The hierarchization of regional social phenomena according to their distance to a certain ?nucleus? ? a unit of signification but at the same time a unit of social life ? engenders a research concerning historical origins. The ongoing continuity of certain aspects of regional life it is connected somehow to their centrality that appears as being not only functionally but also historically construed:

?They all (the social institutions of rural society ? our note) live, on one side, in the mainstream of today social life, connected to its main functions, but, on the other side, they still participate, even if behind the level of today?s people conscious life, to old unities of meaning. Behind every fragment of actual social life, there is an immense stratification, object for a social archeology (Ionică, 1996: 13).

It is essential to combine these two aspects, the functionalist one of the present day life and the historical one, in any regional understanding of social life, because ?the reality of [?] social life [?] is the result of a historical evolution with a unique unfolding and a certain spatial extension?(Ionică, 1996: 14).

The European theoretical position to which Ionică explicitly rallies himself is the German cultural diffusionism with its concepts of Kulturkreis and Kulturschicht. Fr. Gräbner with his Methode der Ethnologie, Heidelberg, 1911 and W. Schmidt with Handbuch der Methode der Kulturhistorishen Ethnologie, Münster, 1937 are quoted. Applying this kind of approach to European rural life can be, notwithstanding all the complications that appear when you study European instead of exotic populations, thinks Ion I. Ionică, very important. The main problem consists in the fact that there is a multiplicity of meanings and functional registers of the concept of ?people? (popor), popular, and of the conceptual connections between popular culture and national culture and identity.

?We are far nowadays from considering the world of popular cultural values as a homogenous reality, expressing a unique and atemporal origin, so, we consider the artifacts of its culture and his specific forms of life as stemming from well determined historical processes and specific spatial circles ? which does not exclude the problem of the national specificity, but gives it another perspective and another depth? (Ionică, 1996: 14, emphasis added ? C.C.).

The old dichotomy between Folklore and Ethnography, which was dominating the study of ?popular life? in Romania, seems ?unnatural? and ?devoid of long term value? (Ionică, 1996: 16) as it differentiates between a field of the study and collecting of the manifestations of spiritual life?songs, beliefs, customs etc. (folklore) and another similar field for the products of material life?arts, traditional techniques etc. (ethnography). The theoretic poverty of this position cannot be resolved by simply transforming folklore into a province of ethnography--as suggested for example by G. Vâlsan or A. Vuia. The solution, in Ion Ionică?s view, consists in the sociologization of the ethnographic approach[3](Ionică, 1996: 19).

Even if this sociologization is to take place, the dualism folklore-ethnography is to be surpassed and from folklore as a study of popular antiquities, of venerable traditions and survivals we are to gain a new anthropological and sociological vision of popular reality there remains a huge ambiguity. The very notion of ?popular? remains indeterminate even in a sociological perspective of the actual, ongoing life of ?the people.?  Ion Ionică is quite aware of these drawbacks and tries to discriminate amongst the meanings of ?popular:?

[3]A quite durkheimian-maussian solution.