Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

Life and Death in the Mazahua Worldview in the Context of COVID-19

Felipe González Ortiz — 2024-12-13

In response to the confinement measures enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of narratives emerged in the Mazahua ethnic region of central Mexico that were deeply connected to the Mesoamerican worldview of this people. This research aims to analyse the reasons why such narratives gained greater prominence in this context and to examine how these narratives manifest in situations of heightened morbidity and mortality. Through ethnographic fieldwork, including testimonial and in-depth interviews conducted immediately after the pandemic, narratives about the experience of confinement in several Mazahua communities were produced and uncovered. These narratives reveal that the Mesoamerican beliefs of the Mazahua people are often collectively kept in the background during times of harmony but resurface with intensity during periods of morbidity and mortality. The study particularly found that Mazahua beliefs are not centred on an affirmative search for truth but rather on a thought process oriented toward existential being.

Examining ‘Vernacular’ Symbols and Symbolic Power in Times of Crisis

Kikee Doma Bhutia — 2024-12-13

This article examines the significance and impact of vernacular symbols with national and ritualistic importance, focusing on their roles in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the Tibetan crisis. The study asserts that the effectiveness of these symbols in mobilising public sentiment depends on their ability to elicit a diverse range of emotions. It analyses symbols that have garnered global attention, particularly following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and China’s occupation of Tibet in 1959.
The methodology combines fieldwork and interviews with Tibetan communities in Kalimpong near Darjeeling (West Bengal), Belakhuppi (South India), and Sikkim, along with Ukrainians residing in Estonia. By utilising both traditional ethnographic approaches and netnography (Kozinets 2015), the study investigates trends and emotional impacts through social media, incorporating digital tools for interviews.
The research explores the transformation of religious and cultural symbols into instruments for constructing national identity amid geopolitical conflicts. It examines how these symbols validate personal and collective identities during national crises, offering insights into their role in affirming one’s identity as it relates to a lost or threatened nation.

The Spiritual Significance of Birds in Sámi Tradition

Francis Joy — 2024-12-13

During the 17th century small animals were connected with the Sámi noaidi – religious specialist and artist – with regard to the practice of noaidivuohta (shamanism) and other tasks he performed. Some of these animals were peculiar species of birds that varied in setting making them significant as assistants. Birds as such are illustrated on historical Sámi drums, particularly those from Swedish Sápmi. The value of birds within Sámi tradition means that some contemporary Sámi artists reuse early illustrations as sources of inspiration for new types of drum, meaning that noaidi power is manifest through their work. Moreover, one can suggest that these drums play a role in the on-going spiritual significance of birds within different settings, thus helping to perpetuate their merit today.

Dramaturgical Tactics in a Chinese Tea Room: Tailoring Self-presentation for Business Success

Yanyu Wang — 2024-12-13

The current paper studies the strategic behaviour pursued by individuals in Fuzhou City, China, to enhance reputation, power, and social capital through rituals involving drinking Wuyi Rock Tea. The rituals include people consciously acting to improve their reputation by following specific rules when making and drinking the tea in teahouses. The dramaturgical method of social analysis developed by social theorist Erving Goffman draws an analogy between dramatic performance and social actors strategically “playing a part” when interacting with others. Analysing Chinese Wuyi tea rituals using this approach demonstrates the value of the dramaturgical paradigm within strategic sciences such as business anthropology.

Dressing the Part: Producing Ethnic Minority Textiles in the Era of Intangible Cultural Heritage Tourism

Carrie Hertz — 2024-12-13

Visualizing difference is central to ethnic tourism and intangible cultural heritage (ICH) performance in Southwest China today. The expectation that individuals in ethnic minority communities will always be dressed and ready to meet romanticized expectations, while otherwise living their lives, creates new subjectivities and refashions how people think about and interact with their traditional material practices. ICH interventions may promise support for minority cultural reproduction but can instead disincentivize the intergenerational transmission of skilled knowledge. At the same time, individuals are experimenting with new forms of entrepreneurial heritage-making that meet community needs without official ICH endorsement, including the development of small-scale ethnic fashion industries. Based on fieldwork in Baiku Yao and Sanjiang Dong communities in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, this study highlights individuals engaged in the making, wearing, and marketing of minority dress on an expanding national stage.

Basketry and Festival among the Dong (Kam) People

Jason Baird Jackson — 2024-12-13

While fundamental to the practical concerns of everyday life, bamboo baskets also play important roles within festivals staged by the Dong (Kam) people of Southwest China. Drawing upon fieldwork in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and in adjacent Liping County, Guizhou Province, this article will evoke and contextualize some of the ways that bamboo baskets are bought and sold, used and put on display within festivals held in this mountainous corner of China and the Southeast Asian Massif.

“I Will Stitch It Back and Pass It Down”: A Bai Elder Makes and Teaches Buzha

Jon Kay — 2024-12-13

This essay explores how traditional arts impact the lives of older adults, especially those recognized as inheritors of an Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). Through the work of elder Bai artist Mrs Zhao Huaizhu, I consider how traditional handicrafts and cultural knowledge enhance elder wellbeing and foster intergenerational connections. Mrs Zhao is a master of buzha, a traditional Bai art form where embroidered silk items are filled with wormwood and other aromatic herbs. Recognized as an ICH inheritor, Mrs Zhao invests her silk creations with Bai folklore, local history, and personal narratives. She uses her creations to convey cultural values and impart her individual identity. Engaging in this expressive practice not only gives Mrs Zhao’s life purpose and meaning, but also allows her to contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of her Bai community. This case study underscores the reciprocal relationship between ICH practices and the elders who practice them. Blending folklore methods with gerontological perspectives, the essay makes clear that traditional arts and cultural performances can work to support the quality of life of older adults. While elder artisans may be vital for sustaining traditional knowledge and practices, active participation in these cultural productions also enhance their emotional, psychological, physical, and social wellbeing, which is seldom a consideration in scholarly and governmental conversations about the value of ‘heritage’ conservation efforts.

Basketry Craft Practice in Southwest China: The Case of Defeng Village

Lijun Zhang — 2024-12-13

This paper focuses on the practice of basketry craft and its relationship to changing social dynamics in Southwest China that we have observed through collaborative ethnographic projects across the region. We here focus on the case of Defeng village, a Dong (Kam) settlement where the entire community specializes in producing a particular form of basket called fanyouyou (rice basket) for a regional market. Basket making as a living form of community-based culture in Defeng is practiced, sustained, and adapted by skilled basket makers in a fast-changing social, cultural, and economic landscape. When relevant, we will also compare the basketry in Defeng to other locales that we have visited in Southwest China.

Folklore, Ethnology, Philology: National Sciences and Global Connections

Diarmuid Ó Giolláin — 2024-12-13

Folklore and ethnology were from their beginnings closely associated with language. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used languages to identify and categorise peoples, and he influenced the German-speaking scholars who coined the earliest ethnological terms, the first of which came in the 1740s. Largely through Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings, from the late 18th century the idea of the Volksgeist helped to valorise language and popular traditions as authentic markers of cultural distinctiveness. With the 19th-century development of the comparative historical study of languages, especially Indo-European and Uralic, the possibility appeared of positing much deeper historical origins for modern European nations, above all for those nations whose written histories began in relatively recent times. As it developed within the German university system in the course of the 19th century philology encompassed not just language and literature but mythology, folk traditions, law, medicine and history, all understood in relation to German culture as a whole. As folklore studies were professionalised and institutionalised, ‘national’ folklore studies tended to be largely defined by the extent of a distinct language, while dialect studies frequently drew on folk traditions to give representative examples of localised speech using storytellers as privileged informants – as we show in the case of Irish dialectology.

Book Review: Words and Silences: Nenets Reindeer Herders and Russian Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic

Kirill Istomin — 2024-12-13

Vallikivi, Laur. 2024. Words and Silences: Nenets Reindeer Herders and Russian Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 358 pages.

Folk Narratives in the Changing World: The 19th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR)

Malay Bera — 2024-12-13

The 19th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR) was held in Riga from June 17 to 21, 2024.

Book Review: The End of the World: Cultural Apocalypse and Transcendence

Roberto Evangelista — 2024-12-13

De Martino, Ernesto. 2023. The End of the World: Cultural Apocalypse and Transcendence, translated by Dorothy Louise Zinn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 352 pages.

Editorial Impressions: The Great Robbery: How Skeletons and Gods Ended up in Museum Collections

Art Leete — 2024-12-13

Editorial