Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life：Expressions of Belief

177 Pages·2012·9.271 MB·English

by  Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk

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Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life
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Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life
Expressions of Belief
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aw Edited by
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ht Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk
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AN: 869706 ; Valk, Ulo, Bowman, Marion.; Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life : Expressions of Belief
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First published 2012 by Equinox Publishing Ltd, an imprint of Acumen
Published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business
© Marion Bowman, Ülo Valk and contributors 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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aw Notices
l Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or
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h experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom
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co To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or
e property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the
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b material herein.
a
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pl ISBN 978-1-908049-50-6 (hardback)
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r British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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S. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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r Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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u Vernacular religion in everyday life : expressions of belief / edited by Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk.

ed p. cm.
tt Includes bibliographical references and index.
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m ISBN 978-1-908049-50-6 (hardback)
r
e 1. Religions—Case studies. 2. Ethnology—Religious aspects—Case studies. I. Bowman, Marion. II. Valk, Ülo, 1962- III. Title: Expressions of belief.
p
s BL41.V47 2012
se 305.8—dc23
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2011020061
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f Typeset by S.J.I. Services, New Delhi

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Contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
1. Introduction: Vernacular religion, generic expressions and the dynamics of belief
.
w
a
l PART I: Belief as Practice

t
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ig 2. Everyday, fast and feast: Household work and the production of time in pre-modern Russian Orthodox Karelia
r
y
p Marja-Liisa Keinänen
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c

e 3. How to make a shrine with your own hands: Local holy places and vernacular religion in Russia
l
b
ca Alexander Panchenko
i
l
pp 4. ‘I make my saints work …’: A Hungarian holy healer’s identity reflected in autobiographical stories and folk narratives
a
r Judit Kis-Halas
o

S. 5. Chronic illness and the negotiation of vernacular religious belief
.
U
Anne Rowbottom
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PART II: Traditions of Narrated Belief
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i 6. Autobiographical and interpretative dynamics in the oral repertoire of a Vepsian woman
m
r
e Madis Arukask and Taisto-Kalevi Raudalainen
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s
se 7. Hidden messages: Dream narratives about the dead as indirect communication
u
r Ágnes Hesz
i
a
f 8. Religious legend as a shaper of identity: St Xenia in the mental universe of a Setu woman
t
ep Merili Metsvahi
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x
e

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r PART III: Relationships between Humans and Others
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h
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li 9. Things act: Casual indigenous statements about the performance of object-persons
b
u
p Graham Harvey

e
h
t 10. Haunted houses and haunting girls: Life and death in contemporary Argentinian folk narrative

m
ro María Inés Palleiro
f

on 11. Angels in Norway: Religious border-crossers and border-markers
i
ss Ingvild Sælid Gilhus
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r
e 12. ‘We, too, have seen a great miracle’: Conversations and narratives on the supernatural among Hungarian-speaking
p
t Catholics in a Romanian village
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o
h Éva Pócs
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m
r PART IV: Creation and Maintenance of Community and Identity
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f

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n 13. Komi hunter narratives
a

n Art Leete and Vladimir Lipin
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ce 14. Stories of Santiago pilgrims: Tradition through creativity
u
od Tiina Sepp
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re 15. Restoring/restorying Arthur and Bridget: Vernacular religion and contemporary spirituality in Glastonbury

be Marion Bowman

.t
eo
gn
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ey PART V: Theoretical Reflections and Manifestations of the Vernacular
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Rod. 16. Belief as generic practice and vernacular theory in contemporary Estonia
e
.v
4r Ülo Valk
1e
0s
2e
r 17. Some epistemic problems with a vernacular worldview
@
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htht Seppo Knuuttila
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yr r Afterword: Manifestations of the religious vernacular: Ambiguity, power, and creativity
pl
CoAl Leonard Norman Primiano
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Index
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Acknowledgements
The time lapse between the inception and completion of this volume perhaps epitomizes the joys and hardships of
international scholarly cooperation! The editors would like to express their gratitude to the authors for their contributions, and
to friends and colleagues for their valuable help. We particularly want to thank Daniel E. Allen for his work on English
language editing for this volume, George Moore for his copy editing input, Marat Viires for drawing the maps that illustrate
. the articles, and Pihla Siim for her technical help. We are grateful to Veikko Anttonen for his help in devising the outline of
w
a
l the book, and to our colleagues at the Department of Religious Studies, The Open University in Milton Keynes, and the

ht Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu, who have assisted us in various ways. We are
g
ri thankful to our families and friends for their moral and practical support. Finally, we are immensely grateful to Janet Joyce
y
op and Valerie Hall at Equinox for their patience and enthusiasm for this project.
c
e This book has been supported by grants from the Estonian Science Foundation (grant no. 7516 ‘Vernacular Religion,
l
ab Genres, and the Social Sphere of Meanings’) and by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund
c
li (Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory). We are greatly indebted to them for their financial support.
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Contributors
Madis Arukask is a folklorist who works as Associate Professor at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics,
University of Tartu, Estonia. He is also President of the Estonian Society for the Study of Religions. His main field of interest
is the traditional belief of Balto-Finnic peoples, primarily Vepsians and Votes. In the last 13 years he has conducted fieldwork
in North Western Russia and written articles about different aspects of vernacular religion and folklore genres there.
.
w
la Marion Bowman is Head of Religious Studies and Senior Lecturer at The Open University, UK, and a past President of both

ht the British Association for the Study of Religions and The Folklore Society. Working at the interstices of religious studies and
g
ri folklore, her research interests include vernacular religion, contemporary Celtic spirituality, pilgrimage, material culture, the
y
op creation of myth and tradition, and a long-term study of Glastonbury, England, on which she has published extensively.
c

e
l
b Ingvild Sælid Gilhus is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her interests include religion in antiquity,
a
c
i with a focus on ancient Gnosticism, and contemporary New Age religion. Her most recent book in English is Animals, Gods
l
p
p and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (2006). She is book review editor of
a
r the journal Numen: International Review for the History of Religions.
o

.
S
U. Graham Harvey is Reader in Religious Studies at The Open University, UK, with research interests in the performance,

er material cultures and literatures of Jews, Pagans and indigenous peoples. His numerous publications include Religions in
d
n Focus: New Approaches to Tradition and Contemporary Practices (Equinox, 2009) and The A to Z of Shamanism
u

d (co-authored with Robert Wallis, Scarecrow Press, 2010). His current research expands upon interests in the etiquette of
e
t
t human interaction with the larger-than-human world.
i
m
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e
p Ágnes Hesz is Assistant Professor at the Department of European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Pécs,
s
se Hungary. Her research includes fieldwork on the relations between the living and the dead among a Hungarian ethnic group in
u
r Romania, and she has also published on bewitchment and local festivals.
i
a
f

t Marja-Liisa Keinänen is Associate Professor of History of Religions and Senior Lecturer at Stockholm University. Her
p
e
c research topics are everyday religion and gender, especially women’s rituals and ritual agency in Russian Orthodox Karelia.
x
e Besides her doctoral thesis Creating Bodies: Childbirth Practices in Pre-modern Karelia (2003), she has published widely on
,
er these topics and also edited Perspectives on Women’s Everyday Religion. (Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion 35,
h
is 2010).
l
b
u
p
Judit Kis-Halas has been a Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology,
e
h
t University of Pécs, Hungary since 2009. She has published in the areas of traditional healing, witchcraft and magic.

m
o
r
f Seppo Knuuttila is Professor of Folklore studies at the University of Eastern Finland. His current research interests include
n
io cultural theory, cultural localities and spatial peripheries as cultural and social constructions, and contemporary folk/outsider
s
is art. He has participated in long-term research in two North Karelian villages for around 30 years. He has also studied folk
m
er humour (Ph.D. 1992), mythic history, Finnish mentality and identity. He is the Head of Kalevala Society (2007– ).
p

t
u
o Art Leete is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Tartu, Estonia. His main research interests are related to
h
t
i contemporary religious changes and the development of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian groups among the Komi
w
m people, as well as hunting practices and related beliefs. He has published several articles about Komi hunting, most of them in
r
fo co-operation with Vladimir Lipin. They have conducted joint fieldwork annually since 1996 among different ethnographic

ny groups of the Komi.
a

n
i
Vladimir Lipin is Research Fellow at the Department of Ethnography at the National Museum of Komi Republic, Syktyvkar,
d
e
c Russia. His main research topics are related to the hunting and fishing culture of the Komi people, as well as museological
u
d
o studies. He is the author of the first Komi ethnographic lexicon (2008) and has published a number of articles about Komi
r
p
e traditional culture. He also owns a traditional hunting ground near Kulymdin village.
r

e
b
.t Merili Metsvahi received her PhD from the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu, where
eo
dg n she now works as a Research Fellow. Her research interests include Estonian folk belief, individual-centred research in
ey
tlMa folklore studies, Estonian werewolf traditions, and women’s status in Estonian society as revealed through folk narrative
u
o. genres.
Rd
e
.v
4r
01se María Inés Palleiro is researcher in folk narrative at the Institute of Anthropology, Buenos Aires University; Professor of
2e
@ r Methodology of Folk Research, National Institute of Folk Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Vice President of the
s
htht International Society for Folk Narrative Research. She has authored over 170 articles on Argentinean folk narrative and
gg
riri several books, including It Has Been a Real Case (2004).
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Alexander Panchenko is Chair of the Centre for Literary Theory and Interdisciplinary Research, Institute of Russian
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Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences; Director of the Centre for Anthropology of Religion, European University of St
Petersburg; and Director of the Program for Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St Petersburg
State University. He has published extensively on vernacular religion and the history of sectarian movements in Russia and on
theory of folklore.
Éva Pócs is Professor Emerita at the University of Pécs, Hungary. She is the series editor of sourcebooks on early modern
religion and witchcraft and the editor of 25 volumes on religious anthropology and folklore, the latest being Folk Religion and
Folk Belief in Central-Eastern Europe, 2009. She has conducted extensive, long-term fieldwork among Hungarian-speaking
Catholics in Romania and has produced over 460 academic publications during her long and distinguished career.
w. Leonard Norman Primiano is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Cabrini College, Radnor,
a
l Pennsylvania, USA and a pioneer of the term ‘vernacular religion’. He is the co-producer and co-founder of The Father
t
gh Divine Project, a multimedia documentary and video podcast about The Peace Mission Movement. He is currently writing on
i
yr the North American vernacular religious artist ‘Sister’ Ann Ameen; Roman Catholic ephemeral culture as exemplified by the
p
co ‘holy card’; the international marketplace for Roman Catholic sacramental objects, such as the ex-voto; and the expressive

le culture of Father Divine’s Peace Mission community.
b
a
c
i
l Taisto-Kalevi Raudalainen is a Doctoral Student at the Folklore Department of Helsinki University, and a Lecturer at the
p
ap Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn and the Culture Academy in Viljandi, University of Tartu, Estonia. He has done

or fieldwork among different groups of Finno-Ugric peoples, especially among the Balto-Finnic. His main field of interest is the

S. construction of ethnic history and personal autobiographies within the traditional genre spectrum. His doctoral thesis concerns
.
U tradition-bound autobiographical narration among the Ingrian Finns.
r
e
d
n
u Anne Rowbottom was, until her retirement, a senior lecturer in the Centre for Human Communication at Manchester

d
e Metropolitan University, UK. She conducted long-term research in the field of vernacular civil religion, on which she both
t
t
i published and (with Paul Henley) made a television documentary, Royal Watchers. After contracting CFS/ME she began
m
er researching links between chronic illness, complementary medicine and alternative spiritualities.
p

s
e
us Tiina Sepp is a Doctoral Student of Folklore at the University of Tartu. Her research areas include Catholic and contemporary

ir pilgrimage and vernacular religion. Since 2003, she has been researching various aspects of the Santiago de Compostela
a
f pilgrimage and has published two books on that subject.

t
p
e
xc Ülo Valk is Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu and ex-President of the International
e
, Society for Folk Narrative Research. His publications include the monograph The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the
r
he Devil in Estonian Folk Religion (2001) and other works on belief narratives and demonology. His current research interests
s
li are connected with vernacular genres, belief systems and the social dimension of folklore in Estonia and North Eastern India.
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Introduction: Vernacular Religion, Generic Expressions and the
Dynamics of Belief
The development of the human sciences in the nineteenth century led to the formation of anthropology, comparative religion,
ethnology and folklore – all new disciplines whose focal points lay outside the ‘enlightened’, ‘rational’ and ‘advanced’ realm
of contemporary urban life. Anthropologists looked at non-European cultures as living examples of the pre-modern past,
.
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a ethnologists and folklorists studied the rural people of their own countries as carriers of obsolete traditions, and early scholars
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t of religious studies looked for primitive forms of religion among ‘uncivilized’ peoples and in historical sources, as
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ig expressions of belief that antedated the contemporary Protestant Christianity conceived to be the highest stage of religious
r
py development. What linked these disciplines was the attempt to engage with the cultures of ‘others’ – non-Western civilizations
o
c and ‘backward’ peasants – and by describing them systematically to place them within an externally conceived framework.
e
bl After nation states had been established and colonial empires had collapsed, anthropology, comparative religion, ethnology
a
ic and folkloristics1 went through periods of self-reflection and critical examination of their objects of research as they had been
l
pp constructed in the context of Western scholarly discourse and social needs at the time of their formation. Defining categories
a
r such as culture, folklore or religion as reified ontological entities has lost its former attraction, because the social and verbal
o
. constructedness of concepts has become common knowledge. Former endeavours to build up disciplines on the basis of
S
U. clearly defined objects of research, to establish their foundations in fundamental theories – such as evolution – and to discover

er timeless truths inherent to the empirical data, have become less attractive, whereas the subjective dimensions of scholarship
d
n have become more significant than ever before. The focus has been shifting to human agency in producing cultures, and to
u

d more reflexive methodologies that demonstrate awareness about ‘the situated and interested character of our knowledge
e
t
t production’ (Ritchie 2002: 445). Contemporary scholars do not think of themselves as impartial outside observers, alien
i
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r ‘others’ who study cultures from a safe and scientific distance, but rather as partners in communication, participants in a
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p heteroglot dialogue of indefinite numbers of voices and points of view.
s
se Although belief in analytical categories as basic tools for producing firm knowledge has weakened, other concepts and
u
r approaches have emerged that offer alternative perspectives to those methodologies which constructed exhaustive systems of
i
fa classification, transcultural taxonomies and universal definitions. Many scholars nowadays think that the goal of scholarship is

pt not to produce authoritarian theoretical statements but rather to observe and capture the flow of vernacular discourse and
e
xc reflect on it. As everyday culture cannot be neatly compartmentalized into the theoretical containers of academic discourse, it
e
often seems more rewarding to follow the methodological credo of Lauri Honko and produce textual ethnographies (Honko
,
r
e 1998: 1). Rooted in whatever constitutes reality for a particular group or person, such studies allow us to see how theory is put
h
s
i into practice, how beliefs impact on different aspects of life, the ways in which worldview must affect, and be expressed in,
l
b
u everyday life.
p
e What emerges in these studies are challenges to a number of assumptions that have operated in some discourses on religion,
h
t such as the homogeneity of belief and praxis in ‘traditional’ contexts, or conversely the uniquely modern nature of highly
m
ro eclectic, heterogeneous personal belief systems. While agreeing with Manuel Vásquez that ‘complexity, connectivity, and
f
n fluidity are preponderant features of our present age’ (Vásquez 2008: 151), we get intimations that the ways in which people
o
si have expressed, maintained, articulated and negotiated beliefs in the past lack neither complexity nor fluidity. The dynamism
s
mi of vernacular genres in a plethora of contexts is unmistakable.
r
e The current book is an outcome of the ‘Vernacular Religion – Vernacular Genres’ symposium convened by Veikko
p

t Anttonen and Ülo Valk at the University of Tartu as part of the 15th congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative
u
o
h Research (ISFNR) in July 2005. At that symposium, 19 papers were delivered, ten of which have been developed into articles
t
i
w in the current volume; eight further scholars, with similar methodological approaches, were invited to produce articles for this

rm joint publication, which has authors from Argentina, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Russia, the UK and the
o
f USA. United in the assumption that, as Richard Rorty neatly puts it, ‘disengagement from practice produces theoretical
y
an hallucinations’ (Rorty 1999: 94), the authors deal with beliefs expressed in a variety of local, historical, textual, virtual and

in performative contexts.

d
e
c
u
d
ro From Religion to Vernacular Beliefs
p
e
r
e A range of expressions of belief is presented in this volume, in terms of genre, form and content, with careful consideration of
b
.t the means of expression and the worldviews being expressed. Before considering individual chapters, however, it will be
eo
dg n helpful to examine some of the history and key concepts forming the backdrop to these studies.
ey
la One aim of this book is to bring together scholarship from both ethnology/folkloristics and religious studies, demonstrating
tM
u
o. the value of exchanging and sharing terminological and methodological insights, and noting the impact of different academic,
Rd
e
.v national and sociopolitical trends and assumptions on the study of belief. As Robert Orsi comments:
4r
1e
0s
2e
r Self-reflexivity within particular disciplines is most effectively done by tracking back and forth between the practice of the discipline and reflection on that
@
s practice, on its distinctive challenges and dilemmas, and the ‘so called … alternatives’ to these in light of the discipline’s past and its contemporary
tt
ghgh circumstances. (Orsi 2008: 138)
ii
rr
pyl Early folklorists were convinced that the peasant cultures of Europe had maintained a considerable quantity of beliefs and
ol
CA practices with roots in pre-Christian religions. Folk beliefs thus represented the ‘elder faith’ of social groups and folkloristics
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