Halfway through this week’s readings, I looked up from my computer and asked my husband what he thought Folklore, insofar as a graduate level class with that word in its title, would be concerned with examining. His response was, and I loosely quote, “Oral traditions. Stories? Old stories? I don’t know.” Having just read Bayard’s The Materials of Folklore, in which the author states that some anthropologists define Folklore as mainly the study of literary aspects of a culture, I wondered if this limited view of the field holds sway not just in academia (I happen to be a career student, my husband is not), but also on a larger, perhaps American, scale.
Yet, after completing this week’s readings, I cannot say that I have a crystal-clear definition of the study of Folklore, or that I would be able to write a concise job description for the position of Folklorist at a scholarly institution. The arguments made in each article proposed distinct visions of the field of Folklore, as well as the ways in which folklorists study groups, practices, or ideas. However, I decided that because this is my first blog post of the semester, and because the articles did offer some central tropes regarding distinctions of the field of Folklore, it would make sense for me to try and outline a few of these tropes that may not have been specifically stated in this week’s readings, but are what I extrapolated from analyzing the readings as a set.
1) Folklore can be construed, among other things, as the study of the ‘every day.’ As an anthropologist writing about work practices of rural ranching communities, I find this to be something folklorists and anthropologists share. The habitus, or the embodied practices of an individual - be it the way you wear your cowboy hat or the way you strum your banjo - conveys meanings about the norms and taboos of a group, a society. When studying rural or ‘folk’ communities, focusing on these every day practices can allow folklorists to highlight traditions of these groups, but also to highlight the changes and fluidity in identity and practice that are present in these groups.
2) Folk groups may be defined partially in contrast to other groups. In Thomas and Ender’s Bluegrass and “White Trash”: A Case Study concerning the Name "Folklore" and Class Bias, Al, the self-proclaimed leader of the bluegrass band, was identified as unknowingly straddling two groups: one, a ‘hillbilly’ group actively avoiding being defined by the American Dream, and two, an entrepreneur of sorts who in many ways exemplifies the American Dream. Thomas and Ender provide an interesting discussion by questioning if Al belongs in either (or neither) of these groups, and it seems that Folklorists could utilize the study of a certain folk group to discuss what these categories (“factory worker,” “hillbilly”) mean, what the boundaries and contestations of these categories are from within, and the ways in which these categories are defined in opposition to one another.
3) The popular perception of a ‘folk group’ by others, whether they are elite or academic entities, leads to the argument for an inherent political economy of folklore. Now, I am not a diehard political economist by any stretch of the imagination, but I would have to disagree with Bayard when in his article he wrote that it is unimportant to study “the political social class…from which they [the materials of folklore] have emanated (Bayard 1953: 8).” After reading Thomas and Ender’s article or even Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s article Mistaken Dichotomies in which she discusses the applied character of folklore in the public sector, it seems necessary to discuss the political and social arena in which the field of Folklore inevitably presides. Just as folk groups like the bluegrass community in Thomas and Ender’s article work to establish a common identity because of and in contrast to their socioeconomic status, so do American Folklorists work to define their role as scholars in a time when nostalgia, misconception, or commercialization of folk groups has taken hold of the popular imagination of the country.
Thanks everyone...I look forward to seeing you all in class!
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