What is it about?
In this paper we examine a prominent but little studied aspect of everyday life in Central Europe, the Czech tramping movement. We aim to show how workers and students from Czech industrial towns and cities created and sustained imaginary rural spaces and flamboyant alternative personas. In some cases these shared fantasy worlds were understood to be a simple leisure pursuit. In other instances tramping activity was a form of resistance and provided a means of escape from the monotony of everyday life, and political repression by the Communist authorities.
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Why is it important?
This is an example of how contemporary archaeology can combine multiple lines of evidence to research and document ephemeral or intangible aspects of popular culture in the former Eastern Bloc
Perspectives
Czech tramping is little known in the West, but may be likened to similar 20th century youth movements elsewhere. The paper makes a contribution to the study of such movements globally, by advancing a methodology for studying the activities of such ephemeral groups.
Professor James Symonds
University of Amsterdam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cowboys and Bohemians: Recreation, Resistance, and the Tramping Movement in West Bohemia, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, August 2014, Equinox Publishing,
DOI: 10.1558/jca.v1i1.165.
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