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Four Nebraska Cockfighters responded orally to queries about breeding, conditioning, heeling and handling of game fowl, and also about the public image and stereotypes of cockfighting and Its participants. Mastery of breeding, conditioning, heeling and handling is what makes a successful cockfighter, while association with the sport means having to face charges of cruelty to animals and accusations that only the seedier segments of society are attracted to it. Cockfighters are prepared to defend and rationalize their sport with a uniform set of excuses. They claim their adversaries are hypocritical in their accusations. Cockfighters also maintain that the Lord created game birds only for fighting. They emphasize that cockfighters are respectable people with a degree of honesty, dignity and pride unknown to other sports. The esoteric-exoteric factor in folklore provided a theoretical perspective to the study. Simply, cockfighters engage in an illegal activity that is regarded by those outside the group as cruel and dehumanizing. Cockfighters, however, realize the exoteric concepts believed about them and are able to refute those concepts on the basis of their own esoteric knowledge.

After briefly placing barbecue cookery in its proper historical perspective as a traditional method of food preparation, this study describes from an ethnographic viewpoint the methodologies and attitudes of two traditional barbecue cooks, Rev. E. J. Jones of Columbus, Kentucky, and Woody Smith of Arlington, Kentucky, the commercial establishments in which they cook and the role of this form of folk cookery in the area in which these men are located. This material is then utilized to draw conclusions based on the changes which have occurred in the form, process and function of barbecue in the transition from the traditional to the commercial and to indicate the effects these changes might have on the foodways of Western Kentuckians.

The history of pre-Lent celebrations is traced through the presentation, comparison, and evaluation of the main theses of origin held by Shrovetide and Carnival scholars. It is determined that the question whether the festivals are of pagan or Christian origin is not important for the analysis of their present-day significance. Their vitality stems first of all from the general importance of celebration for humans to define themselves in a setting in which they can perform, act, and behave in non-traditional ways that cannot be transferred to everyday life. However, the festivals' uniqueness can be defined through two main characteristics: (I) the establishment of fools' or mock-governments and the ritual dismissal of the local authorities, and (2) the use of elaborate masks and costumes. Masks and costumes not only facilitate new contacts with other, particularly non-masked, members of one's community, no matter to which social level they belong; they also allow people to freely parody and thus criticize their society's political, social, and moral order, without having to suffer consequences. Although considered to be anarchic by their critics, pre-Lent celebrations actually reflect the everyday world, which they need as a background on which to stage their distinct nature. The actors, give up their performance after the reenter their routine lives they often take with them a without special equality, which they may use within interactions. called "fools," willingly festive period and misgivings. However, feeling of democracy and their everyday social interactions. The results of fieldwork done in Southwest Germany (the area of the Swabian -Alemannic Shrovetide) are reflected throughout the study. Forty-nine black-and-white photographs as well as a map give a visual impression of Shrovetide in Germany.

My thesis, building on over two centuries of scholarly research on colonialism and evangelism in Mexico, seeks to heighten the visibility of the Franciscan order in New Spain. I intend to clearly establish how the Virgin de Guadalupe’s influence on native conversions was mediated through, and controlled by, the Franciscan institutional systems between 1523 and 1572. Many scholars have argued that the most influential factor in converting the Nahua populations was the apparition of the Virgin de Guadalupe, in 1533. These scholars have argued that at the time of her appearance the conversion of the country had been incomplete, but following her appearance Guadalupinist Catholicism spread rapidly in Central Mexico and became the “focal value of Aztec culture” (Madsen 1967, 378), resulting in some nine million baptisms by 1537. Although the Virgin de Guadalupe proved to be a substantial contributing factor for conversion in New Spain, I will argue that these scholars have given disproportionate emphasis to the Virgin, in the process neglecting the institutional systems implemented by the Franciscans between the years of 1523 and 1572. This thesis will discuss the desire of the Franciscan administration to establish a moral order, defined by leading scholar of Globalization Christopher Chase-Dunn as, people’s agreements about definitions of right and wrong, obligations, and legitimate conflicts (Chase-Dunn 2014, 176). Using Michel Foucault’s theories about power and the subjected I will expand on this definition and argue that the moral order helped define the relationship and the roles of the Franciscans and the Natives; the Franciscans becoming the administrators of a new society that they largely defined and managed, while using the institutions they developed as tools of social regulation and control to produce docile native subjects, deprived of a unique cultural heritage.