Paper short abstract:

Magical thinking has mostly been considered as primitive or rationally low. However, current evidence in cognitive science proposes that magical thinking has not gone anywhere in modernization. The present paper discusses how magical thinking of historical people was rather similar as it is today.

Paper long abstract:

For centuries, magical thinking has been considered as primitive, rationally low, or something that occurs in the other cultures but not in one’s own. Since the time of the Victorian era anthropologists Edward B. Tylor and James Frazer, magical thinking has also been considered as something completely other than science or modern thinking. Because of these pejorative connotations, researchers of the 21st century have faced certain ethical challenges in studying magic of historical or non-Western cultures. How to resign from these pejorative connotations?

This paper presents a socio-cognitive perspective in studying magic of “the other” cultures. Current evidence in cognitive science, psychology and behavioural studies proposes that magical thinking derives from the basic mental processes of the human mind, and that magical thinking is relatively common within modern, Western people as well (see, e.g., Rozin & Nemeroff 2000; Lindeman & Aarnio 2007; Vyse 2013). Magical thinking has been with us all along, and it is not just a phenomenon of "the others".

The paper presents a case study in which the studies of cognitive science are combined with folklore studies considering magical healing in pre-industrial Finland and Karelia. This cross-disciplinary study proposes that these historical people were not actually that different from contemporary Westerns but, on the contrary, their magical thinking was rather similar as magical thinking of, for instance, Western college students in the 21st century.

Paper short abstract:

Despite the disenchanting theme of the triumph of rationalism over belief, the original Scooby-Doo series has been read as texts that leave the door open to the possibility of the supernatural. As queer readings reinterpret heteronormative texts, I suggest an analogous 'queer' reading for belief.

Paper long abstract:

The original episodes of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" (1969-1970) presented belief in the supernatural as the preserve of the rural, the antiquated, the marginalized and, on occasion, the racialized other. Even among the show's protagonists enchantment was for the more emotional, reactive, and befogged members. Whatever supernatural occurrences were reported and investigated, they were inevitably discovered to be false ostensive practices (Dégh & Vázsonyi; Ellis), bad actors using local legend and the purported gullibility of a population to distract from a property crime, and all sensory experiences that were once interpreted as encounters with the numinous were, after persistent scrutiny, subsequently explained as manipulations. Such a break with the past aligned almost perfectly with the final years of what has been called 'The Golden Age of Capitalism' (Perelman), the unbroken streak of technological advancement, financial growth, and faith in institutions since the end of the Second World War that was being thought of as a new normal. However, these texts need not be read as the producers intended them, and as proven in interviews and online fan criticism they clearly have allowed for alternate interpretations. Particularly in the hegemonic framework of mid-20th century American children's television, I suggest that an approach to disenchantment texts can include a reading similar to Bonnie Zimmerman's 'perverse' readings of heteronormative ones: a reader reclaims enchantment for themselves and on behalf of the protagonists. This paper builds on my work on the intersection of folk and popular culture, legend and contemporary legend, and children's television.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the question of how ‘Nature’ can be meaningfully depicted as an engagement between the human and the nonhuman in works of anthropocene fiction by looking at the proliferation of mythology- and folklore-derived monsters and hybrids in recent literary works.

Paper long abstract:

Depictions of ‘nature’ in fiction have always reflected the broader socio-political context of their production. What most of these narratives in Western literature from the Enlightenment onwards have in common is how nature has been depicted as something external to, and separate from, the realm of the human. However, within the past few decades it has become more and more obvious that such a separation is no longer tenable. In 2000, the term ‘anthropocene’ was suggested by two scientists as replacement for ‘holocene’ to denote the current geological era in acknowledgment of the ‘major and still growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales’ (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000: 17). Although the term remains contentious, it helped alert a wider public to the pervasiveness of the traces of human activity in the environment. So what, then, does this mean for fiction writers? How can we write ‘Nature’ in the anthropocence? This paper proposes one possible answer to this question by examining the proliferation of monsters and, in particular, hybrids in recent English-language literary works, many of which relate back to characters from myth and folklore.