{"title":"Magic Specialists in Udmurt Culture:Some Portraits","authors":"N. Anisimov","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article* is dedicated to special people whom their community marked as having secret knowledge and magic power, and who belong of the institution of the initiated. My main sources are my field materials, interviews with these magic specialists, gathered between 2010 and 2021. My fieldwork data reveal that some healers have magic abilities from childhood, while others received them when they give birth or after some particular event in their lives. Some of these people specialise in and heal only particular ailments (for example of children), while others cure a wide range of diseases and difficulties. Some have special buildings to receive their visitors. The communities of which these personalities are part have ambiguous feelings towards them, and thus they become marginalised. As examples, I present the characters and describe the activities of seven women healers. I attempt to analyse precise examples of magic and social interaction within the relationships between the community and the magic specialist, and to investigate the understanding of the world that these healers have. To date there has been no focus on the personal and subjective aspect of this question, as well as to the socially regulative aspect: most publications so far have mainly emphasised the magic and mythological aspects.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"104 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41810129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inspirational Insights: The Problematic Vernacular","authors":"Simon J. Bronner","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although many disciplines dropped the use of “vernacular” in the 21st century because of the term’s connotations of primitivism, classism, and marginalization arising from 19th-century colonialism, the term has risen in usage among folklorists and ethnologists in the early 21st century. Three distinct streams of usage are identified and analyzed for their nuanced meaning: linguistics, religion, and architecture. Folkloristic and ethnological usage is traced to concern whether ‘vernacular’, despite its problematic historic context, is preferable to ‘folk’ as a modifier of areas of inquiry, many of which are into fluid, non-objectified categories such as belief, faith, and play. A rhetorical shift coinciding with social change from analog to digital communication is apparent to binaries of official/unofficial and formal/ informal in cultural analysis. A further and possibly fringe development has been an ideological strategy represented by the compound term ‘stigmatized vernacular’ that embraces rather than repudiates cultural hierarchy. The evaluation of the problematic adoption by 21st-century folklorists and ethnologists of ‘vernacular’ is that it reifies the very problems that the users intended to resolve.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"1 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42977452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Territories of Fire : Indigenous Communities, Land, and Anarchy Among a Highland People in Mindoro","authors":"C. Rosales","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article challenges the assumption that land tenure is contingent on acquiring a land title. It argues that for Indigenous peoples a land may be delineated, occupied, utilised, and collectively owned through the concept of territoriality. Through a combined ‘anarchist anthropology’ and political ecology the article provides ethnographic evidence from among the Tau-Buhid as a case in point to show that through their everyday relationship with fire and ignition practices territoriality is reinforced among their communities as a basis of land tenure. Thus, despite efforts of the Philippine state to phase out all kinds of fire practice on their land, a portion of which is a declared protected area, ignition continues as a way of orchestrating territorial autonomy against state sovereignty in the highlands. Ultimately, through such practices Indigenous lands have metaphorically transformed into ‘territories of fire’, a frontier where the state is irrelevant to Indigenous life and where state-control apparatuses are inoperable.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"239 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69219263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Buying a God in Paris: Cultural Hybridity in the Thinking of Yuri Vella, Forest Nenets Intellectual","authors":"E. Toulouze, Liivo Niglas, Laur Vallikivi","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper analyses highly creative and hybrid practices which tie the Indigenous Siberian, European Christian and Soviet worlds in unexpected ways. Reflecting on the Forest Nenets reindeer herder, poet and intellectual Yuri Vella’s understanding of the religious, the authors discuss an episode of turning an icon-like painting of Madonna with Child into a Nenets ‘god’. This took place in Paris half a year before Yuri’s death. First, we present his short biography, emphasising the key moments that shaped his cosmological and religious sensibilities. Then we depict a ritual of ‘god-making’ by using the ethnographic technique of thick description and then comment on it from various angles and discuss what they reveal about Yuri’s understanding of personhood and agency, relations with deities and other humans. Finally, we explain how animist notions and Christian elements become entangled in his religious thinking.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"22 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42788667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Objectified Values at Udmurt Prayers","authors":"R. Sadikov, T. Minniyakhmetova","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ritual objects and belongings are still used today at Udmurt prayer rituals that have sacrifices. We would even go so far as to say that carrying out ceremonies without them is unthinkable. Depending on their function they can be defined in several groups: ritual utensils and dishes, ritual clothing, priestly attributes, sacrificial items, donation items/offerings. Currently, there is both the preservation of traditional items and the emergence of new ones to fulfil known ritual purposes. In some cases, when creating new items, one can discern the imitation of traditional forms and materials. The article examines the objects in connection with a definite ritual, looking at the essence of their utility and sacredness, their role in maintaining historical memory, and the composition and purpose of the ritual objects. The article then goes on to analyse the reasons for the modification of these objects.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"132 - 159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41924979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: New Studies of Folk Religiosity in Poland","authors":"Iryna Koval-Fuchylo","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0025","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"311 - 315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42054879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hybridity in a Western Siberian Bear Ceremony","authors":"Stephan Dudeck","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Hybridity is often discussed in connection with the postcolonial condition. The cultural revival of the Khanty bear ceremony in Western Siberia could be a perfect example. It is on one hand a key representation of local Indigenous ontology and on the other has become a token in cultural heritage preservation by state actors and a cultural commodity for local tourism and media outlets. Indigenous activists struggle against the loss of authenticity with ideas of purism and scholars identifying the amalgamation of Indigenous ritual elements with Christian ideas and inventions of tradition on the other hand. I argue that the perception of original purity of elements that develop into hybrid forms in the colonial and postcolonial context is somewhat misleading. Instead, I propose that we look at hybridity and purity as intertwined dialectical aspects of cultural politics with a multiplicity of voices and perspectives and negotiated relations at several levels.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"43 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47976277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preface to the Special Issue “Hybrid Beliefs and Identities”","authors":"Art Leete","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"16 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44129417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial Impressions: On a Non-War","authors":"Art Leete","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"i - iv"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44707544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Rebuilding Ties that Existed Long Ago”: Experiences of Finnish Roma During Missionary Work in Estonia","authors":"Lidia Gripenberg","doi":"10.2478/jef-2022-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses Finnish Roma experiences of interaction with Roma in Estonia, in the period after the historic fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 through to the present. The research data rely on semi-structured interviews and informal conversations, as well as indirect observations of Finnish Roma missionising activities. The results show that Roma identity was seen as a unifying factor and a source of a feeling of belonging, but not as the major factor driving mission. The driving force of the mission stems from the urge to evangelise, inherent in how Pentecostal teaching is lived and directed. This study contributes to the understanding of the interplay of ethnic identity and spirituality in Roma communities in the context of missionising, as well as the role of missionising for the missionaries themselves.","PeriodicalId":37405,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics","volume":"16 1","pages":"117 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46955540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}