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Resonating to the theories of cultural trauma published in recent years we intend to regard the series of value conflicts provoked by the abrupt political and economic changes of the early 1990s as a cultural trauma. The extensive nature of fieldwork and level of publications achieved enable to carry out a fundamental theoretical study on the effects, mechanisms and coping strategies of cultural trauma. By way of method different forms of qualitative analysis, first of all semi-structured interviews incl. biographical narratives and investigations into everyday environment will be used. The aim of the study is to find out the main fields of effect of a cultural trauma and, consequently, the mechanisms of coping with it. As hypothesis we presume that the main fields of manifestation of a cultural trauma are: 1) the development of double standards of social thinking, as well as an extensive period of experiencing them and making them conscious. Overcoming the double standards would thus mark the end of the trauma; 2) structural changes in civil initiative through which the initiative on grassroot level adapts itself to the changed circumstances; 3) rituals of cultural nature, their slow transformation that may even prove to be a way of assimilation into a new social reality; 4) home as an integrative cultural factor that reflects conflicts of values in both the material and mental spheres in a complex manner. Retreatment, innovations, ritualizations, actions of resistance should be regarded as mechanisms of coping with the trauma. |