Category: Blog

@article{JEF, author = {Kärri Toomeos-Orglaan}, title = { Gender Stereotypes in Cinderella (ATU 510A) and The Princess on the Glass Mountain (ATU 530)}, journal = {Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics}, volume = {7}, number = {2}, year = {2013}, keywords = {fairy tale; interpretation; gender stereotypes; active male; passive female}, abstract = {One of the best-known role-based stereotypes in European fairy tales is that of an active male and a passive female. Awareness of such a stereotype is connected with the feminist approach that criticises the domination of the male point of view in fairy tales and the depiction of women from the position of men. The article focuses on analysing if and how the stereotype is realised in the context of two fairy tale types – Cinderella (ATU 510A) and The Princess on the Glass Mountain (ATU 530). According to Bengt Holbek, fairy tales as symbolic texts are closely connected to the real world as they refer to the latter through fantastic phenomena and events. Holbek is interested in the meaning of magical elements in the living tradition: according to him the world of fairy tales does not reflect the real world directly, but reveals the storytellers’ and their audiences’ ideas of what the latter should be like. What emerges as an important question is whose vision is transmitted by such fairy tale interpretations; whether researchers are able to interpret the meanings the tales might have had for the storytellers, or whether it is just the viewpoint of the researcher that is reflected.}, issn = {2228-0987}, pages = {49–64}, url = {https://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal/article/view/142} }

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 12 No 2 (2018) /
4. Notes and Reviews

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2018-0015 16th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions titled Multiple Religious Identities – Individuals, Communities, Traditions was held on October 17–21, 2018 in Bern, Switzerland. In this report on EASR 2018 conference I focus on its general idea and topic, give a brief overview of the plenary talks and panels, and organizational and conceptual problems.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

– the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 12 No 2 (2018) /
4. Articles

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2018-0010 This study, based on fieldwork in rural Lanquín, Guatemala, discusses cultural continuity and the sense of historicity through agricultural rituals and worship of the agricultural deity Tzuultaq’as. The place, Lanquín, and the Q’eqchi’ Maya peasant farmers are situated within a two-fold tension and contradiction. Geographically remote in relation to the economic centers in Guatemala, and marginal in infrastructural development, while their cash crop harvests never fail to be effected by the fluctuations of the global market. From the eclectic stance merging both theories of cultural essentialism and constructivism, by juxtaposing the emblematic event of the anti-Monsanto Law movement in 2014 in Guatemala, and by the calendrical cycles of ritual events, routines, and ceremonials in rural Lanquín, the subsistence practices of milpa (corn field) cultivation emerge as a central theme for cultural survival and continuity. The aggregated clusters of ritual processions and the system of symbolism used manifest the Q’eqchi’ peasant thought and practice of sustainability and conservancy in their construction of a modern cultural identity that maintains congruency with the cultural essence of a nativist identity.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

– the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 12 No 2 (2018) /
4. Notes and Reviews

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2018-0016 Overview of 3rd Ethnographic Field Symposium in Ludorvay, Udmurtia, September 18-20, 2018.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

– the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

@article{JEF, author = {Marcas Mac Coinnigh}, title = { A Life History of the ‘Irish’ Ecotype Tied Stones and Loose Dogs}, journal = {Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics}, volume = {13}, number = {1}, year = {2019}, keywords = {ecotype; ecotypification; Irish language; jest-tale; “Tied Stones and Loose Dogs”}, abstract = {The term ecotype was first introduced to the field of folkloristics by Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878–1952), who proposed the idea that folktales develop from base forms due to transformations triggered by specific environmental conditions before eventually stabilising within cultural districts. The general analogy was popular amongst folklorists who readily invoked the concept to deconstruct a wide range of genres including rhyming couplets, folk ballads, folktales, fairy-tales, personal narratives, legends and urban legends. It is unfortunate, however, that ecotypes have largely been ignored by scholars working in the fields of paremiology, especially when one considers not only the established inter-relationships between proverbial material and other folkoristic genres, but also the recent pioneering cross-cultural analyses of idiomatic expressions in European languages and beyond.This paper will provide a template for the analysis of folk expressions by examining the life history of an Irish ecotype, tied stones and loose dogs. It will show that folk expressions are a fertile area of research that can be deconstructed using literary and historical research based on the historic-geographic method. At the heart of this template, I argue, is the need to read texts within their contemporary cultural, historical and socio-economic frameworks to decode meanings according to instantiation, the motivations for their use, and the question of agency in folk groups. By collecting, examining and construing inter-relations between folkloristic texts across a range of cultural products – folklore collections, popular culture periodicals and political discourse – and by informed cultural contextualisation of its instantiations, we can re-construct the extensive cultural underpinnings that inform a range of everyday folk expressions.}, issn = {2228-0987}, pages = {51–78}, doi = {10.2478/jef-2019-0004}, url = {http://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal/article/view/302} }

@article{JEF, author = {Ave Tupits}, title = { MD Voldemar Sumberg and the Folk Medicine Collection of the Estonian Museum of Hygiene from the 1920s and 1930s}, journal = {Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics}, volume = {4}, number = {2}, year = {2011}, keywords = {collecting folk medicine; study of folk medicine; history of folkloristics; history of medicine}, abstract = {Based on the documents preserved in several museums and archives in Tartu and Tallinn (the Estonian Health Care Museum, the Estonian State Archives, the Estonian Historical Archives, the Estonian Folklore Archives and the Estonian National Museum), the article will give an overview of the views of the director of the Estonian Museum of Hygiene, Voldemar Sumberg, on the relationship between folk medicine and modern medicine; the data on folk medicine collecting campaigns with Sumberg’s involvement in the 1920s; and the fate of the folk medicine records and items collected by the Museum of Hygiene during the 1920s and 1930s, according to the documentation and archival material found so far.}, issn = {2228-0987}, pages = {19–30}, url = {https://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal/article/view/53} }

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 12 No 2 (2018) /
4. Articles

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2018-0014 Traditionally, the curator’s work has been in close connection with the main functions of the museum – preservation, research, and communication. The changes that have occurred at museums over the past few decades have also influenced the profession of curator. Specialisation has taken place inside the museum, and so the curator’s functions have also changed. This article focuses on the curator’s field of work at national museums in Finland and in the Baltic states. The analysis is mainly based on interviews conducted with curators and other museum professionals at the Estonian National Museum, the Estonian History Museum, the National History Museum of Latvia, the National Museum of Lithuania, and the National Museum of Finland. Emanating from the PRC model provided by the Reinwardt Academy as well as the global changes induced by the new museology, the focus is on the curator’s connection with museum collections. The analysis shows that the curator’s role is not similar in all the museums under discussion; there are regional differences in structure, curatorial duties, and priorities. While at some museums the curator is regarded as a collection keeper who can also do some research, at others they are rather researchers and have only infrequent contact with collections.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

– the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

Preface to the Special Issue “Fairy Tales – Tellers, Tellings and Interpretations”.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

– the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

@article{JEF, author = {Eleonora Lundell}, title = { Exú’s Work – The Agency of Ritual Objects in Southeast Brazilian Umbanda}, journal = {Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics}, volume = {10}, number = {1}, year = {2016}, keywords = {Umbanda; Exú; ritual objects; materiality; Afro-Brazilian religion; São Paulo}, abstract = {This article concentrates on the material side of religious intimacy in Afro-Brazilian Umbanda through an ‘ontographic’ perspective as well as looking at materiality as evidence. It is based on an eleven-month fieldwork among devotees, clients and individual practitioners of Umbanda in Southeast Brazilian metropolises, especially in São Paulo. In people’s experiences of spiritual work (trabalho) and spiritual development (desenvolvimento) carried out with Exús – guardians, guides and protectors who have, after their death, returned in order to work for people’s wellbeing – ritual objects (such as bodies, clothes, beverages, herbs, cigarettes, candles, songs) are seen as constitutive in knowledge production and life transformation. The central claim in this article is that diverse material and immaterial objects through which Exús interact and materialise, are not primarily symbolic nor representative, but are re-configurative.}, issn = {2228-0987}, pages = {43–69}, doi = {10.1515/jef-2016-0003}, url = {https://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal/article/view/232} }

In literature about missionary activities in western Siberia in the 19th – early 20th century, the natives are seen as passive recipients of the missionaries’ initiative, as victims of their endeavours. This article intends to present another view of the encounter, showing firstly why this erroneous vision developed and secondly how the Khanty and the Nenets are actually active in the interaction. It shows how in both cases, either by accepting or by refusing, the natives follow their own interests and their own decisions without submitting to stronger constraint against their will. While those who refused to accept the missionaries’ endeavours clearly expressed their independence, those who chose to convert did it sincerely, although their understanding of Christianity did not match the missionaries’ expectations. They did it for conscious reasons, not just yielding to the missionaries’ wishes but often being themselves the initiators. For them, Christianity is integrated in a worldview that is not based on dual oppositions. Therefore, while representatives of official Christianity do not see these natives as real Christians, they consider themselves to be so.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

– the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.