Ethnologia Europaea

Conférence Internationale d'Ethnologie Européenne

Commercialism has left its mark on all aspects of children’s everyday lives today. It constitutes a shared world of experience, permeating relations between children and within the family. The article discusses the possibilities of an in-depth analysis from an ethnological perspective. One possibility is to study commercialization from the children’s perspective as practice, social activity, or lifestyle. This is exemplified primarily with children’s computer games. Another possibility is to study in a historical perspective how consumerism has been gradually introduced, established, institutionalized, and finally made into a seemingly self-evident part of the children’s world. The authors discuss how the process could be studied through archival sources such asadvertisements and pricelists. The article concludes with a discussion of the new images of family relations and children’s competences that emerge from the commercial media. In advertisements for computers, children are presented as competent and superior. In television series, parents are often portrayed as pathetic, as clumsy fathers and nagging mothers, while the children are enterprising and crafty. What does that say about actual changes in family relations and problems in today’s families?

In Christian circles the tendency exists to deny that the cause of manslaughter and homicide may be due to the existence of a biblical based frame of orientation – indeed, that frame teaches respect for other persons’ lives. However, it is shown that the presence of such a frame may also lead to gruesome forms of manslaughter, usually represented by Christians as absolutely un-Christian, devilish, or heathen aberrations, worse than homicides committed out of pure hatred, aggression, or self-defence. The purpose of this article is, first, to present a typology of biblically inspired fatal crimes (or ‘reli-crimes’) as they occurred in the last two centuries in Europe, and, second, to present an interpretation of the relationship between religious imagination and representation on the one hand and atrocious forms of physical violence towards fellow human beings on the other.

The vineyards of Burgundy have an unparalleled reputation for the quality of their wines and an image of unchanging tradition. Such clichés hide the reality of a dynamic and fluid society which has been subject to the constant pressure of social and economic change. By providing the first ethnographic study of the major regional festival, the Saint Vincent Tournante, this article demonstrates not only the methods by which local wine producers have “invented” tradition for their own commercial advantage, but also the importance of ritual to the social and professional world of the vigneron.

During the festival of Pesach Jews all over the world celebrate the Exodus of the Jewish people out of Egyptian bondage with a night time ritual. As a result of the isolated position in which Jews have found themselves in the diaspora historically, this ritual, in which fundamental values such as exile, redemption and Jewish homeland are symbolically expressed, remained almost unchanged over the years. In fact, recently, its significance has increased as a result of the political circumstances in the Middle East. To understand Jewish feelings about this subject, it is important to realized that the same fundamental values are at stake here.

The ethnological research on the everyday life of big Polish cities has only commenced. The author describes a series of customary behaviours connected with the dress of the students of Cracow in the years 1945-1956. Basing on the newspapers of those times and on his own memories, the author discusses the fashion of that period, the ways of obtaining the clothing and its alteration necessary since a considerable part of it came from the military stores of the Western armies. A proper haircut and a special way of bearing propagated by the Communist youth organization, a manifestation of the philosophy of life. According to the author that fashion was a conscious form of protest expressed by the academic youth against the cultural unification introduced by the totalitarian system forms in Poland in the period following World War II.