The purpose of this thesis is to explore how three festivals function together to meet the Mission Statement goals of Holden Village, an isolated Lutheran renewal center located in the Cascade mountains in Washington State. The Holden Village Mission Statement states that Holden Village is organized to provide a community for healing, renewal, and refreshment of people through worship, intercession, study, humor, work, recreation, and conversation in a climate of mutual acceptance under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The purpose of this community is to participate in the renewal for the church and the world by proclaiming the gospel of God's unconditional love in Jesus Christ; rehabilitating and equipping people for ministry in the world; lifting up a vision of God's kingdom of peace, justice, and wholeness; and celebrating the unity and the diversity of the church, all humanity, and all creation. (Lutz 1987:16-7) This ethnographic study provides an initial history of Holden from the days it operated as a copper mine, explains how Holden became a Lutheran renewal center, and explores the different ways the current villagers incorporate the Mission Statement into their everyday lives. After establishing the historical, cultural, and spatial context of Holden Village, I then analyze three festivals in detail vis-a-vis the Holden Village Mission Statement. To gain a better understanding of the function of these three festivals, and to place them within a broader context, I also provide a detailed description of the daily, weekly, and calendrical events at Holden. The three festivals analyzed in this thesis are the Fourth of July, Jubilee! Day, and Sun Over Buckskin Day. In my analysis of these three festivals, I rely on my role as a participant/observer in these festivals, journal entries written throughout my various volunteer experiences at Holden, letters I wrote to family and friends, recollections sparked by photographs, conversations with Holden friends and acquaintances, as well as relevant printed sources. The conclusions drawn from my fieldwork indicate that each of these three festivals contribute in some way to meeting the goals of the Holden Village Mission Statement. After my analysis of the three festivals, I briefly discuss some of the issues and concerns which have occurred at Holden during times of community stress and how the village has responded. My conclusions indicate that despite the problems which can arise at Holden, people leave Holden with a sense of renewal. This sense of renewal is facilitated by the daily, weekly, and calendrical events and festivals at Holden, all of which provide the villagers with the opportunity to celebrate themselves as members of a community.

Cumberland County, Kentucky, is situated on the Tennessee line just at the western edge of the Appalachian Mountains. The county's terrain is typical of land in the foothills of a mountain range and varies from flat farmland and good bottomland along the Cumberland River to steep, wooded hillsides and rough, rocky ridge tops. Areas often take part of their names from outstanding topographic features of the land. Community names such as White's Bottom, Howard's Bottom, Cherry Tree Ridge and Bow Schoolhouse Ridge are common in Cumberland County. On Pea Ridge, which runs along the north shore of Dale Hollow Lake, is the small community of Peytonsburg. To the casual observer, Peytonsburg would probably appear similar to other small communities scattered upon the countryside, but a closer examination of the area's culture will show that the people of Peytonsburg still cling to a lifestyle that disappeared in most of the United States more than half a century ago. A farmer who uses only mules as a source of power splits fence rails from hickory logs; two women still spin wool on their spinning wheels, and most of the women in the area make patchwork quilts, one man makes his living by such traditional activities as digging ginseng and sassafras roots and hunting and trapping; a traditional chairmaker and several broommakers still practice their crafts, a farm wife makes butter by hand in an old crock churn with a wooden dasher; and one family operates a sorghum mill to make molasses for community members each fall. A community in which people still retain this many elements of traditional lifestyles is unique, indeed. But even more remarkable is the fact that they all live on a one-mile strip of Pea Ridge, starting just above the Peytonsburg Post Office and extending to the backwaters of the lake. (Appendix one on page sixty-nine contains a map of this section of Pea Ridge.) The purpose of this study is to document the unusually rich folk culture of this small community and to discuss the reasons for the tenacity with which the folk cling to their traditional way of life.

Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D.--Wash.--University of Washington. / Bibliogr. p. 211-224. Index.

Thesis--Indiana. / "Folklore texts from Ban Nai": p. [187]-581. Vita. Bibliography: p. [591]-596.

Akademische Abhandlung - Helsingfors. / "Literaturverzeichnis": p. [vii]-xvii.

Inaug.-diss.--Munich. / Lebenslauf. "Quellen": 5th prelim. leaf.

Despite the late stage of modernity we live in, urban legends, an already prolific form of folklore, have become even more prone to retransmission within the internet. This thesis aims to understand why and how these contemporary folk tales are so widely believed and disseminated. Two crime legends that spread in Mexico City through email from 2005 to 2007 will be studied as narratives that address some of the most pressing problems as perceived by a given population, engaging human beings principally by helping to make sense of hostile environments, binding together human groups through fear and collective reassurance, and fulfilling a basic, atavistic compulsion in human beings towards conflict and its representations. Urban legends about ongoing crime seem to give momentary relief to the people engaging with them, but may ultimately aggravate the vision they hold of their surrounding reality and erode their context at large. Metaphorically, they can be compared to the use of cigarettes to alleviate stress. As a result, such urban legends may be regarded as negative and deluding stories leading a culture, as the title suggests, deeper into the 'labyrinth' it most fears. The thesis concludes that this ongoing narrative construction of social fears may thus indeed have detrimental consequences, such as lessening the living standards of whole communities and deteriorating their social fabric.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

In spite of their ubiquitous presence, the artisans who make serialized souvenirs for the tourist markets in the US-Mexico border and the people who buy these objects are invisible to the academic communities on both sides of the national divide. Simultaneously ignored by the Mexican folk arts canon; borderlands studies; Mexican historiography; and the anthropological literature interested in signs and symbolism, these allegedly low-grade and marginalized objects and people are nonetheless integral to the development of capitalism in Mexico. This work is an ethnography of the system of objects known as "Mexican curios" from the point of view of those who make the objects and those who consume them. It focuses specifically on one family of artisans that makes plaster figurines in Nogales, Sonora and shoppers at a Flea Market in Tucson, Arizona. The ethnography seeks to answer the questions: "Why is the most visible invisible?" and "How does invisibility become socially-installed and contested?" The study argues that instead of considering Mexican curios as the degenerate rear-guard to standards of good taste, or, as affronts to state-sanctioned ideas about folk art, these objects and the meanings attributed to them by makers and consumers must be read "in reverse." That is, as subtexts of fragmented projects of nationalism and social distinction. Curios distort by negation and playful inter-cultural negotiations dominant intellectual ideas about national patrimony and "worthiness." Plaster curio artisans and shoppers invent their own narratives to counter perceptions about their value as human beings and citizens. They appropriate, exppropriate, transform, and invent discourses about aesthetics, work, class, gender, and historical memory to invest meaning into their practices and their identities. The study stresses the importance of vernacular social histories as a mean through which subordinated people can regain a sense of empowerment when they interact with structures of power over which they have no control. In addition, the ethnography attempts to open a dialogue about the limits and the opportunities afforded by the disciplines of Folklore and Anthropology when they are wielded by research participants for their own goals.

<p> There are places within nature which are imbued with magic and beauty. This dissertation explores the numinous or sacred within nature which creates such a hold upon the imagination. The images of enchantment from fairy-faith open the realms of nature as a threshold experience, explored through the research of W.Y. Evans-Wentz and Katherine Briggs. The concept of the invisibles in nature as "Other" is investigated through the ideas of Mary Watkins. </p><p> When one steps into these enchanted spaces, one may want to spontaneously sing, dance, or remember a story. Such an enchanted experience signals that the invisibles or fairy-folk may be present. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats wrote that " . . . the beautiful [fairies] are not far away when we are walking in pleasant and quiet places [. . .] I will explore every little nook of some poor coppice with almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me" (<i>Mythologies</i> 64). </p><p> A relationship between the human and natural orders of being encourages the imagination of both worlds. As Gaston Bachelard argues, "The imagination gives more than things and actions, it invents new life, new spirit; it opens eyes to new types of vision" (<i>On Poetic Imagination and Reverie</i> 16). The poetic imagination provides a way to enter the mythical spheres of nature. The imagining psyche, as seen through the lens of alchemy, mysticism, and physics, is explored through the work of W. B. Yeats, Mary Oliver, and William Shakespeare. In their works, the poetic imagination creates stories that give visionary form to the invisibles of nature. This study also investigates the figures of Arthurian legend, Merlin and Vivien, in their fairy aspect. Their story of disappearance into the primeval forest provides metaphors for the workings of numinosity within nature, such as the "return to the forest," and the "sacred marriage," explored through the thought of Heinrich Zimmer, Mircea Eliade, C. G. Jung, and Marie Louise von Franz. </p><p> Finally, an accompanying creative component includes a journal of active/guided/shamanic imagination, a journal focusing on travel to Ireland, and a collection of poems, which, taken together, contribute to the exploration of the numinous qualities of nature.</p>