Folklore and anthropology

Abstract

Folklore at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in a Very Broad sense is understood to encompass the expressive culture of any notable group of people. As implied by the original meaning of the word “lore” when the term “folklore” was coined in 1846, tradition is a vital ingredient of folklore. Yet not all folklore relies on centuries of tradition: Customs may become obsolete, live on submerged for centuries before being revived, or come into being all anew: Duration rather than historical roots makes folklore. The folk, on the other hand, is not necessarily constituted by the uneducated masses, as a conservative point of view would have it: Folklore is not germane to specific social strata but rather to substantial numbers of individuals sharing similar ideas or activities. In this sense folklore encompasses a wide range of cultural expression, ranging from popular beliefs and customs to myths, legends, and other genres of oral literature/verbal art. The obvious overlap of certain aspects in folklore studies and anthropology is inter alia signaled by contemporary Persian terminology, most commonly rendering folklore as farhang-e mardom and anthropology as mardom-shenāsi.