Meeting-Discussion in Burgas on the Challenges Facing Traditional Kinship in Bulgaria

Regional Historical Museum – Burgas and Burgas Municipality invite you to a discussion on April 7, Tuesday, 6:00 PM, at the Cultural Center “Morsko Casino“, “Petya Dubarova“ hall, with three ethnologist authors, dedicated to their newly published research on pre-industrial kinship in Bulgaria.

They will be presented by Prof. D.Sc. Diana Radoynova from Burgas Free University “Prof. Asen Zlatarov“.

Everyone who is interested in this topic will get acquainted with the patrilineal (blood-related) and affinal (marriage-related) kinship systems, as well as with godparental, brotherly, and adoptive kinship and their different variations. 

The information on the challenges to the traditional kinship system in industrial society is particularly rich.

Then, from a system existing in a closed society, kinship and its variations begin to exist in a world where the person is not static, but moves often, his mobility is a fact not only outside the settlement, but also beyond the borders of the state.

The information regarding kinship in one settlement, in one village, is extremely valuable.

The audience will be able to be convinced that it is not a biological but a cultural category, through which memory, names and rituals are preserved, and at the same time it defines the behavior, the ethical code and the relationships and the social organization of individuals.

Within the framework of the event, the authors will not present in detail the content of the books, but will focus on the current state of the methodology of the research, on the source mass available today, as well as on the theoretical concepts and scientific paradigm in which contemporary studies of kinship are developing.

The discussion will address three publications, published in recent years, which examine different levels and variations of traditional culture – pan-ethnic, regional and local, and outline the conceptual, spatial and social range of research in the field of Bulgarian kinship:

Maria Ivanova, Elya Tsaneva “Kinship and its institutions in Bulgarian pre-industrial culture“, vol. 1-2 (2024); Daria Vasileva “Renegotiating Kinship. Kalofers from the mid-nineteenth to the first decades of the twentieth century“ (2023); Angel Yankov “Material for the old genealogies of the village of Malevo, Dolni Rupchos“ Historical and Ethnological study (2024).