<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> The Punjabi postpartum tradition is called sawa mahina (‘five weeks’). This study investigates infant health care belief practices in rural Punjab and looks at the social significance of infant care beliefs practiced during sawa mahina. During six months of fieldwork, using participant observation and unstructured interviews as primary research methods, the study explored the prevalent postpartum tradition from a childcare perspective. A Punjabi child holds a social value regarding familial, religious, and emotional values. The five-week traditional postpartum period provides an insight into mother-child attachment, related child care belief practices, and the social construction of infancy. A child’s agency is recognised in the embodied mother-child relationship, and a child is seen in a sympathetic connection with the mother. Establishing an early foundation of ascribed identities is another important part of postpartum belief practices.</abstract>

The Postpartum Tradition of Sawa Mahina in Rural Punjab, Pakistan

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article* situates folklore studies in relation to the approach to social research known as world-systems analysis. In doing so, the work also serves as an evocation of world-systems analysis of potential usefulness for the practice of folklore research and for further thinking about the articulation of the field with others in the human or social sciences. Even if folklorists choose not to embrace a world-systems framework, it is valuable to position folklore studies within the matrix of social science disciplines that this perspective sees as important to the rise of the modern capitalist world-system. This positioning relates to interpretations of world history, but also to debates about the future status of the disciplines. While world-systems analysis is only one among several approaches to exploring the human experience in broad greater-than-local contexts, it offers a useful instance for a larger effort to work out more far-reaching modes of work in folkloristics.
</abstract>

Towards Wider Framings: World-Systems Analysis and Folklore Studies

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>In this article* I describe the process of developing of Mari ethnic religion based on the tradition of animistic beliefs. I aim to consider two areas of contemporary Mari religion, the activities of the official religious organisation and the vernacular tradition as practiced by people in the countryside. The Mari vernacular belief system has been seen as one of the components of Mari ethnic identity. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mari religious tradition has played a role in strengthening national identity, and so the religious organisation has been officially registered. Today there is an attempt to adapt Mari religious practices to the conditions of the religious market, in the face of which vernacular tradition seems to lose its connection with the ethnic worldview and rural way of life. My analysis of research material from fieldwork conducted shows the existence of belief rituals that are followed independently from the official Mari religious movement. Contemporary Mari religious tradition has two layers and can be described as a process of transformation from vernacular belief to ethnic religion with its religious institutions and group of experts.</abstract>

Contemporary Mari Belief: The Formation of Ethnic Religion

The Revival of Sacred Sites in the Urals: the Local and Beyond

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article looks at the perceptions of fear and ‘the frightening’ in contemporary Mongolian demonology. In the article, I discuss beliefs concerning both human and supernatural – what is supposed to be frightening for humans and what is supposed to be frightening for spirits, ghosts and demons. In daily interaction with the supernatural this mutual ‘fright’ can be regarded as an important part of communication. In this article, I discuss what is believed to be the most frightful for humans and for supernatural agents, what kinds of image this fear relates to and what the roots of these beliefs are, as well as the popular ways to confront and defend against ‘frightening’ in Mongolian folklore.My research is based on fieldwork materials collected during annual expeditions in different parts of Mongolia (2006–2017) and Mongolian published sources such as Mongolian newspapers and journals, special editions of stories about encounters with the supernatural.</abstract>

Faces of Mongolian Fear: Demonological Beliefs, Narratives and Protective Measures in Contemporary Folk Religion

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article concentrates on the practice of wearing crystals in Estonia. The practice is currently a popular phenomenon in New Spirituality on a global scale, although it is not an entirely novel trend. Crystals are part of the materiality of New Spirituality and so the aim of the article is to emphasize the meaning-making process of this materiality and of vernacular interpretations in the practice. Following the methodology of material culture studies, I focus on mutual relationships and interaction between humans and crystals and the significances gained through practice. Based on the perspectives of vernacular religion, the practice is embedded in people’s everyday lives. People wear crystals to support their human qualities and daily activities, and in practice crystals as material objects evolve intimate and profound relationship with people.</abstract>

The Practice of Wearing Crystals in Contemporary New Spirituality in Estonia: Supporting Oneself in Everyday Life

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article reflects on the complex Udmurt religious situation. The Udmurt, a minority group in Central Russia, have an animistic background and live today in different administrative units of the Russian Federation: they have their own Republic, Udmurtia, in which the majority of the population is composed by ethnic Orthodox Russians, but they live also, from West to East, in the Kirov oblast, in the Mari El Republic, in Tatarstan, in Bashkortostan, and in some smaller groups eastwards. In the core territory they were submitted to forced Evangelisation by the Orthodox Russians after their integration into Muscovy, in the 16th century. Eventually, the imposed conversion succeeded, while in regions where the dominant religion was Islam, and where many fled under pressure, they kept their original religious practice. This article investigates this group’s religious affiliations and real practice today, between Orthodoxy and Islam, observing that where Islam dominates, animism thrives while where Orthodoxy dominates, different forms of syncretistic religious practice keep the former worldview alive.
</abstract>

Udmurt Religious Practice Today: Between Native Traditions and World Religions

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The article, which is based on both published sources and field expedition materials from recent decades, sets out to examine the confessional processes taking place in a small area in the south of Perm Territory that is settled by Udmurts, the foundation of whose religious tradition was the preservation of traditional beliefs. The author has conducted an analysis of the historical prerequisites for the formation of a multi-confessional community, characterised by both the preservation of traditional religion and the active spread of Islam and Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historical experience of this period has influenced the modern ethno-confessional situation. Today, each of the religious traditions observed by the community being studied has a different potential for development. Following the restoration of the system of prayers and institutions, traditional religion has played a vital role, both in the modern ethnic identity of the group as a whole, and in the local identity of the inhabitants of specific villages and hamlets. In their capacity as significant and major social events of the year, prayers occupy an important place in the contemporary ethno-cultural life of the Kuyeda Udmurts. At the same time, the symbolic nature of prayers, the loss of a developed system of ideas, along with the absence of outstanding confessional leaders are often the reasons for the absence of public religious life in some Udmurt villages, and for the lack of involvement of a significant part of the local community in contemporary confessional events. Christianity currently has significant potential to spread within the group individual strategies, as well as missionary work, are the main reasons for its active spread in recent decades. Islam has maintained its position in the same period.
</abstract>

The Contemporary Ethno-Confessional Situation Among the Udmurts of Perm Territory

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Continuing a dialogue with Ülo Valk on the value of the etic term <italic>vernacular</italic> in folk-loristic scholarship, this essay responds to his claim that despite the stigma of the word’s past usage and its rejection by other fields it holds promise for folkloristics because of its conceptual flexibility, which he finds is especially conducive to the study of belief and religious practices. Pointing out that flexibility – or “fuzziness” to quote other critics – suggests imprecision, residualism, hierarchy, and lack of analytical instrumentality, this essay contends that use of <italic>vernacular</italic> reveals more about its users than the groups and practices it purports to describe. Recounting the intellectual history of the term and its adoption in folkloristic circles as well as the author’s own scholarship, this essay maintains that the term has limited, if any, use in folkloristics and ethnology because of its negative assumptions and “fuzzy” logic. It can be reflexively analyzed, however, to understand scholars’ perceptions of cultural phenomena and their conflicts with cognitive categories of practice and belief enacted by cultural participants.
</abstract>

The (Mal)Functionality of <italic>Vernacular</italic>

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article takes as its focus an examination of instances of occasional commemoration of the dead in Udmurt culture. Descriptions of such commemorations are based on sources drawn from published research literature as well as the author’s own field materials collected between 2007 and 2022. It should be noted that, to date, no specific research has been conducted on this issue, most probably due to its irregularity and, to some extent, its intimate nature. The material shows that cases of occasional commemoration within Udmurt culture cover a fairly wide range of social, ceremonial and magical aspects of life. Faith in the power and strength of ancestors has built up an entire system of relationships and behavioural strategies that vividly characterise a traditional worldview that is actualised in extraordinary life circumstances. It can be said that today examples of occasional commemorations are quite diverse, and are commonplace in the everyday and ceremonial life of the Udmurt.
</abstract>

Occasional Commemorative Rituals in Udmurt Culture

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The article* focuses on an analysis of the funeral and memorial rituals of the Ludian Karelians in the context of folk religion. For many years, rites of Orthodox origin were either viewed unilaterally or ignored altogether in ethnographic literature, with the reconstruction of ‘pagan’ elements being highlighted, which in turn gave rise to the theory of dual faith. According to the results of my research, the funeral and memorial traditions of the Ludians (from the late 19th to the late 20th century) are based on an Orthodox funeral system in which many aspects derived from a Christian basis found new interpretation. For example, the requirement to light candles was explained as lighting the way to the afterlife, the importance of making confession was so that the dying person’s sins would not attach to the living, and funeral services were to help the soul of the deceased ‘settle’, etc. The principal exponents of the funeral rituals, who ensured the successful transition of the soul to the next world, were representatives of the people: women who washed the body of the deceased, and lamenters, but the church priesthood nonetheless played a significant role in conducting the rituals. The priest’s participation is apparent at all stages of the funeral ritual, from confession to commemoration. Following the abolition of the institution of the church during the Soviet period, the functions of the priest were assumed by elderly women who knew the prayers and church burial traditions.
</abstract>

Christian Elements and Their Folk Adaptations in the Funeral and Memorial Rites of the Ludian Karelians

Book Review: Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
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.
</abstract>

Inspirational Insights: The Problematic Vernacular

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> This article examines rituals of mourning in the digital mediascape in the case of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, 2015. The idea of the digital mediascape draws on Arjun Appadurai’s (1990) seminal work on mediascape and develops it further in the current framework of digital media. Rituals of mourning are approached as a response and a reaction to the anxiety and distress caused by the unexpected violent death of global media attention. The phenomenology of ritual practices in Charlie Hebdo is characterised as multi-layered, relational and coexisting. The article looks in particular at the ritual mourning in association with the message and the meme “Je suis Charlie”. The ‘imagined worlds’ created around the digital circulation of this ritual message are discussed in relation to the idea of the politics of death formed around such fundamental value-laden questions as whose life counts as life and is thus worthy of public recognition of mourning, as Judith Butler (2004) has asked.</abstract>

“Je Suis Charlie” and the Digital Mediascape: The Politics of Death in the Charlie Hebdo Mourning Rituals

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article<xref ref-type="fn">*</xref> 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 period among devotees, clients and individual practitioners of Umbanda in Southeast Brazilian metropolises, especially in São Paulo. In people’s experiences of spiritual work (<italic>trabalho</italic>) and spiritual development (<italic>desenvolvimento</italic>) 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 neither primarily symbolic nor representative, but are re-configurative.</abstract>

Exú’s Work – The Agency of Ritual Objects in Southeast Brazilian Umbanda

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>Sport has become increasingly popular with recreational athletes over the last couple of decades. This has only gained minimal attention so far from scholars interested in the relations between recreational sports and everyday culture. With this paper, we seek to contribute to this field by scrutinising the sensory dimensions of recreational sport. Rather than probing into or highlighting isolated senses, we look at sensory dimensions understood as a combination of different, non-separable sensory experiences featured in recreational endurance sports. We are interested in how the senses play a role for recreational endurance athletes in running, triathlon and cycling both in training and competition. We start by examining how cultural and social dimensions are inextricably linked to doing sports. Secondly, we show how different configurations of the senses and their communicative mediation are contingent on sport disciplines, specific settings, technology, development and change as sensory careers over time. Thirdly, we discuss the kinaesthetic dimensions of doing sports in relation to the senses and the role of atmospheres. We conclude by arguing that highlighting specific senses by athletes is a cultural practice that calls for a holistic analysis of senses in sport, and outline some methodological implications for research on the senses.</abstract>

Sensing Athletes: Sensory Dimensions of Recreational Endurance Sports

Editorial Impressions: Feelings of Hybridity

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>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.</abstract>

Curators With and Without Collections : A Comparative Study of Changes in the Curator’s Work at National Museums in Finland and in the Baltic States

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Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

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The Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics (JEF) is the joint publication of the Estonian Literary Museum, the Estonian National Museum and the...

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

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