Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Mining (in religion, folklore, etc.)”

Literature is a cultural phenomenon and literary works represent national cultural values. Cultural elements, including belief — religion, exist in relation to each other and are reflected in the phenomena and relationships in literature. For the Khmer in Vietnam, Theravada Buddhism is the main religion and the main factor influencing the Khmer's way of thinking and behavior in all aspects, including folklore. Through this article, by methods of statistics, classification, analysis, generalization, etc., the author presents the manifestations of the philosophy of cause and effect, the concept of filial piety of Theravada Buddhism through images. Symbols, artistic details in Khmer folklore works.

The main objectives of this article is to explore how people use folklore for interaction, and how folklore is useful for managing social/cultural situations for identity making. Pedestal on qualitative secondary data were obtained from various literature, books, journals and articles. The conceptual frame of the study respite on four field approaches of anthropology which comprehend folklore at local, regional, national, and global scales and are supportive in reflecting the understandings in application and seeking ways to adjust with communities to assist them in preserving folklore or in bridging the knowledge-community dissection---understanding and analyzing ethnic behaviors, their identity and institutions, human-culture-nature relation, micro-macro structural relations. With a unique cultural heritage, Nepal is copious with diverse folklore based on legends, religion, popular beliefs etc. They are the traditions of ethnic cultures, subcultures, or groups to express feelings. Nepali folklore establishes relationship of local people with their culture, ethno-cognition, using folklore for interaction and unity, for managing social/cultural/ecological situations in various institutional settings for identity making, explaining the natives as possessing an exclusive system of perceiving and organizing phenomenon. Anthropology’s in-depth fieldwork methodology, long rendezvous in questions of society–culture interactions and broad holistic view yields precious insights into Nepali folklore.

Folk literature is created by the common people and preserved by them. Vallikannan is a renowned writer, journalist and author of all kinds of literature, his novels Iruttu Raja, Ninaivu charam and Oruveetin Kathi describe the life of Saiva Velalar in Nellai district in a rustic form. Among these games children's games are swinging, playing Tayakkatam, playing by singing and dancing, playing pandi, and playing Kannambuchi. Other common games are folk songs, titling, calling women by their village names, proverbs, folk performances related to religion, celebrating festivals, paying tribute to the village temple during festivals, performing arts, naming, marriage, processions, performing arts programs at weddings. They use figure of speech in their speech. The folk songs, proverbs and local idioms used by the Nellai district people reveals the author's general knowledge and approach to the people. It can be seen that the folk elements found in lullabies, folk tales, songs, stories, fables, myths, proverbs etc are mixed with the character and sentiment of the Tamil people. The article is about the folklore elements found in Vallikannan novels.

The subject of this research is the key genres of song folklore of the Dargin people – one of the ethnoses of Dagestan, which includes such Akushin, Kaitag, Kubachin, Mekegin, Tsudakhar, and others. An attempt is made to examine genre diversity of the Dargin people traditional poetic folklore, describe the forms of existence of specific genres, determine their ideological-aesthetic and artistic content, trace their evolution and transformation, as well as characterize the poetics. The goal of this work consists in demonstration of genre diversity of the song folklore of the Dargin people, its national specificity, artistic uniqueness and forms of existence. In the course of this research, the author applies the method of scientific analysis of theoretical literature on the topic, comparative-typological and descriptive-analytical methods, including observation, interpretation and comparison, which allows giving philological assessment of the text, reveal folk poetic means of expression. The scientific novelty lies in establishment of the fact that some of the genres under consideration still exist, but have undergone transformation. In a number the Dargin Districts, such as the rural localities of Harbuk, Urkarah, Madzhalis, Kubachi, Usisha, etc., texts of ritual poetry that have been previously performed by the adults, now shifted into the repertoire of children's folklore; multiple wedding songs – from ritual folklore to the category of love lyricism, and are performed mostly at youth parties and festivities. Lamentations were subjected to the influenced of Muslim religion, and now often feature the appeals to Allah to bless with patience and mercy, etc. Ballades in the folklore of the Dargin people also experiences certain genre changes: tragedy and drama of the situation fade away, and the ballades grow into the type of lyrical song of family, life or love content.

The concepts in English and Russian dictionary sources of various types are used in the study to help teachers. The aim is to investigate the educating methods, not only for foreign students but also native speakers of the Russian language to acquaint themselves with the ideas of interpretation of individual images by the representatives of a given nation In the course of the research, analyzing approximately 40 common methods of teaching (explanatory, encyclopedic, scientific and technical, etc.). Results confer the possibility of grasping the intended concepts of folklore, literary texts or folk art and as well as abstract concepts . However, these concepts emerge from the interaction of national tradition and folklore, religion and ideology, life experience and images of art, sensations and value systems of this ethnic system.

Abstract The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary component ‘re-description’ of religion in general and ‘re-constructed’ religious systems in particular. Usually, this means revealing allegedly forgotten ancient meanings of indigenous customs, rituals and folklore texts through the use of various concepts taken from esotericism and/or practical psychology. The language for this re-description is provided by conceptual apparatus developed by New Age movements. Of particular interest in this respect is the language of ‘new science’, ‘alternative history’, ‘transpersonal psychology’, etc., employed as a tool for criticising the established system of Christian-centric understanding of what religion is and what its social functions are.

Our research is based on a rather large "library" of various works by M. Drahomanov, which contains his views on religion. Among them: Paradise and Progress, From the History of Relations Between Church and State in Western Europe, Faith and Public Affairs, Fight for Spiritual Power and Freedom of Conscience in the 16th - 17th Centuries, , "Church and State in the Roman Empire", "The Status and Tasks of the Science of Ancient History," "Evangelical Faith in Old England," "Populism and Popular Progress in Austrian Rus, Austrian-Russian Remembrance (1867- 1877)," "Pious The Legend of the Bulgarians "," The Issues of Religious Freedom in Russia, "" On the Brotherhood of the Baptist or the Baptist in Ukraine, "" The Foreword (to the Community of 1878), " Shevchenko, Ukrainianophiles and Socialism "," Wonderful thoughts about the Ukrainian national affair "," Zazdri gods "," Slavic variants of one Gospel legend "," Resurrection of Christ (folklore record) ", etc.

Introduction. The impact of Benjamin Bergmann — a renown religious figure, writer and translator — in Kalmyk folklore studies is immense. He authored the earliest European documented record of the Kalmyk heroic epic of Jangar, German translations of the Buddhist treatise titled ‘Mirror of Reality’ and two songs of the Gesar epic, thirteen folktales from the Siddhi Kür collection, etc. Goals. The article introduces B. Bergmann’s letters included in the 1804 German-language edition of his Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmȕken in den Jahren 1802 und 1803 (Germ. ‘Nomadic Wanderings among the Kalmyks in 1802–1803’) published in Riga. Materials. The study explores and translates into Russian the first six letters containing ethnographic observations. Results. B. Bergmann’s scholarly insights into religion, language, lifestyles, and history of the Kalmyks to have compiled the edition were to lay the foundation of his work at the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences which unfortunately never happened. The meticulousness of his accounts and descriptions testify of his decent proficiency in ethnography and folklore investigations.

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] On the basis of his phenomenological theory of body and emotion, and especially his concept of emotion as atmosphere, Hermann Schmitz (1928–) defines religion as “behavior derived from affectedness by the divine,” i.e., communication with a powerful atmosphere overwhelming human beings. This definition enables us to explore religion in a broader context, such as dwelling, daily practice, rituals, architecture, art, etc. From this perspective, religion cannot be confined to the fields of theory, practice, institution, or convention but covers a much richer field in life. On the other hand, this view means that our daily existence is more profoundly related to the religious. This makes it understandable why new religious movements appear repeatedly, and why social phenomena appear that are not called religions but have some religious aspects even in a modern, secularized society. In this way, the theory of atmosphere can give us insight into the general necessity of the religious for human existence in each culture. Schmitz’s phenomenology of religion has, therefore, its advantage in the analysis of folk religion, which is rooted more deeply in folk culture and such of its aspects as customs, festivals, and folklore. This article will address some characteristics of Japanese folk religion and then compare monotheism with polytheism.

The folklore phenomenon (the deep, oral, popular, traditional culture) is represented by all the creations of a community that is based on tradition, are expressed by a group of individuals and recognized as reflections of its expectations to the extent that it represents its social and cultural identity. This is, in fact, a sum of local, village and city identities in which “individual identities” are incorporated. Through it, the fusion between territory, language and people is obtained, which is legitimized “through a genealogy and a space conceptualized as such”. We belong to a world in which access to information is open to all. In this context, in order to find yourself, you must define and assume your own identity. Such a complicated and responsible process cannot be undertaken without reference to the traditional system of norms, expressed in that large segment of the culture that is folklore. A Europe of nations cannot be achieved without knowing and understanding the system of values to which they have appealed throughout the entire period of their definition. Folklore is a fundamental landmark for the man of the post-industrial society who is in search of the self. Along with the scholarly culture, to which it is complementary, folklore contributes to the realization of the universal, European, national heritage. Forms of expression of folklore, musical, literary or choreic texts, ritual practices, beliefs, the dominant religion of the group, etc. cooperates for the purpose of forming this identity. The standards and values are transmitted orally, by imitation or other means. Folklore includes, inter alia, phenomena of language, literature, music, dance, games, mythology, rituals, customs, crafts, architecture and other arts. The present study highlights, synthetically and systematically, the main traditions created and developed over time by the Romanian people, traditions that define it and give it a specific identity.

The phenomenology of religion examines the concept of the "sacred" in different social and sociocultural contexts. These concepts refer to divinity, the power given to living people by the Creator, and are also often associated with nature (animals, plants, water, springs, springs, etc.). Also, the concept of "sacred" in traditional and post-traditional Kazakh culture and worldview can be considered as a special value given to humanity by the Creator, associated with theistic concepts of holiness. In the article, using some ethnographic examples, the role and meaning of the concept "sacred" in the worldview of modern Kazakhs is determined, its role as a national value and its continuity with religious beliefs, customs and traditions, the religious nature of the Kazakh culture is premodern. The development of these concepts to this day plays a role in our traditional religion, folklore, customs and rituals passed down from generation to generation.

The article deals with P. P. Bazhov’s world of things as an aesthetic unity. The book of skaz (folk tales) of the Ural writer is a unique artistic world, the structure of which is defined by a system of several basic oppositions. It is a world extremely full of things, such as household items (people’s everyday lives), clothes (social status, the «us-them» divide), instruments and tools of craft (key topics of handicraft / craftsmanship) etc. A special role in this objective world is played by artisan products that combine the functions of a household item, an artefact and a magical object, and magical objects per se that are received from a donor but are usually different in function from their proper fairytale counterparts, which are common to the traditional Russian folklore and literary fairytales based on folklore stories. Bazhov’s system of images-things also includes a specific «human as a thing» category that is connected with the main conflicts of the book depicting serfdom-based mining civilization. Generally, the peculiarity of the world of things in «The Malachite Casket» is defined by the «borderline» nature of the skaz genre, its complex relationship with folklore and the unique character of Bazhov’s aesthetic experiment.

Saint Agatha is an Italian martyr of the 3rd century, who is honored by the Catholic Church as the protector against fire accidents (she is also the patron saint of bell-makers, weavers, shepherdesses, wet nurses, sufferers of breast diseases, etc.). The article deals with the manifestations of religiosity of Latvia’s Roman Catholics–the tradition of Saint Agatha miracles. According to the examined folklore materials–folk beliefs, customs, Christian legends and notes on memorates –, the traditions related to Saint Agatha’s Day play a considerable role in the life of a practicing Catholics. Their importance emerges in honoring Saint Agatha, the practices of storing and using objects and substances blessed in the church on her commemoration day on February 5 (bread, water, salt), as well as in the stories about miraculous help in fire accidents (Agatha’s bread or water puts fire under control or distinguishes it). The miracle stories of Saint Agatha share a common textual structure: 1) The story is based on a real event; 2) The situation accelerates drastically; 3) Then comes a sudden turning point; 4) A happy ending. These memorates are stories whose key function is to assert folk religiosity regarding the intervention and help of the supernatural, divine force in the event of misfortune or accident.

Using the place legends stored at the Lithuanian Folklore Archives and the questionnaires from the Collection of the Lithuanian Place Names, the author of the article analyzes folklore related to the Plateliai Lake (in Plungė District) and its segments, including islands, peninsulas, and shallows. Having systematized a number of place legends related to the lake, the author discerns three themes that are further analyzed in the article, namely: the appearing of the Plateliai Lake and several lakes connected underground, the underwater world of Plateliai (the lake demanding sacrifices), and the image of the Plateliai Queen. Applying the concept of the mental landscape and the current research on placelore, he reveals the mythical character of the Plateliai Lake and its surrounding space. Special attention is paid to the way that various segments of the lake are depicted in place legends. Among the most frequently mentioned, several islands, peninsulas and shallows connected to the mythical plots are pointed out, as well as the lake itself. According to the folklore analyzed in the article, the lake had an important role in human life, while certain motives related to the pre-Christian religion (including the sunken church, the Queen of the lake, the souls residing at the bottom of the lake, etc.) allow one to conclude that from the ancient times, the Plateliai Lake was perceived as an important mythical place.

In the XIX century in all Caucasus Azerbaijanians most densely lived in the Western Azerbaijan. The originality material and moral riches, folklore literature, art, a mass school network, monuments of art, architecture differed. At the same time, the Azerbaijanians living in the Western Azerbaijan were an example of preservation and enrichment of our literary language, our religion, our customs and traditions, not marriages with other nationality. In the XIX century in Azerbaijan, in its Western part, school business and education developed. With opening here for people education in row settlements of the country of schools, along with national language, Russian studying didn't remain unaddressed also.In article educational activity such Azerbaijani and intellectuals as, JalilMamedkulizade, Firudin bey Kocharli, etc. is investigated.

For a long time, folklore researchers from various countries struggled to determine if charms and prayers belonged to the same folklore genre, or two different ones. In Lithuania, this question used to be discussed in somewhat smaller extent, mainly concentrating on the comparison between charms and prayers addressed to the deities of the ancient Lithuanian religion (Žemyna, Gabija, the New Moon, etc.). The goal of this article is clarifying the features that enable establishing affinity between charms and prayers to gods, and what this says regarding the interconnection between these genres. Having discussed the problematic terminology in the 20th century Lithuanian folklore research, the author goes on to analyze the charms that are characterized by direct addressee and peculiar form of communication akin to prayers, namely employing the soft power, i. e. the action strategy based on mutual agreement. Such kind of charms in the article are defined as soft. According to the author’s research, soft charms display numerous features characteristic to the prayers addressed to gods; in terms of communication, such common components as direct address, exaltation, formulaic invitations and offerings, and requests for help can be discerned. Although some of these features are less pronounced in charms than in prayers, it still seems obvious that the soft charms and prayers constitute the same corpus of texts. Distinction between these genres could perhaps be sought only on the performative level, i. e. by analyzing the way and circumstances of uttering charms and prayers.

In modern studies of religion, the category of time of the confessional text is usually described with the help of the opposition profane-sacred. Orthodox text is not an exception. However, there are certain types of texts for which the framework of this opposition is tight. It concerns the texts of folk Orthodoxy - more precisely, Russian folklore spiritual verses. The works of this genre inherit the notion of profane and sacred time from Christianity, but they transform it in their own way. The Orthodox tradition within folklore is interpreted mainly in terms of folk culture: the importance of the folk idea of triplicity increases; the concept of the mythological ideal origin of the world is actualized; the semiotic space of the Orthodox tradition is enriched with folkloric ideas about the border-time ( midnight, 12 o'clock, etc.); Friday as the day of the Crucifixion of Christ is exposed to additional sacralization (according to some spiritual verses, it is on Friday that the Ascension of Christ takes place, in substantial contradiction with the canonical tradition); events that generally did not receive the corresponding ethical evaluation in the canonical texts are endowed with an additional sacred meaning (for example, the age of the beginning of teaching the holy child)...

By using archaeological material and comparing it with analogies from oraltradition we can putatively identify some holy places which have been im-portant in past religions, but which have lost their holiness over the course oftime and due to changes in past religions. In doing this, it would be importantto distinguish two categories of holy sites. First, there are classic holy places,the knowledge of which predominantly derives from the living religion andliving folk tradition, and which relate primarily to the folk religion of the re-cent past. But in addition there are also sites that may have had significanceas holy places in different periods of the past, but which have lost this mean-ing and together with it also the folklore as the main source material. Thus itis important to consider other sources, such as archaeological sites, finds etc.,in order to recognize places which may have had an importance in the contextof some past religion. It is clear that we cannot see the whole of the holy land-scape of the past, but such an approach still permits us to observe holy placesin a more dynamic way, where the meaning of places has changed togetherwith the rest of religion, society and the settlement pattern, and where holyplaces may have been abandoned or new places brought into use.

The religion and mythology of any nation cannot be understood apart from its historical context, and mythology represents the cultural background, beliefs, and thoughts of different nations. The relationship between humans and animals, as well as humans and gods, has been of great importance in various myths and legends. Many nations have great value and religious sanctity. The people of India and Egypt worship Gaura as God, and still, the cow is a valuable creature; eating its meat is forbidden and cursing this animal is a crime. This article is devoted to investigating the position and place of the cow in mythology and the reasons for its importance in the folklore of Khorasan and some other nations, including Egypt, China, Greece, India, etc., because whenever one literary work is compared with another, and one of them is evaluated in comparison with the other, they show a deeper a meaningful.

Research objectives: In response to the problem of diametrically opposed views on the Islamization of Kazakh nomads, this paper aims to present a new interpre­tation of the religion`s destiny in connection with post-Golden Horde decadence. In this regard, certain tasks must be addressed: to characterize new research trends; to substantiate the argument for the completion of Islamization under Uzbek Khan and the Muslim identity of the Kazakh Khanate; to propose a hypothesis on the religion’s crisis further in order to challenge the thesis of “Superficial Islam”. Research materials: The research used a variety of sources. Required information is contained in Muslim authors’ works such as those of Seyfi Chelebi, Fazlallah Ibn Ruzbihan, etc., as well as several Russian-European authors’ notes. Particular attention was paid to Kazakh genealogies and folklore. Results of the research: Serious differences in views on the time of the area’s full Islamization are revealed. An alternative point of view about the full-fledged Steppe Islamization already in 14th–early 15th centuries is justified. In general characteristics of Kazakh religion, its peculiar forms in accordance with the concept of regional Islam were not qualified as a pre-Islamic complex. At the same time, taking into account the evidence of Islam`s weakness in the Steppe of the later era, the authors propose a new approach – studying Islam in the context of the post-Golden Horde decadence. From this perspective, the idea of a gradual weakening of tradition and an institutional disintegration of religion “after Uzbek Khan” could be admitted.

The Totola Rabhas are a community that has never lived in isolation. They are touched on all sides by other communities and ethnic groups. Therefore, cultural assimilation in the case of the Totola Rabhas is not a new phenomenon. The culture of the Totola Rabhas which is a part of Indo Mongoloid culture has contributed a lot towards the greater Assamese culture. The evolvement of a new cultural identity in the real sense of the term, the Totola Rabhas, overtime is a fact ignored by and unknown to the world. Therefore, it is of utmost necessity to study the folklore of the Totola Rabhas to understand the culture of a community not only least represented but also misunderstood. The Totola Rabhas have a very rich tradition of folklore, which has not at all been explored. They are passed down from generation to generation through word of mouth and in the long run, they have undergone a drastic change due to assimilation with people of other communities. This assimilation has enriched and added to the already existing folklore of the Totola Rabhas. The folk songs and the oral narratives of the Totola Rabhas are indeed unique in their own nature. The songs sung during various occasions are a living tradition of the Totola Rabhas. They are sung during marriages, during work, during worships, during festivals, etc. The Totola Rabhas believe in many Gods and Goddesses and they observe a variety of rituals. One such religious practice of the Totola Rabhas is the worship of Bura Bun Gohai, ie. Old Forest Deity. She is believed to be the Goddess of all things and the prosperity of the village depends entirely on her. It is, therefore, a humble attempt on the part of the Researcher to explore and document the folk songs associated with their traditional religion and belief. This paper is an attempt to explore the ritual hymns and the world view of the Totola Rabhas of Kataligaon.

As in many others, in Serbian folk tradition a lot of attention is given to dreams which foretell death through the means of certain images and symbols, which should first be decoded in order to understand the prophesy. The principles of folk interpretation are rooted in ancient forms of mythical and magical thinking (the principles of similarity, closeness, sameness, opposition, mythological symbolism etc.) which is present to different degrees in folk culture (myths, religion, beliefs, rituals, customs). In this kind of worldview, the opposition between life and death is considered especially important, as evident from the rich symbolismof foretelling death in dreams. The analysis of the interpretation of dreams among The Serbs reveals a number of ill omens which occur in dreams, symbolizing death: the color black, the Moon, a deciesed person, fire, falling, buildings being torn down, pulling teeth, weddings, priests, graves, candles etc. These symbols are present in the beliefs, myths and fairy tales of many peoples, where they are also connected to death, the netherworld and chthonic beings, which suggessts that these are largely universal, archetypical images. Stories about prophetic dreams which foretell death are a genre of folklore which has not been sufficiently studied in our society, and these kind of studies can be an important topic, as well as a means to unearth the ancient folk worldview and the mythical logic on which it is based.

Over the years, the spiritual heritage of the great Abai Kunanbayev has been studied in terms of various aspects of socio-humanitarian science, such as linguistics, literary criticism, philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, etc. This article reflects the creative intentions of the thinker, who raised the spiritual potential of the Kazakh people to the world level, as well as the influence of European and Russian culture on Abai’s work. In Hakim Abai’s works, the problems of the national life of the Kazakhs, their worldview, character, religion, mentality, language and spirituality are raised, which are an invaluable heritage for the modern younger generation. As we know that in Abai’s studies, the main object is a person, i.e. personality who is perfect and worthy of respect. The scientist-thinker deeply impressed by aesthetic, ethical preferences, dreams, the meaning of life, feelings and intuition, the peculiarities of being and thinking of his imaginary image of a perfect Kazakh. Abai’s poems are rich in philosophical reflections and patriotic appeals. He found inspiration in Kazakh folklore and preached ideas and images of national heroes. Furthermore, the article represents the connection between the achievements of Abai’s poetic heritage and its creative potential in general.

Demonology ideas that date from the oldest and most stable folklore and mythological traditions are emphasized in multiple ethnic cultures. An early form of religion directly coupled with mythology is represented by the black faith of the Mongolian and, more broadly, Central Asians, which evolved from many different beliefs bequeathed by ancestors (belief in the forces of space and nature, in the souls of dead ancestors, totemic ancestors, etc.). It made people perceive the world around as a set of elements dynamically influencing their lives where each element has its own origin, its own spirit somewhat independent, which they worship and appease by means of sacrifice, incantation and primordial magic. Mythologization as a certain tendency of consciousness was preserved throughout all historical stages shaping the ethnic Mongolian society, including the Kalmyks. The paper discusses the naming of mythological characters (demonologems or demonims), defines the groups of nominations for „lower mythology‟ characters with a surreal denotation that does not exist in real life. The study aims to feature the ethnolinguistic functioning of demonology glossary in the Kalmyk language and to identify its significance in modern linguistic consciousness. The glossary is basically denoted through ethnocultural stereotypical ideas about demonology born in the minds of native speakers. The most productive are the nominative groups of mythical creatures determined by their habitat, by deleterious effects that malevolent entities can have, etc. Evaluative nominations are based on demonologemes that have a negative connotation fixed in the language.

The article explores national motives (Ukrainian, Jewish, Yakut), which are found in the stories, essays and novels of V. Korolenko, and the problem of the intercultural communication that takes place in his works. Ukraine, namely the Volyn region, the second half of the XIX century, where the childhood of the future writer took place, is described in his works. Korolenko acquaints readers with the bright pages of its history, cultural traditions, customs, peculiarities of life, uses folklore sources, in particular, the heroic epic and mythology. The material for the analysis was the stories „Without a tongue”, „Children of the dungeon”, „The forest is noisy”. In particular, the story „Without a tongue” is full of characteristic ethnographic realities of Polissya village: Ukrainian houses under thatched roofs, features of religion due to the interaction of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the specifics of the local dialect and even clothing. In the course of the study, the synthesis of Ukrainian, Polish and partly Jewish cultures, characteristic of this cultural and historical locus. Jewish motifs are widely represented: historical plots („Legends of Flora, Agrippa and Menachem, son of Yehuda”); cultural and religious identity of the Jewish people, language, clothing, characteristics of life, etc. (the story „The Mendel Brothers”; traditional holidays and elements of folklore (the image of Hapun in the story „Judgment Day (Yom Kippur”)). There are Yakut national motives: descriptions of the life of the local population, local traditions and customs, the specifics of religious ideas, which are a synthesis of Christianity and paganism (the story „Dream of Makar”) In V. Korolenko’s „Siberian stories”. The proposed exploration, with the selection and analysis of national motives in the most famous works of V. Korolenko, opens opportunities for further study of the writer’s work in this context, in particular, in the autobiographical novel „History of my contemporary”.

A short reflection on the books and publications in which I have already written about religious identities in Europe is presented in the introduction. A situation with religious identities varies from one society to another, from one continent to the other. There are three types of religious identity that dominate in Europe (church, churchless and “distanced“). Have religious identities or their “folklore” aspect become stronger in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the 1990s? Then I come back to the very term and type of identity (acquired, chosen etc.) and their basic sociological characteristics. The importance of self-identification and others’ perception of our identity is discussed. Considering the multiplicity of human identities, there will be elaboration of the place of religion among multiple identities. In what social conditions does religious identity gain significance? What is the correlation between religious identity and family, national and professional identities? What happens if the religious identity is rejected? There will be some elaboration also of the place and the role of religious symbols in identities. What kind of social "game" can these symbols play? The examples of conflicts over religious symbols are provided. In particular, migrations and the religious identity of Europe will be discussed. Migrations lead to establishing more regular contacts between different religious identities. Who does not understand whom: is it that the domicile population does not understand migrants or vice versa? Is the migrants' arrival experienced more as an encounter of different religious cultures than as an encounter of different religious identities? Is the relation of those with the Christian and those with the Muslim identity in fact the central issue in all this matter? Approaching migrants as a "threat" to the "Christian European identity". Who is bothered by the plurality of religious identities in Europe? Above all, conservative consciousness, then right-wing politics growing stronger in Europe and inciting hatred towards the non-Christian, especially towards the Muslim identity. The inability of the left-wing to develop a different, more tolerant model towards migrants. Does this mean that the position of the minority in Europe will become more difficult? Something about the sacrilege and the ways in which it is demonstrated in Europe and in our region. The religious identity in the creeps of criticism and art. How far does the freedom of artistic provocations go? The conclusion will be about whether religious identities lead to their separation from others. How to talk about religious identity of "the other" from the standpoint of a personal worldview and religious identity in a society with multiple religious identities? Are we confident that identity problems will not cause further conflicts and instability in European societies?

The objectives of this academic article aimed to 1) to study the ritual of ancestor sacrifice in the Veda and Thai society and 2) to study the theories of folklore influenced toward the way of life of Vedic people and Thai society. The results indicated that the ritual or ceremony is a kind of activity and function in all human beings’ society which related to and arranged by a doctrine, religion, or belief of tradition and culture for alchemy, supernaturalism or good fortune, etc. Ritual of ancestor sacrifice is a kind of belief in the Vedic period which is worshiped, performed, and continued from that time until the present. Vedic people believed in their ancestors’ spirits and so did Thai people. Both people in the two nations believed that the ancestors’ spirits could punish their relatives who had bad behaviors but help those who had good behaviors. Both nations have still believed that ancestors’ spirits can provide them goodness and badness so they usually have to perform the sacrifices to the ancestors. Then, the ritual of ancestor sacrifice has become the deep belief of two cultures, unify, and create people to be a unique and happy society under their belief.

In Latvian literature since the second half of the 19th century, Lithuanians, Lithuania, its history, its particular sites are quite often depicted in some specific view, sometimes comprehensively, conceptually, sometimes episodically, passingly. The article attempts to demonstrate what image of Lithuanians and Lithuania that could have made an impact on Latvian literature, formed before it emerged and while emerging: in folklore, writings of Baltic Germans in the 18th–19th centuries and works by activists of the National Awakening. In Latvian folk songs, Lithuanians (leiši) are mostly depicted either as close, connected to Latvians by marital bonds, likely bonding people or as enemies, raiders to defend against. There are many other, random, hardly classified Lithuanian motifs in the discussed songs. In narrative folklore, the image of a Lithuanian is more one-sided and not very amiable: a Lithuanian person is usually portrayed in a mocking manner, emphasising negative traits, such as laziness, lack of intelligence, gullibility, etc. In texts by Baltic Germans, a Lithuanian of that period was also mostly characterised negatively, by emphasising one’s indolence, backwardness, ignorance. The image of Lithuania in the past, its rulers described by them is different: reserved, objectivised, including sometimes expressed nuances of surprise, respect towards the former geopolitical, military might of Lithuania. The old Lithuanian (and Prussian) religion, mythology started being treated as Latvian ones (Gotthard Friedrich Stender (1714–1796) and others), community of the Lithuanian, Old Prussian and Latvian languages, ethnoses was observed, even considering them all to be one nation (Carl Friedrich Watson (1777–1826) and others), history of Lithuania started being positively assessed and presented while bringing it closer to the history of Latvia (Garlieb Helwig Merkel, 1769–1850). Ideas of community or kinship of the Lithuanian and Latvian languages, religion, history were actively taken over and intensively fostered by the New Latvians (jaunlatvieši) and other activists of the Latvian National Awakening in the 19th century. They were writing on an inseparable history of Latvians and Lithuanians or even one nation, carried out in-depth investigation of the past and language of Lithuanians, both grounding on their data, objectively, reasonably and subjectively, motivelessly extending the concept of Latvian history, enriching the Latvian language. Atis Kronvalds (1837–1875), Juris Alunāns (born Gustavs Georgs Frīdrihs Alunāns, 1832–1864), Fridrihs Veinbergs (1844–1924), Andrejs Dīriķis (1853–1888) and other enlightened people were those whose endeavours contributed to making the image of Lithuanians and Lithuania in the public space of Latvia more positive, usually, while linking to the past, it was being idealised. Such, idealised, image was mostly taken over by Latvian romantic, neoromantic literature since the 19th century.

AbstractThe way many Ghanaians relate to the environment now is not the best; they just do not care about how to handle the environment in a sustainable way. They have forgotten that life is environment and environment is life due to rapid cultural change, population explosion etc. There is indiscriminate logging, annual bushfires, illegal surface mining, bad farming practices, dumping of human and industrial wastes into our water bodies and the like. It is estimated that over 90 percent of Ghana's high forest has been logged since the late 1940s. The sanitation situation is growing from bad to worst as the records show. All efforts to salvage the situation over the years have failed to yield the needed results. It is for this reason that this paper argues strongly for the inclusion of indigenous Ghanaian religion and culture in this fight, for they have proven to be eco-biased religion and culture due to the environmentally beneficial mechanisms inherent in them. Specifically, the traditional Akan use their conception of land, taboos, totemism, sacred groves and sasa to ensure the conservation of nature. Therefore, this paper believe, the time has come for us to forge a common ground in our efforts to find a lasting solution to our environmental problems from both the perspectives of science and that of Indigenous Spiritualities and Culture.

автор анализирует различные аспекты ассимиляции, такие как исторический контекст, социально-экономические отношения, бытовые аспекты, культурные факторы, результаты и последствия. Использованы разнообразные источники: статистические данные, мемуары, публицистические работы, фольклорные материалы и др. Сделан вывод, что ассимиляция между русскими и инородцами Югорского края была сложным и многогранным явлением, которое имело различные результаты и последствия для обеих сторон. Ассимиляция не была односторонней или насильственной, а скорее добровольной и постепенной. Она не привела к полному стиранию этнической и культурной идентичности русских и инородцев, а способствовала обогащению и диверсификации их культур. Ассимиляция стимулировала формирование новых социальных групп и общностей с собственными особенностями быта, языка, религии и т.д., внесла свой вклад в экономическое, социальное и культурное развитие Югорского края, способствовала формированию региональной идентичности Югорского края как особого этнокультурного пространства, где сосуществовали и взаимодействовали разные народы и культуры. the author analyzes various aspects of assimilation, such as historical context, socio-economic relations, everyday aspects, cultural factors, results and consequences. A variety of sources were used: statistical data, memoirs, journalistic works, folklore materials, etc. It was concluded that assimilation between Russians and foreigners of the Yugra region was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that had different results and consequences for both sides. Assimilation was not unilateral or forced, but rather voluntary and gradual. It did not lead to the complete erasure of the ethnic and cultural identity of Russians and foreigners, but contributed to the enrichment and diversification of their cultures. Assimilation stimulated the formation of new social groups and communities with their own characteristics of life, language, religion, etc., contributed to the economic, social and cultural development of the Yugra region, contributed to the formation of the regional identity of the Yugra region as a special ethnocultural space where people coexisted and interacted different peoples and cultures.

Microblog posts such as tweets frequently contain users’ opinions and thoughts about events, products, people, institutions, etc. However, the usage of social media to prop-agate hate speech is not an uncommon occurrence. Analyzing hateful speech in social media is essential for understanding, fighting and discouraging such actions. We believe that by extracting fragments of text that are semantically similar it is possible to depict recurrent linguistic patterns in certain kinds of discourse. Therefore, we aim to use these patterns to encapsulate frequent statements textually expressed in microblog posts. In this paper, we propose to exploit such linguistic patterns in the context of hate speech. Through a technique that we call SSP (Short Semantic Pattern) mining, we are able to extract sequences of words that share a similar meaning in their word embedding representation. By analyzing the extracted patterns, we reveal some kinds of discourses that are replayed across a dataset, such as racist and sexist statements. Afterwards, we experiment using SSP as features to build classifiers that detect if a tweet contains hate speech (binary classification) and to distinguish between sexist, racist and clean tweets (ternary classification). The SSP instances encountered in tweets containing sexism have shown that a large number of sexist tweets began with the introduction ‘I’m not sexist but’ and ‘Call me sexist but’. Meanwhile, SSP instances found in tweets reproducing racism revealed a prominence of contents against the Islamic religion, associated entities and organizations.

An educational international project, initiated by a Romanian organisation, comprising folk dances from around the world, has challenged me to go deeper into understanding one of the most popular dance forms of Western Odisha, Dalkhai. Traditionally a religion-based folk dance connected to the agrarian culture of local Adivasi communities, it has been gradually developed into a cultural pattern of Odisha, Eastern India. Considering folklore as intangible cultural heritage of humanity, according to UNESCO definition, I explore the expression of this ritual-dance, in connection to the Adivasi culture, as Dalkhai is considered the goddess of fertility, initially worshipped by the tribal people/Adivasi like Mirdha, Kondha, Kuda, Gond, Binjhal, etc., but also in its recent metamorphosis into a proscenium representation. The Dalkhai dance is becoming visible and recognised at state, national and even international form of dance, while in the Adivasis communities it is noted that the ritual becomes less and less performed. Consulting the UNESCO definitions and documents on Intangible Cultural Heritage is useful for understanding how to approach a choric ritual, involving a tradition, music and dance, enhancing the importance of safeguarding cultural diversity while confronting cultural globalization. Its approach, in accordance with ‘universal cultural rights’, emancipatory politics concerning world culture and multiculturalism, opposes the disappearances and destruction of local traditions, indigenous practices. Heritage concerns the whole community, conferring an identity feeling, and supporting the transmission to the next generations, sustainable development, often involving economic stakes, becoming essential for developing the territories (Chevalier, 2000).

The article examines oriental motifs and images in the work of the poet of the Silver Age K.D. Balmont. The cultural significance of K.D. Balmont's work is undoubtedly for the ideas of the Silver Age. The purpose of the study is to analyze the work of K.D. Balmont and identify oriental images and motifs such as: the Enlightened Buddha, the desert, the Sphinx, the Koran, Allah, the Merciful. The object and material of the study were the poetic texts of K. Balmont: "Boro-Budur" from the collection "Burning Buildings", "Sphinx" from the collection "Silence", "Merciful" from the collection "Pearl Rug". The scientific novelty of our research lies in the consideration of motives and images as an important component of the figurative picture of the world and the poetic worldview of K.D. Balmont. The culturological aspect of oriental themes in the poet's work has been identified and substantiated. Such oriental ideas and motifs were formed, new images in his work as: the enlightened Buddha, Nirvana, pyramids, desert, Sphinx, motifs of the Koran, Allah, the Merciful, etc. In 1909-1912, K.D. Balmont traveled around the world. Egypt, Indonesia, and India completely conquered the poet. Balmont studied a huge number of scientific works on religion, philosophy and mythology of the East. K.D. Balmont wrote many letters, poems, travelogues, essays on the culture of the East. The poet's translation activity occupies a special niche in his work. He translated Ashwagosh's "The Life of the Buddha" from Sanskrit, Kalidasa's drama "Sakuntala", "Malyavika and Agnimitra" and "Urvashi Obtained by Courage", and he translated "The Koran" from Arabic. Folklore and mythology of India, China, Japan, and Iran are collected in the collection "Calls of Antiquity".

The article includes the analysis of the semantics of the subject code Kazakh yurt. At present, the issues of content and semantics, functions, definitions of the term "cultural code" are the subject of scientific research in many branches of the humanities. In the scientific discourse there is a significant number of works, the authors of which put different ideas and meanings in the concept of "cultural code", which is due to its polysemantic and versatility features. But at the same time, the researchers are unanimous that cultural code is an integral part, semantic core, matrix of the cultural process; is an essential component of the national picture of the world. The location of functioning and self-presentation of cultural codes in the spiritual sphere are the so-called secondary sign systems (along with natural languages, recognized as the original "basic semiotic system", as primary sign system), namely: myth, religion, folklore, literature, art - painting , dance, architecture, sculpture, cinema, science, etc., which play a dominant role in the process of generation and transmission of socio-cultural knowledge, experience and values ​​of society. The source and context for the formation of cultural codes is the Universe: 1) objects and phenomena of the natural landscape environment surrounding a person, the near and far Universe; 2) a person – who is feeling, seeing, hearing, tactile, thinking, with his inherent higher forms of thinking and self-consciousness; 3) society, i.e. a community of individuals and individualities; 4) the world of objects and things created by human, i.e. realities of ethnic culture. In the system of cultural codes, an important place is occupied by the subject code, which includes an extremely wide list of objects and phenomena of nature, as well as the materialized results of human activity, which, as a result of semiosis, along with their immanently inherent properties, can be attributed with other qualities/ meanings / functions, i.e. acquire the status of a sign/symbol. It is concluded that the yurt archetype was formed on the basis of the most archaic stage of cosmological ideas about the multi-tiered Universe and vertical axis of the world connecting all its parts, as well as the cult of the sun, sky, the goddess Umai, the cult of ancestors, etc.

There are different researches and studies that have appeared regarding nationalism. There are 3 major theories of these studies, these studies are: primary, modernist, and ethno-symbolic hypotheses. Primary hypothesis claims that all nations came from the same race, and they share the same religion, language, culture and history. The modernist hypothesis claims that nationalism is a communal necessity. In this theory, nationalism explains the modernist process that was affected by social, political, and economic parameters. Finally, the ethno-symbolism theory posits that nationalism is mainly based on ethnic origin and culture. The Epic of “Turnalar” by Ozanturk has pushed the Turkish culture forward. There are three sections connected to each other that talk about the Turkish communities in the “Turnalar” Epic. The first section talks about the Turkish people in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, North Cyprus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Turkey.Second section talks about Turkish tribes who live in Iraq, Iran, East Turkistan, Kirim, Tataristan, Main Kurdistan, Yakutsk, Chuvashia, The Republic of Altai, The Republic of Tuva, etc…The third section details the Turkish people who are struggling to live in eastern European countries such as Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Hungary and Macedonia. “Turnalar” is the first work of Bayram Durbilmez who used Ozanturk as a nickname. Bayram Durbilmez used Ozanturk as a nickname for the first time in “Turnalar”. Durbilmez is known by literature studies about love, religious literature, and Turkish national folklore. This scholar defended Turkish nationalism in non-governmental organizations, some foundations, and associations. He used the Ozanturk nickname in his work which shows us how much of a nationalist he is in the literature world. This thesis aims to study “Turnalar” by Ozanturk from the nationalist aspect. By doing this, this thesis will reference his nationalist academic studies. Keywords: Nationalism, Nationalist Theories, Turkish Communities, Ozanturk, Turnalar, Saga, Love Literature

From the beginning of the 20th century the crisis of world religions caused to the search for autochthonous spiritual alternatives. There is a steady trend towards the revival of ethnic religions in Europe for the whole century. In the article was considered the history and main conceptual foundations of The European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER) as an international forum for communication of European ethnoreligious communities, which revive authentic spiritual traditions and practices in their countries. In particular, a detailed ХVІ ECER (2018) report from the direct participant and Declaration XIV ECER (2014) were presented for illustration, as well as observations on the development of traditionalism in the Italian organization "Movimento Tradizionale Romano", which will have a scientific and applied value for religious studies. A conclusion was drawn about the historical patterns of ethnoreligious Renaissance. The Roman ethnic religion, whose development was interrupted by the expansion of Christianity in the 4th century, did not disappear suddenly after the decrees of the Emperor Theodosius I, but continued to exist in deeply veiled forms. Many literary sources of faith have been preserved, which gives the opportunity for Italian traditionalists to reliably revive their worldview, theological and ritual traditions. Now, the authentic Italian confession of the native faith is "Movimento Tradicionale Romano". The existence of common Indo-European sources of faith, such as the Vedas in India, the poems of Homer, the works of Hesiod, the orphan hymns in Greece, the works of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, the German and Scandinavian epics, Slavic folklore, etc., provide an opportunity for scientific comparative methods to restore the ancient spiritual heritage of European nations with the aim of returning it in the living national environment.

The paper deals with the first digital corpus of texts in the Koraput Munda languages (Sora, Gutob, Bonda), which became available online in Spring 2020. Koraput Munda are spoken in India on the border between states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh and they all are more or less endangered. Texts in these languages were collected during four expeditions to the state of Odisha in 2016–2018. Koraput Munda speakers live in communities, which differ in religions, traditional occupations, dialects and are influenced by various official languages depending on the state. For example, Sora speakers belong to more than six religious communities and use four types of writing. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the corpus is to present texts of various genres and different social conditions of language usage. At the moment, the corpus includes oral and written texts, poetry and prose, religious, folklore and traditional everyday content. Oral texts are presented both in phonological transcription and in audio and video recordings. The sub-corpus of written texts presented in various scripts contains both texts related to a particular handwritten genre, as well as samples of printed materials. The texts are provided with morphological markup and translation into Russian and English. Each text is accompanied by detailed sociolinguistic and genre-specific information. One of the most special features of the corpus is the system of tags including text format, speaker’s gender, script, genre, topic, religion etc. This project is intended not only to make linguistic materials of the Koraput Munda languages accessible for the global linguistic and anthropological studies, but also to be useful for teaching and preserving cultural heritage, in particular within the framework of the Multi-Language Education government program.

The phenomenon of the miraculous cannot be removed from human existence, no matter how much its presence contradicts the arguments of reason, legislation, or common sense. Its attractiveness for philosophical reflection has been evident since the ancient classics (4th century BC), when the very phenomenon of admiration was considered the root cause of knowledge by Plato and Aristotle. The miraculous turns out to be semantically interconnected with religious communication, understood as the observation of the unknown, inexpressible, inaccessible within the familiar (N. Luhmann), including its naming and classification. This study is devoted to identifying the basic sociocultural differences and their dynamics associated with the lexeme miracle in the Russian context of the 11th–18th centuries based on the analysis of written sources. Tracing the evolution of the semantics of the miraculous, identifying the criteria for assigning such a characteristic to a certain phenomenon and the value assessment of what was called a miracle, the following trends are revealed. On the one hand, it is a differentiation from religious communication, which distinguishes between true and false miracles depending on the origin (for example, the Christian God or the Magi, fortune tellers, sorcerers, etc.). On the other hand, there is an increase in the complexity of the phenomenon itself, acquiring by the end of the 18th century various communication features. These are true/false miracles in religion; legal/ illegal in the field of state regulation of public life (starting with the legislation of Peter the Great); miracle as superstition, deceit and quackery for selfish purposes, i.e. marginal communication, contrary to science, morality, law and the ideals of the Enlightenment as the worldview of the elites; as a historical and cultural phenomenon (in works related to the history, ethnography and folklore that are emerging in Russia); as an artistic mean (functional element) in literature.

The article deals with the personality of A. Krymskyi as a fieldwork researcher from the perspective of his fiction book Beirut Stories. The author’s presence in the text is shown not only through the personage of an eccentric muscovite who came to Lebanon to study Arabic, but also through the massive anthropological narrative, which often overshades a plot and personages. The reader can’t get rid the feeling that this narrative is, as a matter of fact, a main hero of the book. It is based on the A. Krymskyi’s experience as a fieldworker who used in his research investigations mainly a method of included observation. The article focuses on the author ‘s usage of onomastic arsenal with the help of which he denotes different identities of Lebanese society through the lenses of anthropology of religion. He works with the official and folk terms: Orthodox, Rums (in the meaning of Orthodox), Greeks (in the same meaning). By the way, the term Greek in the oral speech of Beirut people in the end of 19th century marked also Russians who lived there, and even Orthodox French nuns come from Marseille. Russian expats were also named as Moskobs, Muscovites. Catholics of Beirut were called as Jesuits (in case they are the teachers of the Catholic schools), Franjie, etc. A. Krymskyi as a thoughtful observer noticed that the identity in the Lebanese society of that historical period is situational: depending on context the person could identify him or herself according to the religious, local, social or ethnic identity. The street life in Beirut demonstrates an example of interreligious and interethnic communication and everyday diplomacy, and Ahatanhel Krymskyi methodically incorporated his own observations, communicational experience, oral dialect, folklore to his Beirut Stories.

Nationalism studies differ in terms of approaches to the subject. Various opinions on a given topic focuses on different aspects of nationalism, its core elements, and causal links between ends, ways, and means. This paper focuses on culture, arguably one of the most influential dimensions among other layers constituting and shaping nationalism among different nations. In doing so, it considers Anthony Smith’s explanation of national identity, which, according to the latter, is shaped by a fundamental consensus among the population on things like culture, religion, history, language, ethnicity, political values, and norms of behaviour and aims and other related notions. The causal link between nation and culture is revealed by making a holistic account of different sub-elements of culture like memories and narratives; language, poetry, and art; national folklore and symbols; social norms, traditions, etc, in different historical eras and seeing their role in a nation-building process. The paper also focuses on a modern-day example, an ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine that has exceeded the boundaries of a mere military domain and is also visible from a cultural perspective. The paper’s main finding is identifying elements affecting nation-building and making it work. While all these different elements of culture were, are, and will be used in the future in a nation- building process, perception remains a vital factor. Culture and its elements can certainly significantly impact nation-building. However, in the end, it will always depend on how individuals, communities, and populations perceive national symbols, the historic heroic deeds of their ancestors, poems and literature, and norms of social behaviour and traditions. Without socially constructing these perceptions, the “us vs them” narrative might not materialize.

This article discusses the mountain metonymy of the Urals, i.e. the designation of supernatural anthropomorphic creatures that store the riches of the subsoil (minerals and metals) and contribute to or hinder their discovery, extraction, and processing. Russian mountain mythology has been studied by folklorists, but the linguistic aspect is only beginning to be explored. The material for the article was collected in the field between 2020 and 2023, and derived from dictionaries, folklore texts, and authorial literature. The author mostly focuses on Middle Ural and South Ural mythonyms; for comparison, the article draws on material of other zones connected with the Urals geographically or historically (Bashkiria, Siberia). The article provides detailed descriptions of the motivations of mythonyms and the conditions for the appearance of nominations. Mountain mythonymy can be divided into several groups depending on the motivation, i. e. the thematic group of vocabulary underlying the mythonym. This article analyses mythonyms motivated by social vocabulary, namely, denoting a person or kinship: золотая девка (golden girl), каменная девка (stone girl), горная девка (mountain girl), чудская девица (Chudskaya maiden), горный батюшка (mountain father), горная матка (mountain mother), Шубин (Shubin), etc. The article reveals and explains the specificity of Ural mountain mythonymy: thus, the девка token is used for the nomination of female spirits, whereas the баба nomination is characteristic of traditional Russian peasant mythology. An expressive feature of Ural mountain mythonymy is the presence of mythonyms formed from toponyms (девка Азовка, девка Дедюрка). The article proves that the formation of mountain mythonymy was influenced by the mythology of the Russian peasantry, the mythology of the autochthonous peoples of the Urals (Turkic and Finno-Ugric), as well as the terminology of mining actively developing in the Urals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

<p>Preserving the indigenous peoples’ traditional cultures is a problem of current special interest from research and practice perspectives. Indigenous peoples of the world were always largely affected by dominating societies and forced to transform their original cultures, way of life and identity. In this regard, surviving indigenous culture practices require a special support based on the scientifi understanding of their meanings from the point of view of sustainable preservation of ethno-cultural environments. Cult and sacred places, be they natural sites or human-made facilities, remain crucial but quite vulnerable cultural elements of indigenous ethnic groups. They are important spatial objects which preserve indigenous peoples’ culture memory and different ethnic traditions connected with religion, spiritual culture and mythology. This paper summarizes main results of an interdisciplinary research of cult and sacred places used by the Shor people in the Kemerovoregion and the Tozhu-Tuvans in TuvaRepublic(Russian Federation). During their 2015 – 2017 fi the authors identifi a lot of sacred places, revered by indigenous communities, and described them in terms of their signifi as elements of living indigenous cultures. The data obtained in the process of fi allowed the authors to map the sacred places, as well as the main risks and threats associated with them. The latter include: mining activities, infrastructural and tourism facilities, etc. The identifi threats lead both to the destruction of the sacred places as well to extinction of indigenous knowledge.<strong></strong></p>

The article studies some sources that deal with certain aspects inherent to spiritual culture of Hulun Buir Olots (PRC). The work is topical enough since the ethnic group is small, and its size tends to further decrease. Insight into various aspects of history and culture of Hulun Buir Olots may be instrumental in clarifying individual issues of the historical and cultural unity of Western Mongols — Oirats (until the middle of the 18th century) — and reconstructing certain elements of their traditional culture. Goals. The paper aims to identify and investigate sources in Classical and modern Mongolian (Cyrillic) containing data on folklore, religion, and the formation of Olots in Hulun Buir. Results. The study reveals spiritual culture of the ethnic group is still characterized by many features typical for that of the Oirats. So, Olots of Hulun Buir have preserved the folk song Altai Khangai, songs and legends about the Oirat leader Galdan Boshogtu Khan. The lingering folk songs performed by Olots of Hulun Buir are similar to the those of Olots in Khovd (Mongolia). The article also examines pastoral songs, shamanic invocations, legends about the struggle between shamans and Buddhist priests. It is noteworthy that the first Buddhist monastery called Buyan Tsugluulagch was founded in 1785, and contributed a lot to the strengthening of Buddhism in the region. Olots paid great attention to the development of school education. For example, Zhalfun (a common clerk) founded a home school in an ordinary yurt around the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was teaching Mongolian and Manchu writing. Master Buyantogtokh founded an elementary school during the Manchukuo period and his student Ts. Hada grew to become a prominent scientist. The work also analyzes modern poems of some Olot intellectuals about Anu Khatun (Galdan Boshogtu Khan’s wife), school, etc. The study of Olot proverbs shows some of them belong to the general Mongolian cluster, and some have analogies in the Buryat and Barga (Barghut) languages. Moreover, the study discovers that until recently Olots of Hulun Buir have had storytellers that could recite the Jangar epic. Conclusions. Olots of Hulun Buir have a rich spiritual culture, and some elements of the latter go back to the common Oirat cultural heritage. At the same time, the spiritual culture of the ethnic group has its own local characteristics resulting from their long stay in Hulun Buir.

The article is devoted to the study of the state of Orthodox liturgical singing practice at various stages of the Christianisation of the Ossetians. Christianity penetrated into the Alans’ lives due to their political and economic contacts with the states in which it was the official religion. The adoption of Christianity contributed to the expansion of international trade, political and cultural relations of the Alans (Ossetians) and the enrichment of the material and spiritual culture of the ethnic group itself. A new stage of Christianisation, which began in the 18th century, largely contributed to resolving the issue of Ossetia joining Russia. Information on the Christian singing culture of the Ossetians is scarce. The earliest of it, recorded in one of the periodicals, dates back to the 19th century and allows us to judge its condition for a specific period of the designated century, the methods and the nature of transmission, as well as some related sources accompanying it (chant books and manuals). On their basis, we can conclude that close attention was paid to the dissemination and the quality of liturgical singing. The analysis of Obikhod in the Ossetian Language (1864-1889) indicates the orientation of the Ossetian church singing culture towards the liturgical singing practice of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, due to the presence of the Acolouthia in different languages ??in the churches in Ossetia, one cannot exclude other possible influences (for example, Georgian, Armenian, etc.), as well as the existence of their own traditions. At present, the chant range of Orthodox religious service is being updated through poetic texts (they are being translated into the Ossetian language), and through the musical and intonational component. The need to transform the latter is seen not only in the desire to give a religious service a national character. It is also connected with the search for ways to overcome the problem that arises when using the principles of chanting generally accepted for the Russian Orthodox Church in relation to texts in the Ossetian language. At the moment, the musical and intonation sphere of Ossetian religious service includes folklore, on the musical texts of which canonical chants are sung, as well as original author's compositions, often based on the intonations of Ossetian folk songs. However, there are also connections with the Georgian singing tradition.

В результате семантического анализа материалов селькупского фольклора, верований, обрядов, изучения пищевых предпочтений и запретов было выявлено несколько древних религиозных идей, сделавших пищу самым действенным магическим средством на селькупском мифологическом поле. Среди них представления о съедении умершего человека, пересекающего границу земного и потустороннего миров, животным-предком, позже переросшие в представления о связи этого перехода и смерти с приемом пищи; взгляд на пищу как на благо, посылаемое человеку духами, и на духов как на материальных существ, которые едят и пьют и которых нужно, задабривая, кормить; идея подобия, согласно которой человек, съевший мясо или какую-то часть духа, обретает те же свойства, что есть у духа или у этой его части, и др. Каждая из идей универсальна и характерна для всех народов мира на ранних стадиях развития культуры и религии. На материале селькупских религиозных верований такое исследование проводится впервые, в чем заключается его новизна и научная значимость. Актуальность исследованию придает процесс формирования у современных селькупов новой этничности и вызванная им востребованность любых разработок по вопросам селькупской истории и культуры. As a result of the semantic analysis of the materials of Selkup folklore, beliefs, rituals, the study of food preferences and prohibitions, several ancient religious ideas were revealed that made food the most effective magical means in the Selkup mythological field. Among them, the idea of eating a deceased person, crossing the border of the earthly and otherworldly worlds, by an ancestor animal, later grew into ideas about the connection between eating and crossing the border, as well as death; a view of food as a benefit sent to a person by spirits, and a view of spirits as material beings who eat and drink, and who need to be fed, appeasing; the idea of similarity, according to which a person who has eaten meat or some part of the spirit acquires the same properties that the spirit or this part of it has, etc. Each of the ideas is universal and characteristic of all peoples of the world at the early stages of the development of culture and religion. This is the first time such a study is carried out on the basis of Selkup religious beliefs, which is its novelty and scientific significance. The relevance of the study is given by the process of the formation of a new ethnicity among the modern Selkups and the resulting demand for any developments on the issues of Selkup history and culture.

Dievturība (dievturi - "God keepers", "people who live in harmony with God") is a newly created religious tradition having appeared in the second part of the 1920s – 1930s, its most essential source includes materials of Latvian folklore and folk traditions. These are interpreted by construing a religious ethical theory and creating a religion which is alternative to Christianity, with its own doctrine and rituals, and the conception of Latvianness in culture and politics. Latvianness is the most essential concept of cultural politics to which all activities of the dievturi are subjected (exaltation, family celebrations (krustabas, vedības (marriage), bedības (funeral)) as well as seasonal rituals, cultural historical excursions, tidying and spiritual restoration of the sacral sites (sacred places, castle mounds), folklore activities, article publications in mass media, summer thematic camps in the countryside marked by intensive mastering and cultivation of history and culture, celebration of Latvian public holidays and the most important remembrance days. Contemporary dievturi groups are seeking for new ideas in order to develop and popularize their conceptions, which can partly be characterized as a cultural political programme for theoretical (doctrine) and practical (exaltations, ceremonies, seasonal rituals) realization of Latvianness and its components. Within this publication, creativity means the system of ideas and values that promotes the development and perspectives of dievturi groups as well as includes them into a wider cultural political environment thus performing a culture-creating job. A special attention is paid to the essential ideas and values guiding the creativity of contemporary Latvian dievturi groups, making ample use of storyteller habitus, thus intentionally allowing the domination of group participant discourse. The two main directions of dievturi group participant creativity are the development of their doctrine (teaching) and the ritual practice (exaltations). These directions allow to attract wide attention of the society and mass media, new participants and supporters, to influence the political and cultural processes in Latvia. An important part in the doctrinal reflections of the dievturi, especially in the ritual practice (exaltations), has always been taken by Latvian literature writings. A selective choice of these supplement the textual canon of the dievturi continuing the tradition in line with “the mood of Latvian folk songs” and attributing a more modern shape and world outlook concepts to dievturi undertakings. The aim of an exaltation is always associated with the main cultural political concept of the dievturi – Latvianness, namely, to make Latvianness more active, to offer an opportunity to approach Latvianness, make efforts for deeper comprehension of it, being aware and living through it, although thematically it may be dedicated to separate components of Latvianness (people, land, language, God, Māra, Laima, work, virtues, human life, and the like). Also, the most essential ideas and values of dievturība – gender equality, domesticity, antiglobalism, ecology, traditional marriage formula, life style and appearance, environment (for example, use of Latvian language), music, art and literature priorities (classical and/or national music, use of local building materials and ornaments (all ornaments have been observed in Latvia’s nature), writers, poets and playwrights who most precisely depict the “Latvian spirit” – derive from folk songs and the cultural concepts deriving thereof. Activity in the field of Latvianness (ethnicity conception) is in accord with the activity in favour of the future of the Latvian people, symbolical non-forgetting of culture correspond to generating of culture. This attributes a political and social dimension to the cultural activity of dievturi. Dievturība does not perform an official cultural politics of cultural values, heritage, traditions etc., this is a task for politicians; however, it is at least a marginal participant of the cultural political sphere. Placing ethnicity, or the Latvian discourse, at the centre of cultural politics encompasses the range of further impact when the seeming encapsulation within the margins of culture are replaced by reflections on Latvian economy, guidelines in education and science, health care system, axiological juxtaposition of the countryside and city. Also, the evaluation and criticism of the activity of the Christian Church by the dievturi is connected with the conception of Latvianness. Dievturi strongly disclaim Christianity and any chance of mutual cooperation (and also vice versa), protest against its monopoly position in Latvian society, consider Christianity a historically alien religion having been forced upon Latvians and demanding the status of a traditional religion in Latvia also for dievturība including, for example, the right to wed, to celebrate religious festivals. The results of field research do not allow to speak about dievturība today as a strong and united manifestation of Latvian religious experience and way of life. Rather, it is possible to register (after the decline of the movement at the end of the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s) a quite consistent and sufficiently active revival which is connected with the appearance of new persons and creative ideas among Latvian dievturi. The future events depend on the fact whether dievturi themselves would be able to solve the protracted inner inconsistencies and find a uniting grounds for further development of the movement. The article is based on the study results obtained during the 2006–2008 field research carried out in dievturi groups (interviews with group leaders, participants and individual representatives, transcripts of audio and video materials). The study was carried out with the financial support of the project “Society and lifestyles” and using its accepted methods – ethnographic description, semi-structured interviews and methods of visual anthropology (photography, filming) and instructions by the Ethical Commission (for example use of assumed names for storytellers).

There are cultures that focus on their origins, while there are also cultures oriented towards their destination: the former perceive the time in mythical manner – in its cycles, while the latter perceive it historically– in its linearity. The movement in the time-space continuum and its specifi cs in different cultures is provided by the desire either to pay more attention to the truth already known (the old texts) or to discover new one (new texts). The culture of Latgale is characterised by the prevalence of the old, constant texts or the traditional coding, as attested by persistent invoking of the region’s stereotypical values in the interpretations of the image of Latgale in literature, also the most operative genre of it – poetry. Nevertheless the artistic perception of Latgale in the poetry of the second half of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century shows not only respect towards the old, constant texts, but also intensive generation of new texts in certain periods of development of the regional culture. A very important indicator for identification of either the static or the dynamic culture type in artistic texts is the time: figurative perception of the past, the present and the future. The aim of the present study is to characterise the interpretation of the image of Latgale in the Latgalian patriotic poetry (the second half of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century). The image of Latgale is analysed in the culture discourse, based on the methods of cultural semiotics and phenomenology in treatment of time as well as the opposition of the new and the old. The present study uses as its source the Latgalian traditional (Romualds Spaitāns, Antons Rupainis, Antons Zvīdris, Marija Andžāne, Andris Vējāns, Pēteris Jurciņš, Marta Bārbale, Jānis Gurgons, Augusts Eglājs u. c.) and the modernist (Osvalds Kravaļs, Vilis Dzērvinīks, Antons Kūkojs, Ingrīda Tārauda u. c.) poetry. The semiotician Yuri Lotman lists the most important communicative functions of a text: 1) Information of an addressee; 2) Maintenance of collective cultural memory (in the format of inclusive transcendental abstraction archetype images, concepts, etc.); 3) Inclusion in a certain culture context (coding while respecting the traditions, stereotypical concepts, for the sake of cliché-like comprehensibility, recognisability); 4) Urge for the addressee’s self-examination (direct individual examination of the world’s phenomena and creation of codes). Realisation of the aforementioned functions in Latgalian poetry texts revealing the image of Latgale is clearly indicative of the rules of coding. First, the repeated denotation of abstraction representing and supporting the collective culture memory, its semantics and connotation depends upon the prioritised values of the respective age and society: Latgale as a land (the territorial identity) – territory or a region of a state and Latgale as people (the ethnic identity) – population or nation, part of a nation; second, inclusion into the region’s culture context is related to a wide though variation-less use of stereotypes (symbols, metaphors, rituals) and clichés; third, generation of new codes can nearly only be found in the modernist texts, where the priority is the revelation of direct impressions in formation of both the space-time continuum and the images, though also here in most cases direct impression in the poetry text functions as a projection of the past, a reconstruction (Latgale as the birthplace with the actualisation of place names – including the names of castle mounds, etc. in nostalgic retrospection). The image of Latgale in the coding system of the territorial identity is mainly marked with the cipher of concept "homeland” and in most cases overlaps with the ethnic identity codes, as it nearly always contains some stable and self-explanatory metonymic connection between the land and its inhabitants. In the Latgalian poetry it is related with the following semantically and stylistically expressive interpretations: 1) The protector – the potential/existing member of a family (a bride, a mother) or the one to be protected (an orphan left without the family, the youngest sister), such a connotation is mainly characteristic for allegorical national romanticism and national patriotic neoclassicism texts; 2) The sufferer (pain, a tear on a cheek, etc.); 3) The guardian of ethic values (sweat, conscience, etc.); 4) A birthplace with an accent on belonging (the poetical “I” admits his/her Latgale origin, frequently involving a particular set of place-names, using the reminiscence of the return of the prodigal son, with a shade of guilt in subtext; 5) A chosen, special place – most frequently in analogy /comparison structures as a reminiscence of the Latgalian mythology, folklore: a princess, a legend, soul, Muorys zeme (‘the Land of Māra’), Trešō zvaigzne (‘the Third Star’); also a figurative depiction of particularity of the territory and its inhabitants with the use of positive stereotypes: the land of the blue lakes, the green forests, people with an authentic material culture (castle-mounds, ceramics, linens), a language of their own and their specific religion (temples), hospitable, cordial people, ethnically diverse environment, et c., frequently in opposition ”centre – periphery”, ”the civilised – the natural”; 6) Vital and tough inhabitants.

Personal libraries occupy a special place in the structure of the cultural heritage of the past. The study of one of them - currently the largest noble library of the Urals of the 18th century - should be recognized as a serious research objective. The study became possible thanks to the discovery of a rare source - the Property Inventory, compiled in 1789 after the death of the Ural industrialist Alexei Turchaninov. A huge section of the Inventory is reserved for the library, almost a quarter of which (about a thousand volumes) is occupied by Western European publications, and the article aims to analyze the latter. The difficulty, and often impossibility, of identifying foreign books according to the Inventory is due to the fact that they are described not in the original language, but in Russian, with no imprint, briefly, with inaccurate reproduction of authors’ names and surnames. Therefore, it was possible to more or less reliably identify only a part of the books, while all of them were distributed according to linguistic characteristics and branches of knowledge. In total, 16 thematic sections are specified, each presented separately and in a summarizing table. The European publications on astronomy, physics and mechanics, mathematics, chemistry and mineralogy, natural science and medicine, which are not so typical for the noble library, are consistently considered, especially since among the books on this topic there was a lot of scientific and special literature. The maximum number of titles among foreign books was made up of books on chemistry and mineralogy, which speaks of the industrial interests of the library owner and his priorities in choosing foreign publications. The variety of literature on metallurgy, construction, mining, and industrial architecture is quite expected as part of the book collection of the Ural manufacturer. The humanitarian part of the library is rich in books on philosophy, politics and law; a historical section stands out: it ranks third in the number of titles and volumes. Modest in comparison with others, the section of literature of religious content still testifies to Turchaninov’s spiritual quest, his interest in the origin of Christianity and the history of religion. In general, the analysis of foreign books by the degree of reflection of their titles and by the number of volumes in thematic sections showed that books of two sections - on art and pedagogy - dominate in the library, which indicates a serious influence of the family and the owner’s enthusiasm for collecting (paintings, etc.) on completing his book collection. A general conclusion is made that, in terms of the composition of its foreign part, Turchaninov’s library is completely universal, that is, characteristic of the era, but at the same time not typical of the noble book collections of that time; it shows a noticeable trend towards natural science and industrial literature. During the period defined by the term “Gallomania” and the predominance of French literature in the noble libraries, 85.7% of foreign books in Turchaninov’s library were in German, the language of science and scientific knowledge of the time.

Purpose Hate speech in recent times has become a troubling development. It has different meanings to different people in different cultures. The anonymity and ubiquity of the social media provides a breeding ground for hate speech and makes combating it seems like a lost battle. However, what may constitute a hate speech in a cultural or religious neutral society may not be perceived as such in a polarized multi-cultural and multi-religious society like Nigeria. Defining hate speech, therefore, may be contextual. Hate speech in Nigeria may be perceived along ethnic, religious and political boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to check for the presence of hate speech in social media platforms like Twitter, and to what degree is hate speech permissible, if available? It also intends to find out what monitoring mechanisms the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have put in place to combat hate speech. Lexalytics is a term coined by the authors from the words lexical analytics for the purpose of opinion mining unstructured texts like tweets. Design/methodology/approach This research developed a Python software called polarized opinions sentiment analyzer (POSA), adopting an ego social network analytics technique in which an individual’s behavior is mined and described. POSA uses a customized Python N-Gram dictionary of local context-based terms that may be considered as hate terms. It then applied the Twitter API to stream tweets from popular and trending Nigerian Twitter handles in politics, ethnicity, religion, social activism, racism, etc., and filtered the tweets against the custom dictionary using unsupervised classification of the texts as either positive or negative sentiments. The outcome is visualized using tables, pie charts and word clouds. A similar implementation was also carried out using R-Studio codes and both results are compared and a t-test was applied to determine if there was a significant difference in the results. The research methodology can be classified as both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative in terms of data classification, and quantitative in terms of being able to identify the results as either negative or positive from the computation of text to vector. Findings The findings from two sets of experiments on POSA and R are as follows: in the first experiment, the POSA software found that the Twitter handles analyzed contained between 33 and 55 percent hate contents, while the R results show hate contents ranging from 38 to 62 percent. Performing a t-test on both positive and negative scores for both POSA and R-studio, results reveal p-values of 0.389 and 0.289, respectively, on an α value of 0.05, implying that there is no significant difference in the results from POSA and R. During the second experiment performed on 11 local handles with 1,207 tweets, the authors deduce as follows: that the percentage of hate contents classified by POSA is 40 percent, while the percentage of hate contents classified by R is 51 percent. That the accuracy of hate speech classification predicted by POSA is 87 percent, while free speech is 86 percent. And the accuracy of hate speech classification predicted by R is 65 percent, while free speech is 74 percent. This study reveals that neither Twitter nor Facebook has an automated monitoring system for hate speech, and no benchmark is set to decide the level of hate contents allowed in a text. The monitoring is rather done by humans whose assessment is usually subjective and sometimes inconsistent. Research limitations/implications This study establishes the fact that hate speech is on the increase on social media. It also shows that hate mongers can actually be pinned down, with the contents of their messages. The POSA system can be used as a plug-in by Twitter to detect and stop hate speech on its platform. The study was limited to public Twitter handles only. N-grams are effective features for word-sense disambiguation, but when using N-grams, the feature vector could take on enormous proportions and in turn increasing sparsity of the feature vectors. Practical implications The findings of this study show that if urgent measures are not taken to combat hate speech there could be dare consequences, especially in highly polarized societies that are always heated up along religious and ethnic sentiments. On daily basis tempers are flaring in the social media over comments made by participants. This study has also demonstrated that it is possible to implement a technology that can track and terminate hate speech in a micro-blog like Twitter. This can also be extended to other social media platforms. Social implications This study will help to promote a more positive society, ensuring the social media is positively utilized to the benefit of mankind. Originality/value The findings can be used by social media companies to monitor user behaviors, and pin hate crimes to specific persons. Governments and law enforcement bodies can also use the POSA application to track down hate peddlers.

In this paper, we give an overview on the emerging trend of the digitized self, focusing on visual lifelogging through wearable cameras. This is about continuously recording our life from a first-person view by wearing a camera that passively captures images. On one hand, visual lifelogging has opened the door to a large number of applications, including health. On the other, it has also boosted new challenges in the field of data analysis as well as new ethical concerns. While currently increasing efforts are being devoted to exploit lifelogging data for the improvement of personal well-being, we believe there are still many interesting applications to explore, ranging from tourism to the digitization of human behavior. 1 Introduction We are already living in the world, where digitization affects our daily lives and socio-economic models thoroughly, from education and art to the industry. In essence, digitization is about implementing new ways to put together physical and digital resources for creating more competitive models. Recently, lifelogging appeared just as another powerful manifestation of this digitization process embraced by people at different extents. Lifelogging refers to the process of automatically, passively and digitally recording our own daily experience, hence, connecting digital resource and daily life for a variety of purposes. In the last century, there has been a small number of dedicated individuals, who actively tried to log their lives. Today, thanks to the advancements in sensing technology and the significant reduction of computer storage cost, one’s personal daily life can be recorded efficiently, discretely and in hand-free fashion (see Fig. 1). The most common way of lifelogging, commonly called visual lifelogging, is through a wearable camera that captures images at a reduced framerate, ranging from 2 fpm of the Narrative Clip to 35 fps of the GoPro. The first commercially available wearable camera, called SenseCam, was presented by Microsoft in 2005 and during the last decade, it has been largely deployed in health research. As summarized in a collection of studies published in a special theme issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine [5], information collected by a wearable camera over long periods of time has large number of potential applications, both at individual and population level. At individual level, lifelogging can aid in contrast dementia by cognitive training based on digital memories or in improving well-being by monitoring lifestyle. At population level, lifelogging could be used as an objective tool for 60 understanding and tracking lifestyle behavior, hence enabling a better understanding of the causal relations between noncommunicable diseases and unhealthy trends and risky profiles (such as obesity, depression, etc.) Fig. 1. Evolution of wearable camera technology. From left to right: Mann (1998), GoPro (2002), SenseCam (2005), Narrative Clip (2013). However, the huge potential of these applications is currently strongly limited by technical challenges and ethical concerns. The large amount of data generated, the high variability of object appearance and the free motion of the camera, are some of the difficulties to be handled for mining information from and for managing lifelogging data. On the other hand, legality and social acceptance are the major ethical challenges to be faced. This paper discusses these issues and it is organized as follows: in the next section, we give an overview of potential applications; in section 3, we analyze technical challenges and current solutions. Section 4 is devoted to ethical issues and, finally, in section 5, we draw some conclusions. 2 Potential Applications Humans have always been interested in recording their life experiences for future reference and for storytelling purposes. Therefore, a natural application would be summarizing lifelog collections into a story that will be shared with other people, most likely through a social network. Since the end-users may have very different tastes, storytelling algorithms should incorporate some knowledge of the social context surrounding the photos, such as who the user and the target audience are. However, lifelogging technology allows capturing our entire life, not only those moments that we would like to share with others (see Fig. 2). This offers a great potential to make people aware of their lifestyle, understood as a pattern of behavioral choices that an individual makes in a period of time. This feedback could provide education and motivation to improve health trends, detecting risky profiles, with a personal trainer “in-the-loop”. Indeed, by providing a symbiosis between health professionals and wearable technology, it could be possible to design and implement individualized strategies for changing behavior. Considering that physical activity and poor diet are major risk factors for heart diseases, obesity and leading causes of premature mortality, this social impact of applications will be huge. On the other hand, lifelogging could be useful in monitoring patients affected by neurological disorders such as depression or bipolar disorder by aiding in predicting crisis. 61 Fig. 2. Images recorded by a Narrative Clip: From left to right and from the 1st to the 2nd row: in a bus, biking, attending a seminar, having lunch, in a market, in a shop, in the street, working. Finally, digital memories could be used as a tool for cognitive training for people affected by Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a condition that represents a window for novel intervention tools against the Alzheimer disease. Although the emphasis nowadays is on the use of wearable cameras for health applications, its potential spreads to many other domains ranging from tourism to digitization of intangible heritage. For instance, data collected during a long trip could be used to make short and original photostreams for storytelling purposes and be shared in a network of visitors of a country. On the other hand, probably in the next century, these data would be useful for people interested in comparing how transportation and landscape have changed over time. During the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the use of digital media in the preservation, management, interpretation, and representation of cultural heritage. Intangible cultural heritage consists of nonphysical aspects of a particular culture, among which folklore, traditions, behavior. The intangible aspects of our cultural heritage represent a treasure of significant historical and socio-economic importance. Naturally, intangible cultural heritage is more difficult to preserve than physical objects. The digital documentation of intangible cultural heritage represents a huge market potential, which is largely unexplored. Wearable cameras could be used in this field to collect, preserve and make available digitally part of the intangible cultural heritage of the 21th century, such as human behavior. 62 3 Technical Challenges Wearing a camera over a long period of time generates a large amount of data (up to 70.000 images per month), making difficult the problem of retrieving specific information. Beside data organization, the high variability of object appearance in the real world and the free motion of the camera make state of the art object recognition algorithms to fail. In Fig. 3 are shown two sequences acquired by wearing a Narrative Clip (2fpm): one can appreciate the frequency of abrupt changes of the field of view even in temporally adjacent images that makes motion estimation unreliable and frequent occlusions that cause important drop in object recognition performances. Fig. 3. Example of photostreams captured by a Narrative CLip while (first row) biking and having a coffee (second row). As shown in [2], the interest of the computer vision community is rapidly increasing and this trend is expected to continue in the next years. Most available works have been conceived to analyze data captures by high temporal resolution wearable cameras, such as GoPro or Google Glasses and they can be broadly classified depending on the task, they try to solve in: activity-recognition [15, 11, 10, 13, 6], social interaction analysis [1, 3, 19], summarization [4, 16, 12]. Activity recognition usually relies on cues such ego-motion [15, 10], object-hand interaction [11, 10] or attention [13, 6]. Generally, the major difficult to be faced in the task of activity recognition are the large variability of objects and hands and the free motion of the camera that make it very difficult to estimate body movements and attention. Social interaction detection is based on the concept of F-formation that models orientation relationships of groups of people in space. F-formations require estimating pose and 3D-location of people, which are challenging tasks due the continuous changes of aspect ratio, scale and orientation. A common approach to summarization is to try to maximize the relevance of the selected images and minimize the redundancy. Relevancy can be captured by relying on mid-level or high-level features. Mid level features may be motion, global CNN features [4, 16], whereas high-level features may be important objects [12] or topics [18]. 63 4 Ethical Issues Lifelog technology can be considered still in its infancy and assuring that the related ethical issues receive full consideration at this moment is crucial for a responsible development of the field. In the last few years, a number of papers has tried to inquiry into the ethical aspects of lifelogs held by individuals [17, 7, 14], discussing issues to do with privacy, autonomy, and beneficence. Images captured by a wearable camera clearly impact the privacy of lifeloggers as well as of bystanders captured in such images. In [7], the authors identified various factors to make a photo sensitive and proposed to embed into the devices an algorithm that use these factors to automatically delete sensitive images. The most general meaning of autonomy is to be a law to oneself. The authors of [8] recognize that lifelogging offers a great opportunity towards autonomy, since it allows to better understand ourselves. Moreover, they provide recommendations and guidelines to meet the challenges that lifelogs poses towards autonomy. Beneficence concerns with the responsibility to do good by maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society, while minimizing harm to the individual. A critical component is informed consent that should be signed by participant to research projects or clinical projects. More general specifications for wearable camera research are provided in [9], proposing an ethical framework for health research. 5 Conclusions This paper has reviewed some of the most important aspects of visual lifelogging, focusing on the technical and ethical challenges it arises, and on its potential applications. We believe that a responsible development of the field could be highly beneficial for the society. In order to become widely used technology, a large amount of effort should be invested in the development of efficient information retrieval systems, to allow fast and easy access to lifelogging content at a semantic level. Further advances in the field of deep learning will allow filling this semantic gap. Acknowledgments This work was partially founded by TIN2012-38187-C03-01 and SGR 1219. M. Dimiccoli is supported by a Beatriu de Pinos grant (Marie-Curie COFUND action).