Ethnologia Europaea

Annika Larsdotter and Karin Hansdotter were two of thousands of young, unmarried Swedish women in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were charged with child murder or abortion, and who usually were condemned to death. The general questions discussed in the article are: Why did the women murder their children? What was the role of the man, the father of the child? Ultimately, child murder is about gender, power and sexuality, and it is interpreted by the author within the framework of the gender power structures of the patriarchal society as they were represented in the institution of the household. The author is able to show that child murder was more closely associated with men’s honour than with women’s, regardless of whether the father of the child was married or unmarried. It was the man who had had illicit intercourse with the woman who drove the woman to kill the child, by threats and denials.

Breach of promise was a recurrent theme in Norwegian church and local courts until the beginning of the 18th century. A number of pregnant women sued their former suitors, arguing that their honour had been violated. As a routine the man was sentenced to marry or to give the girl satisfaction, provided the woman had an untainted reputation.These cases may be read as a set of representations and performances in which women as well as men redefined the meaning of their sexual experiences and practices, in terms of the concept of honour and ideal representations of femininity and masculinity. In this article, one particular case from the beginning of the 18th century is discussed; involving a man and a woman who negotiated about a breach of promise, and about honour and shame. The sexual behaviour of the woman was placed at the centre of her integrity, but the dialogue in court and the divergent understanding of their sexual relationship in this particular case suggest that sexual behaviour also played a part in male integrity.

This article discusses the gender constitution of Swedish clergywomen in their professional careers. Light is shed upon the strategies developed by the informants, how they cope with their situation both as women and clerics and their potential to develop a new professional clerical role. It is obvious that clergywomen are often given a warm reception by their parishioners, but not always by their male colleagues. Here we speak of a type of male homosociality that excludes women from the “top positions” in the Church of Sweden.One interesting field for analysis of the process of gender constitution is spiritual counselling, where the axes of gender and positional power tend to reinforce each other when the minister is a man, while they deviate from each other when the minister is a woman. Concerning the informants’ understanding of gender, it can be pointed out that essential and constructional understandings appear to co-exist. Activating different understandings of gender in different situations may be a type of survival strategy in a professional context, where the very existence of clergywomen is called into question.

In this paper I examine the way in which national political symbols have changed in Bulgaria during the last decade. Using a comparative approach with examples from both the socialist and post-socialist periods, I observe two important trends. The first is that changes in the use of symbols reveal rural-urban divisions that have arisen as a consequence of post-socialist reform. The second trend is that there has been a notable shift away from symbols that give primacy to the political domain and towards ones rooted in the economic sphere of social life. Such observations provide a valuable insight into the particular direction that post-socialist reforms are taking in one east European context.

The concept of “European identity” can be discussed in its geographical dimensions, as well as from a historical, cultural, economic or political point of view. In some instances, the geographical belonging to Europe does not fully coincide with the awareness of a cultural and/or political European identity. Like their predecessors from the late 19th century, the Bulgarians of today, after the end of socialist regime, live with the feeling of being “isolated” and “forgotten” by the rest of the European continent. While in the late 19th century the concept of Europe was used synonymously with “civilisation” and “modernisation”, today it is associated with the overcoming of the closedness and the social deformations of totalitarian rule. But the Bulgarians’ concept of Europe is still vague and abstract. This vagueness of the image of Europe turns “the European card” into a ready tool and argument in the political struggle between main political actors. The very possibility of using the concept of Europe as a strong political argument, however, indicates that the image of Europe is positive and has a high position in the value system of the Bulgarians of today.

Die deutsche Bundesregierung hat begonnen, eine jeweils zeitlich begrenzte Arbeitserlaubnis an jene Bewerber zu vergeben, die bereit sind, zur Behebung des Mangels an Fachkräften in der informationstechnologischen Branche hierzulande beizutragen. Die neue Form von Anwerbungspraxis gibt der wissenschaftlichenDisziplin Europäische Ethnologie/Volkskunde die einmalige Chance, sich mit bestimmten kulturellen Aspekten zu befassen, die bisher nicht im Zentrum des eigenen Forschens standen: Die neuen Arbeitskräfte sind nicht mehr un- und angelernte Industriearbeiter aus Südeuropa, sondern gut ausgebildete und weltweit begehrte IT-Fachkräfte vom indischen Subkontinent, aus der ehemaligen UdSSR und aus Südosteuropa. Das heißt: Das soziale Spektrum unseres Faches würde sich beträchtlich erweitern. Der Aufsatz bilanziert aktuelle Ansätze im Bereich der Migrationsforschung. Darüber hinaus geht es ihm darum, ein Modell zu entwickeln, wie weitereForschung sinnvoll und innovativ entwickelt werden kann, wenn man gleichermaßen diachrone und synchrone inter- und intrakulturelle Austauschprozesse zur Auswertung bringt.