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.