Folklore
“Doing good in the world”
According to a report published in 2005 by Stanford University, the goal of academic scholarship must be to “do good” in the world.
While few would doubt that the spirit of this intention is laudable, right away we are confronted with the realization that “the world” is a very large and ambiguous categoryand that determining what’s “good” at any given point can be equally vexing.
The study of Folklore is helpful on both of these counts.
First, folklore breaks down “the world” to “many worlds” -in fact, to those “worlds” that seem to count most when people set out to determine what’s really important to their sense of wellbeing. That is, the sphere of something called “everyday life” —-where ordinary affections, meanings, sensations, beliefs, rituals, fears, and aspirations seem to collect on the surface of things, words, and habits.
Border Sculpture by Taller Yonke at UA campus
It’s a world defined not so much by the large categories –nation, globalization, the economy, faith-but definitely embedded in them, except only noticeable in the way life unfolds in minor registers of artful embellishments (a mode of speaking, a way of signaling pleasure and discomfort, a particular bodily pose to keep strangers at bay; a singular memory of how a food is prepared, a manner of doing things learned by doing, a fashion or adornment to mark certain extra-ordinary events).
What is “good” in these worlds is never static; it is both a memory of “how it has always been done” (that elusive object we call “tradition”) and a somersault towards something still emerging…our own take on things, an improvisation -a way to get from here to there amidst the chaos of too much going on.
It is in this light that “texting” between teenagers produces new grammars of human understanding and mis-understandings; that “social networking” on the Internet replaces town squares; that new urban legends reflect new, yet unspoken anxieties of a new era (sub-prime loans and 9-11 all in one same breath).
These are moments that fluctuate (swing back and forth) between what Philip J. DeLoria, in his book Indians in Unexpected Places, calls “expectation and anomaly.” Between the juxtaposition of the expected and the unexpected….a space opens up (for humor, melancholy, satire, tenderness, aversion, etc.). Often, DeLoria argues, what we end up with out of these moments is just “a chuckle.” That is, a reaction about that everyday instant when what happens somehow stands apart from a shared ideology of “the American grain.” To chuckle at the “anomaly” of life as lived, without malice, is possible….but “to separate oneself from the history that produced the chuckle, “says DeLoria, “is not.” In other words, the everyday is 99% percent broad cultural expectations: “an inheritance that haunts each and every one of us,” says DeLoria.
In a book entitled The Dynamics of Folklore, folklorist Barre Toelken has crafted a very useful measure for defining what is folklore…and what is it, specifically, that folkloristics (as a field of study) can contribute to the humanities and social sciences (in other words, what kinds of things would a folklorist notice that others may pass by?):
“All folklore,” Toelken says, “participates in a distinctive, dynamic process….variation within a tradition….a process that grows out of context, performance, attitude, cultural tastes…and the like.”
He adds:
“Folklore’s primary characteristic is that its ingredients seem to come directly from dynamic interactions among human beings in vernacular performance contexts rather than through the more rigid channels and fossilized structures of technical instruction or bureaucratized education…”
More recent poststructuralist cultural theorists have read this intention of folklore through the lens of something called “affect” —-that is, the production of in society, and the deployment of, forms that move people emotionally towards understanding how and why things are as they are (and stay that way….or occasionally, change).
Plaster piggy-bank produced by artisans in border towns
The lens of that which is “affective” and “affects” us at a level underneath our most obvious pronouncements, opens up an important ethical dimension of folklore that may not be so obvious otherwise. In her book entitled Ordinary Affects, anthropologist Kathleen Stewart defines this ethical possibility as grasping an understanding of how meanings “pick up density and texture as they move through bodies, dreams, dramas, and social worldings of all kinds.” In other words, if we pay attention to these miniscule aspects of the grand category of Culture, we may also come to realize that “at once abstract and concrete, ordinary affects are more directly compelling than ideologies……as well as more fractious, multiplicitous, and unpredictable…” than even that realm of social life that we have usually pinned as “symbolic meanings.” Something about the vernacular is deeper than just symbol…..deeper and more resilient (and possibly more consequential —once and if changed) than “characteristic X” of “group X” or “tradition Y” of “folk group Y.”
Groups that have and practice “folklore” are varied; in fact, many groups that seem the furthest away from traditional “folk” have their own folklore. Some examples of folk groups are:
- Ethnic groups: Perhaps the most commonly cited example of folklore, ethnic groups often have a body of commonly practiced traditions, culture, and oral lore.
- Occupations: Doctors, construction workers, restaurateurs, waiters, cab drivers; all of these professions have their own folklore. Whether it is through shared jokes, superstitions, or occupational practices, many professions share a common body of practiced traditional knowledge that we have come to identify as folklore.
- Activity groups: Skateboarders, video gamers, breakdancers, hip-hop aficionados, pop-music fan-groups, and internet shared-interest groups all create their own folklore through the repeated practice of shared expression and knowledge by the members of the groups.
- Families: Family groups are one of the most prevalent forms of folk groups; it is in our own families that we first begin exploring the concepts of tradition and understand what it means to practice those traditions within a group.
Folklore appears in many facets of our day to day lives. Whether it is through the jokes we tell, the songs we sing, or the food we make, folk culture is a major part of our lives as social beings.
Click here to read the statement “About Folklore” from the American Folklore Society
Self-referencial poster at popular restaurant in Tijuana
Read more about “What is Folklore”:
“What is Folklife?” Mary Hufford/ Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center
“Folklore and Folklife.” /New York Folklore Society
“What are Folklife and Folklore?” /University of Southern Mississippi
Links to Exemplary Folklore Organizations:
Library of Congress American Folklife Center
Louisina Voices Fieldwork Guide
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Alliance for California Traditional Arts
