Post Assignment for Week #2: Domestic Folk Knowledge

Playing and learning a stone game in Nepal

This coming week in Reinventing Knowledge, we plan to explore our unit on Folk Knowledge by focusing on the domestic sphere. In short, we want our students to think through the types of things one acquires know-how about informally in families, and how such knowledge is transmitted, taught, and learned.

We do hope students refer to their own homes and experience, but we are urging them to begin right away pursuing our first learning outcome about history.

Assignment:

If students have not done so already, they should review the general instructions for blogging post.

• Research and write about domestic folk knowledge from history for your main post. Choose a period of time, a culture or place, and a specific kind of folk knowledge to discuss and comment upon (see list below for ideas). If possible, account for how that knowledge is acquired, preserved, or passed on.
• Connect this research to your own life and experience and, where possible, to class discussion, common readings, or posts from other members of class. 
• Respond to others' posts and to general discussion on this topic in your group's blog as part of your daily blogging requirement. Consider adding media or providing additional links to resources that build on other students' posts.

An example for this assignment has been posted by Dr. Burton, here.

Types of Domestic Knowledge

• Food (finding, hunting, gathering, preparing, cooking, preserving; food customs and rituals)
• Homemaking (creating shelter, dealing with weather, living arrangements, cleaning, etc.)
• Clothing (making, dressing, obtaining, religious or community customs regarding)
• Handicrafts (knitting, sewing, crocheting, needlework, weaving)
• Health and Medicine (first aid, hygiene, remedies, folk medicine)
• Water (obtaining, dowsing, wells, purifying, bathing, culinary use)
• Agriculture (crops, orchards, tools, farming methods)
• Birth and Death (midwifing, preparing bodies for burial, customs for celebrating and grieving)
• Marriage and Weddings (customs, courting, community practices)
• Sexuality (how knowledge of reproduction is passed on, mores for learning about, taboos, gender-specific information)
• Initiation Rituals (coming of age, entrance into community, etc.)
• Games and Leisure (children, sports, toys)
• Education (not formal education, but in the home)
• Money and Finances (focus on domestic, not business or trade)
• Time (calendars, clocks, planning)
• Measurement (construction, cooking, time, etc.)
• Animals (pets, livestock, breeding, protecting, selling, training, caring for, killing and dressing)
• Hobbies

Do your best to tell how these kinds of knowledge have been preserved and passed on.