ISFNR Newsletter No. 6 February 2012 (in pdf-format)

2February 2012Front cover: old market in Shillong.Photo by Ergo-Hart VästrikBack cover: boys in Nartiang, the villagewith the biggest cluster ofmegaliths in the Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya.Photo by Ülo ValkISFNR Newsletter is published by theInternational Society for Folk NarrativeResearch.InternationalSocietyfor FolkISSN 1736-3594 NarrativeResearchEditor:Ülo Valk (ulo.valk@ut.ee)Language editor: Daniel E. AllenDesign and layout: Marat ViiresEditorial Office: InternationalSocietyISFNR Newsletterfor FolkUniversity of TartuNarrativeDepartment of Estonian Research and ComparativeFolkloreÜlikooli 16-20851003 TartuEstoniaISFNR on the Internet:http://www.isfnr.orgInternationalSocietyfor FolkNarrativeResearchThis publication was supported by the EuropeanUnion through the European RegionalDevelopment Fund.ContentsEditorialby Ülo Valk.................................................................................................... 3The ISFNR Interim Conference “Telling Identities:Individuals and Communities in Folk Narratives” inShillong, North-East India, February 22–25, 2011:Presidential Address at the Opening of the ISFNR Interim Conferenceby Ulrich Marzolph ....................................................................................... 4The ISFNR Interim Conference 2011 in Retrospectby Pihla Siim .............................................................................................. 12ISFNR Review: Shillong Lives up to Its Reputationby Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh .......................................................... 14An Experience from Indiaby Sarmistha De Basu ............................................................................... 17Impressions of the Local Aspect of the ISFNR Interim Conference,Shillong, 2011by Mark Bender .......................................................................................... 18Beliefs and Narratives in Shillong, Indiaby María Ines Palléiro ............................................................................... 20CALL FOR PAPERS: 16 th Congress of the ISFNR in Vilnius,Lithuania, in 2013 ..................................................................................... 23CALL FOR PAPERS: Belief Narrative Network Symposium “Boundaries ofBelief Narratives” at the 16 th Congress of the ISFNR in Vilnius, Lithuania,in 2013 ....................................................................................................... 25Life-Tradition: Contribution to the Concept of Life-Worldby Giedrė Šmitienė .................................................................................... 27The Problem of Belief Narratives: A Very Short Introductionby Willem de Blécourt ............................................................................... 36Report of the ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming,2011: The Year of Moscow and Incantatioby Jonathan Roper .................................................................................... 38Collect : Protect : Connect – The World Oral Literature Projectby Claire Wheeler, Eleanor Wilkinson and Mark Turin .............................. 39Identity & Diversity: The Future of Indigenous Culture in a GlobalisedWorld (Conference at the Central University of Jharkhand,February 1–2, 2011)by Faguna Barmahalia, Rupashree Hazowary and Ülo Valk ...................... 43Symposium on Finno-Ugric Folkloreby Merili Metsvahi ..................................................................................... 45New ISFNR Members Summer 2010 – December 2011 ............................. 47Traditional and Literary Epics of the World:An International Symposium Reviewby Ambrož Kvartič ...................................................................................... 48

February 2012 3Dear Friends in Folklore Research,the sixth issue of the newsletter marksthe way of the ISFNR from the interimconference, which was held in Shillong,India on February 22–25, 2011,to the 16 th congress, to convene in Vilnius,Lithuania on June 25–30, 2013.The main goal of the ISFNR is to developscholarly work on folk narrativesand to stimulate contacts among researchers,although its regular forums,held on different continents and withindifferent cultural contexts, always offersome extra values to the benefits ofacademic discussions. Participants inthe meet in Shillong experienced thefamous ethnic and cultural diversityof North-East India in many aspects:in the variety of papers, dedicated tothe local traditions; the cultural eventsof the conference program; and thedaily life in the city and in the stateof Meghalaya, which is the home ofseveral indigenous peoples. In theinaugural lecture of the interim conference,published in this newsletter,Ulrich Marzolph, the president of theISFNR, discusses cultural hybridityand exchange as universal phenomena,characteristic of diverse formsof human expression. The world ofNorth-East Indian cultures, touched byHinduism, by Western and Christianinfluences and yet unique as a constellationof local indigenous traditions,offers many convincing examples tohis arguments about the weakness ofearly folklore scholarship that tendedto overwrite the narrative cultures ofthe world according to familiar patternsof European standards.In order to see the ISFNR interimconference in Shillong from a varietyof perspectives, I asked fiveparticipants from different countriesto reflect upon their memories andimpressions. Sometimes it is difficultto find people who will agree to writeconference reports and who laterfulfil these enforced promises – however,this did not happen this time.The ease of receiving the articlesfrom Sarmistha De Basu, MeenaxiBarkataki-Ruscheweyh, Mark Bender,María Inés Palleiro and Pihla Siimreminds me of the easy, happy andfriendly atmosphere of this smoothlyrun event. Professor Desmond L.Kharmawphlang, his team and theNorth-Eastern Hill University (NEHU)deserve our great gratitude for theirremarkable work, making the conferencepossible and marking Shillongon the mental map of internationalscholarship as a vibrant centre of folkloristics.The folklore program of theDepartment of Cultural and CreativeStudies, NEHU, definitely has a greatmission in service of the ethnic communitiesof North-Eastern India andacademic folkloristics, which is both awell-established and rapidly developingdiscipline in this part of the world.While the memories of North-EasternIndia are still fresh among the conferenceparticipants, the ISFNR is lookinginto its near future to hold its nextregular congress in North-EasternEurope, in Vilnius, the capital city ofLithuania. Please find in this issue thecalls for papers for the 16 th congressof the ISFNR, Folk Narrative in theModern World: Unity and Diversity,and symposium of the Belief NarrativeNetwork, Boundaries of BeliefNarratives, to be held at the samecongress in Vilnius on June 25–30,2013. Lithuania is known not only foramber, basketball and the mystic artand music of Mikalojus K. Čiurlionis,but also for strong traditions in folkloreresearch, represented by famousscholars, such as Jonas Balys,Norbertas Vėlius, Marija Gimbutas,Algirdas J. Greimas and many others.As an example of current Lithuanianscholarship we can read the articleby Giedrė Šmitienė from the Instituteof Lithuanian Literature and Folklore,one of the leading centres of folkloreresearch in the Baltic states andNorthern Europe and the main organiserof the next ISFNR congress. Relyingon her rich fieldwork experience,Giedrė Šmitienė shows that traditioncannot be defined as a closed setof possessed knowledge but can beunderstood as a lived, embodied andnarrated reality. Tradition thus takesindividual forms, appearing in relationshipwith home as a lived place, andis in constant flow. The concept of lifetradition,introduced by Šmitienė, canprobably also shed light on the jointactivities of communities and networksin creative and developing forms. TheBelief Narrative Network (BNN) of theISFNR, established in 2009 at the 15 thcongress in Athens, held a succesfulconference in St. Petersburg in May2010, organised by professor AlexanderPanchenko, and a symposium,Belief Narratives and Social Realities,at the ISFNR interim conference inShillong in February 2011. In the currentissue we publish the address ofWillem de Blécourt, the chair of theBNN, to the conference in St. Petersburg.Unfortunately, he was unableto attend the meeting because ofcomplications of getting the visa andalso the Skype link did not work in theend. In his short introduction Willemde Blécourt delineates some of theguidelines to studying and problematisingbeliefs and their expressions innarratives.The productive work of the ISFNRCommittee on Charms, Charming andCharmers is discussed in this issueby Jonathan Roper, the chair of thecommittee. Landmarks of 2011 are thesuccessful conference in Moscow andthe first issue of the journal Incantatio.Claire Wheeler, Eleanor Wilkinsonand Mark Turin introduce the WorldOral Literature Project, which haseven wider and further-reaching internationaldimensions. Founded in2009, the project is carried out at theUniversity of Cambridge, UK and YaleUniversity, USA and aims to documentand preserve the most endangeredcultural traditions of our planet. As theinitiative promotes fieldwork amongmarginalised ethnic communities andsafeguards their oral traditions, theISFNR shares the ethos of the projectand completely supports its goals.Hopefully, readers of the current

February 2012 5Nairobi, Kenya (2000), Melbourne,Australia (2001), and Santa Rosa,Argentina (2007).We are particularly happy to meetin Meghalaya since the first IndianDepartment of Folkloristics was foundedin 1972 at the nearby University ofGauhati, the oldest university in theregion. The Folklore Research Departmentat Gauhati was established witha view to study the oral literature, customs,art forms and performing arts ofthe communities of North-East India.Today, its mission statement deploresa certain cultural instability and thedecay of traditional knowledge in theregion. Such an evaluation of the situationof folklore is all the more regrettablesince North-East India pridesitself of a wealth of cultural, ethnic,and linguistic diversity.Folklore, as we all know, is a pivotalconstituent of cultural identity; folk narrative– the main concern of our society– serves as the verbal expression ofthis identity at a narrative level. Thespecific characteristics of folk narrativetraditions differ widely on an internationalscale. Yet all folk narrativetraditions share a notion of condensingthe highly complex worlds of their narratorsand the surrounding societiesinto the nutshell of a narrative. Theextent to which these narratives correspondto the worldview, the ethicalnorms and the social circumstancesof their surrounding cultures or societieseventually defines the degree oftheir reception and, hence, their popularity.Narratives may be lengthy andhighly artful compositions, such as thelong epics of Asian, European, or Africantradition the oral performancesof which at times takes days or evenweeks to complete. Narratives mayalso be highly codified items, such asfolktales and fairy tales, or even fairlysimple and straightforward short items,such as jokes and anecdotes. Whilepopular narratives are primarily texts,in live performance they may often gotogether with dramatic enactment orvisual representation illustrating thetext. Whatever they are, popular narrativesconstitute highly meaningful itemsof verbal art, and their documentationand study is a constant challenge toour discipline. While popular narrativesdeserve to be preserved in publishedcollections, they should not, and certainlynot primarily, be stored away asmuseum pieces devoid of their originalcontext and meaning. Documentationis a necessary part of research, butby no means should the study of folknarrative end with the simple recordingor publication, and neither with theclassification of narratives in nationalor international catalogues. In otherwords, the documentation, classificationand publication of popular narrativesare but the necessary first stepsfor their study. Popular narrativesare very much alive. They changeconstantly while adapting and respondingto the exigencies of surroundingsocieties and cultures.Popular narratives are as much aliveas the people who narrate the tales.At times we may have to face the deplorabledisappearance from activetradition of age-old cherished narrativessuch as those we heard ourselvesfrom previous generations. At the sametime, new genres appear, such as therecent genres of urban legends or of internetlore. At any rate, a world withoutpopular narratives is simply unimaginable.Humanity has been shaping itsexperience into narratives since timeimmemorial. The modern media haveaccelerated the lives of many individualsand communities, particularly in thetechnologically ‘advanced’ societies, tosuch an incredible pace that the term‘tradition’ almost appears a contradictionin terms. Meanwhile, narrativeshave not disappeared. Rather thecontrary, they document their superiorposition in human expression by adaptingto the changing times, by formingnew genres and by transforming oldgenres to fit the new media of transmission.To quote a favourite term ofKurt Ranke, the founding father of myinstitution, the German based Encyclopediaof Folktales and Fairy Tales, thehuman being is a “homo narrans”, andstorytelling is a basic quality of humanexistence. Wherever humans live, theywill always strive to grasp their experienceand communicate their worldviewin the garb of narratives.Against this backdrop of our discipline,let me stress once more the importanceof staging the present ISFNRInterim Conference in Shillong. Sinceits inception in the nineteenth century,the discipline of folk narrative researchhas turned to India for some of theoldest narrative sources available, andcertainly some of the most influentialones on an international level. TheSanskrit Pancatantra together withits numerous descendants in a multitudeof languages is an influentialconstituent of world literature as wellas international narrative tradition. Theworld’s most renowned collection ofnarratives, the Thousand and OneNights, is heavily indebted to ancientIndian tradition. In addition, Indiantradition has produced several otherlarge compilations of narratives thatfor many centuries have exerted aconsiderable influence on world narrative,East and West, such as thestandard collection of Buddhist tales,the Tripitaka, Somadeva’s Kathâsaritsâgara,The “Ocean of Stories”, or theanonymous Śukasaptati, the “Tales ofthe Parrot”. Meanwhile, whatever weknow about Indian folk narrative on aninternational level appears to pale intoinsignificance against the truly vast“Ocean of Stories” – to borrow thetitle of Somadeva’s collection – thatwe encounter in Indian oral tradition.In particular, Indian folk narrativesare primarily known to the West byway of a small selection of publicationsin international languages, yetthe wealth of living oral tradition canonly be guessed at by those withoutaccess to the native languages. Thisassessment notably not only holdstrue for India, but in fact for manyof the world’s oral traditions, forknowledge of which internationalscholars depend on the availability ofaccessible translations. At the sametime, the international knowledge ofworldwide narrative traditions has for along time also been heavily influenced

February 2012 7what extent does the perception of therespective folk narrative researcherinfluence the understanding of foreigncultures? And finally: to whatextent does folk narrative researchact against the background of a selfcentredmatrix implying the perceptionof foreign cultures only againstthe background of the researcher’sown experience?L-R: A.N. Rai, Vice-Chancellor of the North-Eastern Hill University, A.C. Bhagabati and JawaharlalHandoo at the dedicated session of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (New Delhi),ISFNR interim conference in Shillong.Photo by Ülo Valk.of economy – capital, possession andwork. Yet it is certain that knowledge isas unevenly distributed internationallyas the other categories: globalisationsuggests an equality that it cannotproduce. Moreover, globalisation doesnot imply the functional equivalenceof information that is made globallyaccessible; rather it means the hegemonisingof standards, ever sooften with the implicit goal of globalcommercial exploitation. In order notto turn my presentation into an antiimperialisticpamphlet, I suggest, forthe time being, to leave aside the politicaland economic implications ofthese considerations, some of whichare deeply relevant for countries likeIndia. So let me return to the specificproblems of folk narrative research.The third conceptual complex to bementioned possesses particular relevancefor my discussion. While theconcept of globalisation is explicitlyconcerned with hegemonising, theconcepts of intercultural and multiculturalstudies implicitly regard cultureas an entity that can clearly be definedand demarcated, only thereby makingthe comparison of different entities,in this case cultures, possible.In contrast to this concept, in recentyears the related debate about thehybridity or hybridisation of cultureshas created awareness of the factthat cultures in themselves alreadyrepresent a conglomerate of smallerentities of various origins 2 . This concept,originally borrowed from biology,questions the monolithic and clearlydemarcated character of cultures, andproposes we view cultures – in thewords of Edward Said – as “closelyinterwoven; no culture is unique andpure, every culture is hybrid, heterogeneous,extremely differentiatedand unmonolithic” 3 . The concept ofhybridity thereby challenges the conceptof intercultural studies insofar asit proposes a focus on constituents ofcommon origin rather than on a dialogueof differences. The concept ofcultural hybridity makes it possible – toquote Homi Bhabha – to study “differencewithout a received or decreedhierarchy” 4 . If cultures in themselvesare already complex hybrid productswhose characteristics originate bothfrom different and common sources,then differences can be observedwithout the need for evaluation.These general considerations leadto various questions for comparativefolk narrative research, including thebasic question against which theoreticalbackground folk narrative researchoperates. How broad are the possibilitiesof perceiving foreign cultures byway of their narrative expression? ToIn discussing these questions, the followingconsiderations are based onthe evaluation of a number of textsdedicating themselves to the researchof “European narrative X within thenon-European culture Y”. This questionrelates to a special category of‘displaced’ folktales in the sense of theterm proposed by Norwegian folkloristReidar Thoralf Christiansen in 1960 5 .The declared object of such investigationspromises to supply basic informationabout the degree to whichcharacteristics of foreign cultures canbe perceived. In other words: Whenwe are studying characteristics ofan alien culture that originate fromour own culture are we interested inwhat became of the ‘Own’? Or are wesensitive in relation to what the ‘Own’means to the ‘Alien’, and moreover,what the ‘Alien’ means to itself?The example of the European receptionof the Orient may serve to remindus how strongly the perception of analien cultural sphere can be determinedby the conditions of the perceivingculture 6 . When, towards the end ofthe seventeenth century, the MuslimOttoman empire ceased to constitutea military threat for Christian centralEurope, the previously reigning anxietydirected against the Turks fadedaway and soon gave rise to an uncriticalenthusiasm for everything Turkish,a so-called Turquoiserie that generateda popular enthusiasm for things‘Oriental’. An essential constituentof this form of Orientalism – notablyboth product and producer – was theEuropean translation of the originallyArabic Stories of the Thousandand One Nights, in English commonlyknown as The Arabian Nights’

8February 2012Entertainments, in short, The ArabianNights, or shorter even, the Nights.The Nights were first introducedto the European public by Frenchorientalist scholar Antoine Gallandfrom 1704 onwards in a form that hasaptly been termed an “appropriation”rather than a translation 7 . Galland’stext not only furnished new narrativematerial to the French literary salons,but rather quickly in the whole of Europeevoked a tremendous inspirationin various areas of creativity, includingliterature, music, drama, painting, andarchitecture. The cultural complexityof the Arabian Nights was unravelledby research only following its popularreception and today remains ratherunknown to the general public. It isquite telling that in common apprehensiona few tales from the ArabianNights became more or less synonymousfor the collection itself. Notably,these tales prior to Galland’s translationhad never belonged to the originalArabic collection. Moreover, they owemuch of their particular characteristicsto the individual influence of the ostensibletranslator. The most productiveof these stories in terms of worldwideinspiration is the story of Aladdin andthe Magic Lamp. While the basicstructure of that story is legitimisedas ‘authentic’ by the oral performanceof the Syrian Christian narratorHanna Diyab, the story contains elementsthat strongly suggest an autobiographicre-working by Galland.What the readers perceive thereforeas the ‘Orient’ within the tale is littlemore than their own imaginations andfantasies about the Orient in pseudoauthenticgarb; in other words, an Orient‘within themselves’. This critiquesimilarly applies to wide areas of thereception of the Arabian Nights in thenineteenth century, above all for theabundantly annotated translations preparedby Edward William Lane andRichard Burton. Both correspond to a‘text in the mind of people’ rather thanconveying Arabic or ‘Oriental’ reality.Since the days of Galland almostthree centuries have passed, andone might feel inclined to think thatsuch forms of the perception of thecultural ‘Other’ are now relegatedto popular entertainment – such asthe Disney cartoon version of Aladdinthat was screened in 1992 8 . Witha certain amount of reassurance, itseems unlikely that contemporaryfolk narrative research would fall intothe old trap. But are we really entitledto think so? Dutch folk narrative researcherJurjen van der Kooi recentlyfelt obliged to publish a strong pleafor “worldwide comparative studies” 9 .Justified as it is, his plea also revealsthat this author regards the ways inwhich the complexity of processes oftransmission are perceived by currentresearch as insufficient. This critiquealso applies to the corpus of Europeanstudies in folk narrative research hereinvestigated. It soon becomes clearthat even though there is discernibleprogress from the colonial attitude 10towards indigenous narrative traditions,a conscious effort is neededin order to discard a traditional perspectivein favour of contemporaryrequirements. Let me give you a fewexamples.When the German orientalist (andesteemed translator of the ArabianNights) Enno Littmann expressesconcepts of the “truly lower German”or “authentically oriental” in his essay“Sneewittchen in Jerusalem” (1932) 11 ,we might feel entitled to evaluate hisremarks as old-fashioned and outdated.But what are we to think aboutthe debate that was going on up tothe 1970s between Richard Dorsonand his critics about the African backgroundof Afro-American narratives? 12How should we evaluate Africanistscholar Sigrid Schmidt’s remark, whoin 1970, when reporting about the missionaryRobert Moffat’s experiencesin 1818, evaluated the behaviour byone of his informants as “an act ofconscious lying”? 13 What are we tothink when psychologists Amine A.Azar and Antoine M. Sarkis in theirstudy of the “migrations of Little RedRiding Hood in the Levante” after ahighly sensitive investigation of theearly European history of internationaltale type 333 treat the Levantineeditions of the fairy tale surveyedby them (in Turkish, Armenian, andArabic) exclusively under the aspect ofto what extent they adapt the foreignstory to the respective cultural background– reaching the unsurprisingconclusion that none of the surveyededitions contains illustrations preparedby an indigenous artist? 14 What arewe to make of the fact that Germanlinguist Gunter Senft in his study ofthe tale of the brave tailor in the TrobriandIslands is almost exclusivelyinterested in how the original fairy talebecame adapted to the alien culturein terms of language and content? 15Somehow these studies remind me ofwhat Werner Daum remarked yearsago about his field research undertakenin order to collect fairy tales inYemen, when he wrote: “... and what Iheard everywhere did not interest me:anecdotes of all types, witty stories... It was endlessly disappointing.” 16One aspect is common to the quotedstudies: They investigate their subjectagainst the background of their ownexperience, their own expectationsand their own system of cultural values.Against this background, possibleresults lie anywhere in between disappointmentat insufficient capacities ofreception on the one hand and patronisingstatements on the other hand,such as the statement that indigenouspeople like to learn and are willing toadapt, perhaps are even open to consciousmanipulation 17 or demonstrate“a certain inner understanding for theEuropean fairy tales” 18 .Contrasting with the studiesquoted so far, there are a number ofstudies concerned with the receptionof European folk narratives in non-European cultures that demonstratea different degree of sensitivity visà-visalien values. In addition to USscholar Margaret Mills’s essays relatingto Cupid and Psyche or Cinderellain Afghanistan 19 , one might mentionseveral other studies. French AfricanistDenise Paulme supplies herinvestigation of a Cendrillon variantin Angola 20 with a detailed analysisof the role of women, of patterns ofmarriage and of familial relationships;the European reader who at first mighthave judged the final incestuous relationshipbetween the heroine andher brother as unsuitable, is thusenabled to understand it from a cul-

February 2012 9turally immanent point of view as theonly possible way of attaining ultimatehappiness. James M. Taggart afteran extensive discussion of variantsof Hansel and Gretel in Spain andMexico concludes that there is a relationshipbetween the symbolic contentof the stories and family relations inthe Hispanic world 21 . And Cameroonscholar Norbert Ndong studies in greatdetail the references to living realityin variants of Snow White told by anarrator in south Cameroon – while inhis quality as a member of the studiedtradition group he obviously feltthe need to demarcate his researchagainst the “proponents of a theoryregarding the African people purelyas a consumer and not as a producerof culture” 22 .This second group of studiesdemonstrates how fruitful the conceptof hybrid cultures can be if researchersbecome aware of the factthat cultural exchange takes placealways and everywhere. Though thisassessment is fundamentally valid,both modern media and the mobilityof people in the modern world haveconsiderably expanded the temporaland geographic dimensions of communication.With the changing conditions,the question what ‘Alien’ actuallymeans and what is perceived asalien, and why and how, gains a newrelevance. A final example might serveto demonstrate this point.The Hamburg based sociolinguistMechthild Dehn has related thepoignant example of the migration ofa specific variant of Little Red RidingHood around the world 23 : her exampleoriginates from an investigation inthe fourth grade of elementary schoolaiming to provoke pupils to “actualizecultural terms in the process of writing”.The Persian girl Maryam, whenoffered a choice of contemporarypopular characters (Pippi Longstocking,Batman, Arielle, Aladdin, The LionKing, etc.) decidedly opts to writeabout Little Red Riding Hood. Twopoints are particularly interesting inher execution of the task: On the onehand, Maryam writes in Persian (andnot in German); on the other hand,the tale of Little Red Riding Hood isclearly not a component of traditionalIranian popular tradition. These discrepanciesare gradually explained:Maryam has come to Germany onlya short while ago and does not commandthe language well enoughto write in German. She is familiarwith Little Red Riding Hood from achildren’s book in the Persian languagethat she had received fromone of her teachers. This text in turnturns out to be one of the numeroussimplified comic-book adaptations ofpopular stories originating from Japaneseproduction that in contemporaryIran enjoys a considerable popularity.The adaptation clearly derives fromthe version presented by the brothersGrimm. In consequence, the tale toldby the Persian girl has made a voyagearound the world before returning toGermany, including several adaptationsand transformations in culturesalien to its place of origin. Maryamregards her tale as a product of herown culture and is not aware of itslong and complicated history. At thesame time, the alien culture in whichMaryam lives at present also regardsthe tale as its own propriety while perceivingthe changes as alien.In order to decode similar processes,we need not only knowledge aboutthe respective cultural backgrounds inthe sense of taking into account andinterpreting facts. In addition to the accumulationand analytical apprehensionof factual evidence, knowledge hererather means sensibility and, aboveall, responsibility. The study of foreigncultures always implies a form of demarcation.In many ways, this demarcationof the ‘Self’ against the ‘Other’cannot be avoided, since researchersare always bound to act against thebackdrop of their individual experience,much of which is related to the valuesof their original culture and society. Buteven though a certain alienation visà-visforeign cultures is unavoidable,the conscious effort to be aware ofone’s own background and limitationswill help to counterbalance the impliedcultural bias. In modifying a statementfrom Eva Sallis’s book on the ArabianNights, the ideal folk narrative researcher“is not characterized by the absenceof prejudgmental cargo, but by a consciousnessof prejudgment and a willedmaintenance of flexibility” 24 . When strivingfor a dialogue of cultures, or evenunderstanding, the contemporary responsibilityof folk narrative researchis to contribute to public awareness ofcommon grounds and to evaluate andhonour the evident differences of hybridcultures as divergent yet fully equivalentforms of human expression.Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues!Two centuries after its inception, thediscipline of folk narrative researchhas matured into a major field of culturalstudies. Considering the closelink between human existence and theexpression of human experience in narratives,we do not only study popularnarratives as they were passed on bytradition. Rather, we take into accountpopular narratives as vibrant and activeconstituents of our contemporarydaily existence, regarding them as thepivotal expression of cultural diversityand common concerns of humanity atthe same time. Judging from the conferenceabstracts I have had the pleasureto read, staging the present conferencein Shillong and the state of Meghalayaimplies the tremendous chance for allof the participants to gain insight intoan otherwise little-known complex ofregional narrative tradition that at thesame time is part of a larger South Asianand South East Asian web of tradition.Moreover, by convening in Shillong, theISFNR takes pride in acknowledgingthe scholarly achievements of Indianfolklore scholars and institutions. It isto be hoped that the present event willalso serve to support and strengthenthe study of folklore and folk narrativein the present institution. I am confidentthat the presentations of the conferenceparticipants will convince the audienceas well as the responsible authoritiesof the discipline’s strong standing andits pivotal relevance for assessing andunderstanding the complexities of lifeas expressed in narratives, both from atraditional and a contemporary perspective.Let me thus express my sincerewishes for a challenging and inspiringmeeting!

12February 2012The ISFNR Interim Conference 2011 in Retrospectby Pihla Siim, University of Tartu, EstoniaThe conference was organised by theDepartment of Cultural and CreativeStudies (North-Eastern Hill University– NEHU) under the guidance of thehead of the department, folklore professorDesmond L. Kharmawphlang.Once before, in 1995, an ISFNRmeeting was organised in India. Thatconference, organised by professorJawaharlal Handoo in Mysore, washistorical because it was the firstISFNR conference to take place outsideof Europe.North America. A little more than 30participants came from outside India.Some had cancelled their participationat the very last minute, asI understood. Estonia was very wellrepresented with eleven participants,probably thanks to Margaret Lyngdoh,who is a PhD student in folklore fromShillong, doing her doctoral studies atthe University of Tartu.Pihla Siim is writing her dissertation abouttransnational families in Estonia, in Finland andin Russia.Photo by Toomas Pajula.In February 2011, the ISFNR interimconference took place in Shillong,North-Eastern India, with the theme“Telling Identities: Individuals andCommunities in Folk Narratives”. Thisconference was my first ISFNR meetingand probably very different fromthe ‘ordinary’ ones – the location beingso unusual and far away, if looked atfrom Europe. As we found out, evenfor Indians themselves, North-EasternIndia may represent somethingdifferent, even frightening. I did notexperience it that way at all, sincewe were very warmly welcomed andtaken good care of. Our hosts did awonderful job to make our stay thereunforgettable. I suppose the Februarywas the ideal time for the meeting, becauseit was not too hot, not too coldand not too wet either – just perfect.Shillong is the capital of Meghalaya,one of the smallest states in India. Becauseof the rolling hills around thetown, it is also known as the “Scotlandof the East”. During the conference wecame to know and experience whyShillong is also known as the RockCapital of India.The first Indian department of folkloristicswas founded in 1972 at GauhatiUniversity, which is also the oldestUniversity in North-East India. TheNorth-Eastern Hill University in Shillongwas established in 1973 and theCentre for Creative Arts was set up in1977. The Centre for Literary and CulturalStudies was started in 1984 withspecial emphasis on the folklore of theNorth-Eastern Region. In 1997, theabove two centres were re-structuredand amalgamated.The NEHU campus was located a littleoutside the city limits. All the servicesand departments seemed to beneatly and compactly situated near toeach other, and buildings surrounded– a little surprisingly – by pine trees.The climate in Shillong was actuallyvery different from tropical India. Evenwhen driving the 100 kilometres fromGuwahati to Shillong we observed theastonishingly large changes in nature,as well as the changes in the text andsymbols painted on trucks, reflectingthe different beliefs in these two towns.While Hinduism is the main religion followedin Guwahati, there are a lot ofChristians (Presbyterians, Catholicsand Protestants) in Shillong, as wellas people who follow Khasi beliefs.There were around 100 participantsat the conference: from India, otherAsian countries, Europe, South andDesmond L. Kharmawphlang, the main organiserof the ISFNR interim conference in Shillong.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.The conference had nine sub-themes,most sizeable of them being “Ethnicityand Cultural Identity” and symposium“Belief Narratives and Social Realities”with 23 and 29 papers respectively.Since my research topic is related totransnational families, I was especiallyinterested in sub-themes “Identity andBelonging in a Transnational Setting”and “Places and Borders”. There were4–5 parallel sessions running all thetime and here I can only shortly discusssome papers and themes that Ipersonally found most inspiring.In his presidential address, UlrichMarzholph (Göttingen, Germany)brought up the problem of Western-

February 2012 13centred folkloristics; most folkloristshave until recently received their educationin the West and thus narrativetraditions of the world have been studiedpredominantly from the Westernperspective. In addition, within multiculturalstudies the perspective hasbeen mainly that of Western cultures(cf. also women’s studies: in ‘third countries’women have been very criticalabout the Western model claiming tospeak for all women). We should furtheranalyse who this knowledge hasbeen produced by and to whom it hasbeen made available. Globalisation hasnot lead to equality yet – and probablynever will. Ulrich Marzholph posed aninteresting question: If we are studyingtraits/characteristics of our own culturefound in another culture, are we thenreally interested in other cultures? It isalways difficult to study the other withoutreflecting our own culture, withoutstarting from the classifications of ourown culture. One of the tasks for folkloristswould be, according to Marzholph,to help to understand hybridity of cultures,and also to value this hybridity.We should not understand culture assomething bounded and ‘pure’; or pollutedwhen contacted and influenced byother cultures. Neither should we thinkthat one should define oneself with oneculture exclusively.William Westerman (New Jersey,USA) raised similar questions in hispaper, titled “Xenophobia, Narrativesof Migration, and the SociolinguisticDrawing of Borders”. He posed aquestion of what kind of folklore weshould study – that which is pleasantand harmless, or should we also paymore attention to those moments andperiods when folklore turns ‘ugly’?Folklorists tend to turn their backs on‘unpleasant’ folklore. The case thatWilliam Westerman introduced in hispresentation was immigration relatedhate speech generated in the socialmedia. His question was: if we don’tlook at that kind of folklore, are we inthat case quietly supporting it? He encouragedfolklorists to meet this challenge.We should be willing to takepart in the complex moral discussionsL-R: Sadhana Naithani, Parag Moni Sarma and Sadananda Singh (all from India) at the sessionon ethnicity and cultural identity.Photo by Pihla Siim.going on in our societies.The presenters from India touchedon the question of defining ethnicityand cultural identity in many ways. Ienjoyed, for example, the paper byMrinal Medhi and Mira Kumara Das(Guwahati, India), who analysed identityconstruction among the Kumars inGuwahati using personal narratives.The Kumars used to live near the templeof Kamakhaya in Guwahati untilWorld War II, when they were given 72hours to evacuate from this area. Theauthors were interested in their evacuationexperiences, the memories andinterpretations that people gave to theevents and to their own lives. Most ofthe interviewees were born in the currentsettlements, and thus reflected onthe experiences of their parents.The presentation by Sadhana Naithani(New Delhi, India) was also basedon lengthy fieldwork. Naithani hasbeen studying folk performances inIndia, in traditional and non-traditionalfields, and discussed changes in theroles of folk performers. As societyand communities have changed, thecommunities of folk performers havebecome dispersed and modern valuesof performance – including commercialism– have been adopted. Naithanicriticised folklorists for lamenting thechanges, rather than analysing them.To keep people interested in participatingin performances, traditionshave to change along with society andcommunity. A dynamic phase of reformulationof traditions is taking placeand descriptive anthropology is notenough to document it. According toNaithani, what one should be worriedabout is the state not supporting theeducation of folk artists at schools.The state, instead, is using folk formsin its own propaganda. In addition towhich the documentation of differentforms of performance is insufficient.Etawanda Saiborne (Shillong, India),who gave her paper on the last dayof the conference, also touched onthe same theme. Communities haveexperienced big changes when facingthe processes of modernisation,globalisation and Christianisation.Saiborne compellingly discussed thedifferent and even contradictory rolesof new media in the (re)production offolklore in these new contexts.One of the most positive sides ofthe Shillong conference was thepossibility to meet numerous Indianresearchers. While listening to theirpapers and discussions I also observedthe familiar juxtaposition ofemic versus etic accounts. There arepositive sides to be found in both ofthese standpoints – in studying one’sown group, as well as in studying fromthe outsider’s perspective. Still, as isoften the case, this theme seemed

14February 2012to be emotive. Some researchersfrom outside the communities theystudied, were accused of being toodispassionate and representing an“urban” view. On the other hand, acertain kind of reflexivity and analysisof the researcher’s role, as well asthe aims and effects of his/her study,are certainly needed when studyingone’s own community. I suppose oneof the eternal challenges for folkloristsis to balance these two viewpoints.As pointed out earlier, folklorists alsoneed to be ready to take a stand inrelation to societal questions – andalso when a somehow repulsive politicalaspect is present.ISFNR Review: Shillong Lives up to Its Reputationby Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh,Academy of Sciences and Georg-August-University of Göttingen, GermanyIt was in Kohima, capital of the North-East Indian state of Nagaland, in December2010, that I first heard of theInterim meet of the ISFNR to be heldin Shillong in February 2011. I wasin Kohima to attend the annual sessionof the Indian Folklore Congress(IFC). Many of the participants at theIFC were planning to also attend theISFNR meet. I was a bit surprised tohear that two such big events wouldbe held so soon after one another,in more or less the same part of theworld. But a rapid run of the ISFNRwebsite convinced me that the ISFNRwas in a different league altogether.Although I could see that I had missedall deadlines I thought I’d try asking.Desmond’s answer was clear – yes,I could participate but no, I could notpresent a paper. Sometimes that canbe the most convenient arrangement,since you don’t have to feelguilty about not having presentedsomething. Also since I am not technicallya folklorist, I was relieved thatI wouldn’t need to pretend to be one.So I happily made plans to attend.And I’m glad I did. For those four daysin Shillong were a real treat. I am notsure how this meet compares withother Interim ISFNR meetings sincethis was my first contact with theISFNR, but for Shillong, perhapseven for India, it was a really bigshow, with more than a hundredparticipants of which a sizeableproportion were from outside theregion. The facilities at NEHU haveimproved significantly over the yearsand the Guest Houses, ConferenceRooms and technical infrastructurewere as good as anywhere else inthe world. The army of very friendlyand helpful volunteers kept thingsgoing and Desmond Kharmawphlangdid an amazing job of keeping everythingtogether. And for me, coming asI did from the outside, both in termsof the discipline and the fact that althoughI am Assamese, I now live andwork in Germany, it made me proudto belong to this region and to havethe chance to show ourselves off tothe rest of the world.The very impressive inaugural sessionset the tone for the rest of theconference – the presence of theGovernor of Meghalaya at the inaugurationlent ceremony and glamour tothe proceedings, and the presidentialaddress of Professor Ulrich Marzolph,President of the ISFNR, set the benchmarkfor the high academic standardfor the event by giving a systematicaccount of the historical developmentsas well as the present concerns andpriorities of the ISFNR as well as offolklore studies worldwide.The other star of the meet, at least interms of his engagement with North-East India, was Professor Ülo Valkfrom Estonia. In addition to askingme to write this article for the newsletter,Professor Valk also told me of anMeenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh is doing researchamong the Tangsa ethnic minority inAssam and Arunachal Pradesh.Photo by Pihla Siim.agreement between Göttingen Universityand his own university which couldenable me, as a student at Göttingen,to visit the University of Tartu. I wasalso excited to meet the celebratedfolklorist Sadhana Naithani, aboutwhom I had been hearing for manyyears now, and she certainly did notdisappoint.Of the many sessions and papers Iattended, my personal favourites werethe talks by Mark Bender (USA) onoral traditions in south-west China andthat of Ulf Palmenfelt (Sweden) on individualhistories and collective localhistories of a community. There were

February 2012 15a few new trend setting papers too,especially the one by the very youngAmerican folklore student JeanaJorgensen. Looking at her many neatpie charts with percentages and proportions,scepticism arising from mymathematics background made mewonder if ‘cataloguing gender andbody in European fairy tales’ usingmodern technology will tell us significantlymore than what we alreadyknow (or can reasonably guess) aboutattributes like beauty and age. Talksby a few young Assamese and Mizofolklorists were also very interesting.I immensely enjoyed the talks aboutlocal landscapes, places and bordersand their role in framing identity narrativesand could sense that this wasprobably another exciting new directionthat folklore studies would take inthe next years. And many times duringthose four days there was so muchthat interested me that I was not surewhether I was turning into a folkloristor whether this was just an illustrationof the fact that folklore and anthropologyhave a lot in common, much morethan either care to admit.There were quite a few scholars fromthe Nordic and Scandinavian countrieswho had all done amazing work. Listeningto the incredibly meticulous andminutely researched documentationdone by several such folklorists in theirtalks I wondered whether the age oldSudheer Gupta from New Delhi introducinghis film.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.stereotypical images of the cold andserene landscapes of their country andtheir reserved and quiet natures madethem naturally suited for folklore studies.On the other hand, there was notmuch talk about Africa (or for that matterabout Australia and Latin America).One can’t have it all, I suppose.On the whole, there were some greatsessions with some excellent papers.Since questions of identity, ethnicityand cultural constructs interest me Itried to attend as many talks on thosethemes as I could. There were fiveparallel sessions at any given pointof time. Parallel sessions are unavoidableI guess in meetings of this scale.What could have been avoided, however,is having parallel sessions withthe same theme. I kept wondering whythe division of themes was not donevertically across time instead of horizontallyacross locations. The otherfactor that severely restricted choicewas the fact that the 5 venues werenot all located in one building. That oftenimplied that participants could notreally choose talks, rather they had tochoose sessions, and since the fivesessions often had to do with at mosttwo or three thematic categories. Typically,a participant wished he could bepresent at several places at the sametime for certain sessions and couldnot find even a single talk of interestin some others.In addition, as is inevitable at suchlarge gatherings, there were quite afew last minute cancellations. Thiskept people wondering until the lastminute and did cause some confusionas the programme was not updatedat all once the conference got underway. On some occasions, participantshaving arrived at a venue would findout that an entire session had been reducedto a single paper or had lapsedcompletely, which was not very pleasant.Getting to read the papers in theconference proceedings would havebeen some consolation. But I wassurprised to hear that the practice ofpublishing the proceedings has beendiscontinued. I don’t know what thereasons are, but it would be great ifthe practice could be revived.Given the many cancellations, it wouldhave been much nicer to have planneda few more plenary sessions. The solitaryplenary session, apart from theopening event, was on the last day, forwhich many new people arrived on thescene. While Professor A.C. Bhagabatidid a great job of chairing that sessionand Professor J. Handoo was at hisusual combative best, I couldn’t helpwondering why Professor BirendranathDatta, who is undoubtedly a very seniorand much respected folklorist fromthe region, and certainly one of thebest known folklorists in the country,was not there to share his thoughtswith the gathering.But there were a few other things aswell that I couldn’t figure out, for example,the reason for the complete lackof information on the internet aboutthe actual programme during the runupto the event – I was perhaps doingsomething stupidly wrong all the timebecause despite looking repeatedlyat what looked like the official conferencewebsite I did not manage tofind out what the conference registrationfees for Indian participants was,also if there was a late fee; nor did Imanage to locate the third announcementwhich was supposed to containthe detailed programme. Other participantstold me that they had alsohad trouble with the website and hadfound out when they were scheduledto speak by mailing Desmond. Since Iwas only going to listen, I didn’t botherhim but kept wishing that the websitewould tell me more.While listening to the talks by theforeign scholars gave me the chanceto learn about new areas and topics,the talks by folklorists from the regionoften gave me a sense of deja-vu,often also enabling me to seefamiliar things in a new light. Andsometimes when I was just sittingaround, unable to decide which talkto go to, and chatting with whoeverhappened to be nearby, I had the feelingthat while Western scholars today

16February 2012Some of the conference organisers and participants. L-R: Desmond L. Kharmawphlang, BettyLaloo, Elishon Makri, G. Badaiasuklang Lyngdoh Nonglait, Ulrich Marzolph and Chitrani Sonowal.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.might be more than ready to give uptheir superior attitudes and to treat Indianscholars as friends and equals,the colonial hangover was taking longerto leave the local scholars, many ofwhom seemed not quite ready to stopbeing deferential and servile to theirEuropean counterparts, simply on thebasis of skin colour. It is perhaps thisvery phenomenon that prevents usfrom striking out on our own and formulatingour own paradigms, despiteliving in a region that has so much tooffer in terms of folklore.In that sense I did hope that this meetingin Shillong, which brought thesetwo worlds to an undifferentiated commonplatform, would perhaps help localscholars to shed their diffidenceand begin to speak their minds a littlemore boldly. Many papers presentedat the meet were excellent illustrationsof the very high demands of presentday academic scholarship. There weremany great lessons to be learnt. Inthat sense it was a pity that mostof the volunteers at the conference,many of whom were young students offolklore, could not attend the talks (orthey could not pay attention to whatwas being said, even though theywere present at the venue) being busywith mundane organisational chores.The cultural programmes whichinterspersed the academic sessionswere as motivating and of the sameelevated standards as the sessionsthemselves. The spectacular culturalprogramme on the evening of thefirst day was very colourful and veryentertaining. I was quite amazed atthe professionalism and the technicalperfection of the artists. Furthermore,the cultural events every eveningconveyed a very good sense not justof the colourful ethnic diversity ofthis region but also of how Westernmusic has come to play a big part inthe lives of the Khasis and the otherhill people of the region.Also very impressive was SudheerGupta’s documentary film, which wasscreened just after the sessions endedon the second day. Over and abovethe singularly interesting theme of theseamless manner in which multiplereligions seem to flow into one anotherin certain parts of India as illustratedby the community of Muslim Jogi singersportrayed in that film (who stillcelebrate the Hindu festival of ShivaRatri), the incredible cinematographictechniques Gupta employs in the filmwere very impressive.I cannot end before I use this chanceto express my thoughts about somethingwhich has begun to bother mevery much in recent times – for whilethere was so much being said aboutvarious folk traditions, narrativesand practices in different parts of theworld, most conspicuous by their absencewere the ‘folk’ themselves. Thelonger I have been working in the field,the more convinced I have becomethat we must include our folk singersand storytellers in some real sense inour learned discussions and deliberationsabout them. I can speak onlyfor myself, and I am not really surehow to go about doing this, but asa native researcher, working with myown people, I am convinced that forme it is collaborative much more thanparticipatory ethnography that must bepractised. But it didn’t seem to bothertoo many others at the meet. It wouldhave made me so happy to have actuallyseen a few Khasi storytellers ortraditional priests sitting in at least atthe talks when their ‘lore’ was beinganalysed and being given a chanceto speak for themselves.Perhaps that is mere wishful thinkingat this point of time. But the ambienceof the beautiful and sprawling NEHUcampus was conducive to such daydreaming. To end, by attending theISFNR meet at Shillong I learnt a lot,met some wonderful people, heardsome superb talks, made some newfriends, and have had the pleasureonce more of wandering around underthe enchanting pine trees in thebeautiful NEHU campus dreamingabout what is and what could be... Icouldn’t have wished for much more.

February 2012 17An Experience from Indiaby Sarmistha De Basu, The Asiatic Society, Kolkata, IndiaSarmistha De Basu delivered a paper on urbanfolklore in Kolkata and West Bengal.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.Surrounded by the scenic beauty ofone of India’s most beautiful citiesShillong, known as the Scotland of theEast, the North Eastern-Hill Universityarranged the Interim Congress of theISFNR 2011. It was my pleasure andpride to participate in this conferenceas a member of this prestigious organisation.The conference was well organisedwith one symposium, one dedicatedsession and six sub-topics. I attendedsome selected lectures of my owninterest but tried to share ideas withvarious participants from multiple disciplineswho had flown in from manyparts of the world. It was a grand experienceindeed. Another interestingthing was to roam around the vastarea of the university and introduceoneself to the conveners and scholarswho made the whole effort successful.The main theme of the conferencewas to explore identities of individualsand communities in folk narrative,which was successfully covered bythe four sub-topics. The main subtopic‘Ethnicity and Cultural Identity’covered community identity whereas‘Identity in the History of Folkloristics’covered the national identity of differentcasts and societies. ‘RevisitingColonial Constructs of Folklore’ wasthe sphere in which folkloric identitiesof colonial communities came to ourattention and ‘Identity and Belongingin a Transnational Setting’ was alsovery interesting. Of the other two subtopics,‘Places and Borders’ and ‘TheMaking and Mapping of Urban Folklore’,my paper was on the later. Theidentity crisis is a great problem andthe subject matter is also very complicated.Perhaps, we can sort out alarge portion of these issues from afolkloristic angle.There were many interesting papersin the ‘Belief narratives and socialrealities symposium’ sessions. Thescholars who participated from North-East India took the chance to expresstheir local beliefs and the realities oftheir condition in these sessions.Some of their papers were quitethought provoking. Besides, therewere various interesting papers fromEstonia, Serbia, Argentina and theUSA.In the 24 th February afternoon sessionwe met Sudheer Gupta, a scholarcinematographer who presented hislecture demonstration with his shortfilm on Rajasthan’s street singer family.This family has pursued this professiongeneration after generationnot only due to extreme poverty orlack of education, but also becausethey feel proud enough to inherit andcontinue their age-old tradition. Thatsession was excellent and we enjoyedthe film very much.Another presentation of the city puppetshow from Manpreet Kaur, aneminent scholar from Delhi also shonea new light on contemporary experimentationin the process of formationof urban folklore. On 25 th February animportant session was arranged bythe organiser dedicated to Indira GandhiNational Centre for the Arts, NewDelhi, on North-East India and South-East Asia: Inter Cultural Dialogue.In recent times, this particular themehas been emphasised by the CentralGovernment of India among the modernresearch scheme on socio-culturalaspects. Therefore, a special effortwas given to the three sessions of thistheme. The first session was held on22 nd February and the second along withthe third on 25 th February. Papers on the‘Cult of Goddess Tara to the Mode ofWorship in Umpha-Puja’ (by ArchanaBarua), ‘Durgabori Ramayan’ (by PrabinC. Das and Monika Chutia) and ‘IndigenousNaga (serpent) Cult: a Study ofAssam (India) and Thailand’ (by SanghamitraChoudhury and Pratima Neogi)were also very appealing.This conference was held in India andas I am an Indian participant, I wasable to meet many known scholarshere with whom there were no interactionsotherwise. It was a kind of reunionfor us taking this opportunity.Interaction with them enriched myexperience many fold. In addition Iinteracted directly with ISFNR members,the President and Vice presidentfor the first time at the conference andI consider it to be very encouraging.This kind of personal meeting withinscholars from different countries definitelymakes a conference successful.An exhibition of national and internationaljournals and books was heldwhich was very rich in the quality ofthe authors and publishers. I benefittedby being informed about variousinternational journals, such as Folklore.Electronic Journal of Folklore,published in Estonia, e-journals aboutsocio-cultural studies, etc.The co-operation of the programmecommittee members, food and financeassistants, book exhibition assistantsand public relations assistants werevery much appreciative. However, I donot think it will be out of place to putone suggestion. I request the authorityto publish the entire programme with

18February 2012details on the website beforehand andit was quite helpful in arranging myown schedule.L-R: Ülo Valk (Estonia), Soumen Sen, P. Subbachary and Ranjeet Singh Bajwa (all from India)at the ISFNR interim conference in Shillong.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.locations on the ISFNR website beforethe conference. It will be very helpfulfor participants to plan their attendanceaccordingly at the conference. Ido remember that the 15 th CongressISFNR authorities gave all programmeIn the free sessions and after theconference we did not forget to enjoythe beauty of Shillong. We visitedWards Lake, Umiam Lake, Cherrapunji,Mousingram, and enriched ourexperienced by visiting various waterfalls.Our footprints were found at localmarketplaces like Police bazaarwherein we met the local people, collectedgifts and souvenirs for friends,colleagues, guides and relatives. Wewent to Kaziranga, a wildlife sanctuaryin Assam after the conference wasover. It was also an amazing experienceand an extra opportunity to knowthe place where the conference wasarranged.Impressions of the Local Aspect of the ISFNR Interim Conference,Shillong, 2011. Telling Identities: Individuals and Communities inFolk Narrativesby Mark Bender, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USAThe Interim Conference of the InternationalSociety for Folk NarrativeResearch was held at the North-EasternHill University, Shillong, Meghalaya,from the 22 nd to 25 th of February, 2011.It allowed participants from around theworld a chance to engage with scholarsfrom various places in the north-eastL-R: Mark Bender (USA) and Ergo-Hart Västrik (Estonia) at the ISFNR interim conference inShillong. Mark Bender has published several books on oral traditions and performance in China,including Han and ethnic minority cultures.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.and other parts of India. The multiculturalregion is home to hundreds of localcultures, many with cultural and linguisticslinks to peoples in South-East Asiaand China. The sponsoring organ wasthe dynamic Department of Cultural andCreative Studies at the North-EasternHill University, Shillong. The Departmentstarted as a centre founded in1984 by Prof. Soumen Sen. The centreproduces world-class researchand nurtures a cohort of well-trainedgraduate students in folklore andcultural studies under the guidanceof educators that include the ISFNRconference organiser Desmond L.Kharmawphlang. Conference participantswere exposed to many aspectsof the multicultural matrix of North-EastIndia during the welcome ceremony,which included a multicultural folkdance program, various food events,and a conference program filled withtalks and papers on various aspectsof folk narrative and culture in North-East India.

February 2012 19L-R: Sandis Laime (Latvia), Badaplin War (India), Margaret L. Pachuau (India) and Jeana Jorgensen (USA) at the session on identity in thehistory of folkloristics.Photo by Ülo Valk.Topics on the local cultures of North-East India were included in numeroussessions and symposiums onethnicity and identity, belief narrativesand social realities, inter-cultural dialoguebetween North-East India andSouth-East Asia, identity and thehistory of folkloristics, urban folklore,identity and belonging in transnationalsettings, colonial constructs of folklore,and places and borders in relationto folk narratives and belief. Onesession included a critique of the paradigmof north-east India as a “folklorists’paradise”, placing the study ofregional folklore in a reflexive context.The discussions in every sessionthis author attended were spirited,inspiring, and girded by exemplaryscholarship and unique viewpoints.Given its history, geographical locale,and cultural mix, North-East India isan ideal place to discuss many of theissues raised by both famous andupcoming folklorists from the North-East and other parts of India. Keyaddresses were given by a host ofaccomplished scholars, manyof whom helped pioneer folklorestudies in the region. These included athought-provoking keynote address byJawaharlal Handoo at the dedicatedsession of the Indira Gandhi NationalCentre for the Arts, New Delhi.Given the consistently engaging topicsand lively exploration of theory,it is difficult to single out individualpresentations for attention. Moreover,the significant number of paperspresented by graduate students fromNEHU and other regional institutes,reflect strong programs that are contributingto the leading edge of folknarrative theory and local culture.Many papers specifically concernedissues involving the peoples of North-East India, often presented by scholarsfrom the ethnic groups being discussed.Examples include a paper byMonalisa Borgohain, which discussedthe emerging social meanings of oneof the multi-ethnic bihu festivals inAssam. In a paper that resonatedwith several others on identity inNorth-East India, Somingam Mawonengaged the multi-faceted topic ofBritish colonialism, the role of Christianityin assimilating Western culture,and the on-going process of identityconstruction in Tangkhul Naga communities.Sadananda Singh presentedon the role of storytelling inthe cultural revival of the Meiteis ofManipur.Two papers, by Margaret L. Pachuauand Vanlalveni Pachuau, respectively,reassessed processes of identity constructionand the roles of women in Mizofolk narrative. Margaret Lyngdoh gave apaper on the “vanishing hitchhiker” motifin the local Khasi community in Shillong,stimulating a good discussion on interpreting‘urban legends’ cross-culturally.Urban legends were also explored in apaper by Rimika Lanong on the motif of“harvesting human heads” in the JaintiaHills District of Meghalaya in narrativesof indigent hired hands in search of sacrificesto the goddess Leshka.Purabi Baruah and Prabodh Jhingan’spaper discussed the convergence ofmyth, ritual, and drama in a performancenarrative known as Deodhani,from Assam. The relationship betweenfolklore and contemporary theatre inManipur was explored by TalhelmayumOmila Chanu. Zothani Khiangte andC. Sheela Ramani presented a moregeneral paper exploring the complexhistorical relations between variousgroups in North-East India and South-East Asia and responses to externalcultural influences.A surprise addition to the programwas an exciting paper by EtawandaSaiborne, a teacher of Mass Mediastudies at St. Anthony’s College, aconstituent college of NEHU. Sheargued that while the new mediais a key driver in the globalisationprocess, it can also be characterisedas a convergence of aspects of lifethat works to create folklore in spacesoutside formal entertainment andnews streams.These and many other papers reflectthe lively folklore and cultural studiesscene in North-East India and thegreat potential to continue the alreadysignificant contributions to folk narrativestudies coming from the region.To complement the papers, an outstandingaspect of the sessions wasthe high level of audience involvementin discussions.

20February 2012Beliefs and Narratives in Shillong, Indiaby María Ines Palléiro,National Council for Scientific Research, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaThe Interim Conference of theInternational Society for Folk NarrativeResearch, “Telling Identities:Individuals and Communities in FolkNarratives”, which took place in Shillong,the capital city of the state ofMeghalaya, India, from February 22to February 25, 2011, offered an excellentframe within which to furtherthe discussions of the Belief NarrativeNetwork (BNN). Around this maintopic, other subjects have also beenproposed, such as ethnicity and culturalidentity; identity and transnationalsettings; identity in the history of folkloristics;places and borders; revisitingcolonial constructs of folklore; themapping of urban folklore in North-East India and South-East Asia: interculturaldialogue, and “Critiquing theParadigm of Folklorists’ Paradise: ANorth-East Indian Perspective”. Prof.Desmond Kharmawphlang, in chargeof the organisation committee of thisconference, inaugurated the event ina touching ceremony. This ceremonyincluded a wonderful performanceconnected with vernacular traditions.Both this performance and the inaugurationdiscourse held by the governorof the state of Meghalaya highlightedMargaret Lyngdoh giving her paper on urbanlegends in Shillong.Photo by Ülo Valk.the dynamics and richness of North-Eastern Indian Khasi culture.This Conference, organised by theDepartment of Cultural and CreativeStudies of the North-Eastern Hill University(NEHU), incorporated a symposiumon “Belief Narratives and SocialReality”, focusing in the discussionon the narrative organisation of beliefsin very different parts of the world.Folktales, legends and other narrativegenres were considered in thissymposium as expressions of socialidentity, which explore the boundariesof historic experience. Topics such asflying churches, vanishing hitchhikers,haunting ladies wandering around urbangraveyards and other ‘incredible’subjects were analysed as differentways of telling cultural traditions.The believability of these narratives,dealing as it did with the traditionalbackgrounds of different cultures, wasone of the main aspects of discussionin this symposium. The relevance ofsuch narratives in local contexts waswisely stated by Professor Handoo inthe press conference on the first dayof the meeting. Regarding North-EasternIndian culture, Handoo stressedthat “the North-East is an ancientsociety and an oral society”, in whichthe old tradition of passing wisdomand knowledge orally from one generationto the next is still practised. Suchoral culture mentioned by Handoohas a counterpart in the detrimentaleffects of technology, which, accordingto Margaret Lyngdoh, offer a favourablecontext to the genesis of urbanlegends.In her presentation, Lyngdoh statedthat in fact the uncontrollable trafficsituation in Shillong city, due toindustrialisation, has engendered anurban legend about a female vanishinghitchhiker. This female ghost canbe seen in a taxi, which can be consideredas a metaphoric expressionMaría Ines Palléiro has authored several bookson Argentinean folk narrative, including Fue unahistoria real (‘It Has Been a Real Case’, 2004).Photo by Pihla Siim.of contemporary cultural spaces. Accordingto Lyngdoh, this urban legendcontains a tension between what theKhasi community believe and what actuallyoccurred in a tragic accident,which caused revenant visitations totaxi drivers. The urban legend of thevanishing hitchhiker creates in thisway local meanings, as seen in differentvariants of the plot collected byAmerican folklorists.Other variants can easily be found indifferent parts of the world. I dealt withother versions of the same narrativepattern registered in oral and virtualchannels. In oral versions collectedin Argentina, this narrative pattern,centring on the lady ghost’, deals withthe supernatural appearance of a vanishingyoung woman whose untimelydeath took place on the same day asher wedding. I also focused attentionon virtual versions circulating in theinternet. In such versions, I examinedthe rhetorical resources used by thenarrators, and those used by the receiverswhose comments in virtualforums dealt with the believability of

February 2012 21the narratives, with the aim of showinghow new channels of discoursecontribute to spread them in differentcontexts. The protagonist of all theseversions is a lady ghost who takes thenames of historic young ladies whodid exist in local environments. One ofher names is Clementine, whose tragicdeath took place in the residence ofMaria Luisa Auvert Arnaud, the ownerof an urban palace in Buenos Airesat the beginning of the 20 th century.The lady ghost also appears in theEstonian context, connected with thehistoric tragedy of the young lady Frederikevon Grottes, also known as theLilac Lady. Frederike was an aristocraticyoung woman of German originwho died tragically as the result of unrequitedlove in an ancient building,which is today Tartu Literary Museum,in the same period in which Rufina’sdeath took place in Buenos Aires. TheEstonian ghost is said to be seen in alilac dress in the haunted building. Anotherlady ghost is the Italian Beatricedi Canossa, who also died tragicallyon the day of her wedding during theMiddle Ages. I analysed some virtualversions of her haunting appearancein the Italian castle of Livorno, alsocirculating in internet forums. Such forumsdiscuss the believability of thisvirtual legend, and some participantsinclude metapragmatic reflectionson the argumentative resources ofconstructing social beliefs. Theconstructive process of all these narrativesis based on a poetic reconstructionof history. Such poetic reconstructionscan also be recognizedin oral and virtual versions of storiesabout other Argentinean lady ghosts,such as the young Rufina Cambaceres,who died the day after her nineteenthbirthday, the victim of a catalepsyattack; and Felicitas Guerrero,who was murdered the day before herengagement and whose ghost is saidto be seen once a year in the tower ofan ancient Argentinean church.Haunted churches and lady ghostsare in fact metaphoric expressionsfor the supernatural in different livingcultures. That is how the presentationof the Serbian scholar ZojaKaranović examined belief tales aboutmiraculous churches moving fromone place to another in Serbia andother regions once inhabited by theSerbs, like Bosnia and Herzegovina,Montenegro, Slovenia-Croatia andMacedonia. The author stated thatthese tales are based not only onsocial beliefs but also on the realexistence of an orthodox church incertain places. According to such beliefs,these churches moved by themselvesin a sort of self-dislocation. Therhetoric of believing can be recognisedin these Serbian narratives, in whichindividual sacred places become symbolsof collective religious belief.In all these belief tales, as well asin others analysed in the symposium,names, colours and places arechanging details of narrative frameworksstored in a latent state in eachnarrator’s memory. Such generalframeworks serve to express diverseworld models with a spatial and timeorientation, as well as expressingsocial contextualisation of similarsequences of events located in themost distant places. Every narrator,A group of the conference participants visiting the sacred grove in Mawphlang, Meghalaya.Photo by Damang Syngkon.

22February 2012whether in Shillong or in the UnitedStates of America, in Italy, in Serbia,Estonia or Argentina, recreatessimilar narrative patterns in differentcontexts and channels of discourse,using argumentative resources orientedto convince the audience of thebelievability of their tales.The fictional recreation of history andthe argumentative orientation canbe considered discursive strategiesdealing with the rhetoric of believing.Aristotle characterises rhetoric asthe art of persuasion, and he pointsout that the aim of rhetoric is not toreason but to convince, appealingto belief. The narratives examinedin the Symposium have shown therelevance of belief, whose true valuedepends not on reasoning, but in acollective agreement. Belief can beconsidered as modal expressions ofthe certainty whose truth depends ona subjective or intersubjective agreement.Legends and other belief talesare also narrative expressions of differentialidentities, the study of whichcontributes to understanding socialrealities of different parts of the world,from Eastern India to Western Europeand North and South America.an excellent scholar and a charmingnarrator. “The Beatles Night” alsoshowed how English pop music canbe recreated in the fascinating atmosphereof Shillong. The atmosphere ofKhasi culture of the North-East of India,shown in another evening gatheringdedicated to artistic performances,was a challenging context in which todiscuss belief narratives.The success of this Symposium encouragedZoja Karanović to proposeanother meeting of the Belief NarrativeThe sacred grove in Mawphlang, Meghalaya.Photo by Pihla Siim.The Shillong conference gave theparticipants a good opportunity tostudy such belief tales, and also todiscuss different aspects of folk narrative.The Estonian scholars madeexcellent contributions to this discussion,both in a theoretical and in apragmatic dimension. In fact, notonly the academic sessions but alsoother activities such as a visit to ahaunted forest, whose participantswere Ülo Valk, Merili Metsvahi, JeanaJorgensen and other dear friends,were a very important parts of themeeting. This visit also gave us theoccasion to listen to Khasi belief tales,told by Margaret Lyngdoh, who is bothNetwork (BNN) of the ISFNR, organisedby the Department for SerbianLiterature of the Faculty of Philosophyat Novi Sad, Serbia, from August28 to 30, 2012. Members of the BNNwarmly accepted this proposal, whichwill give an important opportunity todevelop the academic research onbelief narratives.

February 2012 23CALL FOR PAPERSThe 16 th Congress of the International Societyfor Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR)Folk Narrative in the Modern World: Unity and DiversityOrganizers:Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore & Vilnius UniversityThe 16 th Congress of the InternationalSociety for Folk Narrative Research(ISFNR) will take place in Vilnius,Lithuania, in June 25–30, 2013.The International Society for FolkNarrative Research – ISFNR (www.isfnr.org) is an international academicsociety whose objective is to developscholarly work in the field of folk narrativeresearch. The research interestsof ISFNR members around theworld cover a number of disciplinesin humanities and social sciences,including folklore, anthropology, culturalstudies, comparative literature,language, history, museology, educationand ethnography from the pointof view of narratives.The Institute of Lithuanian Literatureand Folklore (www.llti.lt) is a majornational research center, carrying outfundamental investigations of Lithuanianliterature, folklore and culturalheritage. The Institute also hosts theLithuanian Folklore Archives – the largestand oldest repository of folklore inLithuania, documenting centuries-oldpeasant culture as well as contemporaryfolklore. Altogether the Archivesnow store over 10,000 collections comprisingover 1,9 million folklore items.Among the chief objectives of the Institute,preservation, editing and publicationof the monumental sources of theLithuanian cultural heritage should benamed. The Institute publishes annuallyabout 30 academic publications,and organizes about 10–15 researchconferences, seminars and other academicevents.Vilnius University (www.vu.lt) is theoldest university in the Baltic Statesand one of the oldest universities inNorth Eastern Europe. It is also thelargest university in Lithuania. The Universitywas founded in 1579 and eversince, as an integral part of Europeanscience and culture, has embodied theconcept of a classical university andthe unity of studies and research. VilniusUniversity is an active participantin international scientific and academicactivities and boasts many prominentscientists, professors and graduates.The 16 th Congress of ISFNR will convenein the Old Campus - the complexof University buildings extending over awhole block of the Old Town. Its originalarchitecture attracts the visitor’s attention.The construction of the Universitybuildings was carried out over the centuriesunder the changing influencesof the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque,and Classical styles. Bounded by fourstreets, the campus is composed of 12buildings, arranged around 13 courtyardsof different shape and size.At present, the Rector’s Office, theLibrary, the Faculties of Philology, Philosophy,and History, as well as someinterdisciplinary centers, are situatedin the old town.General Topic: Folk Narrative in theModern World: Unity and DiversitySubtopics:I. What is Folk Narrative?Theoretical Definitions vs.Practical ApproachesII. Narrative Genres: Heritageand TransformationIII. Homo Narrans:Remembering, Telling,ForgettingIV. Folk Narrative and SocialCommunicationV. Crossing the Boundaries:the Local and the Global inNarrativeVI. Folk Narratives and ModernTechnologies: Preservation,Transmission, CreationPanels: Participants wishing to suggesta panel are most welcome.Please submit your suggestions (indicatingchair/convener of the panel,topic, titles of papers and participants),complying with the thematic guidelinesof the subtopics and the general topicof the congress. The deadline for submittingsuggestions for pre-organizedpanels is October 1, 2012.Some preliminary suggestions forpanels include:Child-lore and youth-loreby Laima Anglickienė (Vytautas MagnusUniversity, Kaunas, Lithuania)FOLKORE AND / IN TRANSLATIONby Cristina Bacchilega (University ofHawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, USA)STORYTELLING: THE BUILDING ANDTRANSFORMATION OF IDENTITYby Jurga Jonutytė (Vytautas MagnusUniversity, Kaunas, Lithuania)Folk Narrative in the ModernWorld: Computers and theInternetby Theo Meder (Meertens Instituut,the Netherlands)WORLD IS MADE OF STORIESby Algis Mickūnas (Ohio University,USA)

24February 2012Symposiums. Two symposiumsare scheduled to be held within theframework of the 16 th congress of theISFNR in Vilnius:1) BNN: Belief Narrative Networkwill hold its symposium entitledBoundaries of BeliefNarrativesEvolving through “legends” and “belieflegends”, the latest manifestation of“belief narratives” does not just signalan adjustment of the label granted toa certain kind of story, it also indicatesthe inclusion of stories such as“myths” and “saints legends” that havemainly been considered separate from“legends”. Whereas the concept of“belief legends” (which some wouldconsider as pleonastic) already constitutesone of the most problematic kindof story, these problems multiply whenfaced with “belief narratives”. This alsomakes them extremely fascinating anda fertile ground for new research anddiscussions.As part of the 16 th ISFNR Congress,the Belief Narrative Committee is organizinga series of sessions exploringthe boundaries of belief narratives;lively exchanges on the following,sometimes overlapping topics areanticipated:Beliefs, Truths, and DisbeliefsDefining Belief NarrativesOld Figures in New ShapesMythsThe Issue of EurocentricityProspects and ProjectsThe above themes are merely meantas guidelines. They are meant to beexpanded and criticized. For abstractssketching the scope of the suggestedthemes, please check the BNNwebsite: http://www.isfnr.org/files/beliefnarrativenetwork.html. Pleasesend your proposals for papers and/or other contributions to: Willem deBlécourt, wjc.deb@googlemail.comDo not hesitate to get in touch whenin doubt about the suitability of yoursubject. The deadline for final proposalsis October 1, 2012.2) The ISFNR Committee on Charms,Charmers and Charming will alsohold its symposium entitledCharms on Paper, Charms inPracticeOnce again, following meetings inLondon (2003, 2005), Pécs (2007),Athens (2009), Bucharest (2010) andMoscow (2011), the ISFNR Committeeon Charms, Charmers and Charmingwill hold a symposium during the 16 thISFNR Congress in Vilnius (2013).More details about the Committee’swork is available via the Committee’swebsite http://www.isfnr.org/files/committeecharms.htmlWhile paper proposals on all aspectsof charms studies will be welcome,the symposium’s title, Charms onpaper, charms in practice is intendedto highlight two topics that are particularlywelcome, namely the statusof charms as text (in manuscripts, inbooks, in archives) and the practice ofcharming. Proposals touching on bothsuch spheres are welcome, as arethose which attempt to link ‘words onpaper’ and ‘living practice’. As long asthere is a focus on the verbal aspects ofmagic, there are no restrictions as to theperiod or the language of the material.Please email your proposals of 150 to300 words to Jonathan Roper, roper@ut.eeThe deadline for proposals is October1, 2012.The congress will also host a bookexhibition of recent folklore publications.Participants wishing to contributetheir publications for the exhibitionmay send them to:Ms. Rūta Pleskačiauskienė (for theISFNR book exhibition)Library of the Institute of LithuanianLiterature and FolkloreAntakalnio 6, LT-10308 Vilnius,Lithuania.RegistrationPlease submit your registrationby e-mail: isfnr@llti.ltby fax: + 370 52616254by mail: ISFNR 16th CongressInstitute of Lithuanian Literature andFolkloreAntakalnio 6, LT-10308 Vilnius,LITHUANIAon-line: available laterRegistration FeeRegular registration until February1st, 2013: 250 EURReduced fee for accompanyingpersons, unemployed colleaguesand PhD students: 150 EURLate registration after February 1st,2013 or on-site: 300 EURReduced fee for the accompanyingpersons, unemployed colleagues andPhD students: 200 EURNoteParticipants of the Vilnius Congress arereminded that this is an event organizedprimarily by and for members of theInternational Society for Folk NarrativeResearch. To ensure their full ISFNRmembership status, including the rightto vote during the general assembly,participants will be asked to checkwith the treasurer or the treasurer’srepresentative, and ISFNR memberswho have not yet paid their dues will beasked to do so prior to registration. Thecurrent membership rates are 25 Eurosor 30 US Dollars for the period betweenthe major congresses, to be paid in advance.The current membership periodis 2009–2013, so the next period will be2013–2017. Non-members wishing toparticipate in the Vilnius congress arewelcome. Meanwhile, non-members willbe expected to pay an additional registrationfee of 50 Euros or 60 US Dollarsprior to registration. Reduced rates at 25Euros or 30 Dollars for non-memberswill only be applicable for students, unemployed,and accompanying persons.Please note that all payments to theISFNR treasurer must be made in cash.Submission of Abstracts [Deadline:October 1 st , 2012]Sessions and panels will be structuredaccording to topics (with a maximumof four participants).

February 2012 25Suggestions for panels are going to betreated as separate units, organizedand submitted by the panel organizer/ chair.Participants are kindly asked to indicatethe sub-topic for their paperswhile submitting the abstracts.Format: RTF, Rich Text FormatTyped: Times New Roman, 12 point.Length: up to 300 words.Space: single [double space betweentitle/subtopic/author/address and thebody of the abstract]You will be notified about approval ofyour submitted abstract by January31, 2013.N.B. Presentations should not exceed20 minutes followed by 10 minutes ofdiscussion.Please submit your abstractby e-mail: isfnr@llti.ltby fax: + 370 52616254by mail: ISFNR 16 th CongressInstitute of Lithuanian Literature andFolkloreAntakalnio 6, LT-10308 Vilnius,LITHUANIAon-line: available soon.Local Organizing Committee:Mindaugas Kvietkauskas (Chair)Antanas SmetonaLina Būgienė (Secretary)Daiva VaitkevičienėJūratė ŠlekonytėRadvilė RacėnaitėGintautė ŽemaitytėBronė StundžienėUršulė GedaitėLina SokolovaitėFurther InformationShould you have questions, pleasee-mail: isfnr@llti.ltPlease find regularly updated informationregarding the congress, nextcirculars, registration procedures, etc.,on the following websites:www.llti.ltwww.isfnr.orgCALL FOR PAPERSISFNR Belief Narrative Network SymposiumBoundaries of Belief Narrativesat the 16 th Congress of the ISFNRin Vilnius, Lithuania, in June 25–30, 2013Evolving through “legends” and “belieflegends”, the latest manifestation of“belief narratives” does not just signalan adjustment of the label granted toa certain kind of story, it also indicatesthe inclusion of stories such as“myths” and “saints legends” that havemainly been considered separate from“legends”. Whereas the concept of“belief legends” (which some wouldconsider as pleonastic) already constitutesone of the most problematic kindof story, these problems multiply whenfaced with “belief narratives”. This alsomakes them extremely fascinating anda fertile ground for new research anddiscussions.As part of the 16 th ISFNR Congress, tobe held in Vilnius, 25–30 June 2013,the Belief Narrative Committee is organizinga series of sessions exploringthe boundaries of belief narratives; livelyexchanges on the following, sometimesoverlapping topics are anticipated:Beliefs, Truths, and DisbeliefsWhat for some is a “belief”, is “truth”for others or “falsehood” for yet others.At the best beliefs are characterizedby discussion, at worst by religiouswars. This field of tension will be examinedby focusing not just on therelationship between belief narrativesand religion, it should also be illuminatingto approach religion or “worldview” as a particular set of belief narratives.This way the relationship becomesone between inside and outsidenarratives, or between particularand overarching narratives. This canbe compounded by temporary shiftsin opinion; one of the questions to askthen is: can “belief” be suspended aseasily as “disbelief”? Another possiblequestion is about gender hierarchieswithin religious systems and howthese are reflected and sustained ininside and outside stories.Defining Belief NarrativesAs a label attached to a certain groupof stories, “belief narratives” is clearlyan academic construct. Yet eachso-called “belief narrative” is also agenuine expression used by real-lifepeople. What should be of concernis whether the academic label, andas such the categorization with other“belief narratives”, facilitates communicationand understanding or pressesa narrative into a pre-conceived pigeonholeand thereby undermines itspurpose and meaning. Matters of definitioninclude indigenous classification,the question of “belief systems”,but also situating the researcher andhis or hers “beliefs” vis-à-vis those ofthe research subjects.Old Figures in New ShapesRelatively new media such as film,comics, television, internet andRPGs have contributed to a revival of

26February 2012legendary figures, ranging from angelsto zombies. Folklore may offerfresh insights into these already wellstudiedphenomena. Are they to beconsidered as “literary”, that is to sayas primarily functioning within a fictionalworld? Or have they, throughostensive action, become part of theactions and rituals of at least somepeople? How have the new media reshapedthese figures in comparisonto their “folkloric” predecessors andare the new forms now predominant?Does the screen witch help or hinderawareness of the historical witch?Can superheroes still function as(mostly male) role models? How tounderstand the recent proliferation offemale werewolves? Or has the appearanceof these figures in a differentuniverse contributed to their declinein daily-life?MythsWithin the western context, myths(that is, narratives involving deities ofall kinds), especially of the Greek, Roman,Celtic and Nordic variety, havelong ceased to be part of a system ofbeliefs and have become integratedin a literary universe. As part of thisdevelopment a second meaning of“myth” as something unproven, afictitious narrative that at least someconsider realistic, came into being.While this duality may be typical in awestern setting, there are also situationsin which myths are more fruitfullyjuxtaposed with rituals. Can monotheisticreligious narratives be consideredas “myths”? How do they relate to other“belief narratives”? This last questionopens up a re-examination of folklore’shistoriography, ranging from the theoryabout survivals to the mythological interpretationof fairy tales.The Issue of EurocentricityLike folklore itself, the study of legendsarose in the context of westernnationalism and is in several waysstill defined by it. This has resultedin fierce criticism of which the exclamationby the French ethnographerJeanne Favret that “folklorists haveignorance as their profession” isperhaps the most famous. But howdoes this whole complex of acts andcounteracts translate to a non-westernsetting? While this question itself alreadydisplays a western perspective,it should also be concidered whetherfolklore’s vices have been uncriticallycopied elsewhere. Can the conceptof “belief narratives”, in spite of itshistory, be applied to the analysis ofwhat is taken as a universal practice,in case, the narrating of “beliefs”? Canthe study of narrative practice in oneplace throw light on a presumably differentnarrative practice in another?Prospects and ProjectsThis session is envisioned as a workingsession in which both future researchand collobarations can bediscussed. Compared to the othersessions it is envisioned as primarilypractical. Participants are encouragedto present their plans and ideas, havethem scrutinized at an early stage, andin the process find discussion partnersand perhaps co-workers. Projectswhich cross national boundaries areespecially encouraged, for examplethe inventarisation of folklore archivesthroughout the world and finding sensibleways to deal with the collectedtexts. Or the writing of a volume ofessays on the problems of belief narratives,which ideally should functionas a future handbook of the subject.The above themes are merely meantas guidelines. They are meant to beexpanded and criticized. Please sendyour proposals for papers and/or othercontributions to: Willem de Blécourt,wjc.deb@googlemail.com. Do not hesitateto get in touch when in doubt aboutthe suitability of your subject. Deadlinefor final proposals: 1 October 2012.

February 2012 27Life-Tradition: Contribution to the Concept of Life-World 1by Giedrė Šmitienė,Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Vilnius, LithuaniaPeople’s daily attitudes, behaviour,even gestures and experienced emotionsbelong to tradition. The formsof acting and reacting, feeling andbearing in regard to environment areculturally defined and inherited fromone generation to another. In spite oftheir fluid and ephemeral nature (alternatelyappearing and disappearing),attitudes and gestures make upculture, forming its body in so far asit exists.Methods of fieldwork research, providinginstruments for tradition recording,also imply certain concepts oftradition. In Lithuanian ethnologicalresearch, asking informants about certainallegedly traditional things usedfor a long time to be (and partly stillis) a typical procedure. If the personthus questioned knows the answer,he/she is regarded as belonging tothe tradition, and if not, is left outsideit. Such a concept suggests traditionto be hard and inflexible, with a clearoutline, and thus easier to define.Let us consider the situation of askingthe informants a simple question, forexample: what phase of the moon ismost favourable for sowing and planting?The expected answer, in moreor less elaborated form, would be:root vegetables should be planted(sown) during the full moon, whileleaf vegetables or herbs during thenew moon. Nevertheless, it does notrequire particularly sharp insight tograsp that some people give suchan answer because of having heardof it from somebody else, while othersdescribe their own practices. Thelatter may be engaged in gardeningand the phases of the moon are reallyexperienced by them to be in correlationwith plants. However, whenfilling in questionnaires, the receivedanswers are similar in both cases.What makes the situation even morecomplicated is the existence of a thirdparty, people who, while being fond ofgardening and very good at it, claimto disregard the moon completely,noting that plants should be plantedon earth, not on the moon. These informantsdo not answer the questionat all, although their inner motivationand qualifications make their praxis,understanding, and their self-perceptionvery important in sounding out atradition. Let us leave this third partyaside for a while and return to thosegiving some kind of answer. Who ofthem supposedly finds it easier toanswer? Undoubtedly those who donot actually practice the tradition, buthave heard of it, i.e. they possess thetradition in the shape of knowledge.They provide the recorder with a sure,clear and handy answer. They haveheard of such things being done, andthat’s it. The practitioners, as a rule,give more complicated answers. Thustradition immersed in praxis is morecomplex, ambiguous and difficult toreveal.Giedrė Šmitienė is a postdoctoral researcherusing the phenomenological approach tofolklore materials; she is the author of the bookSpeaking with the Body (in Lithuanian).Photo: private collection.The ambiguity of tradition is brilliantlyillustrated in a work by Ernest Gellnerdealing with wearing the veil in Muslimcountries. According to E. Gellner,if we consider any veiled woman asadhering to the ancient tradition, weare greatly mistaken. For many centuries,two forms of Islam – the highIslam of the scholars and the low Islamof the people – have survived inharmony. The women adhering to thelatter branch did not wear veils whileeither working in the fields or attendingthe mosque. Only in modern times, asresult of the Islam reformation movement,which amounted to a nationalmovement in Muslim countries, didwearing the veil come to be regardedas a universal feature and an inherentpart of tradition. Thus the traditionof wearing the veil was made muchmore radical. The example given byE. Gellner is a typical case of singlingout and exalting some individual featuresof tradition, and subsequentlyproclaiming them the most inherentand absolute marks of this tradition,although the living tradition is capableof sustaining rather different variants(Gellner 1992: 9–16) 2 .Two trends in comprehending traditionmay be discerned: the first perceivestradition as a lived praxis, while thesecond perceives it as a possessedknowledge. In the first case, traditionis flexible because it exists in constantsearch for new possibilities of manifestation,and fluid because it has tokeep up with the pace of human life.It is characterised by aspects of accommodation,metamorphosis, andimprovisation. In the second case,which has already been mentionedin relation to fieldwork, tradition is regardedas a static phenomenon thatcan be clearly defined.These two trends of comprehendingtradition are based on different modesof knowing, including the practiced orlatent, and thematised or declared,

28February 2012modes. The knowing may be accessedfrom outside, gained fromother people as information withoutbecoming integrated into practicalactions; alternatively, it may bemanifested in praxis and remain unthematised;or it may simultaneouslybe both practiced and thematised. Indiscussing tradition as a possessedknowledge, the word “possessed”should be stressed, since praxis isalso characterised by certain knowledge,although this is incorporatedinto the body and its actions.Thus, tradition may be possessed asobjectus, i.e. as ordered collection ofnorms and rules. Or, it may be practiced.One may be devoid of knowingand of proper training, but, havingonce seen one’s mother act, one is‘bound to know’ the right way of actingin a similar situation many yearsafterwards. A grandparent’s gestureor tale may recur when the grandchildbecomes a grandparent. This impliesthe capacity of tradition to be mimeticallytransferred from one body toanother, rather than being inheritedas some objective possession. Traditionresurfaces and establishes itselfanew. A key notion of phenomenology,current even in the works of those authorswho have never studied EdmundHusserl, is the life-world (Lebenswelt).By this concept phenomenology aimsto reveal humans and the surroundingworld as being so interconnectedthat we can never know of one partwithout the other. “The total ensembleof human actions – including thoughts,moods, efforts, emotions, and so forth– define the context in which man situateshimself. But, in turn, the worldcontextdefines and sets limits tohuman action.” (Mickunas, Stewart1974: 65). In this study I attempt toformulate the more local concept oflife-tradition against the backgroundof life-world notion.. This methodicallyforegrounds research into tradition asconstituted and embodied by an individual.Perception of tradition throughan individual implies the possibility oftracking it as active in the corporealityand sensitivity of human life.Nevertheless this study, althoughdealing with the above-mentioned issuesrelating to tradition, is anythingbut a study in theory. It is focused onan individual female informant, OnaLukšienė, who was encountered bymy colleague Daiva Vaitkevičienė andI in 2010 during a fieldwork sessionin Švenčionys district, an underdevelopedregion of eastern Lithuania.Although having spent quite sometime with her, we could not boast ofhaving recorded a wealth of folklore.Nevertheless, communication with thiswoman gave us a sense of having meta person living a traditional lifestyle.The situation provoked thought.This study aims to contemplate, inas detailed a fashion as possible, aparticular person, embracing the totalamount of recorded material combinedwith the direct experience of first-handencounters. Nevertheless, the purposeis not to produce an individualdescription. In this study it becomesincreasingly obvious that examiningan individual also reveals the structureof a community and a tradition. Thisparadox has already been noted andcomprehensively discussed by phenomenologists.The communality actsthrough particularity, and the objectivethrough the subjective. The morethoroughly the individual experienceis examined, the more precisely thecommon human or cultural traits arerevealed. Communality is never manifestedin anything other than particularity;and being discussed in terms ofparticularity enables abstractednessto be avoided. Partly due to such anidea of individuality the proper nameof the informant is preserved in thisstudy, allowing her to remain a personrather than becoming an anonymoussocial unit.The indeterminacy of traditionLukšienė was an attentive and considerateinformant. She tried to stick tothe questions asked when telling ussomething, and kept inquiring aboutus. Her memory seemed quite good,and her manner of speaking was vivid.However, when we repeated our questionsin a more matter-of-fact way, shewas unable to give clear answers. Andif we persisted, dragging from her oneword after another and seemingly succeedingfinally to learn something,she would immediately contradictthe painfully procured answer withher concluding remark. For instance,when talking about beekeeping, shementioned medokinė, a special drinkmade from honey. When we tried tofind out its recipe she explained thatthe drink used to be made from honeyand vodka, but was vague regardingthe exact proportions. We suggestedseveral plausible answers, encouragingher to choose the most suitable.Finally, she seemed to consent thatthe drink was made from half a litreof honey and half a litre of schnapps.Nevertheless, our joy at getting an exactanswer was short-lived: when wetried to repeat the question in order tobecome better assured, the answerwas again “you put as much as youwish” and “you drink whenever youwish”. “Surely such a drink cannot beconsumed daily?” We still persistedin persuading her that a certain ordermust have existed. “If you wish, youcan drink it daily.” (LTRF cd 447-1).Her world is anything but objectivelymeasurable. The only ‘measure’ liesin her own actions: “as much as I putin”, “until I finished”, “when I went”,etc. She does not even consider anotherstate being remotely possible,and seemingly does not comprehendthe meaning of normative measurements.By this, I do not imply that shedoes not understand reasons behindmeasuring the land and separatingone owner’s strip from another’s. Butsuch activity is not part and parcel ofher life-world. In her world, the life isperformed according to such principlesas: you have as much as youtake; you find as much as you put in;you put as much as you’ve got; etc. 3She constantly considers the situationand acts accordingly.Time is also not identical or neutralto Lukšienė. When describing herself

February 2012 29Ona Lukšienė during our first meeting in June, 2010.Photo by Daiva Vaitkevičienė.suffering badly from the effect of the“evil eyes”, the woman did not onlystress her firm belief in the illness havingbeen caused by the evil eyes, but,what is equally important, added that“perhaps in a particular minute thishappened”. “Are there different minutes?”we inquired. “Surely they arenot similar,” she answered seeminglyrather perplexed at our ignorance. Accordingto her, the effect of the evileyes might not have “stuck” to her,had it occurred in another moment(LTRF cd 447-9).Tradition as manifested in case ofLukšienė always depends on theindividual situations. And as such itcannot be completely defined. Eachmoment and situation supposes variouspossibilities of its perception andcontinuation. Husserl has thoroughlyrevealed the essential indeterminacyof the given world, naming phenomenathat we perceive and interpret as“determinable indeterminacy” (2001:42–48). The life-tradition develops ina dynamic way, requiring inclusionof our experience into its developmentand resisting its simplificationto unambiguity. Here, we confrontthe tradition that is not a normativefundamental phenomenon, and whichsustains different variants (as in thecase of wearing veils, described by E.Gellner). Such tradition exists alongwith people’s wishes, emotions andintentions.D.V. How did bee-friends sharethe honey among themselves? 4O.L. [...] you give as much asyou wish, give them some jar tocarry home, according to yourconscience [here and further onitalics in quotations are mine – G.Š.] (LTRF cd 447-1).D.V. Who used to be invited tothat feast?O.L. Well, if I liked you, you’d beinvited (LTRF cd 447-1).D.V. Does everyone have to drainthe glass dry?O.L. Well, as they wished. […]Look, it’s the same nowadays:who is anxious to drink, emptiesone glass after another, but thereare people who barely drain oneglass during the whole feast(LTRF cd 447-2).It is essential to grasp that, accordingto our informant, following one’swishes does not imply breaking awayfrom tradition. In its flexible living form,tradition is implicit in human will anddesire. We are safe to assume thatLukšienė does not see tradition as imperative,because tradition for her isfluid and shifting. Tradition embracesher whole life. Whenever questionedabout customs, she does not recognisethem as such, but instead shetries to consider her life, in which theyabound. She acts by way of induction:deriving rules from life rather than viceversa.Had we lived together with her, itwould have been easy to learn thingsthat she knew and did. But writing itall down was hard. One has to actuallysee things, to know the meaning

30February 2012of “half-thick” as distinct from “thick”,or what the phrase “to hold a little”implies, etc. Some existing practicesmay only be transmitted as practices,unmediated by thematised knowing.These practices are communicatedalong with the corresponding situationsand grasped in the process.Lukšienė may not know the answer,but she knows the way of doingthings. Therefore tradition is so difficultto determine.Regarding the method of transmission,the following comment by Lukšienėseems particularly illuminating:G.Š. Who did you learn cookingfrom? You said you could cookeverything…O.L. From my mother. As momused to do, so I did… They used todrive to the market, in those days.And I was left behind to feed thelittle ones. The kids were many.And so I learned (LTRF cd450-5).Whenever her mother left, she learnedcooking from her even in her absence.The statement is illogical, but motivatedby experience. She had seen her mothercook, and that enabled her to undertakethe job. What is equally importantin terms of tradition is the fact that sheonly undertook the task in her mother’sabsence. Her mother’s place was thenfree, allowing Lukšienė to ‘master’ everythingby emulating her mother andre-creating things. Lukšienė acutelyperceives the way “things happen indue turns”: people repeat what someoneelse used to do; and what she hasbeen told by her elders, in her presentold age she tells us (LTRF cd 450-4).She does not feel in the least inhibitedby this, because there was no plan tofollow in the past, and neither will therebe one in the future. There is only life,which flows “in due turns”, telling herwhat to do. If her mother is absent andher little siblings are hungry, she hasto feed them. The absent mother doesnot even have to give orders: the wayto act would be indicated by the hungrysiblings. Tradition also rests on attentionto the life-world.The concept of the rigid traditional communityseems to be deeply entrenchedin our thinking. But in ethnographic descriptionsand fieldwork recordings, justas in case of our informant, traditionis revealed as a multifaceted and ambiguousphenomenon, which is no lessplayful than strict.Common tradition and individual lifeWhile continuing the elucidation of thefluid tradition, I am going to discussthe way that the life of this woman,whom we have encountered, mergesinto the common flow of tradition, thusincreasingly unfolding the concept oflife-tradition.We kept asking Lukšienė about numerousthings generally consideredtraditional. I would like to dwell here onher own relationship to her answers.Several subtypes of her relationscould be discerned. The first subtypewould embrace the third-person narration.This group could be characterisedby the minimal connectionbetween the informant and the subjectmatter of her narrative within theframework of the story. This enablesher to talk about things that she hasonce witnessed, but has not actuallyexperienced from within. A suitable examplecan be found in her memoryabout the village women coming tovisit her mother after giving birth to heryounger brothers. The women wouldbring fried eggs, which they wouldeat together from the same vessel,and would perform libations upwardswhen drinking (LTRF cd 447-3). Thenarrative is undoubtedly important tous as collectors of tradition. However,paradoxically, this custom is no longervalid for the informant herself, in termsof her own life, because this was nolonger performed “in her turn”. Thatwas only valid in her mother’s “turn”.The second group would embracenarratives that she has once heardfrom somebody else, who had assuredher of their reliability. This group couldbe defined as the second-person narratives.A typical case would be hernarration of something that once happenedto her female acquaintance.Somebody once came to buy pigletsfrom that acquaintance, grabbed onepiglet along with straw and a pieceof dung stuck to the piglet’s leg, andpushed it into a sack. Since then, thesow has not farrowed, no matter what.The involvement of our informant inthe story remains present in the narrative:“I did ask, how this could havehappened, and why? She said thatshe had foreseen this coming, thathousewife” (LTRF cd 447-8). In thissecond case, traditional folk beliefsare current in Lukšienė’s life. Althoughshe does not follow these practicesherself, they belong to her life-worldthanks to other people.The third group would embrace casesin which tradition completely coincideswith the informant’s life. The traditionis given by the course of life ratherthan being personally performed:something just happens. Such narrativesare told in the first person. Thefollowing is an example relating to the“evil eyes”:O.L. I was bridesmaid at mybrother’s wedding. We all weresitting at the table. And suddenlysomething happened: I ceasedseeing people around, but polesinstead, as if people had turnedinto poles. You know, somethingwas wrong with my head. And Iwas mighty sick afterwards, andpuked also. That’s it… I wasmighty sick because of the evileyes. G.Š. But maybe you had eatensomething bad? Could this indeedbe caused by the “eyes”?O.L. By the eyes, yes, by theeyes…G.Š. How do you know?O.L. Oh yes, it’s the eyes. I wasshaking all over. This couldn’t becaused by food, no way (LTRF cd447-9).Having experienced the effect of the“evil eyes”, Lukšienė does not doubtthe existence of such phenomena. Thenarratives of this third group are veryimportant to her, forming the basis ofher life-world. Yet researchers might

February 2012 31The flowers grew closest to the house; balms and mints in the sunshine against the wall.Photo by Giedrė Šmitienė.find such narratives in the first personto be too immediate. It would be muchmore convenient to be told the samethings in the form of a neutral story: toreceive it all as a text rather than life.Nevertheless, texts do not exist separatelyin the life-tradition; they fill uplife by creating it. Culture and natureform life together, shaping each otherand therefore being inseparable; thisbasic statement of phenomenology isencountered in analysis of our informant’slife 5 . For Lukšienė, knowing traditionsand customs means knowing life.No borderline exists between her lifeand tradition. Such a line can only bedrawn if reducing life to psychologyand elevating tradition to the realm ofmetaphysics. Life is lived according totradition, while tradition flows throughindividual lives.The narratives make up more stableand self-contained units in the dynamicflow of speech. This self-sufficiencyof narrative sometimes entices us toconsider them as separate from life,belonging instead to the realm of language.However, my aim here is toreveal the way that life is lived throughnarratives. Speaking about Lukšienė’snarratives, it should be noted that shehas a stock of her favourite storiesand enjoys telling them. These storiesare well known to her family members,who in turn have their pick amongthese narratives, selecting those thatthey find especially interesting. “Wewere telling stories late into the nightyesterday,” confesses Lukšienė’s visitingsister. The vitality of tradition isprimarily attested by a willingness andability to narrate, and the capacity ofthe narrative to find its proper place,time and listener. Albert B. Lord startshis investigation from the practice ofstorytelling that is primarily traditionalitself and only then turns to traditionalnarratives (Lord 1995: 3–4).The key narrative for Lukšienė seemsto be a story about her marriage. Sheherself initiates its telling as soon asshe finds a break in our questions: “Iwas fifteen when I married him”.During our visits, we listened to thisstory several times, its separate segmentsbeing repeated almost wordfor-word.This story consists of traditionmanifested in the concrete eventsof a personal life; not only in customs,but also in the display of their sensualperception. It might be reasonable toquestion whether this story is a personalor a traditional one. Traditionhere has been filtered through a personalfilter. It’s the kind of tradition thathas been turned into a situation byeach individual human life. No suchindividuality exists that would be nonintersubjective6 .The classical folk narratives recordedfrom Lukšienė are rather few, but theirnumber is nevertheless sufficient tograsp the way they function from herpoint of view. For instance, when discussingher faith in God, Lukšienė vividlydescribed her trust in her prayers.We inquired if she had ever had avision of God. The question seemedappropriate indeed, since informantscharacterised by intense religious experiencesfrequently share their visionsor dreams of God. “Yes, such thingshappen, one can see God.” Lukšienėgave us an unwavering answer and

32February 2012proceeded to narrate a story that folkloristsclassify as an etiological legendabout God walking the earth andspotting a man making a straw fence(Kerbelytė 2002: 66–67). If previouslywe encountered the life story beingpenetrated by the tradition, here wehave a case of a traditional narrativemaking its way into life. Our moderntenacious tendency in separating textsfrom life and vice versa is nothing otherthan a result of the dualistic worldview.The phenomenologists of literaturehave demonstrated ways in which literarytexts had grown into our life-world,becoming identified with our thinkingand senses (cf. Daujotytė 2010).The following is another story fromLukšienė, included into her life-world.She narrated her dream to us. In herdream, Lukšienė saw her late husbandcoming to her during his funeralto fulfil his earlier promise to tell herwhether or not dying was easy:Here, we both used to live, andhe slept over there . He usedto come to me, sloshing withhis galoshes on the floor. Andhe would say: “Look, woman,whenever either of us dies, let ustell the other if dying is easy.” Thathe kept saying. And he diedhere, in our house, and he wastaken care of, dressed and broughtout to another room, and laid outthere, in the coffin. And here, thecooking women started working,making fire, setting pots, preparingthe funeral meal. And my daughtertold me to have some rest; shemade me to go to sleep. You know,I had spent many a night attendingto the dying, and she probably sawthat I was worn out, so she mademe to climb up onto the top of theoven to rest. And I was lying there,listening to the cooking womentalking. They distributed the tasksamong themselves, discussingwho would have to do what: whomakes porridge, who cooks meat,and so on. The cooks were three,and each had work to do. I keptlistening to them, and listening,and I did not feel myself dozingoff. There were four steps to climbonto that oven, on its side .Suddenly I heard something sloshslosh slosh – climbing up thosesteps. “Listen, woman!” “What isit?” I cried. “Dying is very easy,” hesaid. That was true, indeed. he died easily enough without anyconvulsing or tossing around. Ourson turned him onto one side,placed his arm like this, and wewatched, we were all there, sohis breathing came out thinnerand thinner, and then he sighed,and he was off, only the arm [felldown] like this, and it was over. Soeasily, you know, others would betossing and turning, but he diedvery easily. So he said: “It’s veryeasy for me.” That’s clear (LTRFcd 450-4).This is an authentic and beautifulrendering of what we recognise as afolk legend (Kerbelytė 2002: 96–97).Dream legends are a curious topic initself. Here, we are content with establishinghow deeply the traditional isrooted in human life, not only in practicalactions and perceptions, but alsoin the sleeping consciousness.Tradition and sensitivity: the senseof self and of one’s own placeGlancing at our informant’s gardenand orchard makes it clear that shedoes not only care for plants, but isadept at growing them. However,when questioned, she claims to payno heed to any customs, disregardingthe phases of the moon and doingwhatever she fancies (LTRF cd447-10). Therefore, should her skillsraise any interest in us, researchersof tradition? What does her claim ofplanting “whichever way I fancy” meanexactly and how does it function inpractice? Let us consider her attitudetowards her surroundings.The classical statement by ImmanuelKant maintaining that actions alwaystake place in a certain space and timeis currently being replaced by themodern philosophical idea of spacebeing instituted by actions (Casey1993). A person reveals himself/herselfalong with his/her own place. Inorder to talk with us, Lukšienė satdown on her bed. On its one end,two big pillows were placed, while onthe other lay a folded cover; the beditself was covered with a home-madebedspread. Behind the bed was thewarm wall of the old-fashioned oven;at the end of the bed were pegs onwhich her rolled-up headscarves andblouses, combs and scissors werehung. When looking at those itemsone could almost see her taking offher headscarf and hanging it on apeg; as well as combing her hair andputting on the scarf again after wakingup. All this she could accomplishwithout rising, because reaching upwas enough.While sitting on the bed she was situateddirectly in front of the window.Thus she was able to see her spaceoutside, which was arranged in fourincreasingly higher rows: flowers grewclosest to the window; further backthere were vegetable beds of thekitchen-garden; then her orchard andbee-hives; and lastly, the linden trees.Everything was arranged in a waythat nothing would be overshadowedand could be readily visible for theowner. During our first visit, Lukšienėkept keenly watching over her beesthrough the window, in order to detectif they were not going to “swarm out”in the orchard.When going outside to the yard androunding the corner of the house, wewould primarily see the flowers again.The ends of the vegetable rows wereplanted over with high Turkish carnations.And if one opened the windowand bent out to look, one would seebalms and mints growing against thewall below the window. There is usuallyplenty of sunshine by the wall, andthe warm rays of the sun are bound tofurther increase the heady smell of theethereal plants. At another leewardand sun-heated place by the barn,Lukšienė has planted a row of tomatoes.Such a space, in which everythingseems to be placed as if of their own

February 2012 33Vegetable beds, then the orchard and bee-hives, and lastly, the linden trees.Photo by Giedrė Šmitienė.accord to be readily available to seeand smell, could safely be describedas created. Similarly Francis Bacondiscusses the way that the populationof Bensalem grows plants, describingthat they make this by art (Bacon2004: 183). Creativity can be discussedwith regards to the high levelof sensibility. What smells is plantedbellow the window. Flowers, vegetablesand fruit trees reveal themselvesto the eye in succeeding rows. Onecould assume that everything herehas been well measured, calculated,and probably laid out by a professionalgarden architect. But this spacemakes up the life of an 85-years-oldilliterate woman.The space in question is far fromrepresentative. To the contrary, it isvery handy and made up according tothe living body. Those flowers at theends of the vegetable rows have beenplanted not to overshadow somethingunsightly, i.e. the kitchen garden(which is just as nice as the flowers),and not to present themselves to peoplepassing by on the village road, butrather in order to be readily seen andsmelt. Everything here has been plantedaccording to the woman’s senseand wishes. Having been institutedby the moving and sensitive body, thisspace opens up along with the directionsof its movement. Here the ownerpasses daily, therefore the flowers areclose enough. The tools are placed inorder to be handy on the way to thegarden and to be put back on returning.There is no storage for the tools:they are just tucked in along the way.This place has no other classificationor gradation as movements of the eyeand body. What does it mean? Thewoman’s own lived place is one withher own body: the body is implicit in it,while the space is arranged accordingto the body.What would be the most suitable placeto grow a capricious plant – one thatdoes not ripen in our country accordingto many gardeners’ complaints? Naturally,a lee and sunny place is required,and that is exactly where Lukšienė hasplanted her tomatoes! The plant tellsher its needs and the place showsher for what it might be best suited.Rather than thinking everything overor knowing it all in advance, the ownerjust notices and hears the best way todo things. Her mode of actions in herown space is rather similar to the wayof artist’s painting, noted and describedby Merleau-Ponty: the artist does notchoose his colour while painting, becausethe colours that are alreadypresent on his painting ask or cry foranother, just as a line already drawnindicates its continuation (1964a: 46).Similarly, the owner finds the solutionsthat are being suggested to her. Hereis how she talks about her potted plant:O.L. Oh, my most beautiful onehas been beaten down, that oneby the window [she indicatesthe potted plant hanging outsidethe window]. It was blooming sonicely, yet now it is beaten down,

34February 2012you see, and very few blossomshave remained. It wanted meto bring it inside, you see. I sawa black cloud approaching fromover there, and the wind wasrising, so I closed the shed andwas walking past it, and it pokedme on the shoulder. It wanted meto take it off and fetch it inside, butI didn’t. D.V. What poked you on theshoulder?O.L. ...This flower pot, when Iwalked past it after having closedthe shed. It poked me, and if onlyI had taken it off and fetchedinside!.. (LTRF cd 448-4).Our repeated question ascertainedthat the woman was sure that herplant had recognised the danger andwarned her about it, only she did notacknowledge it. The critics might regardsuch an expression as anthropomorphism,yet a phenomenologicalperspective would consider it a certainworldview. The woman ‘heard’what the plant ‘told’ her. Her ability to‘communicate’ with plants and to feelequal to them was manifested in otherways as well. When we visited ourinformant later that autumn, she wasunwell and while looking out of thewindow, she said:O.L. Everything grew so nicelythis year, perhaps it’s the last timealready, so everything grew well.Look, these are my cabbages[indicating the kitchen gardenvisible through the window] andeverything; probably I will notneed this any longer. Perhapsthey will overcome me, they will.D.V. What do you mean by “they”?O.L. Well, all these plants. Theygrew up so nicely this year, soperhaps they will not grow anymore. I feel so poorly now,and I think they are going toovercome me (LTRF cd 448-6).People usually say that plants canovercome each other. Yet our informantmakes it sound as if shewas growing in her garden togetherwith her plants and is able both toovercome them and be overcome bythem. Therefore such description ofher passing away is possible: “theywill overcome me”. Clearly, the plantsmake an integral part of her life-world.Tim Ingold when discussing the formationof agriculture made a subtleremark regarding people’s affiliationto a place being related to their beginningto tend for plants. Humans learnboth how to cooperate and how towork with nature by acquiring skills ofgrowing things, rather than just pickingand taking what nature gives (Ingold2000: 77). The sense of cooperationis vividly present in the movementsof the tiller, and is acutely individuallyexperienced by Lukšienė.We should also note the way this womanperceives her activities. The resultsof her work are readily visible to us, yethard work (such as we usually perceiveit) seems not to be done here. Whentrying to understand what happens inthis case, I remember a comment byJonas Mekas, a member of the Fluxusmovement, who was raised in a Lithuanianvillage. According to him, whileliving in the village they would neverwork: instead, they would water horseswhen these became thirsty, or ploughfields when the time came. I beganto realise his meaning only thanks toLukšienė. Work in the definition of bothMekas and Lukšienė presents itself asintegration into the surroundings andas being one with them. When wevisited Lukšienė in June, we saw abig plot of the kitchen garden beingplanted over, and the rows of potatoesalready ploughed in. When visiting herin autumn, we found everything alreadyharvested. “Who did everything?” weasked her truly at a loss. She justsmiled, although seeing us still lookingat her inquiringly, she raised herhand. She did not say “me” or point toherself. Her hand had accomplishedeverything. According to her, work trulypenetrates her hands. She tells us, ofstarting the work and subsequentlyfinding it difficult to believe in havingaccomplished so much: “I was wonderingmyself in the evening, as to how Icould have done so much It’s trulya miracle!” (LTRF cd 447-6).The lived place is inseparable fromthe person. His/her actions, habitsand perceptions are visible in it. Themodes of relationship between thebody and the place may be different 7 .In our case, it is essential to recognisethat the active person perceiveshimself/herself as equal to the place,therefore acting according to the place.Although seemingly creating it, he/shedoes not stand above it. The personalexpression is incited and supportedby the surroundings. Lukšienė’s attitudesand her regard for the place,as described here, undoubtedly makeup an important part of the tradition.Yet more generalised research into thetraditional methods of place perceptionis still a matter for the future.ConclusionIf we regard tradition as the structuralpart and the necessary condition ofthe life-world, tradition is perceived asthe previous time vividly manifestedand continuing into the present. Althoughbeing past, it is solely givento us as the present, and as activelyfunctioning in the present.The case of 85-year-old bright yet illiteratewoman, who baked her ownbread and slept on home-wovensheets for her whole life, allows usto formulate the concept of the lifetradition.It presents the traditional asbeing inseparable from the informant,as being embodied in his or her lifeand therefore even as not immediatelyrecognisable. Thus it is not accidentalthat, in Lukšienė’s view, knowing thetraditional information that we keptasking her about meant knowing life.Tradition, immersed in the life-world,is not fully definable primarily becauseof the flexibility of life. It is inevitablyfluid, i.e. simultaneously shifting andcontinuing. Thus, when pointing outthe qualities of tradition we have tomaintain the methodological attitudeof the determinate indeterminacy ofhuman life.Life-tradition manifests itself via humancorporeality and sensitivity. It is evident

February 2012 35in the present perceptions, attitudes,reactions and decisions. It allows forand enables one or other way of sensing,of entertaining predisposition tocertain things over others.Thus tradition is able to function evenwhen not completely definite by findingthe most suitable answers to situationalquestions. It does not exist as being setonce and forever. Living tradition constantlyre-embodies itself. It is impliedin attitudes, emotions, senses, desiresand acts along with them. Rather thanbeing purely normative or limiting, it isalso liberating, permissive. Thereforealong with the notion of the life-world,the concept of the life-tradition is discussed,which is always constitutedtogether with a person.In part such study is not unlike thetasks undertaken by anthropologistsheading to foreign lands of unfamiliarcustoms. If we wish to perform suchresearch in our own local ethnic culture,we may be obliged to put awayour systemic knowledge of traditionallife in order to re-discover it anew asacting in the life-world in all its ambiguity.1The article is based on research performedthanks to a grant from the Postdoctoral Fellowshipfunded by the European Union StructuralFunds project “Postdoctoral FellowshipImplementation in Lithuania”.2While discussing the religious tradition, KarlRahner has outlined his famous concept of ananonymous Christian, asserting that an individualwho has never even heard of Christ, may beChristian in terms of his/her “basic orientationand fundamental decision”. K. Rahner regardsthe inner attitude and actions as more profoundthan the accepted and declared position. Heopens up a new way of determining the traditionby means of revealing how a person maybelong to a tradition despite being incapableor unwilling of its thematisation and unawareof the answers to its basic questions ([Rahner]2006: 614–617).3The tendency and habit of counting out andmeasuring the world and all things in variousways as a specific mode of perception is describedby Stuart Elden in his book SpeakingAgainst Number (2006). Working largely in thesphere of politics, this author gives a brilliantanalysis of the cultural phenomenon itself.4In Lithuania, people who share a hive of beeshave the status of bee-friends (bičiuliai). Theyshould respect each other and share the honey.5“There is no break at all in this circuit [of humanactivity]; it is impossible to say that natureends here and that man or expression startshere” (Merleau-Ponty 1964b: 188). We must notimagine that any God, asserts Maurice Merleau-Ponty elsewhere, could determine what we oweto freedom, choice, culture and what to nature(2003: 196).6This is the main insight of the fifth Cartesianmeditation by E. Husserl (1973).7For the different styles of perception and corporealactions, see Behnke 1984: 7–9, 20–25,27–28.ReferencesBACON, FRANCIS 2004. The New Atlantis,in: Essays, Civil and Moral, New Atlantis;Areopagitica; Tractate on Education; ReligioMedici, Harvard Classics vol. 3, editedby Charles W. Eliot, New York: KessingerPublishing, p. 151–192.BEHNKE, ELIZABETH A. 1984. Worldwithout Opposite/Flesh of the World,http://www.lifwynnfoundation.org/worldwithoutopposite.html.CASEY, EDWARD S. 1993. Getting Back intoPlace: Toward a Renewed Understanding ofthe Place-World, Bloomington, Indianapolis:Indiana University Press.DAUJOTYTĖ, VIKTORIJA 2010. Patirtiesžodynas, Vilnius: Vilniaus universitetoleidykla.ELDEN, STUART 2006. Speaking AgainstNumber: Heidegger, Language and Politics ofCalculation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress.GELLNER, ERNEST 1992. Postmodernism,Reason and Religion, London, New York:Routledge.HUSSERL, EDMUND 1973. Cartesianmeditations: An introduction tophenomenology, translated by Dorion Cairns,Hague: M. Nijhoff.HUSSERL, EDMUND 2001. CollectedWorks, vol. IX: Analyses ConcerningPassive and Active Synthesis: Lectures onTranscendental Logic, trans. by AnthonyJ. Steinbock, Dordrecht / Boston / London:Kluwer Academic Publishers.INGOLD, TIM 2000. The Perception of theEnvironment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwellingand Skill, London: Routledge.KERBELYTĖ, BRONISLAVA 2002. Lietuviųpasakojamosios tautosakos katalogas, t. 3:Etiologinės sakmės. Mitologinės sakmės.Padavimai. Legendos, Vilnius: Lietuviųliteratūros ir tautosakos institutas.LORD, ALBERT BATES 1995. The SingerResumes the Tale, [Ithaca, New York]:Cornell University Press.MERLEAU-PONTY, MAURICE 1964a. Signs,trans. by Richard C. McCleary, Evanson, IL:Northwestern University Press.MERLEAU-PONTY, MAURICE 1964b. „Eyeand Mind“, translated by Carleton Dalleryin Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy ofPerception, Evanston, Illinois, NorthwesternUniversity Press.MERLEAU-PONTY, MAURICE 2003.Phenomenology of Perception, trans. ColinSmith, London, Routledge.MICKUNAS, ALGIS, STEWART, DAVID1974. Exploring Phenomenology : a Guideto the Field and its Literature, Chicago Ill.:American Library Association.[RAHNER, KARL] 2006. Karl Rahner onChristianity and Non-Christian Religions,in: The Christian Theology Reader, ed. byAlister E. McGrath, Malden / Oxford / Carlton:Blackwell Publishing, p. 614–617.AbbreviationLTRF – The sound recordings of theLithuanian Folklore Archives at the Institute ofLithuanian Literature and Folklore.

36February 2012Address to the ISFNR Belief Narrative Network Conferencein St. Petersburg (Russia), May 17th–19th, 2010The Problem of Belief Narratives: A Very Short Introduction 1by Willem de Blécourt, Sicklehatch, UKThe village of ... was in uproar. Atthe house of farmer S. a child hasdied. It had been bewitched andbeghosted, it was told. Becausepeople who would know such thingshad heard strange things in andaround the house. At night chainswere rattling in the barn, and theyhad seen invisible shapes wanderingaround, going in and out withoutopening doors or windows.I have translated this newspaper reportas literally as possible (beghosted isthus a neologism, meaning affectedby a ghost). It appeared in 1926 in aDutch daily newspaper. Here it mayserve as an example to illustrate twoissues that I want to put to you at thebeginning of this conference. One: howshould we deal with ‘narratives’? Two:how should we approach the conceptof ‘belief’? For now I will skip the questionas to how different topics classifiedas ‘belief’ (in this example witches andghosts) can be combined and about theusefulness of the concept of a ‘beliefsystem’. We may want to address thisat a future conference. There may beother problems and I hope you will raisethem in the course of the next days.There may be other solutions than theones I am going to suggest. After all,this is just to wet your appetite.My examples tend to be mostly Dutchor Flemish, just because that is thearea I am most familiar with. Otherplaces have, of course, produced differentexamples, but what is importantto stress is that to understand any sortof ‘belief’, it has to be localised, situatedand contextualised. If you wantto use the emic-etic distinction: theindigenous, ‘emic’ view deservespreference. ‘Etic’ merely turns out tobe ‘academic’, an interpretation imposedfrom above that hinders ratherthan helps. Applying this to what wehave agreed to call ‘belief narratives’causes a certain kind of friction.Newspaper reports obviously containsome sort of narrative. While the studyof ‘legends’ used to be concentratedon oral narratives (etymology notwithstanding),the distinction with papersis less strict than it seems at first sight,for one reason because the vast bulkof legends has only survived as texts– written down and often neglectedin folklore archives. But orality andprint are primarily media and peoplemay retell what they have readin papers and papers may print whatpeople tell. It is much more importantto take account of that other distinction:that newspapers are supposedto report truthfully and that legendsmay be considered just stories, thatis to say products of the imagination.While there is some ‘truth’ in the opposition,it also needs to be questioned.It would certainly be foolish to ignorethe fact that the newspaper reportquoted above (and hundreds if notthousands of similar ones), did referto events. A child died (which can bechecked in the death registers); peopletold stories about it. While a narrativein itself, the report also refers toother narratives. It may moreover beseen as a part of a greater narrative,to be constructed by the researcher;whether about the farm, the particularvillage, about witchcraft, or about‘belief narratives’.In other cases newspapers reportedon the unwitchment specialists whowere consulted on the maltreatmentof witches, or people who were instrumentalin causing phenomena thatwere interpreted as ghostly. Theseare all ‘facts’ (if you want to call themsuch) and in a number of cases theyWillem de Blécourt has published extensivelyon magic and witchcraft in European history,including the book Werewolves (2005).Photo by Ülo Valk.can be corroborated by other sources.Stories are never free-floating, autonomousentities, but are embedded inthe society they circulate in, are partand parcel of daily life experiences.It just may not always be possible tocontextualise a story properly when allthere is, is a text. On the other hand,there are many more texts than thosecollected by folklorists. And when itconcerns present-day research, asimple collecting of tales may not beenough. I have always found it veryrevealing to hear from Linda Dégh thatonly eighteen years after her last visitto the Hungarian Kakasd, people beganto tell her things they had nevermentioned before.This time, women took me into theirconfidence more as an equal, aswell as an old acquaintance whocame from far away to visit andremember old times and old peoplewho are not with us anymore.

February 2012 37They were very open and sincere.They spoke of human weaknesses,family feuds, intrigues. They toldme secrets. ‘I will kill you if you tellthis to anyone,’ warned one womanjokingly, but not laughing. I hadheard gossip in Kakasd before,but none treated sensitive themes.Anthropologists have had similar experiences,meaning that our work isnever finished and that there are alwaysdeeper layers to penetrate.If you allow me to dwell a little longeron the work of Linda Dégh: she has,of course written seminal contributionsto our subject and I would strongly adviseeveryone who has not done soyet, to get acquainted with her work.At one point she remarked: “that alllegends are based on beliefs” and thatthe term ‘belief legend’ would thus bea pleonasm. I doubt whether changingthe subject of research into ‘narratives’would make much difference here. Aslong as these narratives are supposedto be about ‘beliefs’, there still lurks theghost of circularity, which on the onehand defines the stories by their subjectand on the other takes the subject itselffor granted. What, then, are ‘beliefs’?Journalists, or their local correspondents(teachers, among others), tendedto report these kinds of things tocombat what they called superstition.Although the newspaper reports onwitchcraft, ghosts and visits to layhealers may have had some entertainmentvalue, they were foremost meantto educate by way of warning example.“How is this still possible in ourenlightened times?” was the general,if not always expressed, complaint.The implication is that the reported‘beliefs’ were not just approachedfrom an outside and usually hostileperspective, but that the very definitionof these ‘beliefs’ and their categorisationdepended on it. In that respectthe journalists were proper descendantsof earlier clergymen who used tofulminate against anything ‘superstitious’,meaning anything that did notsuit their particular denomination,even within Christianity (Protestantsdenounced Catholics as superstitious,for instance). However little we maylike it, this tradition still constitutes aformative part of our research interest.In the course of the nineteenthcentury ‘superstition’ may have beenreplaced by euphemistic terms suchas ‘folk belief’, although the subjectmatter remained the same.‘Beliefs’ are thus defined in oppositionto both religion and science, especiallymedicine, and if we seriouslywant to engage with them in a criticalway, we will have to pay attention toprecisely those contrasting but alsoencompassing fields. Although we nolonger regard such beliefs as survivalsof pre-Christian ideas, we often do notpay proper attention to religion, to ‘religiousbeliefs’. To return to the openingreport: this stemmed from a RomanCatholic area in the Netherlands andit is therefore very likely that the peoplewho thought their child bewitched,had consulted Catholic clergy andapplied Catholic counter-measures.Even if they had not done so in thiscase, it was certainly done in others.There are subtle differences betweenCatholic and Protestant ghosts, too. Incases of illness, people had at leastthe choice to consult a physician, apriest or a witch-doctor; the relevant‘belief narratives’ should enlighten usabout the mechanisms of preciselysuch choices.The discussion of saints, legends andmiracles within the context of ‘belief’legends is a relatively recent development.Given, however, that devils and‘popular religion’ were already incorporatedin surveys of ‘folk beliefs’, thisis only a natural development. Now weeven consider disbelief and competing‘beliefs’. Indeed, not everyone held thesame ‘belief’ and it would not be verydifficult, for instance, to find someonewho does believe in ghosts but notin witchcraft. All the more reason tofocus on individual expressions.In themselves statements by informantsare always ‘true’, although itwould be very exciting to conduct astudy of indigenous concepts of untruths,or ‘lies’. But even a lie is ‘true’in the sense that it is uttered. Whathas often been questioned in the caseof ‘belief narratives’ is their referentialvalue. If there are no witches and noghosts, people who talk about themmust be referring to something else, toneighbourhood conflicts, for instance,or to adolescent anxieties. It can befruitful to proceed in that direction, butit is often forgotten that people oftenacted the way they did precisely becausethey were convinced of theexistence of witches or ghosts. (Thisline of argument becomes even moreinteresting when applied to the notionof a god.) Others have, of course, instrumentalised‘beliefs’ and used themto achieve their own ends.People adopted a whole range of positionsbetween ‘belief’ and ‘disbelief’and it may be necessary to take theirexpression of different opinions in differentsituations into account, dependingon how they fitted into the relationsof power; and also to take intoaccount that they told differing storiesto their families and their neighbours,and again different versions to teachers,policemen or judges. And eventhe position of the folklorist within thisspectrum cannot always be taken forgranted. Here the concepts of ‘register’and of ‘discourse’ come in useful.When your interlocutor does not‘believe’ in witches, you simply switchto a rationalist discourse and agree.“No, my grandparents used to believein witches, but we know better now.”Within a particular context, that maynot even be a lie, but just the applicationof a different discourse.In other words, ‘belief narratives’ areproblematic in a number of ways. Thisalso makes them extremely fascinating.I wish you a very fruitful conference.1Reactions and discussions are very welcome.Please write to the author:Willem de Blécourt, wjc.deb@googlemail.com

38February 2012Report of the ISFNR Committee on Charms,Charmers and Charming, 2011The Year of Moscow and Incantatioby Jonathan Roper, University of Tartu, EstoniaJonathan Roper giving a paper at the conferencein Moscow in October 2011.Photo by Alvetina Solovyova.This year the committee held its largestmeeting yet, entitled Oral Charmsin Structural and Comparative Light,in Moscow, October 27 th –29 th . Overthe three days, 35 speakers deliveredtheir papers on charms, charmers andcharming in the President’s Hall of theRussian State University for the Humanities.For many years, scholarshipon charms in the Russian languagehas been among some of the mostsignificant and fascinating producedanywhere, especially in its engagementwith living charming traditions,but also in its engagement with historicaland transhistorical aspects ofcharms. And yet, due to language barriersand also the sheer difficulty inobtaining russophone academic booksoutside of Russia, this scholarship hasremained also largely unknown, apartfrom to area specialists such as WillRyan. Thus the goal of this conferencewas to establish a dialogue betweenrussophone and anglophone scholars.Such a development requires more, ofcourse, than a single interchange, butfuture dialogue was certainly given asolid foundation by the papers and thediscussions at this event. Happily, thework of this conference is available ina more permanent form in the form ofan e-book, also entitled Oral Charmsin Structural and Comparative Light,on our website (under the ‘Moscow2011’ heading): http://www.isfnr.org/files/committeecharms.htmlThe book also exists in a limitednumber of physical copies that werepresented to conference participantsand to some libraries, and is alsoavailable with additions in Russian atthe site: http://www.verbalcharms.ru/books.htmlThe second main event of the year isthat the committee launched an onlinejournal, Incantatio, under the GeneralEditorship of Mare Kõiva, already wellknownto many of us as the editor ofThe Electronic Journal of Folklore. Likethat title, Incantatio is an open accessinternet journal, and it is accessible at:www.folklore.ee/incantatioA limited number of physical copies willbe produced for libraries as well. In ourfirst issue, you can read the work of HaralamposPassalis, Svetlana Tsonkova,Martin Lovelace, Lea Olsan and JamesKapaló, as well as book reviews anda conference report. Already we aregathering material for issue two, whichwill be produced under the guest editorshipof Emanuela Timotin.Aside from Moscow and Incantatio,other activity has included the steadyupdating of our part of the ISFNRwebsite. For example, the annotatedbibliography of primary and secondarytexts in charms studies now encompassestwenty one languagesand cultures. Also on this page canbe found the call for papers for ournext meeting, which will be held duringthe large ISFNR congress in Vilniusat the end of June in 2013. As withproposals for the larger meeting, thedeadline for proposals on any aspectof charms, charmers and charmingto be sent to roper@ut.ee and daiva.vaitkeviciene@gmail.com is October1st. See you in Vilnius!Members of the ISFNR Committee for Charms, Charmers and Charming at theirMoscow meeting, October 2011. Front row: Emanuela Timotin (Bucharest), Éva Pócs (Pecs),Lea Olsan (Cambridge). Back row: Haralampos Passalis (Thessaloniki), Jonathan Roper (Tartu),Mare Kõiva (Tartu), Andrei Toporkov (Moscow).Photo by Alvetina Solovyova.

February 2012 39Collect : Protect : Connect – The World OralLiterature Projectby Claire Wheeler, Eleanor Wilkinson and Mark Turin,University of Cambridge, UK and Yale University, USAThe World Oral Literature Project issupporting the documentation of traditionsfrom some of the most endangeredcultures on the planet. Alongsidetraining workshops and a lectureand publications series, these collectionsfrom oral communities can helpto preserve and revitalise threatenedcultural practices.The SituationThe Atlas of the World’s Languagesin Danger, 1 released by UNESCOin early 2009, claims that around athird of the 6,500 languages spokenaround the globe today are in dangerof disappearing forever. With eachlanguage lost, a wealth of ideas,knowledge and history also vanish– and vanish without a trace if thelanguage has no established writtenform.Threats to endangered and marginalisedcultures come in many forms:some are implicit and unintended,others are decidedly more explicit.Globalisation and rapid socio-economicchange exert particularly complexpressures on smaller communities,often eroding expressive diversityand transforming culture throughassimilation to more dominant waysof life. A well-intentioned and importantnational education programme inone of the world’s major languagesmay have the side effect of undermininglocal traditions and weakeningregional languages. In the nameof national unity, some governmentsmay even intentionally suppress locallanguages and cultural traditions as away of exerting control over minoritypopulations.Mark Turin is a linguistic anthropologist specialised in the Himalayas. He directs the World OralLiterature Project and the Digital Himalaya Project, both of which are colocated at Cambridgeand Yale universities. He recently published A Grammar of Thangmi with an EthnolinguisticIntroduction to the Speakers and their Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2012).Photo: private collection.Knowledge, identity and culture areoften encoded in oral literature bycommunities with no establishedwritten language. The term ‘oral literature’broadly includes ritual texts,curative chants, epic poems, folktales, creation stories, songs, myths,spells, legends, proverbs, riddles,tongue-twisters, recitations and historicalnarratives. Such traditions arerarely translated when a communityswitches to speaking a more dominantlanguage.Until relatively recently, few indigenouspeoples have had a meansof documenting their cultural knowledge,and there is still little agreementon how historical and contemporarycollections of oral literature can beresponsibly managed, archived andcurated for the future.Archiving and documenting oraltraditionsFounded in 2009, the World Oral LiteratureProject is co-located at theUniversity of Cambridge, UK andYale University, USA. By workingwith field researchers and membersof threatened communities worldwide,the Project is archiving audioand video recordings of endangeredoral traditions and making them availableonline when appropriate. Theseresources are used by researchersstudying diverse cultural traditions; bythe public to gain an understanding ofunfamiliar cultures; and more recentlyby authors and printmakers as an inspirationfor artistic projects. Fieldwork

40February 2012Claire Wheeler is a Research Assistant at theWorld Oral Literature Project, and has a backgroundin Modern and Medieval Languages,educational publishing and teaching Englishas a foreign language.Photo: private collection.is partly funded by the World Oral LiteratureProject, and researchers areexpected to adhere to guidelines onethics, cooperative working standards,financial budgeting, recording and appropriatearchiving. The output of thismodel has been high-quality recordingsof oral literature with accurateand rich metadata, produced withagreement and participations from theperformers and with recorded materialand copyright remaining with thecommunity of origin.Twenty-three collections from tencountries are currently hosted onlinefor free access through our website.The content of these collections rangesfrom songs, chants and speechesin Paiwan and from other minoritylanguage-speaking groups in Taiwanin the 1950’s, to African verbal artsdocumented in the last three years.We are fortunate to have particularlystrong collections from Asia, althoughwe hope that in time, all parts of theworld will be equally represented. Themixture of historical and contemporarymaterial held in our collectionsensures that we fulfil our role of protectingcollections from cultures thathave seen vast change since the recordingswere made, offering insightsinto the history of oral traditions; andthat we help to create a snapshot ofcultural traditions as they exist now.Individuals with historical recordings oforal traditions in legacy media formatstypically approach us with the aim offinding a secure archival platform fordisseminating materials that have notbeen accepted by traditional museumswho may have little experienceof curating audio and video content.Using USB conversion technology,and often in partnership with audiovisualmedia groups in our universities,2 we are able to digitise collectionsthat come to us on audio cassette orVHS, gramophone records or evenon reel-to-reel tapes. More recently,we have started to receive unsolicitedcollections from source communities,as news of our work spreadsand community members approachus to securely archive recordings oftraditional performances.The majority of our contemporary collectionsare ‘born digital’, in that traditionsare recorded using digital devicesin the field and transferred overthe web to the World Oral LiteratureProject from the location of the fieldwork.This provides immediate backupand storage for the researcher, andfaster archiving and dissemination ofurgently endangered customs. Fromour offices in Cambridge, MeltonMowbray and New Haven, we uploadthese fieldwork collections anddigitised heritage collections to CambridgeUniversity Library’s DSpacedigital repository. 3 DSpace is a managedenvironment with a commitmentto forward migrate digital items whenformats evolve and change. Uploadedcollections, and large amounts of associatedlinguistic and geographicalmetadata, are therefore securely archivedfor posterity. In addition, we uploadaudio and video recordings, withbasic metadata (for example, a briefdescription of the item and the locationand date of recording), to the Universityof Cambridge Streaming MediaService. 4 This platform allows for moreimmediate and simple streaming ofaudio and video content in a varietyof formats, making the materials accessibleworldwide to audiences withvarying speeds of internet connection,including those connecting to the webfrom rural or remote regions.An immediate benefit of such documentationfor communities of originis the return of materials to them inan accessible format – whether onDVD, CD or hard disc – to be usedin cultural revitalisation programmesand educational contexts. Youngercommunity members in particularare being introduced to oral traditionsthrough digital media, inspiringinterest in their cultural heritage. Actingon the wishes of indigenous communitymembers, and tailored to theexpressed needs of each community,our approach harnesses the energy ofthe young to help them to reconnectwith traditional cultural content.Eleanor Wilkinson is a Research Assistant atthe World Oral Literature Project, previouslyworking as a freelance collections assistantafter completing her MA in Museum Studiesfrom the University of Leicester.Photo: private collection.Training and workshops in fieldmethodsTraining workshops and conferencesconvened by the World Oral LiteratureProject provide a further opportunityfor fieldworkers to be exposedto best practices in documenting endangeredcultures, and to share their

February 2012 41experiences with a wider communityof academics and independent scholars.The Project has held two annualconferences with the themes ‘Collectionsfrom the Asia-Pacific’ and ‘ArchivingOrality and Connecting withCommunities’. 5 The high levels ofinterdisciplinary involvement demonstratedat these two past eventshave helped project staff conceive amore interactive workshop for 2012,entitled ‘Charting Vanishing Voices:A Collaborative Workshop to MapEndangered Cultures’. 6 Students,linguists, anthropologists, museumcurators, librarians, technicians andcommunity representatives – amongothers – will draft and design a webcatalogue and online map of existingresources on endangered oral cultures.We hope to produce at leasta draft index of oral cultures that willreflect the level of documentation of,and assess threats to, the vitality ofverbal arts. Envisioned as a collaborativedevelopment of the World OralLiterature Project’s existing databaseof language endangerment levels, 7 wehope that the new resource will functionas a research portal that is opento the public, and will help to highlightthe most endangered cultural practicesin need of urgent documentationand support.Embracing new models of academicpublishingFree online dissemination of publishedmaterials is another aspect of theWorld Oral Literature Project’s pledgeto wider access and greater connectivity,and we are firmly committed to adissemination model that overcomesthe constraints of traditional publishing.The Project publishes an OccasionalPaper series of case studiesand theory relating to the documentationand archiving of endangered oraltraditions. 8 Hosted as PDFs on ourwebsite and co-hosted through otherplatforms, these papers can be downloadedfor free or printed on demandfrom anywhere with Internet access.To date, we have found this modelto be effective for making materialsavailable to fieldworkers, researchersThe shaman Dirga Bahadur Dumi reciting for the ethnographers.Baksila, Khotang district, Nepal, 2006.Photo by Marion Wettstein.and interested members of the publicas well as to indigenous communitiesaround the world. Titles includeFaroese skjaldur: An endangered oraltradition of the North Atlantic by DrStephen Pax Leonard, and The Epicof Pabuji ki par in Performance by DrElizabeth Wickett, both of which havebeen downloaded many hundreds oftimes since being hosted.For larger manuscripts, we havelaunched an innovative partnershipwith the Cambridge-based OpenBook Publishers to create affordablepaperback, hardback and PDF-downloadableversions of new titles andout-of-print classics in oral literature,bypassing the problems inherent inconventional academic publishing(such as remaindered copies throughover printing, high unit cost and poordissemination). This method of digitalpublishing has the distinct benefitof greater global access to scholarlycontent and rich online supplementarymaterial. Authors are not restricted tothe page, but can incorporate a wealthof audio, video and photographic materialto support their text. Our firstProject-supported Open Book – arevised edition of Ruth Finnegan’sclassic Oral Literature in Africa 9 – willbe launched early in 2012, with manyother monographs to follow. A websiteof African photographs from the 1960sto the present, including images fromFinnegan’s own fieldwork, will coincidewith the book launch, and will behosted on the website of the OpenBook Publishers. 10Public engagement and outreachPublic support for communities strugglingto preserve their endangered oraltraditions is an important factor in maintainingpolitical engagement with culturaldiversity. The World Oral LiteratureProject’s involvement with social networkingand media, through Facebookand Twitter, allows us to share our newsand our most recent publications witha global community who are interestedin the diversity of human cultural expressions.These platforms allow us toparticipate in discussions on current issuesrelated to endangered languagesand traditions, keeping ourselves andothers up to date with events aroundthe world that affect the future and fateof oral traditions.Media coverage extends the activitiesof the World Oral Literature Projectto wider public domains. Our presencein print, online and on air hashelped generate publicity for thecause of protecting endangered traditions,and a greater familiarity with

42February 2012our chosen methods of achieving this.Recent coverage includes interviewswith the Project director on BBC radiodiscussing current issues in languageand cultural revitalisation; 11 articles inthe Guardian and the Daily Telegraphon the Project’s role in archiving anddisseminating endangered traditions; 12and a series of feature articles in TheObserver on the experiences of oneof our recipients of a fieldwork grant,documenting oral literature in Greenland.13 We believe that such publicityhelps to foster a sustained interest inour methodologies, approaches andcommitment to documenting oral traditionsand contributing to culturalrevitalisation.Outreach opportunities allow us toengage a wide variety of groups insupporting or working towards thepreservation of cultural traditions. Bypresenting at open days for academicinstitutions, participating in communityevents and working with artists andauthors who have been inspired byrecordings of oral traditions, we areextending knowledge of other culturesbeyond the confines of the ivory towersand silos of the academy. Workingfrom the assumption that a deeperunderstanding of cultural diversity canenhance empathy for others and discourageprejudice and stereotyping,our outreach programmes encourageinteraction with materials created byindigenous communities themselves.At a recent event for Young Carers, weshowed videos of songs and dancesperformed in rural communities, basedon which the young participants completedconfidence – building dramaand artwork activities to imagine howthe indigenous performers might feelif their language or traditions weretaken away from them. The participants’empathy for the difficulties experiencedby people far removed fromtheir own familiar lifestyles provideda compelling example of how best tounderstand threatened communitiesthrough their own voices.Our ultimate goalThe three verbs collect, protect andconnect 14 encapsulate our aims: collectionis the gathering and documentationof oral literature in the field, not inan extractive or acquisitive manner, butin a way that is responsible, collaborativeand predicated on trust. Protectionis its archiving and curation – doingthe best we can to ensure that theseunique cultural materials are maintained,migrated and refreshed as newtechnologies become available andolder technologies become obsolete.The connection is made when collectionsare returned to source communitiesand when they reach a wider publicin print and online.Ranki, one of the oldest inhabitants of Cholakkad, being interviewed by Ramu K. A. and KiranTom Sajan. Attapady, Kerala, India, April 2010.Photo by Ramu K. A. and Kiran Tom Sajan.The way in which the World Oral LiteratureProject coordinates documentationand dissemination between indigenouscommunities, fieldworkers and the generalpublic is vital to mitigating culturalendangerment, advancing documentationfrom an academic initiative to aworldwide effort in which communitymembers are invested. We are interestedto hear from – and explore partnershipswith – like-minded projectsand researchers who are committedto widening access and participation totraditional resources for the purpose ofresponsible documentation and communityrevitalisation.To find out more about the Project orto explore ways to support the initiative,please visit:http://www.oralliterature.org/1See http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/2For example, the Anatomy Visual MediaGroup, Cambridge: http://bit.ly/camavmg3See http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/4See http://sms.cam.ac.uk/5For links to abstracts and videos ofpresentations from past conferences, pleasesee: http://www.oralliterature.org/research/workshops.html6See http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1685/7See http://www.oralliterature.org/research/databaseterms.html8To view or download publications, pleasesee: http://www.oralliterature.org/research/publications.html9First published in 1970 by the ClarendonPress10See http://bit.ly/obppartnerships11See, for example: http://bit.ly/oralliteraturebbc5mp312See, for example: http://bit.ly/oralliterature_guardianeducation13See http://bit.ly/dspace_leonard_guardian_pdf14These verbs reflect the mission of theinspiring New Zealand Film Archive. Seehttp://www.filmarchive.org.nz/

February 2012 43Tradition, Identity and Diversity: The Future of Indigenous Culture in aGlobalised World (Conference at the Central University of Jharkhand,February 1–2, 2011)by Faguna Barmahalia, Gauhati University, Assam, India,Rupashree Hazowary, Govt. B.Ed. College, Assam, Indiaand Ülo Valk, University of Tartu, EstoniaFaguna Barmahalia and Rupashree Hazowary at the conference on indigenous cultures at theCentral University of Jharkhand.Photo by Ülo Valk.In order to discuss the socio-politicalsituation of indigenous peoples in India,their cultures, basic needs and thenecessity of negotiating with the newand rapid changes of globalisation, aninternational conference was held atthe Central University of Jharkhandfrom 1 st to 2 nd February 2011. This newuniversity was established in 2009 andin 2010 the Centre for Indigenous Culturewas founded under the Schoolof Cultural Studies. As Jharkhand isthe homeland of several indigenousIndian peoples, such as the Kharia,Munda, Oraon and many others, thenew centre, led by Dr RabindranathSarma, has great potential to becomea leading institution in the field.Sub-themes of the conference wereas follows:• Conceptual Ideas of IndigenousPeoples in India• Tradition and Identity ofIndigenous Peoples• Integration, Assimilationand Regionalism• Revivalism and Nationalism• Ethno-Archaeology andLiving Culture• Indigenous Cultures of India• Indigenous Cultures ofSouth-East Asia• Indigenous Cultures of the otherparts of the World• Indigenous Culture and Media• Indigenous Peoples andGlobalisationDue to the diversity of topics and greatnumber of participants, it is not possibleto give a complete survey of theconference. The current review offerssome reminiscences of papers thatrepresent folkloristic and ethnologicalresearch.Gargee Chakraborty from D.K. College,Assam, talked about women’sspace in culture, focusing on Garos,an indigenous people of theGaro Hills in Meghalaya and Assamknown for their matrilineal traditions.G. Chakraborty showed that folktalesare an important source in researchon gender relations. Dipen Bezbaruahfrom Pub Kamrup College and MrsJilmil Bora from D.K. College, Assam,discussed the role of the traditionaldrink jorlang in the customs of theKarbis, an indigenous people living inAssam and some neighbouring states.Jorlang is enjoyed by both sexes whodrink it together; it also plays a greatrole in all the festivals and celebrations.Karbis regard jorlang as sacredand offer it to God before theyserve it to people. Jano L. Sekhosefrom Nagaland University, Kohimadiscussed the cultural and traditionalpractices among the 16 major Nagatribes. There are many culture-specificwords in the Naga language that denotesupernatural entities, such asSupreme Being or Creator, knownas Kepenuopfii (Angami); Lichaba(Ao); Thmilhou (Sema), etc. In spite ofChristianisation the Nagas have maintainedbelief in, and a rich vocabularyabout, a variety of spirits who receiveofferings and are appeased and propitiatedin rituals. Jano L. Sekhose arguedthat in order to understand thesupernatural world of the Naga, closeattention should be paid to vernacularterminology, which differs among thetribes to a great extent.Gitanjali Chawla from MaharajaAgrasen College, New Delhi analysedPunjabi women’s songs knownas Bolis, sung on the night beforewedding ceremonies and expressing

44February 2012Rabindranath Sarma, the main organiser of the conference, Identity and Diversity: The Future ofIndigenous Culture in a Globalised World, doing fieldwork among the Kharia ethnic communityin Jharkhand.Photo by Ülo Valk.emotions and concerns about maritalrelationships. These songs articulateand construct female identity; theyalso express feminist struggles withpatriarchy. G. Chawla discussedfolklore as popular discourse andfield of negotiation between past andpresent that has an important role inconstructing Punjabi identity. GeetanjaliDeka from Belsor H.S. School,Assam offered a psychoanalyticalanalysis of Rongali Bihu, Assam’sspring festival. She showed that in thepatriarchal society of Assam, wherewomen’s voices tend to be silencedand sexuality is not discussed in public,the hidden dimension of culturefinds expression in festivals, such asRongali Bihu, loaded with symbols ofreproduction and fertility.Swapna Bujar Baruah from GauhatiUniversity traced the relationship betweendeath culture and mythologyamong the Meiteis of Darrang districtin Assam. She showed that worship ofthe snake goddess Manasa and therelated folk epic about Behula andLakhindar have a strong impact onthe place-lores of local communities.Places are glorified because they areconnected with mythic events of thepast. Marbhador M. Khymdeit from theNorth-Eastern Hill University, Shillong,showed the connection between archery,gambling and dream interpretationsamong the Khasis. Dream symbolismis complex, polysemantic andeven gender-specific but the traditionof interpreting dreams is maintaineduntil it has social functions (such asthe context of gambling). Faguna Barmahaliaand Rupashree Hazoary discussedin a joint paper the revivalism ofthe Bathou religion among the Bodos,indigenous people of North-Eastern India.The word ‘Bathou’ contains twowords: ‘ba’ meaning ‘five’ (referring toair, fire, sun, land and sky) and ‘thou’meaning deep philosophical thought.The word also refers to the SupremeGod Bathoubrai, whose worship hasa socio-cultural significance and expressesthe Bodo ethnic identity.The meeting was very well organised;in addition to academic sessions italso offered a memorable culturalprogram of chhau dance, performedby Anil Mahato and his group, whoseacrobatic skills mesmerised the audienceduring a long show when theHindu deities, such as Durga, Kartikeyaand their demonic adversariesappeared on the stage. The conferencedemonstrated the great varietyof indigenous cultures in India, thesignificance of this growing field ofstudies and the relevance of folklore toidentity politics among these peoples 1 .Folkloristics has much to offer towardstheoretical analysis of the processesof formation and negotiation of ethnicidentities, including not only harmoniousdevelopment but also tensionsand conflicts. The Centre for IndigenousCulture, Central University ofJharkhand has already become awell-known venue of important academicforums. On December 12–14 ththe Centre organised the 35 th sessionof the Indian Folklore Congress. Recentlyit has been announced that theCentral University of Jharkhand willopen full-fledged folklore departmentas a part of the Institute of Culture.We wish great success to Dr RabindranathSarma and his colleagues inthese important endeavours, whichcould have a most positive impacton the development of folkloristics atregional, national and internationallevels. We also wish that the Centrefor Indigenous Culture would developclose ties with the ethnic communitiesin Jharkhand, spreading knowledge,offering excellent education for theindigenous peoples of India and supportingthem in developing their languagesand cultural traditions.1The indigenous peoples (Adivasi) of SouthAsia have often been overlooked in academicresearch, although recently there have beenseveral positive developments in the field.See for example the web site of the AdivasiReligion and Society Network (http://www.arsnetwork.org/), established and coordinatedby Professor Greg Alles, McDaniel CollegeMaryland, USA.

February 2012 45Symposium on Finno-Ugric Folkloreby Merili Metsvahi, University of Tartu, EstoniaOn 7–9 June 2011 the symposiumThe Finno-Ugric Contribution to InternationalResearch on Folklore,Myth and Cultural Identity took placeat Groningen University. Groningen inNetherlands is among the few placesoutside the Finno-Ugric world whereFinno-Ugristics can be studied. In theyear 2011 the Department of Finno-Ugric Languages and Cultures at theUniversity of Groningen celebrated its45 th anniversary. To mark this occasionthe symposium dedicated to the topicof folklore, myth and cultural identitywas organised. The symposium belongedto the series of internationalFinno-Ugric symposia that have beenheld every fifth year since 1980s inGroningen.During the two-and-a-half days therewere three plenary lectures and twoparallel sessions with 35 papers altogether.The plenary lectures wereheld by Mihály Hoppál, Seppo Knuuttilaand Ülo Valk. While it would taketoo much space to review all of thepapers that I listened to at the symposium,I decided to choose in additionto plenary lectures only some and casta glance at them.Mihály Hoppál (Hungary) talkedabout the past and the present of thefolkloristics in the Finno-Ugric world.He concentrated most of all on thosebranches of research and activities inwhich he has taken part. So Hoppállooked back into the beginnings of etnosemioticsinitiated by J. Stepanov,A. Greimas, V. Voigt and M. Hoppálin 1970s. He also gave an insight intothe history of the volumes of MythologiaUralica and introduced the bookseries Bibliotheca Shamanistica andHeroic Epics of the World. Hoppál encouragedyoung researchers to continuethe investigation of the folkloreof Uralic peoples and emphasisedthe importance of studying culturalidentities in connection with folklorein the era of globalisation.Seppo Knuuttila (Finland) took ashis topic Visualising Myths. Knuuttilastarted with the contemplation thatthere are a lot of myths everywhere,including popular culture. Myths proposedifferent life philosophies andcontinuously influence popular consciousness.Knuuttila introduced theArtists’ Kalevala project, which wasorganised on the occasion of the 100 thanniversary of the Kalevala Society in2011. In the project contemporary artistswere asked to represent imagesthat the Finnish epic Kalevala evokesin their minds. One of the interestingoutcomes of the project was that themost popular figure in the pictures wasnot a male hero, but the mistress ofthe North called Louhi.Ülo Valk (Estonia) concentrated onthe legends that he considered oneof the main genres (mega-genres)of folklore. He claimed that Estonianfolklore is rich in belief legends. Valkemphasised that the legends shouldnot be seen as survivals of ancientworldviews but rather as means ofcommunication in specific socialcircumstances. Folklore as a socialphenomenon was an idea that WalterAnderson already promoted inthe 1930s. However, the idea neverbecame the leading one in mainstreamEstonian folkloristics, at leastnot yet. Instead, Jakob Hurt, OskarLoorits and their numerous followersdedicated themselves to diachronicresearch into old stories that camefrom the past. Valk on the other handstressed the importance of contextualand intertextual approaches to thelegends that explore intergeneric relationships.For example, by comparinglegends with newspaper articlesfrom the 1800s one can find similarmodels and topics.Janne Saarikivi (Finland) gave theetymological viewpoint on some ofthe denominations of Finnish deitiesin his presentation. In earlier times itMerili Metsvahi’s research interests includeEstonian folk belief and werewolf traditions, theindividual-centred approach in folklore studies andwomen’s status in Estonian society as revealedthrough folk narrative genres.Photo by Pihla Siim.was common among Finnish folkloriststo study the Pre-Christian religion.Martti Haavio’s study FinnishMythology published in 1967 was thelast in the research paradigm andsummarised the earlier work. Afterthis book there has been almost nointerest in the etymological researchof Finnic deity names among scholars,despite there being much betterpossibilities to investigate the olderlayers of vocabulary than in Haavio’stime. In Saarikivi’s opinion many ofthe etymologies should be revised.The name Lemminkäinen for examplecomes from the name cluster*lempe, which was the source of theFinnish name Lemmikki, the Estonianname Lembit, the Finnish wordlempoi (‘devil’) and the word lempi,meaning love in the physical senseof the word. The appelative *lempedenoted heat and fire. According toSaarikivi the deity names mentionedby Agricola and Ganander are relativelyyoung.

46February 2012Eila Stepanova (Finland) talked aboutone of the oldest and most universalgenres of folklore – laments. In Finlandlaments were only written downin Orthodox areas. Ritual lamentswere only performed at funerals andmemorial ceremonies, at weddingsand at departure ceremonies. Nonrituallaments were performed for thefolklore collector, for example. Oneof the features of laments is thatalmost nothing is named directly inthem. Among the 1400 circumlocutionsthat one can find in the Dictionaryof Karelian Lament Language,circumlocutions replacing the words‘mother’ and ‘child’ are the most frequent.Laments can be consideredas a special poetic register that wasused only by women but was recognisedby all the members of community.The more talented the lamenter,the more unique product arose in herperformance.Mária Czibere (Netherlands) talkedabout the role of Hungarian linguisticmyths in the formation of modernnational identity. According to her, inidentity formation the positive statementsabout the nation expressedby outsiders are important. Cziberegave several quotes arguing that theHungarian language is superior toother languages. One of the frequentlyused quotes belonging arguably toJacob Grimm states: Die ungarischeSprache is logisch, vollkommen, ihrAufbau übertritt jede andere. Thereare also many other similar quotesthat stress the beauty, perfectnessand masculinity of Hungarian language.Even the Balassi Institute,which teaches Hungarian languageand culture to foreigners, uses thiskind of false quotes in its booklets.Réka Zayzon’s (Germany) point ofdeparture was similar to Czibere’s.She stated that foreign stereotypescan significantly influence the people’sidentity. Zayson concentrated on theKhanty identity and the ways in whichearly fieldworkers and the scholarly‘truths’ have had their impact on theself-image of the Khanty people. Theoldest denomination, Jugra, that canbe found in Arabic sources of the 11 thcentury was based purely on geography.The next denomination, Ostyak,which was based on religion denotingdifferent pagan tribes includedlinguistically heterogeneous groups.Even today in the Khanty identity culturaltraits are more important thanCornelius Hasselblatt in his office at the Department of Finno-Ugric Languages and Cultures,University of Groningen.Photo by Ülo Valk.Kärri Toomeos-Orglaan (Estonia)introduced the unfamiliar name ofMartin Sohberg who published alot of chapbooks in Estonia duringthe second haft of the 19th century.These books contained arguably localnational tradition but were in factmainly adaptations from German fairytales. Sohberg’s style however wasclose to the vernacular style of narrating– including the use of vulgarwords – that was disparaged duringhis time. F. R. Kreutzwald’s book OldEstonian Fairy Tales (Eesti rahva ennemuistsedjutud), which was publishedin 1866 and contained fairytales in the German romantic style,has always been highly respected.Kreutzwald’s style has made a hugeimpact on the style of later publicationsof fairy tales. If the chapbooksreceived more attention in Estonianfolklore studies, new discoveriescould be made. Toomeos-Orglaan’swork indicates that several fairy talesreceived their places in Estonian folklorebecause of the chapbooks publishedby Sohberg.linguistic. Linguistically the northernMansi and Khanty dialects are closerto each other than different Khantydialects.Merili Metsvahi (Estonia) introducedthe hypothesis that there was a matrilinealsociety in the territory of Estoniabefore Europeanisation in the 13 thcentury. The most important proponentsof this hypothesis are the Swedishhistorian Nils Blomkvist and theEstonian archaeologist Marika Mägi.In her presentation, Metsvahi put forwardevidence from Estonian folkloreand folk customs substantiating thehypothesis and gave a brief analysisof the Setu fairy tale The Sisters’ Flight(ATU 313*E) in which a brother wantsto marry his sister, but the girl escapesand in the end the brother marries aheavenly girl instead.Cornelius Hasselblatt (Netherlands)presented an interesting example ofthe metamorphosis of the Estonianepic Kalevipoeg (1857–1861) composedby F. R. Kreutzwald into a literarywork. American author Lou Goble

February 2012 47later developed into the name ofthe sky. After introducing iron, whichwas considered a magically powerfulsubstance, the *Ilmar(i) could havehad the meaning ‘the God of wind (includingstorms and thunder), weatherand travel’. From the 19 th century Ilmarinenno longer denoted an activedeity, although he found his place inthe Finnish epic Kalevala and couldhave been an identity model for aman, as well.Audience at the symposium, The Finno-Ugric Contribution to International Research on Folklore,Myth and Cultural Identity, at the University of Groningen, June 2011.Photo by Merili Metsvahi.has written a fantasy novel The Kalevidethat has also been translatedinto German. The novel is basedmainly on W. F. Kirby’s work Hero ofEstonia published in 1895 and whichwas based on Kreutzwald’s epic. Byscrutinising the rearrangements of thefolklore material in later literary worksthat interpret Kalevipoeg, Hasselblatttried to apply the adapted version ofWalter Anderson’s law of self correction.He concluded that most of thecentral events of the epics are stillpreserved in the novel, but during theprocess of translation and adaptationthey have changed their shape andmeaning.Frog (Finland) argued in his presentationthat the Finno-Karelianmythical hero/deity Ilmarinen was asupreme sky god in an earlier period.His hypothesis, which was based ondata from different Uralic languages,stated that *Ilma denoted God in theProto-Finno-Ugric language, andSuccessful symposia and conferencesalways contain somethingbeyond the scholarly get-togethersin the auditoria and the classrooms.And often precisely these momentsoutside the common academic settingsmake these events differentfrom each other and memorable. Thereception on the first evening, whichwas simultaneously the closing of theHungarian days in Groningen in theHungarian consulate, remains in mymind with the enjoyable speech givenby Cornelius Hasselblatt in five languages– in Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian,French and German – in thathe never repeated himself in differentlanguages. Another memorable eventwas the dinner in which conferenceparticipants took part in a small villageoutside the town. Many thanks tothe organisers from the Departmentof Finno-Ugric Languages and Cultures,University of Groningen!New ISFNR Members Summer 2010 – December 2011Mrinalini Atrey (India)Monalisa Borgohain (India)Sanghamitra Choudhury (India)Frog (Finland)Diane Goldstein (USA)Pauline Greenhill (Canada)Helmut Groschwitz (Germany)David Hopkin (UK)Incoronata Inserra (USA)Sarat Kumar Jena (India)Maria Kaliambou (Greece/USA)Pamri Ramshang Kasar (India)Zothanchhingi Khiangte (India)Ullrich Kockel (Northern Ireland)Ambrož Kvartič (Slovenia)Betty Laloo (India)Rimika Lanong (India)Roplyneda Lyngdoh (India)G. Badaiasuklang Lyngdoh Nonglait (India)Jurgita Macijauskaitė-Bonda(Lithuania)Pratibha Mandal (India)K. Nipuni Mao (India)M. Mani Meitei (India)Fabio Mugnaini (Italy)Kirin Narayan (USA)Pratima Neogi (India)Mairead Nic Craith(Northern Ireland)Almut-Barbara Renger (Germany)Juan Javier Rivera Andia(Belgium/Peru)Pihla Siim (Estonia/Finland)Candace Slater (USA)Chitrani Sonowal (India)William Westerman (USA)Adam D. Zolkover (USA)

48February 2012Traditional and Literary Epics of the World:An International Symposium Reviewby Ambrož Kvartič, University of Ljubljana, SloveniaThe writing on these next few pages isdedicated to an international symposiumentitled Traditional and LiteraryEpics of the World: Textuality, Authorship,Identity that took place on thelast two days of November 2011 inTartu, academic capital of Estonia.Both the descriptions of the presentationsand the subjective views of thesymposium are written by one of theobserving participants, who just satand listened during the symposium. 1The conference was a joint effort byseveral (Estonian) parties – the Centreof Excellence in Cultural Theory,the Estonian Literary Museum and theInstitute for Cultural Research andFine Arts at the University of Tartu.Gathering an international scholarlycommunity, the symposium added anotherimportant piece to an alreadyrich mosaic of Tartu’s academic – inthis particular case folkloristic and literary– events. Furthermore, the symposiumwas organised in celebrationof the 150 th anniversary of the first editionof the Estonian national epic theKalevipoeg (1857–1861). Celebratingthe same anniversary, the new Englishtranslation of the Kalevipoeg waspublished only two months prior to theconference, prepared with the help bysome of the participants, who werehonoured during the gala receptionwith Tartu’s city authorities. This thickbook was available for purchase at theconference’s registration point.Participating at the symposium werescholars of different disciplines, primarilyfolklorists and literary scholars, butalso language scholars, semioticians,and even an artist, Kärt Summatavet,who gave a paper on various levelsof artistic (re)imagination of mythologyand epics.As the conference’s venue, the organiserschose Tartu’s former DomeCathedral, now University of Tartu HistoryMuseum, a majestic example ofBaltic brick architecture overlookingthe town. Lectures took place in twoseparate halls that could not be moredifferent in the kind of atmospherethey conveyed. The so-called ‘WhiteHall’, where the conference openingand plenary lectures were held,lived up to its name with its bright andspacious interior, open to the outsideworld and with echoing walls. Positionedjust below it was the ‘ConferenceHall’, dressed in dark brown, witha low ceiling, and without natural lighting,illuminated only by two dimmedchandeliers. Differences aside – thechairs were equally (un)comfortablein both halls.The symposium was opened by ÜloValk and Art Leete, representing thetwo parties that organised the event.Art Leete greeted participants by recitingsome passages from Kalevipoegbattle scenes, wishing everybody asuccessful ‘combat’ with the genre ofepics and all the issues arising from it.Ülo Valk, on the other hand, welcomedall foreign participants from institutionsoutside Estonia, stating jocularly thatthe Kalevipoeg and Estonia are notthe centres of the world.Despite this particular statement anddespite the organisers’ apparent bestintentions of bringing together as diversea selection of epic traditions aspossible and thus comprising very colourfulpanels, the Estonian nationalepic was clearly a predominant themeof the symposium. In fact, one onlyhas to throw one glance at the conferenceprogram or at the book ofabstracts to see that the Kalevipoegwas the main ‘dish’ on the conference‘menu’. In this regard, the conferenceprobably did not fulfil its initial ambitions– and one could well use thisfact as the main point of a critiqueAmbrož Kvartič is writing his dissertation oncontemporary legendry in Slovenia.Phtoto by Ranibala Khumukcham.– but the overwhelming presence ofthe main Estonian epic is not reallysurprising, given the celebratory motiveof the conference and the nationalcomposition of the participants. Whatis very much surprising though is thatneither of the plenary lectures wasdedicated to the Kalevipoeg.Two plenary papers were presented.The first lecture was given by DavidElton Gay, an American independentscholar connected to Indiana University,who presented some issuesdealing with the illusive definition ofthe genre of epic. Focusing on writtentexts he emphasised several differentdefinitions of the genre, arguing thatneither of them ever encompassesevery aspect of the phenomenon.Furthermore he argued that canonic,published epics are primarily the resultof scholarly work, and that pretty muchevery bigger or long epic (from Gilgamesh,through the Mahabharata tothe Kalevipoeg) is a conscious compilationof various smaller texts or shortepics found in folklore repertoires.

February 2012 49David Elton Gay (USA) giving his keynote lecture“The Idea of an Epic: Some Problems ofGenre Definition”.Photo by Alar Madisson.Contrary to the first, the second plenarylecture was more fieldwork/folkloreoriented. Dmitry Funk, from theInstitute of Ethnology and Anthropologyin Moscow, presented his casestudy of the Siberian ethnic group theShors, showcasing their epic singingtradition. By comparing his fieldworkresults with the data compiled by hispredecessors, Funk argued that thistradition is disappearing, and presenteddifferent reasons – amongthem the religious conversion of theShors not being the least important.Despite being quite interesting, onewould argue that this paper somehowdid not deliver what is required of aplenary lecture and might just as wellhave given up the plenary slot to someother paper form the ‘regular’ panels.The highlight of the conference in thisobserver’s opinion, shared by manyothers, was the first panel followingthe plenary lectures (and a very tastylunch). Papers delivered by LotteTarkka and Frog from the Universityof Helsinki, and Tiina Kirss from theUniversity of Tallinn, were a joy to listento, and not solely for the fact thatthe presentations were vivid and clear.Lotte Tarkka proposed intertextualityas the methodological tool whenanalysing Kalevalaic poetry, wheregenres interact and merge based onperformers’ own choices colliding withconventional forms and motifs resultingin diverse poetic creations. Frog’slecture not only complemented theideas conveyed by the first plenarylecturer, but also surpassed them. Itwas structured very densely and thoroughly,approaching the definition ofepic genre as formal, content-basedand applied conventions within a vernaculargenre system, highlighting thesetbacks and traps of such endeavoursas well. With her lively presentation,Tiina Kirss talked about the roleof the Kalevipoeg on the reading andgeneral culture of Estonians at homeand abroad (in the Estonian diaspora).As was already said, the Kalevipoegwas the predominant choice of topicamong the presenters, becoming redundantfrom time to time, as someof the facts, illustrative material, andeven ideas started repeating from onepaper to another – a great exampleis the matchbox, produced in Swedenwith an image of Kalevipoeg riding aneagle that appeared in three separatepresentations. As was expected, theKalevipoeg was covered from verydifferent standpoints. Some lecturersfocused on textual analysis of theepic, for example Madis Arukask, whotalked about the presence of lamentsin the Kalevipoeg, and Mari Sarv, whocontemplated creation and uniquenessof verse in the Kalevipoeg. Otherpresenters focused on wider implicationsof the epic, i.e. contextual analysis,historic and social backgroundand the like. Hasso Krull thus lookedfor connections between the Kalevipoegand the cultural construction ofthe Estonian landscape, and Ülo Valkpresented the theme of the summoningof spirits in the Kalevipoeg andthe contemporary fashionable practiceof spiritism involving a mediumto convey messages from the deadusing various tools (planchette, oijaboard). In the same train of ‘contextualthought’, others focused on the Kalevipoeg’spolitical implications in Estonia(Katre Kikas on the Estonian populardefence of Kreutzwald’s work) and inLotte Tarkka (Finland) giving her paper aboutthe dialogue of genres in Karelian oral epics.Photo by Alar Madisson.other regions (Cornelius Hasselblatton the reception of the Kalevipoeg inGermany in the 19 th century), and thepossible historical and geographicalinfluences on the development/creationof the Estonian national epic itself(Risto Järv and Eve Pormeister).Among these lectures Liina Lukasgave an interesting paper covering awide geographical area of the Balticsand Germany, using the argument ofEstonian influence on other folkloreor epic traditions. Finally, papers onthe application or even transformationof the Kalevipoeg as the basis ofnew narrative forms, i.e. comic books,plays, etc. (paper by Mare Kõiva), orin general popular culture (paper byMarin Laak), were a welcome additionto other more core text-orientedKalevipoeg papers.Among the presenters who did notdiscuss issues connected with Kalevipoeg,a division between literaryscholars and (primarily) fieldworkorientedfolklorists was clearly evident.Aldis Pūtlis’ presentation was a greataddition to Liina Lukas’ paper, showingLatvian epic examples, enablingcomparison and search for commonelements of the national 19 th centuryepics of these two neighbouring Balticcountries. In the paper delivered byMihály Hoppál an account of the vari-

50February 2012ous Epics published by Russian scholarswas delivered, illustrated with thecover pages of the various, relativelyunknown epic works. Hoppál usedLauri Honko’s work on the Tulu epicto state that epic and its performanceremain a living tradition among somecommunities, giving hope to the folklorists.Rare are the conferences onepics tradition that pass without mentioningthe Kalevala. At this symposium,two papers, delivered by NiinaHämäläinen and Jouni Hyvönen, presentedthe Kalevala from the point ofview of its textualisation – the transformationof the text form oral to written,with special emphasis on Lönnrot’seditorial choices and changes. Furthermore,Sonja Petrović presenteddifferent historical interpretations ofthe epic about the Battle of Kosovo,determined by the perspective of theinterpreter – by being either OrthodoxChristian Serb or Muslim Turk.More fieldwork-oriented papers werelesser in number, but just as important.Ranibala Devi Khumukchampresented the epic of KhambaThoibi(featuring the male character Khambaand the female character Thoibi)from the North-East Indian state ofManipur, and Paul Hagu presentedthe (non-Kalevipoeg!) epic traditionof the Estonian Setu people, focusingprimarily on female performers(known as “song-mammas”) duringthe decade of the nineteen twenties.We also heard two lectures that werenot directly connected to the genreof epics. The speakers were TatianaBulgakova, presenting the motif ofcompetition in Siberian shamanictales, and Margaret Lyngdoh with apaper about ritual practices among theKhasis in North-East India, illustratedby an explicit fieldwork video materialof ritual sacrifices.Taking a critical standpoint when lookingback on the symposium, one mightargue that accepting most of the sentabstracts in an effort to make the symposiumopen and diverse resulted intwo set-backs: making it too narrowon one hand and too broad on theL-R: Valentina Kharitonova (Russia), Dmitry Funk (Russia), Mihály Hoppál (Hungary) and MareKõiva (Estonia) at the symposium, Traditional and Literary Epics of the World.Photo by Alar Madisson. (Photos by courtesy of the Estonian Literary Museum.)other. The ‘omnipresent’ Kalevipoegmade it somewhat too narrow. As Estonianscholars – understandably thelargest group of presenters – perhapsfelt the “duty” or the general need tospeak about their national epic, thisresulted in the symposium being thematicallynot as balanced as it shouldhave been – especially given the factthat epics are one of the least definedand broadest fields of narrative/literarystudy. On the other hand theconference was perhaps too broadbecause of participants’ wide anddispersed disciplinary backgrounds.This was evident for instance duringpaper discussions where some basicdisciplinary (methodological and eventerminological) differences appeared,resulting in discomfort and, in somecases, a priori disagreement with thepresented ideas. These are of coursejust observations.The organisers of the symposiumdid a very good job of attracting suchprominent (even ‘superstar’) namesfrom the disciplines of folkloristics,ethnology, religious studies, and literarystudies as were plenary speakersDavid Elton Gay and Dmitry Funk,Mihály Hoppál, Cornelius Hasselblatt,etc., to the conference. But as mostof the ‘neutral’ participants agree, themost important presentations were notcontributed by these names, but ratherby (somewhat younger) scholars,namely Lotte Tarkka, Frog, Ülo Valk,Liina Lukas, Aldis Pūtelis and the like.Good and not so good presentationsaside, the key word to the whole symposiumwas ‘discussion’. Apart fromthe regular discussion time after eachand every paper, there were plentyof opportunities for informal talk andthe exchange of ideas during the coffeebreaks, lunch, and morning andevening recreational activities (visits tothe Department of Estonian and ComparativeFolklore and Estonian LiteraryMuseum). And the participantstook this opportunity and ran with it.All the time, one could hear conversationsreturning to the questions of thedefinition of the epic genre, the methodologyof its studying, and also thereasons for its decline. What it comesdown to now are the hope and assumptionthat all that conference hadto offer will be published and spreadamong libraries and scholars as soonas possible, so the discussion can beprolonged and some new ideas mayemerge. Coming from the point of viewof a folklorist, the symposium was thussound, informative and simply ‘epic’.Over and out.1I would like to thank Ranibala DeviKhumukcham and Margaret Lyngdoh forhelping me with the information on thoseparallel (overlapping) panels that I could notcover myself.

The International Society for Folk Narrative Research is a scientific society whose objectives are todevelop scholarly work in the field of folk narrative research and to stimulate contacts and theexchange of views among its members.Executive Committee of the ISFNR:President:Ulrich MarzolphEnzyklopädie des MärchensFriedländer Weg 2D-37085 GöttingenGERMANYE-mail: umarzol@gwdg.deVice-Presidents:Vice-President representing Africa(currently vacant)Vice-President representing North AmericaChair of the Membership CommitteeCristina BacchilegaDepartment of EnglishUniversity of Hawai’i at ManoaKuykendall 402, 1733 Donaghho RoadHonolulu HI 96822USAE-mail: cbacchi@hawaii.eduVice-President representing AsiaMehri BagheriTabriz University, Faculty of LettersDeptartment of Culture, TabrizIRANE-mail: mehribagheri@yahoo.comVice-President representing EuropeLauri HarvilahtiFinnish Literature Society, Folklore ArchivesHallituskatu 1, P.O. Box 259, FI-00171 HelsinkiFINLANDE-mail: lauri.harvilahti@finlit.fiVice-President representing Latin AmericaMaría Inés PalleiroO Higgins 1563 1-A1426 Buenos AiresARGENTINAE-mail: sapitosbis@yahoo.com.arVice-PresidentÜlo ValkDepartment of Estonian and ComparativeFolkloreUniversity of TartuÜlikooli 16, 51003 TartuESTONIAE-mail: ulo.valk@ut.eeMembers:Donald HaaseGerman & Slavic Studies443 Manoogian Hall, 906 W. Warren Ave.Wayne State UniversityDetroit MI 48202USAEmail: dhaase@wayne.eduFumiko MamiyaDept. of Developmental Psychology andChildren‘s Literature/ CultureShirayuri College1-25 Midorigaoka, Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182-8525JAPANE-mail: fmamiya@shirayuri.ac.jpSadhana NaithaniCentre of German StudiesJawaharlal Nehru UniversityNew Delhi – 110067INDIAE-mail: sadhanan@mail.jnu.ac.inTreasurer:Marilena PapachristophorouUniversity of Ioannina, School of PhilosophyDepartment of History and ArchaeologyFolklore Section451 10 IoanninaGREECEE-mail: mpapach@cc.uoi.grSecretary:Johanna EllaEnzyklopädie des MärchensFriedländer Weg 2D-37085 GöttingenGERMANYE-mail: jella@gwdg.deA moment from the opening ceremony of the ISFNR Interim Conference at the North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong (Feb. 22, 2011).Photo by Pihla Siim.