Kavecsánszki Máté

Contributed content

2022

The study of the historicity and change processes of dance culture requires a specific theoretical methodology in dance anthropology and dance folklore studies, especially since such research has been relatively rare in the Hungarian anthropological scene and has produced a number of questionable results in the field of dance folklore studies. several aspects of an anthropological approach, as well as adopting a comparative and interpretive approach to critical dance studies can assist in deploying a historical perspective in the examination of dance culture. On the other hand, I will also argue that certain schools of the research methodology of social history may facilitate this as well. Utilizing the findings of new social history can also greatly enrich the current methodology of historical dance research.

Historical dance research can operate in a wide methodological and thematic framework of which I only endeavour to show one possible direction. This possible direction in research investigates the connection between social control and dance culture. in construing the relationship between dance culture and social control, the analysis will focus on two important areas. The first is the analysis of the attempts to regulate the subject and the object of disciplinary actions, i.e., dance, the dancing body, and the instances of habit performance linked to the dancing body. one cannot investigate the disciplining of body movements without endeavouring to comprehend the mental universe that formulates the ideologies in the framework of which the intent to discipline develops and which motivate the actions aimed at achieving this. It is especially important here to place the intent to discipline in a wider social and cultural-historical context, i.e., to examine the mental universe in which the field of conflict between the regulator and the regulated is formed. protestant preachers and theologians would recall the tenets related to bodily sins generated on the basis of biblical traditions. They invented a system of christian ethics in which their anxiousness over the fate of their country was connected to the moral deviations of the population. This is how dance, and its entire culture of customs found their way into the focus of sermons.

PublicationResearch article2022Dávid Ferenc és a kortárs prédikációirodalom