Economic and Manufacturing Culture of Eastern Polissia: A History of Its Monographic Research at the Turn of the XIXth and XXth Centuries

Author

Lytvynchuk Nataliya

a Ph.D. in History, a research fellow at NASU M.Rylskyi Institute for Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology

Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department

Economic and Manufacturing Culture of Eastern Polissia: A History of Its Monographic Research at the Turn of the XIXth and XXth Centuries

Abstract

The article provides an overview of printed works of the latter half of the XIXth to early XXth centuries, which were monographs focused on researching settlements and which specifically or indirectly covered various aspects of Eastern Polissia’s economic and manufacturing culture. Using theoretical and applied methods while processing the array of sources made it possible to determine the algorithm of arranging written monuments and analysing them. Differentiated into two blocks are the studies detected at the time of the authoress’ research, in which on the example of a village or a town, the economic profile of them is characterized to varying degrees. Given the chronological principle, the article, in the first place, comments on works, embracing the finds dating from the 1850–1860 years. The works are grouped by a synthetic manner of representing local historical-and-geographical, socio-economic and ethnocultural features of a particular area. These works are primarily interesting in that, by identifying different levels of everyday practices of local population in the life support system, as well as worldviews and values, they make it possible to compose a mosaic of regional economic and manufacturing culture from separate fragments. It is noteworthy that the studies’ authors not so much scrutinized technical and manufacturing aspects, as paid attention to outline the local specifics of the main and auxiliary economic activities, crafts, trades, as well as their focus. At the same time, these explorations contain information about manufacturing customs, ritual practices associated with various activities, on the relationship of manufacturing activities with folk calendar and the former’s dependence on natural and climatic conditions, as well as the succession of generations, etc.

Another sub-block is formed by monographic printed works, whose subject of research is the dominant practice (usually a craft or a trade) of a certain local object. While focusing purely on a settlement’s manufacturing specialization, determined by the natural environment of Eastern Polissia, the authors, in addition to a detailed description of technical and manufacturing aspects of an occupation, raised issues that hitherto remain poorly explored, particularly in ethnology, and therefore topical. These are primarily themes related to the processes of transformation of the economic profile of village due to the industrialization of traditional space. Actually, these studies debunk the well-established generalized description of Ukrainian villages as solely agricultural locations and provide an opportunity to outline specific regional features of Eastern Polissia’s economic and manufacturing culture.

Keywords

Eastern Polissia, monographic research, economic and manufacturing culture, dominant practice, local history, rural entrepreneurship.

References

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