Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

In the course of transition to market economy, political and economical structures of Lithuanian society changed generally. Many people lost financial capital, social positions and even cultural categories necessary for the orientation in society. In the course of this fundamental transformation the necessity to negotiate new cultural categories became obvious. In the context of these redefinition processes, consumption and consumer goods constituted important means for the creation of new social differences and their symbolic representations. What visions and images of a ‘good life’, of ‘wealth’ and ‘success’ exist in to-day’s Lithuania? How are consumption-oriented patterns of behaviour provided with symbolic meaning? How are identities constructed and represented through ways and objects of consumption as well as particular lifestyles? Research on these questions may contribute to an understanding about processes of cultural redefinition and differentiation in a specific Lithuanian social context and, starting out from this understanding, it allows making plausible interferences about broader social relations and local visions related to global change.

The complex research works on Klaipėda Region Lutheran Psalms singing traditions has started at the Institute of Baltic Sea Region History and Archaeology, Klaipėda University some years ago, as a part of integrated studies on whole historical Lithuania Minor history and culture investigations. The main goal of such research project is to unify efforts of ethnomusicologists, historians, culturologists, linguists, confessional researchers and cultural anthropologists, interviewing local Lutheran people with special questionnaires, and this way collecting actual information about this culture phenomenon. The aim of this re-search is to find out the sources of vitality, local forms and intercultural (German-Lithuanian) relations of local Lutheran Psalm singing tradition, as well as its perspectives at present and for the future. The second aim was to find out and to elaborate generally wider research methods, possible not just for specialised (linguistic, ethnomusicological, etc.) investigations, but usable for complex interdisciplinary explorations. We have a great hope for interdisciplinary and socio-cultural anthropological perspectives here at present and in all the future.

The region of Lithuania Minor to which the northern part of the Curonian Spit belongs, has been characterized by changing national affiliation in the course of the twentieth century (Germany, Soviet Union, Lithuania) and the resulting change of population. The following article analyses how different social actors have recurred to and managed the Curonian Spit’s cultural heritage. It shows how Curonian cultural heritage has been mobilized for the making of nationalist identities. Taking the case of the village of Nida (Nidden) it is shown that heritage is nothing fixed or given but is, in fact, produced over the course of time depending on the political, economic and social interests of the social actors involved as well as on the societal background. The example of the Curonian Spit and the making of cultural heritage is a contested and flexible process. Heritage is nothing fixed or given but is made and remade over the course of time, depending on the political, economic and social interests and power resources of the social actors involved. My examples have shown how the production of Curonian heritage has flexibly contributed to the making of German, Soviet as well as Lithuanian identities.

The debate about the public role of ethnology and folklore has been ongoing for some time, and has its parallel in the current debate about an ‘applied anthropology’. In Great Britain folklore and ethnology are, at least in institutional terms, virtually absent from higher education institutions. An author set pointers for the future – concentrating on the need for the study of culture to focus on lived experience as well as, and perhaps before, text; the need to revisit the political roots of the discipline in a critical but constructive spirit; and, the need to reconceptualise the region as the theatre of ethnological fieldwork – with a view to developing an ethically aware, evidence-based, policy-oriented and culture-critical European ethnology. Within this broad framework, we need to explore further the issues surrounding cultural mediation as a process for applying, but also generating, cultural knowledge and understanding, and the role(s) that ethnologists do, could, should, and perhaps should not play in that process.

Being based on empirical material collected during field work in the Latvian–Russian border zone and theoretical border zone studies, this article analyzes the ways how the state, as well as transnational and global factors, influence the lives of border zone inhabitants. The focus is on the interaction between the state and global agents on the one hand and the local and individual agents on the other hand within the territory, which is also the external border of the European Union and the NATO. The case study permits several theoretical and empirical conclusions about the role of the state and transnational agents in the lives of individuals and the vision for the development of the border zone. In conclusion an author emphasizes the necessity for both practical and theoretical discussions about solidarity and the responsibility of global agents to local communities in the event that under globalization conditions places emerge that are more in the role of patients of globalization rather than beneficiaries from the process. From a periphery-centre viewpoint, the border zone may seem like the end of the Earth to people from the centre, but to those who live there it is the centre of the world.

In this article I present the rudiments of a theoretical approach to the religious field in Lithuania. These reflections are part of an ongoing process of designing a research project on religious and moral pluralism. Religious pluralism is a fairly recent feature of East-Central European societies. When religion was suppressed by the socialist regimes after World War II, the church, especially the Catholic Church, be-came part of a polarized social experience built upon the dichotomy of the state versus the unified nation. In many countries the church established itself as the guardian of a national Christian tradition and claimed a moral monopoly on people’s values. Appearing as gross oversimplifications, presented in the article theoretical reflections can serve as helpful stepping-stones in the process of combining theoretical models and grassroots ethnography.