Short Abstract:

This panel is a continuation of two decades of The Ritual Year studies into un- and re-writing of the patriarchal calendric customs in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ethnological aspects under examination will concern the form, the content and the relevance of the urban rituals nowadays.

Long Abstract:

For two decades, in many conferences, panels and publications, The Ritual Year working group has been scrutinizing the changes of calendric customs from the point of view of gender, history, performance, religion, politics, migration, and epidemics. This panel addresses the typology and examples of changes of the (predominantly) agricultural ritual year (Vladimir Y. Propp, Claude Lévi-Strauss and others) in the modern urbanized society. Since modernization (which occurred at different times in various countries), the rituals have gone through considerable transformations in their form and content. The rites had to adjust to the new urban settings, new occupations and professions, new types of communities, secular surroundings, migrations and multi-culturalism, etc. This process is still on-going, while crucial obstacles (COVID-19, wars, new technologies) drastically interfere with the natural flow of the ritual year.

Nowadays, when the patriarchal rural way of life has been almost deconstructed and people are not that close to nature and agricultural activities anymore, the questions we address are: What is still relevant for the urban citizens and what is not? What rites should be kept and transmitted to the new generations?

This Panel has so far received 4 paper proposal(s).
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