Research
Academic to study Communist superstition
Since the fall of Communism in Russia there has been an
explosion of popular interest in all things magical as evidenced by the
growth of phenomena such as faith healers on television. In the People's
Republic of China (PRC) too, since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, there
has been an astonishing revival of all forms of religion, including the
popular religion that the regime characterises as 'feudal superstition.'
Given that the Soviet Union was the world's first state committed to
eliminating organized religion and to transforming popular culture along
materialist lines - a commitment underwritten by the PRC in 1949 - this
'return of the repressed' is striking. However, precisely because the two
regimes were so committed to recasting social life along scientific and
rational lines, social scientists have failed to appreciate the extent to
which they established themselves in societies where the great majority of
people still clung to a magical view of the world.
This is the problem that Professor Steve Smith, of the Department of
History, proposes to study in a new project funded to the tune of £216,
443 by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB).
The study, entitled 'Struggling with 'superstition'; Communism versus
popular culture in Russia (1917-41) and China (1949-76)' will analyse the
drive by these two Communist regimes to secularise society by
concentrating on their efforts to eliminate 'superstition.' Professor
Smith will examine the different ways in which 'superstition' was defined,
the educational, propaganda and coercive methods used to eliminate
'superstition' and case studies where the efforts of the rural and urban
populace to sustain particular beliefs and practices clashed with the
modernizing agenda of the regimes.
Issues such as witchcraft, folk medicine, fortune-telling,
'superstitions' connected with birth, marriage, death, 'superstitions'
linked to farming, efforts to transform the annual calendar by
revolutionizing religious and agricultural festivals, and finally the
reporting and monitoring of rumours will form the focus for a comparative
study of the two societies.
One of the main, and most ambitious aims of the project, is, by
examining the erosion and endurance of 'superstition', to shed light on
the social and psychic needs that remain unsatisfied by science and purely
instrumental rationality, and to contribute to ongoing debates about
modernity and what the sociologist Max Weber called the 'disenchantment of
the world.'
The AHRB award will go to support a team of two research officers and
two PhD students, each doing independent work, who will open up this new
field of research.
Adultery data used by BBC
A collection of qualitative research deposited with the
Qualitative Data Archival Resource Centre (Qualidata) at the University is
soon to form the basis of a new BBC television series tracing the
development of ideas of love, romance, sex and marriage over the last
thousand years.
Annette Lawson's study 'Adultery, An Analysis of Love and Betrayal,'
conducted between 1981 and 1983, centred on 600 women and men, all married
or in long-term, live-in relationships and examined their views,
motivations and experiences of extra-marital affairs.
'Trouble with Love,' a flagship six-part Open University/BBC television
production draws on key qualitative research methods and resources such as
diaries, letters and interviews as well as making use of the Lawson
material in the final episode, where the role of romantic love is examined
alongside the decline of marriage.
Qualidata staff worked together with production researchers in
selecting suitable letters, interview transcripts and audio recordings to
be used as source material for the programme.
The series is to be presented by Dr Amanda Vickery, co-director of the
Bedford Centre for the History of Women at the University of London. The
first episode will be broadcast at 7.30pm on BBC2 on Monday 2 September
Also in the printed July edition of Wyvern:
- Social mobility: how your family background affects your
potential earnings and marriage partner
- Football fever
