Western Folklore 85.2/3 (double issue) is in your mailbox!
The latest issue of Western Folklore was mailed September 9th.
If you are a dues-paying member of WSFS, you should soon receive a copy of Western Folklore vol. 85 no. 2/3 Summer/Fall 2026 in your mailbox at home. Copies of Western Folklore will still reach your inboxes on a quarterly schedule, unless a double issue changes this, as it did for this most recent issue. To continue getting access to Western Folklore, please be sure to sign up or renew membership through our Membership Page to pay our membership fees online, as well as update your mailing address as needed.
This issue of Western Folklore included the following contents:
Truth, Belief, and a World in Flux
Tim Thurston (editor)
Articles:
Transferring Misfortune in the Eastern Minyag Community: Sutɕywu and Sutɕywumɨni
Wei Chen
ABSTRACT: The Eastern Minyag people handle the adversities of everyday life with a set of ritual practices of transferring misfortune. This article examines the two types of misfortune transference—Sutɕywu and Sutɕywumɨni—and explores their mechanisms and implications for the community involved. The article argues that Sutɕywu creates cohesion within the community, while Sutɕywumɨni can cause tension between community members. These two methods interknit, complement each other, and fulfil the demands of the Minyag.
KEYWORDS: Misfortune, Transference, Minyag, Vernacular, Eastern Tibet
The Legacy and Function of Mormon Women’s Divination Communities: Cattle, Counsel, Marriage, and Money
Millie Tullis
ABSTRACT: Peepstone women and tea-leaf readers performed significant social, economic, and interpersonal functions in their Mormon Utah communities well into the twentieth century. They were often sought out over gendered concerns, and gender impacted their perceived authority in their religious community. The way descendants recounted family stories about Mormon divination shifted over time, as the role of divination in early Mormonism grew increasingly disconnected from mainstream Mormon cultural memory.
KEYWORDS: Mormon, gender, divination, peepstones, tea-leaf reading
Ravenous Spirits for Social Control: Another Way to Take Local Perspectives Seriously
Response Essay to Kanya Wattanagun’s “Devoured by Ravenous Spirits,” published in 84.1 (2025)
Ian G. Baird
Spectral Evidence, the Phi Pob, and the Wish to Believe: an Ontological Disputation
Response Essay to Kanya Wattanagun’s “Devoured by Ravenous Spirits,” published in 84.1 (2025)
Michael J. Bell
Can Ravenous Spirits Devour One’s Mind?
Response Essay to Kanya Wattanagun’s “Devoured by Ravenous Spirits,” published in 84.1 (2025)
Elliot Oring
ABSTRACT: Under the influence of the “ontological turn” in anthropology, Kanya Wattanagun has argued against the ethnographic use of the term “belief” in the characterization of phi pob—vengeful spirits—in northeast Thailand. Rather, she proposes that folklorists should accept these spirits as having real existence. This article responds to that proposal.
KEYWORDS: folk belief, supernatural, phi pob, ontological turn
Worlding Otherwise: Multiple Worlds as a Method in Belief Studies
Kanya Wattanagun
ABSTRACT: To address criticisms of “Devoured by Ravenous Spirits: Absurd Deaths, Obscure Diagnosis and the Phi Pob Tradition in Northeast Thailand,” I make three salient points in this paper. First, granting givenness to others’ truths functions as a heuristic device within a thought experiment that seeks to understand different ways of worlding. As a methodological posture rather than a proselytizing tool, it doesn’t require converting to informants’ truths. Second, the notion of multiple realities of multiple worlds addresses unequal positionalities in knowledge production. It shifts the question from why informants hold false beliefs to “what kind of world must be in place for this truth to hold true?” This reframing invites the ethnographer to decenter assumptions rooted in their ways of worlding. Third, like any analytical lens, the concept of multiple realities can be put to various uses and is not inherently tied to specific implications. Whether it condones harmful beliefs or fosters skepticism and resistance to an oppressive, dominant truth depends on how it is put to use.
KEYWORDS: Ontological Turn, Phi Pob, Belief Tradition, Multiple Worlds
German Folklore during National Socialism, with Some Thoughts on Today’s “Alternate Facts”
A lecture in honor of Norine Dresser
James R. Dow
Reviews:
Frog and William Lamb, Weathered Words: Formulaic Language and Verbal Art
Reviewed by D. Michael Austin
William C. Allsbrook Jr., MD, Making Music: The Banjo in a Southern Appalachian County
Reviewed by Devon Cottle
François-Marie Luzel, The Midnight Washerwoman and Other Tales of Lower Brittany
Reviewed by Emily Kovacic
James Edward Frost, Animal Guising and the Kentish Hooden Horse: An Exhibition at Maidstone Museum
Reviewed by Susannah Keate
Ziying You, Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese and Chinese American Women: Racisms, Feminisms, and Foodways
Reviewed by Wei-Yi Lee
Jeffrey A. Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster, Mobius Media
Reviewed by Alyssa Willis
Do not hesitate to reach out to me, WSFS Operations Manager, with any questions you may have about online membership to Western Folklore. We look forward to improving our operations and continuing to meet the needs of our membership. Happy folklore-ing!
Sincerely,
Daisy Ahlstone, PhD
Operations Manager
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