Vernacular Knowledge: Contesting Authority, Expressing Beliefs
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Vernacular knowledge is a realm of discourses and beliefs that challenge institutional authorities and official truths, defying regulation and eluding monovocal expressions. Unlike monolithic 'truths', religious or secular, vernacular knowledge tends to be dynamic, fluid, ambivalent, controversial, appearing in multiple forms and open to alternatives.
Ranging through culturally, religiously, geographically, politically, and socially varied contexts, Vernacular Knowledge examines heteroglot expressions of knowledge revealed in various genres: traditional tales and personal experience narratives, rumours and jokes, alternative histories and material culture, placelore and ritual. Transmitted through multiple communication strategies (face to face, social media, online forums, publications, etc.) vernacular knowledge is shared and shaped communally but individually articulated and actualized.
Covering various realms of the supernatural, such as ghosts, saints, spirits, magic, energy lines, and divination, vernacular knowledge also underpins beliefs and assertions such as those expressed in conspiracy theories, challenges to politically and ideologically determined creeds, and other socially compelling ideas that undermine prevailing wisdom. Vernacular religion operates in creative tension not only in relation to institutional forms of religion but also to secularism, state sponsored atheism, and scientific rationalism.
Both vernacular knowledge and vernacular religion consistently (though often invisibly) challenge the homogeneity of dominant discourses and the hegemony of institutionalized authorities in myriad contexts.
Vernacular Knowledge will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, ethnology, folkloristics, material culture, religious studies, and sociology - and anyone who enjoys scratching the surface of the status quo.
Bowman, Marion: - Marion Bowman, Religious Studies, The Open University, UK has written widely on vernacular religion, and contemporary spirituality in Glastonbury. Publications include Religion in Cathedrals: Pilgrimage, Place, Heritage, and the Politics of Replication co-edited with Simon Coleman, and Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe (Numen 67:5-6) co-edited with Dirk Johannsen and Ane Ohrvik.
Valk, Ülo: - Ülo Valk is Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He is the editor of Numen: International Review for the History of Religions. His publications include The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the Devil in Estonian Folk Religion and Storied and Supernatural Places: Studies in Spatial and Social Dimensions of Folklore and Sagas (co-edited with Daniel Sävborg).
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