Alexandru Iorga

Romanian Academy · Institute of Ethnography and Folklore "C. Brăiloiu"

Although pastoralism has a special place in Romanian history and national mythology, shepherds “occupy a complicated position” (O’Brien and Crețan 2019) in contemporary technoscientific capitalism (Birch and Muniesa 2020). As their age-old shepherding routes shrink (Săgeată et al. 2022), new devices need to be adopted and associated with traditiona...

Although pastoralism has a special place in Romanian history and national mythology, shepherds “occupy a complicated position” (O’Brien and Crețan 2019) in contemporary technoscientific capitalism (Birch and Muniesa 2020). As their age-old shepherding routes shrink (Săgeată et al. 2022), new devices need to be adopted and associated with traditiona...

In 2023, the Association of Wooden Churches, in partnership with several institutions, including the Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia, continued the research on wooden churches, this time in the Western area of Gorj county. For a more complete picture of the environment in which these edifices are found, together with specialists in architecture, pa...

The book that is the subject of this critical reflection on the relationship between photographic art and ethnographic practice is called Electro+(Guide), written by Agnès Birebent (text) and Nicu Ilfoveanu (photography) and published in 2011, in Bucharest. The book is just a reason for reflection because it offers an attractive framework for quest...

Volumul propune un cadru conceptual în care pot fi analizate o serie de teme relevante pentru dezvoltarea comunităților. În acest sens, sunt discutate aspecte actuale pentru cercetarea problematicilor la nivel comunitar și modalități în care acestea pot fi integrate în programe și proiecte de dezvoltare comunitară. Perspectiva asupra dezvoltării co...

The processes of disciplinary institutionalization emerged from practices of preserving written and oral documents, establishing local and national museums, and developing university courses. In the last 100 years, archives’ development assured the professionalization of scholars interested in disciplines unrepresented at the university level, such...

Rolul Academiei Române în instituționalizarea și continuitatea etnografiei ca disciplină

"Archives are not all the time talking about themselves—as if a self might be forced on them until their disappearance. Why are we so much into archives, museums, collections, and accumulation? What is the purpose of individual and public archives? How are they imagined, built and used? What are the ends of archives and museums in an era of breakin...

In 2016, the Mihai Pop Fonds was established as part of the Image Archive at the Romanian Peasant Museum, and this past year has seen a real effort to organize the documents left behind by the scholar. The Fonds brings together key documents: a rich correspondence with Romanian and foreign research¬ers; Mihai Pop’s field notes from the sociological...

In this essay I will provide an account of haymaking and animal husbandry practices in a post-socialist village from the Romanian Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. "e paper is based on ethnographic #eldwork conducted in the summer and autumn of 2011 in the village of Caraorman. Photographs presented in this paper were taken by the author in the same...

Using field data I will try to explore the mechanisms of identity construction through tourism, in a Magyar village from Romania, focusing on two dimensions of the tourism: cultural and economic. On the one hand I bring arguments that the village is an ethnic enclave, and that the tourism practiced here is a cultural/identitary one. On the other ha...