Construction Of Myth Research Articles

The Mythical Construction of the Spread of Lassa Fever among Garri Marketers: Empirical Evidence from Edo State, Nigeria

Lassa fever (LF) is prevalent in Edo State, where garri, the most important cassava product, is processed and marketed. The disease spreads through practices influenced by the beliefs and traditions of garri marketers. The study examines the mythical beliefs people hold about Lassa fever. A simple random sampling procedure was used to select 192 garri marketers. A structured interview schedule was employed to elicit quantitative data, while in-depth interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data. Gross Margin was used to determine profitability, and the qualitative data were transcribed. Garri marketing is a profitable venture with a gross margin of N80,752.22 per month. A large proportion (39.5%) of the marketers never believed in the epidemic nature of Lassa fever, attributing the disease to punishment from deities. Additionally, 44.6% indicated that the government used it to secure funding from international communities, while others believed that rats are not the cause of Lassa fever. In conclusion, some marketers hold false beliefs about the reality of Lassa fever. Expanding an effective awareness campaign to dispel myths about Lassa fever is crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of preventive measures against its spread.

Invoking Myths in Conflict Reporting: Evidences from Gorkhaland Agitation in India

ABSTRACT The Gorkhaland agitation has been a popular uprising in India's Darjeeling Hills from 1986 to 2017. The sub-nationalist movement that witnessed the bloodiest phase between 1986 and 1988 was associated with threats and everyday risks faced by journalists. Undertaking three case studies of widely reported news events that were largely typical of the reportage during the period and triangulating them through in-depth interviews of the journalists who reported those stories and nine others who reported similar news events then, this paper examines how journalists strategically invoked myths to weave their stories at a time when reporting objectively became risky. Such rituals were invoked by news writers, often deliberately and sometimes unconsciously, as they struggled to narrate gory and unexplainable incidents. The paper argues that there is a clear pattern to such a mythic construction of news. Framing such social crafting of news in the region's historical and cultural context, the paper further posits that such employment of myths in the making of news drew inspiration from local folklore based on the popular regional archetype of the Yeti believed to protect the sacred land space of Ma’yel Lyang and Shangri-La – a myth traceable to the nature-religion connection intrinsic to the region.

Construction of regional myths: a case study of the Greeks of the North Azov Sea region

The article examines the process of constructing the mythological image of the Russian Empire as a "saviour of Christians" who were resettled from the Crimean peninsula to the North Azov Sea region, which became the basis for the formation of a historical myth in the region. The paper uses the analysis of various sources: orders, letters, reports, rescripts, descriptive and statistical materials, messages, etc. to consider the main stages of creating and maintaining this image and its articulation at different levels. The author proves that the positioning of Russia's special mission to protect the Christian population of the peninsula began from the moment the Russian Empire decided to resettle Christians from the territory of the Crimean Khanate. The Russian Empire assumed a leading role in the protection of “co-religionists” justifying themselves by unbearable religious oppression and the difficult situation of the Greeks, Armenians, Georgians and all those who practiced Orthodox Christianity in a Muslim state. To strengthen its role and emphasize the importance of its “mission” the Russian Empire created and spread the image of the Crimean Khanate as a despotic state that oppressed the Christian population in every possible way and limited their religious and social rights almost to the point of destruction. Their extremely difficult situation forced the Crimean Christians to appeal to the Russian Empress to resettle them on the territory of the Orthodox Empire. This was the official version of the resettlement of the Christians used at all levels and became the basis for the construction of the myth.
 The official image of the empire as the “savior” of the Christians was actively spread at first through the works of priests and representatives of the church. The special role of the leader of the Crimean Christians – Metropolitan Ignatius of Gotfey and Kafay was constructed. His actions are compared with the actions of the Old Testament Prophet Moses. In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, this image was replicated by educators, doctors, and researchers of history. At this stage, the author observes the fixation of the official image of the Russian Empire as the “savior” of Christians. It was inconsistent with the memories of the Greeks and their descendants who survived the resettlement and strove to return to the Crimean Peninsula. At the same time, the “logical chain” of the regional myth about the founding of Mariupol by Metropolitan Ignatius and the first commemorative practices in his honor was built. All this laid the foundation for the final formation of the myth of the imperial city of Mariupol.

Eclipse in a Philosopher's Perspective; Construction of Myth, Tawhid, and Shari'a

Eclipse is a natural phenomenon that has a variety of determinations from time to time. Historically, eclipses were first believed to be mythical events and were closely associated with the existence of gods. When Islam came, the eclipse changed into the dimensions of tawhid and Sharia. Tawhid talks about how natural phenomena show the power and existence of Allah Almighty, while the dimension of sharia is reflected in the existence of eclipse prayers in Islam. Long before Islam came, philosophers had discussed the phenomenon of eclipses, nowadays eclipses are a serious study, especially in the study of Falak. This article is classified as literature research with a qualitative approach. The methodology used is a descriptive analysis study. The results of the study concluded that eclipses in philosophers' thoughts are still connected with the dimensions of myth and sharia. The eclipse prayer service is a manifestation of tawhid as a form of gratitude and hope.

Myth-making in Everyday Life: The ‘West’ in Childhood Memories and (Post)socialist Futures

Although postsocialism is often discussed in terms of revisiting and dispelling the myths of the socialist past, this article suggests that it is more productive to understand postsocialism in terms of different kinds of mythic constructions – ‘myths from the future’, namely the myths of the capitalist West and East. Situating our research in the historical context of the Cold War, we approach the study of mythic constructions in state socialist and postsocialist societies through the analysis of childhood memories. In particular, we focus on how mythic constructs relate to mundane objects and everyday life as a lens through which to understand and evaluate experiences and the creation of socialist subjectivities during both late socialism and postsocialism. We aim to explore the ways in which memory narrators – those who are sharing childhood memories today – make sense of their past experiences and how they bring up and relate to these mythic constructs today. In our analysis of memories, we spotlight myths as they unfold in children’s everyday life, while illustrating how these myths continue to animate the past and present, while contributing to collective memory.

The propagandistic narration of the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the mythical construction of sir Francis Drake in Romantic Britain

The propagandistic narration of the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the mythical construction of sir Francis Drake in Romantic Britain

A semiotic analysis of representations of maids in Greek movies of the 1950s and 60s

A variety of semiotic codes, for example, proxemics, kinesics, dress code, verbal code, usually construct specific representations in audiovisual culture. This paper explores the semiotic systems in synergy which seem to lead to consolidation of the social representations of maids in pop culture texts, such as Greek movies in the 1950s and 60s (the old Greek cinema era). The research questions explore the social representations which have been constructed and the ways in which the verbal and non-verbal signs of the maids can lead to the consolidation of their social image or even to a myth construction based on specific ideological perspectives. So, how do maids act in Greek movies in the 1950s and 60s? What does their performance signify? A semiotic analysis will examine all these questions through semiotic codes in those multimodal texts (Greek movies), selected from the field of the historically Greek pop culture texts. These verbal and non-ver-bal codes work coherently to translate the depiction of Greek society and culture and to convey connotative meanings.

ΒΙΚΤΩΡΙΑ ΦΕΡΕΝΤΙΝΟΥ, Τα συγκοινωνούντα δοχεία μιας υβριδικής ποιητικής: Ο μύθος ως διακαλλιτεχνική και διαπολιτισμική ώσμωση στο έργο του Νίκου Εγγονόπουλου

The Communicating Vessels of a Hybrid Poetics: Myth as Intermedial and Intercultural Osmosis in the Oeuvre of Nikos Engonopoulos In 1938, the year of the International Exhibition of Surrealism at the Gallery Beaux-Arts in Paris, the poet and painter Nikos Engonopoulos created Birth of Orpheus and Genesis of Myth. The depiction of the birth of young Orpheus as emblematic of the construction of myth recalls the mythopoetic process as articulated in the anthology of the poet, psychoanalyst and photographer Andreas Embeirikos, Writings or Personal Mythology (1936-1946): “Each myth’s becoming is a child who grows up.” This reception of myth should be situated in the context of the French surrealists’ endeavour to formulate a new collective mythology that would respond to the political and social environment of the interwar years. This collective mythology resorted to cultural topoi that were deemed countercultural, marginalised or anti-Enlightenment, ranging from primitive, prehistoric and Gothic art to magic, alchemy and mythological traditions of archaic or non-European cultures. In this framework, surrealist myth was reconfigured as a new poetic language in constant metamorphosis that could articulate through diverse media and cultural traditions the surrealist vision for the radical transformation of the world. In Greece the appropriations of classical myth were central to the modernist canon. However, the Greek surrealists transformed myth in subversive ways initiating a dialogue with the present in the light of anthropology, ethnography, history of religions and psychoanalysis. Recent research has shown that Embeirikos and Engonopoulos conversed with French Surrealism and their colleagues’ engagement with alternative epistemologies and comparative religion and mythology, participating to a fecund renegotiation of the past. This paper aims at contributing to the revision of the history of Surrealism in Greece by exploring the function of myth, both as intermedial language and discursive practice, in Engonopoulos’s work. Most specifically, it purports to investigate the poetic anthologies Do not Speak to the Driver (1938) and The Clavichords of Silence (1939) alongside visual works he created at the end of the 1930s, such as the drawing SO4H2 (1937), and the engraving Vierge inviolable, métaphysique et surréaliste-sonore (1930s). The subtitles given initially to the aforementioned anthologies allude to the comparison of the arts and the equation of poetry and painting in an alchemical fusion pursued by the historical avant-gardes and Surrealism. Engonopoulos’s work and his experimentations with image-making should be revisited within this context and seen as a paradigm of the formulation of a new myth that sought to interweave the visual arts, poetry and alternative epistemologies into a revolutionary, hybrid form of expression that could effect the individual and society.

"The passion-flower at the gate": Tennyson's Poetry in the "Annals" of Julia Margaret Cameron

"The passion-flower at the gate":Tennyson's Poetry in the "Annals" of Julia Margaret Cameron Michele Martinez (bio) Whereas the title "Annals of My Glass House" might suggest a multivolume history of an artist, the text is a twenty-seven-hundred-word essay by the celebrated Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. "Annals" was written in 1874 and published in Mrs. Cameron's Photography, an 1889 London exhibition catalog that accompanied the Camera Gallery's show.1 Since the text's republication in the July 1927 issue of the Photographic Journal, the essay has been reproduced numerous times for its pithy outline of Cameron's ten-year career as a photographer and the author's heartfelt statements about her sitters, which included members of her immediate and extended family, Britain's cultural and political elite, selected local island models, and at least one presumptuous fan. Although Cameron's portraits of Alfred Tennyson, her Freshwater neighbor, frequent model, and book illustration collaborator, have been the subject of much scholarship, no critic has commented on Cameron's use of quotations from Tennyson's poetry in the text. On the surface, "Annals" affirms the bond between Poetry and Photography by means of her friendship and collaboration with the poet laureate. More subtly, Cameron's quotations address the condescension of her critics by challenging them with an authoritative position that is voiced in Tennyson's dramatic lyrics. I argue that Cameron employs quotations from "The Gardener's Daughter," Maud, and "Locksley Hall" to exert an "imperialist visuality," which is expressed by poetic speakers whose gazes cast their subjects as English heroic or Orientalized types.2 Tennyson's male characters offer Cameron an aesthetic vision shaped by competition, conflict, and obsession, torrents of feeling that create a jarring dissonance in her narrative but flow seamlessly into a Carlylean form of "visualized authority in the Hero" and the photographer-critics' representations of photography as acts of domination and mastery (Mirzoeff, p. 13). [End Page 631] My argument builds on the work of Jeff Rosen, Joanne Lukitsh, and Lori Cavagnaro, who have powerfully demonstrated that Cameron's colonial origins and interests reflect a mode of seeing allied with defenders of English imperialism.3 Cameron's artistic collaborations with Tennyson emerged from a friendship based first in London and then transferred to the Isle of Wight, a prosperous English Channel island, where Queen Victoria and other wealthy English families owned vacation homes.4 In 1860, while Julia Margaret's husband, Charles Cameron, and their two eldest sons traveled to Ceylon to survey their family's coffee and rubber plantations, Julia Margaret purchased "two cottages on the adjacent property" to Tennyson's in the village of Freshwater.5 "Annals of My Glass-House" celebrates the friends, workers, and family gathered together by a benevolent matriarch over the years. However, quotations from Tennyson's poetry challenge the stable gendering of that voice and vision and register the camera's role as an agent of "coloniality."6 Marion Shaw, Robin Inboden, Matthew Reynolds, Emily A. Haddad, and Marion Sherwood have explored the poet laureate's mythic constructions of Englishness and the Orient, informed not by travel abroad but by literary mediation, especially imitations of and translations from Arabic, Sanskrit, and Persian literature.7 In a move that Edward Said would call an act of imaginative geography, lines from Tennyson's 1873 encomium "To the Queen" encompass his vision of an "ever-broadening England, and her throne / In our vast Orient" (ll. 30–31).8 Composed in 1874, "Annals" creates a domesticated version of imperial territoriality that arises from Cameron's occupation of "colonial spaces" within Little Holland House, London, and Dimbola Lodge, the Isle of Wight.9 As Cameron narrates her photographic career in these domiciles, Tennyson's poetry reproduces a desiring, possessive gaze toward her subjects that, in photographic discourse, reflects technical mastery but also midcentury imperial authority.10 Cameron's transformation of husbandry spaces into a photography studio and a darkroom and her enlistment of family, neighbors, and visitors as models provide ample grounds for recognizing maternal and domestic sentiment in "Annals."11 Cameron's gendered spectrum of feeling and emotion erupts and relates to a long history of...

통영연극예술축제의 브랜드 구축 방안 연구

The need for brand building is growing at local arts festivals. Therefore, this study tried to contribute to the establishment of the brand strategy of the local art festival by analyzing the brand construction status of the Tongyeong Theater Arts Festival(TTAF) as a brand myth construction model. As a result of the study, in terms of the dominant ideology, the TTAF was exposed to negative perceptions such as their own league, low artistic level, and doubts about individuality and creativity, as commonly found in other regional festivals. In addition, the desires of consumers and masses were marked by independent consumption, demand for easy and comfortable arts, and enhancement of pride and self-esteem in local culture. To overcome the cultural contradiction, the TTAF is judged to have to focus more on regional specialization and artistic level improvement using the unique cultural resources of the region. Therefore, this study specifically suggests the improvement of the brand strategy of the TTAF through the supplementation and innovation of the PR marketing strategy.

Parsi Identity: Myth and Collective Memories

This article discusses the politics of identity and narratives of the Parsi minority community in India, who are Indian Zoroastrians on the brink of extinction. The mapping of the mythical construction of the Parsis by the Parsis themselves is contrasted with representations by popular culture. The main concern is that when there are no more Parsis left in South Asia to participate in this dialogue regarding the manufacture of identity, unchallenged stereotypes will persist, to the disadvantage of the community. Specifically, the character of the mad Parsi ( yeda) in Hindi cinema will remain predominant in popular imagination, while narratives of great Parsi entrepreneurs will be absorbed into general narratives of the nation, and collective memory will privilege the queer, the fool, the drug dealer or the anti-Christ.

Judges as myth-busters: a re-examination of jury directions in rape trials

ABSTRACT The Victorian and New South Wales Law Reform Commissions (‘the Commissions’) have recently heralded jury directions as a solution to ‘counter and correct’ rape myths in the courtroom. The Commissions recommended several new directions and espoused considerable optimism in their power to transform rape trials. These recommendations are driven by an unscrutinised rationalist agenda, which assumes that rape myths can be corrected. In response, this article maps out an empirical and theoretical re-examination of jury directions and their ability to ‘counter’ rape myths. This article draws on the theoretical works of Pierre Bourdieu and Roland Barthes to scrutinise this construction of myths and the assumption underpinning the recommendations. By doing so, this article argues that the confidence espoused by the law reform bodies is misguided.

Poured from the Sky: The Story of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Cérékang Forest Conservation

The Cérékang people are often used as an example of how Indigenous Peoples successfully carry out traditional conservation of customary forests. This article aims to investigate the conditions that sustain the forest conservation in Cérékang by using Berkes’s (2008) concept of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and Houde’s (2007) six dimensions of TEK as the framework. Data collections were obtained through literature review, direct observation, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions with key informants. The results of the study are as follows: First, the mythical construction around the area of forest is connected to their cosmology and stories of origin associated with the La Galigo epic, and the Cérékang people have developed protective attitudes towards forests consistent with the term “sacred ecology”. Second, such an attitude is endured by the ethics that respect the intimate relationship between humans, nature, and spiritual realms, which is subsequently manifested through prohibitions to enter the sacred forest except for ritual. This implies that the Cérékang people rely on symbolic knowledge, not technical knowledge, to protect the forest. The protected forest does not only provide cultural ecosystem services but also regulates services that indirectly benefit the Cerekang People such as flood prevention. Yet, the uncertain legal status of the sacred forest and the activities of a mining company around the area pose threats for continued conservation efforts. Consequently, to exercise direct control over the sacred forest area, new community organizations are integrated with customary institutions formed with support from NGOs, local government, and universities. This can be seen as their adaptation strategy to survive and conserve the forest amid ongoing challenges.

К геопоэтике города К.: оптики чувствования

This article is a study of literary representations of the text 'Königsberg-Kaliningrad' analysed from the point of view of geopoetics. Based on the descriptions of Königsberg-Kaliningrad in Bolotov's memoirs "Life and adventures of Andrey Bolotov, described by himself for his descendants", Brodsky's poem "Einem alten Architekten in Rom" and the novel "Königsberg" by Buida, the authors explore the sensorial perception of the city by the writers and establish its correlation with the extraliterary metapositions reflected in their texts. It is argued that the basis of the description of Königsberg in Bolotov's memoirs is a detailed mapping of the city, interwoven with a feeling of surprise, which results in an emotional discovery of the unfamiliar space. Brodsky's poetic optics is interpreted as a transition from 'vision' to 'speculation': an imaginary tour of Königsberg leads the poet from the sensory (visual and aural) perception of the city to the understanding of its non-material, spiritual and noumenal essence. Buida associates the space of Königsberg and Kaliningrad with the idea of myth construction. Shifting from the real Kaliningrad to the imaginary Königsberg, the author fills in the semiotic incompleteness of the city as a sign. Based on the comparison of the three types of perception, it is concluded that for different authors, the perception and the understanding of the city K. is associated with its transcendence from the personalization of the material essence of the city to the transition beyond the material, to the city as a noumenon, a thing-in-itself.

Placing the Past and Moving the Present

A striking feature of myth among the Telefolmin of Papua New Guinea is the way in which narrative events are situated in known and named places. Myth’s inscription on the landscape contributes to ritual’s evocative power, but, beyond this, it gives myth a bridgehead in the everyday world that invites a mythic construction of contemporary events. Using the visit of Papua New Guinea’s Governor General as an example, I argue that Telefolmin were able to effectively mobilize the power of the sacred site of Telefolip — and its mythic associations — in novel historical circumstances, a possibility enabled by myth’s presence in particular places. Sacred sites are not only places where things happened: they are also places where things continue to happen.

Transformation of Russian Orientalism in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Works of A. Sorokin

The article describes the ways of Kazakh nomads’ representation in the late imperial and early Soviet works of A. Sorokin in the discourse of Russian orientalism. Within the framework of postcolonial research, the most essential features of Russian orientalism are shown, such as the romanticized image of the “children of the steppe” and the spiritual impoverishment of the “Russian man”, the opposition of modernity and naturalness, the City and the Steppe, where A. Sorokin's own author’s myth construction also plays an important role. It is argued that in the new realities of the early Soviet period, the images of Kazakhs and the steppe could not get rid of the stereotype of the exotic East, of the paradigm "friend or foe" and were still considered as a testing ground for approbation of the "civilizing mission", Soviet modernization, where the authors assigned themselves the role similar to the "enlightened European". The Russian orientalism artistic manifestations in the context of the concept of "Europe - Russia - Asia" in the texts of the early Soviet period confirm the fact that even outside the imperial paradigm, the basic strategies for inventing the steppe as the East are based on the discourse of Russian orientalism.

Corona Wedi Buto: Myth in The Efforts of The Tanggulwelahan Villager Facing Covid-19

The COVID-19 virus was declared by WHO as a pandemic towards the beginning of 2020. As a result, Indonesia also implemented physical distancing nationally. This condition was responded to quite diverse by the community, one of which was in Tanggulwelahan Village, Tulungagung Regency. Myth is actually an alternative that people use in addressing these conditions. Therefore, researchers apply qualitative research methods (phenomenology) to explain the social construction of myths in the efforts of local communities to deal with COVID-19. Based on the results of interviews, observations, and analyzes using social construction theory the following results are obtained. "Buto" figure is a sacred symbol for the community because it is believed to have supernatural strength so that it can banish various outbreaks of disease. This understanding was formed through the process of externalization, objectification, and internalization that has been going on for generations. Meanwhile, medical information related to COVID-19 is new knowledge, so it is difficult to replace the old knowledge of society which is actually a myth.

Rural Sport Spectacles: Ice Hockey, Mythologies, and Meaning-Making in Rural Canada

Hockey occupies a prominent role in the folklore of rural Canada. In this paper, I discuss the role of hockey events in expressions of place-based rural cultures. I draw from fieldwork conducted in three separate communities to discuss the semiotic processes involved in these events and their relationship to myths of rurality. Informed by mythologies and the carnivalesque, I unpack the way these events are engaged in the social processes of their communities. Firstly, I discuss how athleticism and social structures are subverted and reconceptualized. Secondly, I explore the freedom, profanation, and collective laughter of these events. Cumulatively, this analysis explores how normalized, performative transgressions of sport and social norms may be implicated in the construction of myths of rurality. While these events provide a glimpse into the resiliency and creativity of rural people, they may also distract us from thinking critically about the social political contexts shaping rural life.

Taboo and moral reinforcement in Yoruba traditional thought

The world is best described in three words – a global village. In extension, the global village is a village of crisis where morality is seriously endangered with particular references to Africa, there is a serious need to attest the pathetic erosion of morality. There are diverse mechanisms for achieving this but one potential factor that should be considered is the potency of taboo. Really, the logical neo-positivist questions the scientific verifiability of taboo while many Christians and Muslims regard it as mere mythical construction to low unvaried mind through superstitious and further the relevance of African Traditional Religion. This paper argues that it is a critical analytical blunder to examine taboo through the lens of Western logic. Besides, modernity does not outlaw the pragmatic significance of taboo. Hence, taboo obeys a special metaphysical logic that draws on the synergy between the physical and the divine realm.

What to do with the bandeirantes

This paper analyses the debates about the monument of Bandeirante in São Paulo, Brazil, inaugurated in 1953. “Bandeirante” is a mythical and symbolic construction of a historical character who had heroically conquered the interior of America for Portugal. Since the 1980s various intellectual and social movements have raised awareness of the ideological dimension of the Bandeirantes, including their role as enslavers of Indigenous people, propagators of infectious diseases and usurpers of territories. Correspondingly, the monument of Bandeirante has been the subject of protests connected to Indigenous rights. In October 2013, protestors against the proposal for a Constitutional Amendment that would threaten the Indian Territories in Brazil had thrown red ink on the monument, symbolizing the bloodshed. The monument of Bandeirante has thus ceased to be the place of admiration and became a site of revolt, contrasting aspects of the past that are the focus of this paper. The main question of this paper is if it is possible to mobilize the monument as a space for dialogue and negotiation by preserving its physical integrity and, at the same time, giving visibility to the demands of those whose rights have been violated.