Pages: 115-126 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp225115126

The study tries to determine the status and ways of existence of magical practices among the descendants of the Balkan colonists in the contact zones of Ukraine. The most important issue of humanitarian research in recent decades is to identify the conditions and mechanisms for the preservation of archaic beliefs and the entry of innovations into the sacred sphere. In the conditions of globalization of information exchange, rules, value judgments and seemingly unshakable beliefs of people are rapidly changing. The Albanians of Budzhak and the Sea of Azov keep beliefs and practices, largely unchanged from the time they lived in the area of their origin, the analysis of which will help to understand the mechanism for preserving traditional ideas and transforming the cultural code under the influence of external factors — primarily the media, the Internet, etc. The study is based on many years of field observations of the author, conducted from 1998 to 2021 both on the territory of Ukraine and the Balkans. The author draws on theoretical models developed in cultural and social anthropology by researchers who studied the phenomenon of cultural memory on French, Moldovan and Macedonian materials. The historical approach allows us to identify the fundamental patterns of the genesis of cultural memory and the evolution of magical practices.

Keywords: Albanians of Ukraine, magical practices, ritual technologies, information space

Information about author: 


Alexander Novik (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Universitetskaya Emb., 3, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-1123-1109