Gothic Taste and Russian Culture of the 18th Century

This project was an experiment in widening the traditional borders of study in the field and looking at the phenomenon of Gothic taste in many genres and kinds of art. The Gothic taste was a major element in the cultural image of the Enlightenment both in western Europe and in Russia. It was an essential component in the world outlook of an educated person and without studying this phenomenon it is impossible to fully understand the thinking of artistic professionals, amateurs and users in Russian society in the 18th century. Mr. Khatchatourov first analysed the reasons for the importance of Gothic taste in the culture of the European Enlightenment and then studied its linguistic and lexicographic evolution in 18th century Russian culture. He sought to determine the semantic context which actively formed the human mind set in the Enlightenment, including potential users and producers of articles in the Gothic taste. He then looked at the process of absorption of this concept by those forms of art which express it most strongly, in particular architecture and the theatre. His study was based on a comprehensive historical and culturological study using a wide range of sources, a formal stylistic method approach considering the interaction of non-classical styles of the Enlightenment with the dominant classicism, and an iconographic approach which revealed the essential aspects in a new image synthesis of the culture of the Enlightenment.

The Culture of the Deaf Community in the Czech Republic

Romana Mazerova. The Culture of the Deaf Community in the Czech Republic Mazerova set out to discover if the deaf community in the Czech Republic can be said to have its own culture and if so what this is. She began with a comprehensive survey of the history of the deaf from 1786 to the present day, identifying a major turning point in the exclusion of sign language from the education of the deaf around 1930, a move then reinforced in the communist period to the extent that teachers of the deaf had to sign a commitment not to use sign language in their lessons. She also noted the difference between so-called signed Czech, which is an exact translation of the spoken language, and Czech sign language, which has its own structure and even dialects. Following the historical research, Mazerova studied a range of Czech and foreign materials relating to the culture of the deaf, interviewed deaf people about their experiences in school, their participation in the activities of associations for the deaf, and their experiences as a deaf person in a hearing society (these interviews are recorded on video), and visited various associations, clubs and schools for the deaf throughout the country. She concluded that while deaf people share certain behaviours which are quite distinct from those of hearing Czechs, there is little sense of a community as such. The vast majority of deaf people were not born into the deaf community and while feel that they belong together, they do not identify themselves as part of a deaf community and do not work together as a community to achieve their goals.

The Monumental Barrows of the Period 700-1100 AD at the Russian North-West

Nicholas Petrov. The Monumental Barrows of the Period 700-11 AD in the Russian North-West The research deals with the monumental barrows erected in the Russian north-west in the period of 700-1100 AD, which Russian archaeological literature has traditionally named sopka-barrows. These sopka-barrows were analysed as original sacral and funeral structures and considered in the context of cultural processes under way in that region at the time. The position occupied by the sopka-barrows in the culture of the people who erected them was reconstructed on the basis of a synthesis of various kinds of sources - archaeological, written, folklore. The high barrows are not in fact a determining type of the sites of the so-called "culture of the sopka-barrows" in modern literature, which focuses rather on settlements near to which sopka-barrows are absent. Recent excavations have revealed the presence of "surface" burial places (cremation located on the top of the barrow repeatedly rather than only once) in the majority of the sopka-barrows. The materials only provide evidence about the sacrificial nature of the graves in the "body" of the sopka-barrows. They thus offer an embodiment of one element of the widespread views about the dead man's path to the world of the dead (mountain) which is traced in folklore texts. Special attention was paid to the question of the disappearance of the tradition of erecting sopka-barrows and to the nature of their role in the culture of the region during the period 1000-1200 AD. The functioning of the sopka-barrows as funeral monuments in the second millennium AD is also traced on the inlet inhumatios found in them.

A Transformation of the Philosophical Thought of West European Liberalism in the Multi-National Central and South-Eastern European Milieu

This work was devoted to individual child development. Psychogenetic research has emphasised the importance of social factors in children's intellectual development and two social factors are looked at here, family size and birth order. The effect of the formal parameters is, however, very unstable and they should therefore be considered together with certain informal factors. Of these, parental educational style, which is an expression of national traditions at the family level, is of particular interest. Educational style is culture-dependent and only a comparative cross-cultural study can reveal the real mechanisms through which educational style influences children's intellectual and personality development. Dumitrascu carried out an experimental cross-cultural study dedicated to the effects of family environment on child intellectual development. This involved three distinct populations, each of which has a distinct status in their geographical area, namely Romanians, Romanies from Romania, and Russians from the Republic of Moldova. It showed a significant difference between child intelligence in those from large families and in only children, with a huge gap in the case of Romany children. This suggests that the simultaneous action of several negative factors (low socio-economic status, large family size, socio-cultural isolation of the population) may delay a child's development. Subjected to such a precarious environment, Romany children do not seek self-realisation but rather struggle to overcome hardship and the majority remain outside civilisation. Unfortunately, adult Romanies rarely show concern about their children's successful social integration, placing no value on the school as a major socialising tool. This leads to the conclusion that a major effort is needed to help Romanies' social integration.

The Role of the Family in Shaping Self-Concept and Cognitive Styles in Hungary

The project studied the perception of parenting styles and their relation to self-development, cognitive styles, and individualisation in adolescence. Typical parenting styles of mothers and fathers were studied in five different maternal and paternal parenting backgrounds: warm authoritarian, warm democratic, cold neglectful, cold authoritarian, and neutral. Perception of different styles of parenting (for fathers: authority, 'maintaining distance' behaviour, reciprocity, enhancing self-reliance; for mothers: authority, unpredictable behaviour, mutual trust, achievement orientation, and enhancing self-reliance) were analysed in each group using the newly developed Hungarian Parenting Questionnaire (Sallay & Munnich, 1999). This questionnaire has a theoretical basis in the ideas of Harvey (1966, 1967), where the socialisation process is combined with self-development. This categorisation of paternal and maternal parenting backgrounds enabled Sallay to explore and describe in detail how diverse parenting styles contribute to self-development, the development of cognitive complexity, and individualisation. The results show that diverse parenting by mothers and fathers produces differing impacts in nuclear and divorced families and for males and females, taking into consideration such self-components as physical, active, psychological (capabilities, personality, emotions, roles, preferences), social and reflective selves. Cognitive self-complexity varied according to parenting styles and genders: maternal and paternal parenting proved to have the most significant impact on self-complexity in a warm, democratic family. With respect to individualistic tendencies, adolescent boys were most individualistic in a cold, neglectful paternal background in nuclear families as compared to other paternal and maternal family backgrounds and to females.