Vasile AVĂDĂNEI1, Ioan SURDU1, Lidia AVĂDĂNEI1, Carmen CĂTUNA1
1 Mountain Economy Centre „CE-MONT” of the National Institute of Economic Research „Costin C. Kirițescu” of the Romanian Academy; str. 13 Septembrie, Bucharest, Romania;
*Corresponding author: vasileavadanei2004@yahoo.com; +40 721811362
Abstract
The paper addresses the issue of the dowry box as a hope of human regeneration in postmodern society. It describes the role of the dowry box for different people who consider marriage as the most important event in people’s lives and who recognize that the dowry represents a vital package of resources (material and immaterial) for a new family at the beginning of the new life. The paper describes the significance of the dowry box and what it represented in the life of the people in the mountainous environment in recent and older times. The dowry box was and is a catalyst for the generation, accumulation and transfer of wealth (material and immaterial) from one generation to another within a family. In order for the succession of generations to be strengthened, it is necessary to transfer knowledge, skills and competences from a young age. This necessity is also supportive of the predictability of marriage as a capital event in the lives of rural people. The results accumulate gradually, so that when setting up a family, young people will have sufficient resources and knowledge to build their own living environment and fulfill the conditions of viability and functional autonomy. We are concerned with the challenge of rebuilding the ensemble of the dowry box with all the elements that symbolize it, building a complex mechanism of human regeneration as a solution to the social mutations characteristic of postmodern society.
Keywords:
Dowry box, dowry, founding a family, transfer of wealth, chronotope