Blog # 3

This week in class, I have learned that beliefs are a very important part of folklore anthropology. Beliefs and rituals are essential to the study of folklore because it is a group's cultural beliefs that create folklore. For example, when we watched the Guardians of the flute, most  of our class seemingly found the tribes beliefs and rituals foreign and quite inappropriate. The reason our class found the ritual of the boys sucking semen from older men is because in our culture and society we know that sucking semen does not turn a bot into a man, and we would associate this act with pedophilia because we have our own set of beliefs that are completely different to other sets of beliefs. Like chapter 6 in the book notes, there are different kinds of beliefs- there are those that are common which most believe to be true or false and beliefs based on culture so they are only true because someone personally believes something true- like the idea of becoming a man through the consumption of semen. Superstitions are a bit different because they are known common ideas that stem from our particular culture but do not really find to be completely true. Nonetheless, a person who says they are not superstitious usually refrains from walking under a ladder or opening an umbrella in a house because these concepts or beliefs are so ingrained into our culture. The way the topic of this week pertains to my research project is the idea that humor among the Latino culture is different than American culture is due to certain beliefs associated with the Latino culture that are not seen in American culture. Knowing what the background beliefs of a certain cultural group are will help me better to analyze, understand and interpret the jokes and humor aspects I am aiming to get out of my research. I am interested to see how the various Latino groups in my research are similar or different. Do they have varying beliefs with a strong common background such as religion? The belief portion of the book will definitely help me to get down deeper into context and help me to be a better analyzer knowing the differences with belief and rituals.

Blog #2

Fieldwork is crucial to obtaining information for a research project for Folklore anthropology. The methods used to obtain data take on very different approaches. For my research project/experiment, I could use all the approaches in the following ways: Questionnaires would work for asking Latino people their opinion of how they view comedy in popular culture in the United States. The draw back would be, like mentioned in the book, is the questionnaire is a bit impersonal and will not catch the essence of an interview. An interview I can ask more specific questions and also ask follow up questions to answers that I do not completely understand from the interviewee's response. Again, my project is to view and understand the folklore of Latino's use of humor, jokes and anything that is considered popular comedy in their culture. An approach I have thought of that is different from the methods above is to watch popular Latino shows since I understand Spanish. This way I can grasp what is comic to the Latino audience and then ask people questions about the shows. Also, a few of my interviewing questions would be to ask what types of humorous shows/movies their culture considers funny, what is not funny and why? For example, yo momma jokes are not funny in the Latino culture. Do the answers of the interviewee have anything to do with their greater culture such as strong sense of religion? The background on Latino's in the book's chapter mention that Latinos are dominiately Catholic, so maybe their religion has to so with the type of things they consider funny. The Spanish language does not evenly translate to English, so sometimes, jokes or statements cannot be taken in the same way, which would ultimately alter the joke or humorous part of the statement. For my type of research, I would need to do "thick" description because I would have to get into the Latino perspective to appreciate why their culture accepts some things as humorous and some things as offensive.

Blog # 1

The way people identify themselves is very important to an individual. It can also be very confusing. As we learned in class, culture is a shared belief or tradition amongst a group of people, therefore, a certain group of people sharing the same culture would need to identify themselves to others. My research focus is on how cultural groups identify themselves- Latinos in the United States is my concentration. The reading for class on Latino Folklore in the United States made me realize how important it is to have a separated identity from others and how difficult it can be to express to various people how they would like to be perceived. Patricia Sawin, emphasized the numerous terms "Latinos" use to identify themselves. It was surprising that she said Latinos do not even refer to themselves as Latino, but it is what others refer to them as. But Latinos themselves will tell some people they are Mexican-America, Hispanic, and Chicano just to name a few examples. But it all depends on whom they are identifying themselves to. Sawin gave a great comparison in the book to show what and why she meant this. For example, she says, a person living in New York would tell their cousin in California they are a New York, but they would tell a Canadian they are Americans. That gave great perspective on what she was conveying. So I am intrigued on views and reasons why this specific cultural group identifies themselves differently depending on whom they are communicating with.