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Dossier: Rumors and Urban Legends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Extract

As an addition to the papers brought together in this special issue here is an informative dossier, which we have tried to make comprehensive, on recent research work (published since 2001) connected with the field of rumors and urban legends.

This dossier includes reviews of eight French publications.

In 2002 came the second edition of Jean-Bruno Renard's Que Sais-je volume Rumeurs et légendes urbaines; the book by Véronique Campion-Vincent and Jean-Bruno Renard De source sûre; and Pascal Froissart's study La Rumeur, histoire et fantasmes.

In 2003 there was Gérald Bronner's L'Empire des croyances.

The year 2004 saw the publication of a more marginal work by Yves-Marie Bercé, A la recherche des trésors cachés, du XVIe siècle à nos jours, which highlighted a whole complex of rumors and legends around this universal theme.

In 2005 the following were published: Philippe Aldrin's Sociologie politique des rumeurs; Véronique Campion-Vincent's La Société parano. Théories du complot, menaces et incertitudes; and finally Frédéric Dumerchat and Philippe Veniel's Forêt de Chizé: attention puma! focusing on the group of legends about mystery big cats.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2007

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References

Notes

1. We should mention the special issue ‘Challenging the Nation-State: Migration, Multiculturalism and Transnationalism’ of the journal Narodna umjetnost [Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research], 42(1) 2005: 7-124, edited by Jasna Capo Zmegac and Joao Leal, which brings together six studies delivered at the conference of the SIEF (Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore) held in Marseille in May 2004 with the theme of metaphorical constructions of diasporas. A Portuguese folklore journal published an article on panics around incidents of mutilation of livestock (a well-known theme of urban legends, which appeared in the 1970s in the USA) in Argentina in 2002: Martha Blache and Silvia Balzano, ‘La cadena de transmisión medianacional en una leyenda contemporánea: el caso de las vacas mutiladas como metáfora de la crisis argentina actual’, Estudos de Literatura Oral, 9-10, 2003-4: 39-55.

2. The first came out in 1999 and the third is to be published in 2006.

3. In Sweden this is what urban legends are called after the surname of the author, who has for many years had his own radio programme.

4. A. J. Kimmel (2004) Rumor and Rumor Control: A Manager’s Guide to Understanding and Combating Rumors. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.