Folklore: cultural roadmaps to creating, perpetuating, resolving and evolving peace and conflict

Abstract

Given folklore’s quiet pervasiveness in all our lives, it is unsurprising that it has often been used to think through the big issues faced by a community. Folklore is at once a useful lens, permitting focus and diverse perspectives, and an adaptable tool in the handling of such matters. Stories and customs travel, taken as cultural luggage as people move in and out of communities. And just as folklore is not sedentary, neither is it stable. Practices and beliefs that appear ancient and unchanging are often surprisingly recent inventions, adoptions, or adaptations. Folklore is by necessity fluid – otherwise it would not retain its relevance. This Special Issue is concerned with how folklore has been used as such in engagements with two particularly big – and equally pervasive – issues: managing conflict and striving for peace. It is an invitation to consciously and deliberately engage with and explore the interdisciplinary nature of folklore; to experiment with a different lens, a shift in perspective to see if, perhaps, the mechanisms for understanding and positive change are magic beans that we already possess.