Volumen 16 (2022): Heft 2 (December 2022)
Hybrid Beliefs and Identities

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.

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.

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.

The aim of this article is to explore the effect of hybridity in the Komi hunters’ knowledge system as well as the potential for mutual understanding in dialogue between ethnographers and their Indigenous partners. I discuss how the hunters exploit printed sources, both scholarly works and popular magazines, in their practice. In the empirical part of this study, I present three case studies that demonstrate different ways in which a potential hybridity of knowledge has appeared in a field encounter. The analysis shows that some pieces of the hunters’ knowledge have a background in written sources, while they present scholarly evidence as facts from their own lives. At the same time, some similarities between the hunters’ narratives and publications are possibly random. I argue that exploitation of scholarly works and popular publications by hunters brings together Indigenous and scholarly knowledge and supports the potential of collaborative research.

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.

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.

The article* examines the sacred landscape in the space of Chuvash villages in the Samara Trans-Volga region. A sacred space is understood as a territory that, from the point of view of local people, has special properties and performs certain functions in their spiritual practices. Among the Samara Chuvash, represented in the majority by Orthodox communities, in the minority by pagans and Muslims, there are sites of various confessional origins as well as varying degrees of functionality and relevance in modern ritual practice from a actively used to completely forgotten. The article describes various types of sacred objects¹ found in Chuvash villages in the Samara Trans-Volga region in the context of relevant religious practices, showing the attitude of the villagers to sacred sites and their significance in the formation of the religiosity of the Chuvash population in the region. The purpose of the research is to identify the principles of the sacralisation of space, its semantic characteristics, and the specificity and purpose of sacred sites. The object of study is cult sites associated with the natural-geographical environment and formed in close relationship with it (for example places of prayers and pilgrimage), as well as those arising in the course of human activities to create man-made sacred-spatial environments. The study showed that sacred sites make up an integral part of the religious space in Chuvash villages in the Samara Trans-Volga region, and set its spatial coordinates. These objects reflect both general ethnic traditions and local-historical plots associated with a specific area and its people. The formation of the sacred landscape took place with the development of new land, in the course of which a traditional model of the microcosm of the Chuvash peasant was created. The research is based on the archival, published and field material of the authors.

The article analyses changes in Ukrainian folk beliefs about the afterlife in the face of forced resettlement due to the construction of hydroelectric power stations and water reservoirs. During resettlement, folk beliefs were adapted to the conditions of the time, under the influence of Soviet atheism and propaganda. Later, especially since the independence of Ukraine, migrants have tried to restore the lost connection between the living and the dead by establishing and consecrating crosses on common graves in which the remains of former villagers are reburied. Today, narratives about the relocation of a cemetery express anxiety about the disturbance of the dead and the idea of the impossibility of complete resettlement from an ancient place of residence.

In the early through to mid-20th century (before the Second World War), the Jewish population in Samogitian towns was quite abundant; they were generally business owners, and therefore there could have been various relationships between the rural Samogitian farmers and the urban Jews. The paper analyses the material of dialectal texts (recorded in the 1980s through to 2010s) from the ethnolinguistic perspective to find out how the Samogitian attitude towards Jews is reflected in the Samogitian linguistic worldview. The study focuses mainly on the methodology of the Lublin Ethnolinguistic School, in particular in terms of the view that language is directly related to culture, identity, and remembrance. The research revealed that the Jewish ethnic stereotype in the Samogitian linguistic worldview was quite positive, while especially negative evaluation was related to the context of religion.

At the turn of the 20th century, exotic shows as a form of displaying otherness gained wide popularity among various kinds of mass entertainment in Europe and the United States. Promoted professionally, the shows attracted public interest, combining the acquisition of knowledge with leisure. The freaks and people of non-European descent exhibited in different public spaces – zoos, parks, circus – not only demonstrated ‘nature’s errors’ and the diversity of human beings, but also the development of the human body and society within the framework of racial and evolutionary theories. The socio-economic and cultural context of each host country added that country’s own meaning to the messages of the shows. Exotic shows staged in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire inhabited by Latvians created a situation in which entertainment invented by modern colonialism took place in a territory directly affected by colonialism. Providing an insight into these shows, emphasizing exotic otherness mainly in Riga, the article seeks answers to the questions of who the audience was for these shows, and what kind of power relations, if any, between “living specimens” and spectators, and among spectators, one can deduce from the performance venue.

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.

This article offers an anthropological and ethnographic perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected and shaped rural community social behaviour in Kayo village during Japan’s first official state of emergency, April 7th to May 6th, 2020. It draws from observations and informal conversations with villagers during this period. First, it discusses the researcher’s experience of living in a rural village in northern Okinawa during the state of emergency and addresses the position of the ethnographer during the pandemic. It explores the Japanese concept of uchi/soto (inside/outside), to discuss the insider/outsider dynamics that character-ise everyday social life in Okinawa. Secondly, it engages with Marshall Sahlins’ (2013) idea of kinship as ‘social mutuality’ to consider how the pandemic invites us to rethink interpersonal relationships, space negotiation, and social boundaries, and how the latter are reconstructed and negotiated according to the new situation (emergency state). The example of Okinawa rural communities shows how rural populations can reconceptualise their environment and practices during the pandemic. It allows us to understand how notions of space, accessibility and kinship are reshaped into subtle boundaries between locals and outsiders in order to regulate access.

This article contributes to the debate about environmental sustainability, using the Skolt Sami conceptions of nature obligations as guides to this theme. The author’s recent research material is analysed in relation to other relevant publications and sources of environmental anthropology. Three key factors emerge: reasonableness in the use of natural resources, protection of nature, and respect for nature. Gregory Bateson’s models help to arrange these elements in relation to each other. It is argued here that respect for nature sets a scale for the conceptions of reasonableness and nature protection as the basis of environmental sustainability. The article produces questions and principles that may help put environmental sustainability into practice.