Folklore Studies - Historical and Recent Researches in Bulgaria and Slovenia

Both (Slovenian and Bulgarian) research groups wants to establish more thorough scholarly and inter-institutional cooperation between two central national research institutes for ethnolo-gy and folklore in Slovenia and Bulgaria. The project focuses on: 1) on the comparative history of European national ethnologies, and Folklore Studies; 2) on the thematization of tradition and folklore, its genres, and social communication. Both topic areas interest us at two levels at which the images of cultural dynamics are reproduced: academic discourse and everyday life (the empirical level). To understand cultural dynamics, the concepts of tradition/cultural heritage and cultural identity are central. We view our contribution to elucidating both of these in issues of concrete cultural practices and findings about them through the production of knowledge in ethnological and folklore studies today.