American folklore studies and social transformation: A performance‐centered perspective

Abstract

The invention and development of folklore as a concept in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries may be recognized as a response to the epochal social transformation represented by the advent of modernity. In the study of folklore and social transformation, American folklorists are turning increasingly to performance‐centered perspectives. Three principal foci may be identified in this work, the first two relatively well‐defined as lines of inquiry, the third still in its nascent stages: (1) the poetics of face‐to‐face interaction; (2) the social organization and symbolic structures of public “cultural performances”; and (3) the formative and transformative effects of mediated communication. In addition to illuminating the dynamics of folklore and social transformation, performance‐centered analysis offers a valuable critical and reflexive vantage point on folklorists’ own scholarly practice.