Klaipėdos universitetas

The aim of this article is to ascertain what kinds of traditions were common among the communities of cultural workers in the Ukmergė region at the start of the 20th century and in the first half of the 21st century. Based on fieldwork collected in Ukmergė in 2019, it can be claimed that cultural workers were related in both their professional and their social relationships. During Soviet-era government-approved celebrations, seminars for cultural workers and anniversaries were the most popular; while during the period of independence, gatherings of separate collectives, Christmas celebrations, and various organised professional and recreational trips were preferred. The tradition of awarding the best employee, which began with socialist competitiveness in the Soviet era, continues today in the cultural worker workplace.

The article describes and analyses the Shrovetide celebrations that took place in the village of Grūšlaukė, in the Kretinga district, during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The aim of the article is to describe and analyse the Shrovetide celebrations in Grūšlaukė during this period, and to reveal their transformation and the reasons for these changes. The article employs the theoretical approach of interpretive anthropology from Clifford Geertz, a member of the social-interpretive school of anthropology, and is based on the carnival structure model proposed by the British historian Peter Burke.

The article presents the traditions and superstitions of film production workers in Lithuania in the mid-20th and the early 21st century. Based on field research data collected in 2020 and 2021, it turned out that most traditions are transferred or adopted from other countries’ film industries and their employees. The research data reveal what symbolic actions are performed on a film set to indicate the successful implementation of the project or part of it. The strengthening of social ties between film production workers is expressed through the tradition of gift-giving or other traditions formed in individual groups, whereas superstitions, which are common among film production workers, are mostly aimed at attracting success, dealing with fear or anxiety while working on a project, or avoiding anything you do not want to happen.

The article is devoted to the problem of time value in the context of contemporary Western culture and societies. This problem is put into context of whole contemporary culture and civilization. The main attention author gives to the general studies of social norms, values, stereotypes and traditions, known in contemporary Western societies. He points the raising importance of rational time organization of daily needs here. The actualities of real differentiation of daily time allocation are described here as well. The personal abilities to organize the actual time are named as high values in industrialized Western societies, year by year leaving less and less time for the same needs. The everyday stresses, unstable emotions became as the results of such process for a great number of individuals of Western culture. This situation is not so relevant just for less industrialized Eastern World cultures and societies.