SLFK 214, April 20, 2004
Talking to them about projects – they are surprised when they find that the people they interview actually do all sorts of stuff like:
Practice status reversal during ritual
Use space as a symbol
Use of vegetation fertility symbolism
How unaware you can be of all these phenomena unless you take a course like this which makes you aware
In terms of the meaning of ritual – it is culturally appropriate, as Bogatyrev says
You do not do stuff just because it is a relic
Let’s say there was vegetation fertility magic once (or rain magic)
But now rain is not a concern – you would not do rain magic or include it in ritual
You may have the same ACTION, but it has acquired a new, culturally appropriate meaning
I used example of lights at Christmas – may once have been to make sun come back during the period of shortest daylight
Now – to show off your wealth
And this fits money magic – which they found in their rights
All of this is on the border of consciousness at best
The various local festivals like Dogwood are border
To attract businesses to Charlottesville
Increase revenue from tourism
And to cement the community (as in communitas)
And to allow normally prohibited behaviors and thus tension release
Spending of money on spring break
All of these things reinforce
Promote
Teach
Social norms
If there is an inconsistency or a conflict in the culture, things like ritual help deal with it
By allowing contradictory behavior, etc.
Like giving money to the poor
But by giving money away you are making a display of the fact that you are wealthy, that you’ve got money to give
Recall first half of course with the various place spirits
And other beings of the “unclean force”
Remember how we looked at those as reinforcing social norms
If we stick with money – the save and spend issue
How about the foreign goods urban legends
Should save money by buying what is cheapest
Often turns out to be foreign
Saving money is good, but buying foreign goods is bad
Recall the coverage of jobs going overseas in the Post and elsewhere
So legends of students saving money and getting bit by tarantulas, scorpions, etc.
When we did the first half of the course, our emphasis was not universal human processes, like ritual
It was the culturally specific
How Russians and Ukrainians treat space contrasted to attitudes toward space in the west
What they should be aware of is what folklorists call nominal and generic motifs
Or –emic and –etic units
One is the slot; the other is what fills it
One is the process, like the magic processes discussed by Bogatyrev
The other is the thing on which you want to exercise magic
Pattern and message conveyed by the pattern
We’ve mostly talked about the process as an unconscious, unmotivated one
But what happens when it is motivated?
Soviet social engineering
At first try to get rid of ritual altogether
Esp. yearly cycle ritual
The new Soviet man won’t need any of that stuff
Historical events commemorated and that is all
Revolution
Victory at the end of WWII
Very soon give up on this idea and that is where we start with the various Soviet holidays to instill Soviet ideals
Yearly cycle – days of various workers
Harvest and planting season – which both serves the economic motives of the USSR and goes back to old agrarian ritual
Culture and ritual from the point of view of the diaspora – paper at SCSS
Diaspora has no political power
There are various groups, but they seek to influence the US government
No point in trying to affect change in the USSR
The various para-military groups, often of children
What they seek to do is preserve culture – they will keep it pure here and bring back to Ukraine once it is free
But what is the culture that they will preserve?
Own family
Leaves for political reasons – granddad’s position
Grandparents want remains to be shipped to old country when it is free
Analogous to preserving culture here and shipping it back once country is free
In this country encounter people who came for other reasons – the economic migration
From different parts of the country
Regional differences
So which one do you chose?
Which socio-economic group
Which regional group
Furthermore, low/high culture debate
Own family
Country as a whole
For Soviet state it pays to have the Ukrainians appear as folksy
Will not be taken seriously
Low/high becomes big issue – and not just Ukraine
The village movement in Russia
Folk culture is more truly indicative of the nation and its people
But folk culture is low
Accomplishments on the world stage carry more prestige
But there is a kind of world culture
You don’t get the distinctiveness that you want
This is a BIG, big issue in all sorts of groups and now too
Preserving one’s own
Incursion of western culture into former USSR
Barbies or Barbie clones in the poorest villages and anti-Barbie protest
Low/high and the villages are the places of best cultural preservation because they were ignored as folk and not worth bothering with
Indigenous culture gets massively affected in cities – associated with nationalism.
Left alone in villages because it is just folk
But the sort of culture that folk preserve, as in accepting acrylic embroidery threads, Barbies and Lemonade Joe, may not be what urban intellectuals want
Urban intellectuals try reverse cultural engineering just as they decry the Soviet system for the cultural engineering they did in the first place
Add the diaspora to the mix
They assume that what they have preserved is the pure stuff
Had the villagers been left alone, their culture would have developed in the same way
And they fight with the urban intellectuals whose idea of what the culture should be is different.
Humphrey’s look at the post-Soviet world
Good book, but ignores many of the processes and the culturally specific, pre-Soviet items we looked at
Makes it seem as if Soviet system more powerful than it is
Use of space and excluding certain people from the newly reorganized collective farm
Barter economy – not market
Funny play around small, usually personal, possessions
All big things collectively owned
As was the pattern pre-Soviet
Return of various folk medicine practices, like shamanism
The attacks on shamans and other folk medicine practitioners like the baby during the Soviet period
Totally out of proportion with their political power
So, hopefully this helps them understand
I would rather it NOT help them do social engineering
Though marketing is that to an extent
Notice the introduction of new products (or at least ways of selling/marketing these products) in conjunction with a yearly cycle rite, the Superbowl, to draw of the magic power of this rite.