Plural: History, Culture, Society (Jun 2016)
Cultural Revival and the Persistence of Identity in Moldova: from the Folkloric Movement to Hospitality
Abstract
For nearly three-quarters of a century, anthropologists, alongside folklorists, sociologists, and others have steadily documented multiple processes of cultural revival and revitalization, amassing a rich body of evidence to testify to the flexibility and resilience of culture. This focus on successful revivals has generated a wide literature that parallels and supports the growing attention to identity and ethnicity as key concerns across the social sciences. In the following pages, I refer to this literature as I examine the limits of cultural revival in the post-Soviet Republic of Moldova, primarily the country’s folkloric movement, which is the subject of my doctoral research and first book. In this broader field of vision, there are questions to be asked: who is undertaking revival work? What are their goals? What are their methods? And – whether they succeed or fail – what are the conditions that enable this? Although I pose these questions in specific reference to post-Soviet Moldova, they could be asked of many communities, to advance our understanding of how collective identities are established, negotiated, and changed over time.
