Traditions and Modernity in the Rural of the Şieu Basin

Claudia Loredana CLIVEŢ*¹
* Corresponding author
¹ Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
E-mail: claudia.cristea@ubbcluj.ro
Pages: 167-174. URL: https://geografie.ubbcluj.ro/ccau/jssp/arhiva2_2010/11JSSP022010.pdf

Cite: Cliveţ C. L. (2010), Traditions and Modernity in the Rural of the Şieu Basin. Journal of Settlements and Spatial Planning, 1(2), 167-174. URL: https://geografie.ubbcluj.ro/ccau/jssp/arhiva2_2010/11JSSP022010.pdf

Abstract.  Habits are included in the tradition of a nation and appear to us as complex cultural facts, meant to organize people`s lives, to mark the important moments of passage through time, to shape behaviour. They give a meaning to some of the moments of collective emotion, having a syncretic structure, a moral meaning and aesthetic events, representing rural life and the genesis of all forms of folklore. Over time, habits acquire authority, often deciding what is good, true, beautiful and useful, highlighting those deeds and actions which, through their maintenance and repetition, are desired by the individual and its community. The repetition and use of ceremonial forms strengthen values, rules and prescriptions. Due to their pure aesthetic qualities, some of the ceremonial habits have become part of the artistic domain, some remaining in their original form, others changing their characteristics, determined by many factors of which prevailing are the economic ones. Nowadays, when the Romanian village, which is also the case of the villages of the Şieu River Valley, goes through profound transition, the nostalgia for pure traditions and habits of the interwar period are not productive. Meanwhile, a number o concepts have appeared in order to serve to the achievement of a new cultural model, that of improving the reality in which the villager lives through multiple ways, a peasant – based society, relying mostly on unwritten rules, on customs and traditions incompatible with a modern rural society. In this micro-rural universe, increasingly fewer individuals live, in whose behaviour the element of traditional folk culture with its implications in the everyday life is recognizable. Having in front of us the image of the rural population as a heterogeneous structure, its continuous decrease, it is hard to believe that folklore, the traditional culture, may find itself in a state that would allow its functionality, as a way of life.

K e y w o r d s:  rural life, Şieu River Valley, traditions and customs, modernity