FOLK CULTURE IN ROMANIA DURING THE COMMUNIST PERIOD. AN ANALYSIS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL STUDIES (English version)

The paper starts from the theoretical perspective opened by the culturalist approach, that introduced the so-called break from the end of ’50s in cultural studies, and took into consideration the meaning of the concept popular culture not as opposite to that of elite culture or high culture, but as a term which refers to the cultural products, practices and artefacts produced by and for people, also with a special focus on their complex relationship with the political and economic agenda of the period. The research focuses on the popular culture in the communist Romanian society between 1947–1989. The general objective of this larger study was to outline the main aspects of the popular culture in the communist Romania and to identify the popular culture practices and arte facts and their roots. In this paper there will be presented the results regarding the folk culture as a distinct part of the popular culture. I analyzed both the practices of folk culture (what is included in the term of lived culture) and the products and artefacts of folk culture (as a part of the larger concept of lifestyle). Besides this, because these issues have been little explored from this perspective in Romania, I also paid close attention to unanticipated themes that could arise from the empirical research. The method used for accomplishing the objectives of the researc h was the social biography (in the form of life histories). More exactly, I used the technique of ‘multiple autobiographies’, understanding the term in its classic sense, as subjects’narrations about themselves, about their own lives. This method allowed me to obtain ‘subjective’ data about the ‘lived culture’, and also about the existence, evolution, appropriation, negotiation, resistance or rejection of the popular culture products, which in the end could lead us to outline the situation of popular culture elements in Romania in the communist epoch.