Traditions rooted in cultural heritage are a key element behind the well-known motto of the European Union, 'Unity in Diversity'. The year 2018 was designated as the European Year of Cultural Heritage, with the aim to raise awareness about the uniqueness and richness of national, regional and local heritage, while stressing its significance in overcoming modern global challenges such as demographic and climate changes, natural or man-made disasters, community isolationism, and serious violations of the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy on which European societies are based. The European Cultural Heritage Strategy for the twenty-first century stresses that it is 'a key factor for the refocusing of our societies on the basis of dialogue between cultures, respect for identities and diversity, and a feeling of belonging to a community of values' (Council of Europe 2017). Both tangible and intangible forms of cultural heritage are considered as equally important in the this Strategy. The forms of intangible cultural heritage include several elements, among them the oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events. In this chapter, festival events are presented as one of the most popular and accessible formats of cultural performative practices. Not only do they serve the purpose of constructing national identity and presenting the peculiarities of culture, but they also perform the function of the so-called soft power (Nye 2004: x), often referred to as one of the most
Livs are one of the Baltic Finnish ethnic groups; their historical location is in the north-western part of Kurzeme and Vidzeme Regions in Latvia. According to the 2011 census in Latvia, 250 individuals defined themselves as Livs. This marks a significant rise in their population, compared to 48 individuals in the 1970s. Linguistically, Livs are Finno-Ugrians, thus differing from Latvians who represent the Indo-European speaking family. Ethnological data of the 19th and 20th century provide evidence that Livs have been predominantly bi-lingual, gradually leaving their own language in the second place and therefore natural inheritance of the language diminished as a result, until it was broken, supposedly in 2013. Nowadays we can observe a strong tendency to restore Liv culture and linguistic tradition. The present-day statistics indicate about 200 speakers of the Liv language. Field research shows that members of the Liv community recog- nise the increase of prestige and popularity of their language, nevertheless the main language experts today are researchers and those interested in ethnic identity matters. This might serve as evidence that the language tradition is revived rather than naturally inherited within the Liv community. What is the motivation to restore the language tradition in the 21st century, if the instrumental linguistic function of ethnic minorities has become clearly marginalised and only symbolic aspects have remained topical? This issue will be examined in the paper.
The ideologies, beliefs and practices associated with new cult places in post-Soviet Latvia are discussed. When social movement for the restoration of an independent nation state started at the end of the 1980s, new pantheistic cult sites gained a certain topicality. In relation to such sites esoteric New Age style ideologies and practices were constructed. Pokaiņi forest - a remote place in Latvia, abundant in stone piles and big stones, has been interpreted as an ancient sanctuary of global significance, as a cosmological and healing centre. Latvian scholars - archaeologists, geologists and folklorists - are treating Pokaiņi as a site with traces of ancient agricultural activity, and its popularity is attributed to the 'use of good management'. The historical perspective of the Pokaiņi phenomenon and modern interpretations of its perception are discussed in the context of revitalisation movements. The analysis of the complex socio-cultural situation of Latvia in the turn of the twentieth and the twenty- first century reveals the reasons, facilitating the emergence and significance of Pokaiņi and similar phenomena in post-Soviet Latvia.
Both in public and scientific discourse, folklore is usually related to peasant culture. Under the impact of globalization and rapid development of information technologies this kind of culture inevitably becomes marginal and gradually turns into an object of interest for tourism industry. Nowadays, as the sociocultural situation in Western societies becomes more and more indefinite and fragmented, the understanding of folklore and of subject of folklore studies is also changing and expanding its boundaries. As it was envisaged by American folklorist and anthropologist Alan Dundes, folklore research becomes more complicated, but none the less exciting [Dundes 2005]. Modern folklorists study the folklore of urban "tribes" and subcultures, they go together with migrants, in order to record and analyse forms and phenomena of folklore that have originated outside "native cultures", they log on the global web and look for tales, legends, superstitions, incantations and curses rambling in the virtual space. To keep pace with the time, folklorists get acquainted with methodology of such disciplines as semiotics, anthropology and sociology, they are acquiring theories of narratology and performativity, principles of cognitivism and communicology for deciphering cultural codes of different social strata, communities and groups. In this context of ever-changing environment, it is only natural to focus on new forms of cultural expression, folklore created by technology, including the Internet memes.Meme is a concept created by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and presented in his book "The Selfish Gene" in 1976. According to Dawkins, "'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene' . I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory' , or to the French word meme. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'" [Dawkins 1976: 167]. The term meme, as a parallel with gene, denotes elementary particle of cultural information (idea, behaviour or artefact), which exists in a particular sociocultural environment and which spreads through imitation and copying within culture or among different cultures. Despite criticism from the evolutionary biologists, cultural and semiotic theorists, the concept of meme turned out to be quite viable, and is currently most commonly encountered in the Internet environment. The creator of the concept himself does not object to it: "How do you feel about your word meme being reappropriated by the internet? The meaning is not that far away from the original. It's anything that goes viral. In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of The Selfish Gene, I did actually use the metaphor of a virus. So when anybody talks about something going viral on the internet, that is exactly what a meme is and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that" [Solon 2013].
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