of the 1970s exchanged by Mattei Dogan and Henri H. Stahl, to render the way sociological education was organized at the University of Bucharest immediately after the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Sociologist Constantin Schifirneţ is a researcher who constantly draws attention on studies and advanced ideas. Lately, the same thing happened with Tendential Modernity. Reflections about modern evolution of society (Tritonic Publishing House, Bucharest, 2016, 199 p.). Through the proposed perspective, but also by the depth of the research, we consider this paper as a work of reference, especially since the ideas that generated it are the result of long reflections on modernity. [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]

This article analyzes the American presence in two journals of the Bucharest School of Sociology, as well as the information provided in these journals with regard to the American sociological models and their evolution. The data reviewed demonstrate not only a strong academic connection, but also an active cooperation and consistent exchange of academic knowledge between the two countries. The paper builds on a quantitative study of the full archives of the two journals - Arhiva pentru Ştiinţa şi Reforma Socială (Archive for Science and Social Reform) and Sociologie Romanească (Romanian Sociology); its final part is dedicated to the Romanian monographic activity of the U.S. sociologist Ph. Mosely. The conclusion is that the development of the Romanian school of sociology was in line not only with what was happening in the greatest schools of sociology in Europe, but also with the theoretical developments of the American sociology. [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]

The following paper is a brief presentation of the Romanian research in rural sociology carried on by the School of sociological monographs led by D. Gusti. In its introduction, the author ranges Gusti's studies with the international framework of research in rural sociology. He emphasizes the growing interest in rural life displayed by Western sociology after World War I, and at the same time focuses on the East European, chiefly Russian, sociological practice of research in the field. According to the author, the literary and socio-political agrarian movements that have dominated, side by side with the national question, the Romanian public and intellectual life before 1918 should be ranged with the abovementioned tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is centrism and what kind of influences has the researcher's cultural model on his/her subject of investigation, and in which ways the given historical context gains different meanings in time, are some of the key questions of this paper. Taking into account the historians' socio-psychological biases when they do researches in the socio-humanistic realms, their (ethno)centrically embeddings, we can move away from a history of an unrepeatable contingency of events, towards a relativistic consideration of history's objects of study. By adding on this path a genuine cultural relativism, various socio-anthropological methods and techniques, thinkers of history could overpass the social-cultural influences (upon their investigated phenomena/groups/historical periods) of their belonging social groups, and catch up properly the "original meanings". Looking at various historical facts through the double opaque lens of sociology and history, I have emphasized the syntheticphenomenological solution/theoretical frame which could smooth the progress of (socio-historical) data examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]