ETHNOGRAPHIC RELATIONS OF THE KAZAKH FAMILY RITUAL FOLKLORE

The article deals with the connection of family folklore with Ethnography. It is well known that ritual folklore is closely related to Ethnography. First of all, it is the common features in their origin and functions that stand out. These are, of course, visible connections. And if we go deeper, we will see a multi-faceted, very complex root system. After all, the structure of ritual works, methods of depicting reality, content, plot lines, sets of motives, so to speak, the entire system of poetic structure is inextricably linked to the study of rituals, but these relationships have their own laws of relativity. The purpose of this article is to explore these paths. Such Parallels, which in the world of folklore are called "common places", are constantly repeated in different genres in the form of formulas. This is a very important element in the study of folk poetics. This opens up wide opportunities for studying traces of the ancient worldview and mythological consciousness, especially with the help of ethnographic and folklore materials.

Laughter for Dessert

The author reflects here on the important role that laughter has played in his life. His brother Murray laughs harder than anyone else he knows—and he caps it off by clapping in wild applause. The author's daughter, Eliza, once quipped: “We had laughter for dessert.” He even imagined a mystery story in which the murderer kills by devising a perfect joke that convulses people with laughter till they die. He also can remember a girl whose infectious laugh inspired a poem entitled Lily. His friend and Ping-Pong partner Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, is a student of humor; he also teaches a class in humor theory at the University of Michigan. And like many long-married couples, he and his wife have developed routines for their own personal comedy team of sorts. The author adds that banter is a key ingredient of folk culture and family folklore.

History of Childhood in America

The history of childhood and youth is a relatively new field in American history that has grown exponentially in size and sophistication over the past twenty years. Befitting a burgeoning field, historians are currently engaged in all areas of scholarship—compiling anthologies, creating reference works, and crafting both monographs and comprehensive synthetic overviews. Located within the larger interdisciplinary arena of childhood studies, as well as alongside complementary subfields of American social history, the history of youth attracts a range of scholars with training in a diversity of disciplines, including (but certainly not limited to) the history of education and the family, folklore, American studies, and children’s literature. Both the emerging nature of the field and the genre-challenging creative scholarship of its creators have guaranteed that key historiographical questions and assumptions about periodization are very much open to debate. Scholars grapple with how concerns familiar to social historians—race, ethnicity, religion, social class, gender, and sexuality—differently affect the lives of young people, even as they consider issues particular to youth, such as the coherence of an age cohort, the effects of generational influence, and the impact of accepted norms of child rearing and scientific “truths” on the realities of children’s lives. As historians write the experiences of youth into the narratives of American history, they have also identified some important methodological challenges. How to uncover children’s voices, while remaining critical of the presumed authenticity of such sources? What are the benefits and limitations of memoirs in reconstructing the experience of youth? How to balance the realities of a category of historical inquiry defined by certain biological and development distinctions with an understanding of the historical construction of childhood? How to locate the historical child within complex and evolving ideologies of childhood?

Motivation Matters: Shelter Workers and Residents in the Late Capitalist Era

Domestic violence shelters are a product of a capitalist order; a response to a political-economic system that has seen shrinking extended family networks and disappearing social safety nets. In our contemporary era, the head of the household is responsible for the financial well-being of the family. There are fewer familial and communal systems of support. The isolation of the nuclear family is compounded by the circulation through popular culture and our own family folklore of the myth of the one true love, undying passion and lifelong happiness. This lifelong happiness is disrupted by families that don't follow the mythical narrative: divorce, death before children reproduce, when one generation cannot ‘naturally’ take over from the one that came before. When things go wrong, we are increasingly forced to turn outside our kinnetworks for assistance. Shelters are designed to provide a safe haven for women experiencing violence when there is nowhere else to go. When interested members of the public ask, "Why does she stay?" it is because shelters have become the obvious place the victim is supposed to go. Beyond providing respite from the abuse, shelters are increasingly viewed as the space where a transformation takes place—the replacing of unproductive victims with able bodied survivors, survivors to be healthfully put back into the system, revitalized and productive members of society read workforce.