Folk Beliefs & Superstitions: Omnipresent & widespread
Belief = conviction or acceptance that something is true (what is in the world, how world is best understood, and what makes things happen)
Fact = verifiable statement (can be proven or disproven)
How world should be classified/categorized
e.g. food (cheese is food to us, not to all)
Theories about cause and effect (how to get pregnant)
STUDY – perspective or point of view makes interesting
(WHY someone believes something)
Worldview – system of beliefs, understanding or world
Built of many different fund. beliefs working together
ð coherent picture of world
ð applies to groups of people (e.g. Americans)
SUPERSTITION: a kind of belief, usually about luck or concerned with successful completion of specific task, often associated with ritual behaviors, that is recognized as probably not valid, but is practiced anyway.
People can believe contradictory things (compartmentalize)
Can be idiosyncratic or widely shared
OTHER KINDS of Folk Belief:
FOLK MEDICINE: hopes for cures, esp. for diseases that defy medicine (cold, hiccups, hangovers, warts, etc.)
Divination, often associated with love or childbearing
Belief in Supernatural: legends about haunted places, ghosts, Ouija boards, witchcraft, demons, psychics
Proverbs: often express folk beliefs
Interpretation: Discern why believed by individual or society
From: Pimple, Kenneth in The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life ed by George H. Schoemaker. Bloomington: Trickster Press, 1900.