Paper short abstract:

In my presentation I am going to look at the ways some of the participants of the folklore collecting campaigns (1890s Estonia) made use of the framework of collecting as an alternative public space to express ideas they felt to be marginalized.

Paper long abstract:

19th century was an era of modernization in Estonia. One aspect of this modernization was interest in the nation’s past, which brought about widespread folklore collecting campaigns in the last decade of the century. Collecting campaigns engaged people of backgrounds quite varied. There were those for whom writing was a daily activity (teachers, writers, students) and those whose writing experience was rather limited. Thanks to the latter there is a considerable layer of vernacular literacy in the corpus.

Vernacular literacy in the broadest sense means literate activities that are not connected to institutions aiming to spread and control literacy matters. The term covers the formal qualities (heterography, idiosyncratic sentences etc) as well as content of the texts. In my paper I am going to study the writings of some of the collectors which diverge considerably from the advice given by the organizers of the collecting campaigns. We can say that those collectors used the frameworks of the collecting campaign as a kind of alternative public space. Arguably they felt that their views about past and present are being marginalized in the public, and so they turned the collecting campaign into a medium for expressing them.

Folklorists have often neglected those writings as unworthy of study, noting that those writers totally misunderstood the idea of the collecting campaigns. However, from the angle of vernacular literacy we can also scrutinze their active search for possibilities to express ideas dear to them, and enquire why did they choose folklore collecting as a channel.

Paper short abstract:

In 1860-s, rumors about the Highest approval of Old Belief caused massive exoduses of Old Believers from Edinoveriie. Studying the accounts from Estonia and Siberia, I focus on the historical and cultural backgrounds of these rumors and the arguments OB opted for to confront the officials.

Paper long abstract:

In April 1861, an Orthodox priest Shchepetov reached a man in Raja village named Vasilii Poliakov, who claimed himself and Old Believer, despite being an Orthodox parishioner since 1855. Poliakov explained that he was converting back because of his mother who cursed him and his children for belonging to the official church and because he believed that free rejoining with the Old Belief had legal grounds.

Same as Poliakov, the repressive policy of the Nikolai I administration forced many Russian Old Believers (OB) to join the so-called Edinoveriie, a special branch of the Russian Orthodox Church designed to eliminate the schism. Imperial officials doubtlessly considered OB as been obscurely obsessed by “formal” manifestations of faith, such as rites, in particular, and assumed that Edinoveriie, where the liturgy would be performed in the old ways with the usage of the old books, would be acknowledged. Nevertheless, since parishes remained directed by official priests, OB did not massively consider Edinoveriie as a real alternative to their own denominations.

The anti-OB laws were loosened under Aleksander II but still, the open manifestation of it was forbidden. Nevertheless, the rumors about the Highest approval captured OB population of the Empire. As example of Poliakov shows, OB were justifying their claims by appealing to alleged vows of their parents and grandparents who asked them to keep up with the faith. In my presentation, I am going to show why Old Believers opted for this argument in an attempt to overrun the power of local authorities.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation looks at the continuity of tradition across ethnicities in Northeast India through religion. Micro-traditions, existent in the vernacular discourse, subverts the political borders and indicates how historically there has been much more co-operation between different tribes.

Paper long abstract:

In Northeast India, mong both the Amri Karbi and the Bhoi indigenous communities may be found narratives, rituals, and expressions of belief about a feminine non-human entity called Klingmekar/Klengmekar. Along the Khasi borderland, in Jhare magical practice, numerous divinities source power and invest authority to the tradition. In one origin account of Jhare, she is the originator of the ritual. However, the Karbi and Khasi both orally describe her to be a feminine entity. In Jhare magical practice, she is the most dangerous goddess who consumes people ‘raw’. Among the Karbi, Klengmekar is three women and in narratives, they were the ones who helped Karbi people in their migration route. But they also were cannibals who devoured Karbi people and in retaliation, Karbis killed them.

This presentation looks at the continuity of tradition across ethnicities through the case study of the deity Klingmekar. Border areas between Khasi Hills and Karbi Anglong become sites of the dense exchange of narratives that address questions and issues most significant to the tribe. I argue that this micro-tradition, existent and present in the vernacular discourse of contemporary Karbi and Khasi, subverts the political drawing of borders, and indicates how historically there has been much more co-operation between different tribes than are actually acknowledged. Further, a salient feature of the present study is it’s exposition of how peripheral narratives, communities, and deities point to strategies in which folklore is deployed to divide and ‘other’ communities from dominant, authoritarian discourses.