The hen (or bachelorette) party, with its groups of visible, raucous women on trains, planes, and in public spaces is ubiquitous throughout the English-speaking world. The practice of the blackening, a unique form of kidnapping and “punishment” ritual, is limited to North Eastern parts of Scotland and to specific sectors of the population. Both are prenuptial rituals enacted by women. In Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland, Sheila Young produces a thorough description of how these two rituals were and are enacted and analyzes the ways these practices have changed through time as a social commentary. Young’s study provides valuable insights into identity, gender, social class, contemporary attitudes to ritual, and what it means to approach marriage in the twenty first century.

This contemporary book offers current perspectives on routines and rituals to extend an understanding of the scope of these concepts, with a view to challenging conventional wisdom and to offer insight for practitioners. Routines and rituals are part of everyday being. Routines can be useful for individuals in structuring ‘messiness’ in their lives, while rituals are often more spectacular in nature and typically involve a collective event. Routines and rituals can be traditional, established, new or reinvented, as well as personal, social, and/or emotional. Traditionally, rituals have been characterised by formality, customs, regularity and procedure; conversely, routines (public or private) have been considered less important in their significance and meaning. Employing several research methods (literature review, ethnography, netnography, autoethnography and in-depth interviews) and examining a variety of contexts (ranging from hen parties, clothing to collegiate tailgating and the Covid pandemic), this edited volume reveals typologies and tactics for strategic practitioner use and policy makers, as well as identifying avenues for further research. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Marketing Management.

This volume explores generational differences in alcohol consumption practices and examines the changing role of alcohol across the life course. It considers generational patterns in where, how and why people buy and consume alcohol and how these may interact with identity and belonging and considers how drinking alcohol in adolescence, adulthood, middle-age or later life takes on different functions, meanings and tensions. Alcohol is shown to play an important role in biographical transitions, such as in the coming of age rituals that mark the passage from adolescences to adulthood, whilst drinking alcohol in adulthood and in later life takes on new meanings, pleasures and risks in light of shifting roles and responsibilities relating to work, leisure and the family. The empirically-informed contributions draw on a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and a range of cultural contexts provides a nuanced examination of the role of alcohol at different life course stages and explores both continuity and change between generations.

In Oral Traditions in Contemporary China: Healing a Nation, Juwen Zhang provides a systematic survey of such oral traditions as folk and fairy tales, proverbs, ballads, and folksongs that are vibrantly practiced today. Zhang establishes a theoretical framework for understanding how Chinese culture has continued for thousands of years with vitality and validity, core and arbitrary identity markers, and folkloric identity. This framework, which describes a cultural self-healing mechanism, is equally applicable to the exploration of other traditions and cultures in the world. Through topics from Chinese Cinderella to the Grimms of China, from proverbs like “older ginger is spicier” to the life-views held by the Chinese, and from mountain songs and ballads to the musical instruments like the clay-vessel-flute, the author weaves these oral traditions across time and space into a mesmerizing intellectual journey. Focusing on contemporary practice, this book serves as a bridge between Chinese and international folklore scholarship and other related disciplines as well. Those interested in Chinese culture in general and Chinese folklore, literature, and oral tradition in particular will certainly delight in perusing this book.

After the Civil War, Emancipation purportedly brought physical freedom to African Americans. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, blacks continued to experience inequality in all phases of American life—social, cultural, political, and economic. In pursuit of equality, African American movements interpreted folklore to reveal in their rhetoric the soul of a race and a path toward civilization. This book provides a comprehensive chronicle of these competing initiatives and their reception starting with the folklore society organized by Hampton Institute in 1893 and continuing through the early 1940s with the American Negro Academy, Fisk University graduates, William Hannibal Thomas, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Friends of Negro Freedom, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and blacks associated with the Communist Party USA. Disavowing a culture of fear, money, guns, and death, black folklorists in these movements exposed a racial inner life ranging from loving, loyal, and happy to imitative, tragic, spiritual, emotional, and creative. Each characterization of the race justified a distinct path and possible contributions to civilization. If unable to know their past, members of the movements and other folklorists were fearful that African Americans would be an anomaly among humanity.

Perspectives on East and Southeast Asian Folktales is a multidisciplinary examination of folktales that are unfamiliar to Western audiences. Examining folktales from countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, China, Japan, and Korea, the contributors consider various aspects: including identity issues, morals, collectivism, violence, scatological references, language socialization, representation of Buddhist values, emotional competence, as well as folktales' relationship to idioms and narrative structure. Highlighting differences and similarities between East and Southeast Asian and Western folktales, this volume promotes memorable understanding of East and Southeast Asian cultures and their oral traditions.

Through meticulous textual and contextual analysis of the sixteenth-century Chinese tale The Seven Brothers and its fifteen contemporary variants, Juwen Zhang unveils the ways in which the translation and illustration of folk and fairy tales can perpetuate racist stereotypes. By critically examining the conscious and unconscious ideological biases harbored by translators, adapters, and illustrators, the author calls for a paradigm shift in translation practices grounded in decolonization and anti-racism to ensure respectful and inclusive representation of diverse cultures. Translating, Interpreting, and Decolonizing Chinese Fairy Tales not only offers insights for translators, researchers, and educators seeking to leverage folktales and picture books for effective children's education and entertainment, but also challenges our preconceived notions of translated and adapted folk and fairy tales.