Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

An approach to the analysis of character as a complement to structural analyses that focus only on plot. Propp's treatment of character roles in his Morphology of the Folktale is a point of departure. The work of linguists and logicians on propositional structure is drawn upon.

They are research studies on the intersection of several fields in the humanities and social sciences, namely social anthropology, linguistics, folkloristics, applied Bayesian statistics, and cultural studies (see the references). All these three studies have been conducted by the Hanoi-based ISR research team at Phenikaa University, Ha Dong district, Hanoi, Vietnam.

It is widely believed that Nigeria consists of a minimum of 250 ethnic groups with Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo as the three dominant ones. Each group has its own language and custom and accepts one or more of the main religions of Christianity, Islam and African traditional religion. This multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious nature of the country makes the pursuit of national unity, unity in diversity, a difficult task. And this is the background for the disruption and violence that (...) have caused much of the displacement and internal migration in the country today. Whenever the parties to a communication act bring with them different experiential backgrounds that reflect a longstanding deposit of group experience, knowledge, and values, cross-cultural or intercultural communication is at play. This paper, therefore, explores the possibility of promoting national cohesion by means of cross-cultural communication in both its symbolic and linguistic forms. Concluding that if professionally applied, cross-cultural communication can enhance national integration, the paper recommends that Nigerians should understand cultural diversity, develop awareness of different cultures, and for this reason, introduce folkloristic (the study of folklore) and cultural history in primary and secondary school curricula. (shrink)

In 1873, 75 years before Karl Jaspers published his theory of the Axial Age in 1949, unknown to Jaspers and to contemporary scholars today, Scottish folklorist John Stuart Stuart-Glennie elaborated the first fully developed and nuanced theory of what he termed “the Moral Revolution” to characterize the historical shift emerging roughly around 600 BCE in a variety of civilizations, most notably ancient China, India, Judaism, and Greece, as part of a broader critical philosophy of history. He continued to write on (...) the idea over decades in books and articles and also presented his ideas to the fledgling Sociological Society of London in 1905, which were published the following year in the volume Sociological Papers, Volume 2. This article discusses Stuart-Glennie’s ideas on the moral revolution in the context of his philosophy of history, including what he termed “panzooinism”; ideas with implications for contemporary debates in theory, comparative history, and sociology of religion. It shows why he should be acknowledged as the originator of the theory now known as the axial age, and also now be included as a significant sociologist in the movement toward the establishment of sociology. (shrink)

This paper considers Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, published in 1897, as a window into techno-scientific and sociocultural developments of the fin-de-siècle era, ranging from blood transfusion and virology up to communication technology and brain research, but focusing on the birth of psychoanalysis in 1897, the year of publication. Stoker’s literary classic heralds a new style of scientific thinking, foreshadowing important aspects of post-1900 culture. Dracula reflects a number of scientific events which surfaced in the 1890s but evolved into major research (...) areas that are still relevant today. Rather than seeing science and literature as separate realms, moreover, Stoker’s masterpiece encourages us to address the ways in which techno-scientific and psycho- cultural developments mutually challenge and mirror one another, so that we may use his novel to deepen our understanding of emerging research practices and vice versa (Zwart 2008, 2010). Psychoanalysis plays a double role in this. It is the research field whose genealogical constellation is being studied, but at the same time (Lacanian) psychoanalysis guides my reading strategy. Dracula, the infectious, undead Vampire has become an archetypal cinematic icon and has attracted the attention of numerous scholars (Browning & Picart 2009). The vampire complex built on various folkloristic and literary sources and culminated in two famous nineteenth-century literary publications: the story The Vampyre by John Polidori (published in 1819)2 and Stoker’s version. Most of the more than 200 vampire movies released since Nosferatu (1922) are based on the latter (Skal 1990; Browning & Picart 2009; Melton 2010; Silver & Ursini 2010). Yet, rather than on the archetypal cinematic image of the Vampire, I will focus on the various scientific ideas and instruments employed by Dracula’s antagonists to overcome the threat to civilisation he represents. Although the basic storyline is well-known, I will begin with a plot summary. (shrink)