Folklore Society Research Articles

Leonard Roberts, The Farmer-Lewis-Muncy Family, and the Magic Circle of the Mountain Märchen (American Folklore Society Fellows Invited Plenary Address, October 2008)

This address—presented at the American Folklore Society's 2008 Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky—celebrates the narrators and narratives recorded by Kentucky folklorist Leonard Roberts (1912-1983) and commemorates Roberts's first audio folktale recording, a 1949 performance of "Merrywise" by Janie Muncy (now Margarett Jane Muncy Fugate). The narrator's memories and interpretations reveal mountain märchen telling as three continuous arcs: the forestory (the pool of previous images, tellers, and stories that frame the tale), the performance (the tale itself in the moment of oral creation), and the understory (the tale as re-created simultaneously and lived inside the listener). The performance is the only audible arc in this three-part circle of narration: each telling inspires an understory, which then becomes the unheard script for the forestory that shapes the next performance. Through saturation fieldwork and by coming together with performers and collectors—as on the occasion of this address—folklorists attain greater understanding of the dynamics of the full narrative circle.

The Blues Formula: A Response to Taft

michael taft ends his response to my critique (2007) of his book, The Blues Lyric Formula (2006), on a heroic note, describing how, at the 1972 annual meeting of the American Folklore Society, he survived Albert Friedman’s criticism of his position on formulaic composition in the blues (2009:80). I personally witnessed several of Friedman’s harsh remarks to hapless graduate students at academic meetings and saw how they left permanent scars on some, reduced others to tears, and drove still others from the field of folklore studies altogether. Therefore, I congratulate Taft for his ability to hold his ground and go on to a distinguished career as a folklorist. The beginning of his response, however, is far less heroic, as he tries to make a virtue out of his faulty transcriptions of the lyrics of early blues recordings. Taft admits to a shocking error rate of “perhaps 10 percent of the words in any given song” but claims that his inaccuracies “tended to make my corpus seem less formulaic than it actually was” (2009:75). He states that “transcribing for the purpose of formulaic analysis” is likely to result in an inflated number of formulas, which is why he “tried not to prejudge the lyrics and erred on the side of some mishearings” (75). I feel almost embarrassed to point out that the goal of lyric transcription from recordings is accuracy. After this has been achieved can come formulaic analysis. But regardless of this weakness in his corpus, Taft and I are not in disagreement over whether “the blues is highly formulaic” (76). We have both long maintained this view. Instead, our dispute is over the nature and definition of the formula and how formulas are used by blues singers. I doubt that either Taft or I will change the other’s mind, but let me briefly summarize our differences and reply to some issues he raises in his response. Taft and I both claim that our work is inspired by the definition of the lyric formula first offered by Milman Parry ([1928] 1971:11). While I uphold a lexical and syntactic interpretation, focusing on the first part of Parry’s definition (“a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions”), Taft upholds a semantic interpretation, focusing on Parry’s concluding phrase (“to express a given essential idea”). I believe, however, that Taft is quibbling over semantics. If Parry had used an alternative word such as “clear,” “simple,” “specific,” or “basic,” instead of the word “essential,” I think we would have no argument over the interpretation of his definition. Parry was not some sort of closeted proto-Chomskyan semanticist, nor was he being “crypto-psychological” (Rogers 1966; Taft 2009:76). Everything that Parry and his student Albert Lord (1960) wrote about formulas shows that these are

Folklore Today and Folklore Tomorrow? Folk’s Problems in the Shrinking World

In August 2009, when the draft program for the Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society had recently come to hand, the present writer felt that it might be helpful to gain from it an impression of the apparent shape of the current research in conceptualizing the discipline. Accordingly, he then decided2 analyzing carefully the sheets of the spaced out – and perhaps somewhat provocative – ordering of this meeting’s many listed offerings. [The draft itself has been given the page numbers (1–47), for subsequent clarity of reference and possible sequencing, as the whole field of research and practice moves towards charting – and embracing – the existing challenges for the future that come from so much un-evenness of social and economic opportunity, let alone comparable social justice.] And so an initial attempt was made to try to discern possible themes and patterns in the listings, concentrating on the titles of the proffered papers rather than on the workshops, half-day tours, other program clusters or subtitles. While the many sections and paper-titles are alike, obviously influenced by the framing need for general groupings, it is believed that various equally meaningful groupings may be identified from a close reading of the draft listings. There follows an unordered series of clusters, formulated much as they occurred to the present reader:

Death Lore: Texas Rituals, Superstitions, and Legends of the Hereafter (review)

2010Book Reviews3gg analysis by Douglas Scott, an archeologist with the National Park Service. Using crime-lab techniques developed during his ground-breaking archeological study of the Batde of Litde Bighorn, Scott was able to identify firearm types and individual weapons. Cartridge and bullet type and size allowed the Red River War researchers to distinguish between military and Indian weaponry. Individual weapons were recognized by unique firing pin impressions, cartridge extractor marks, and rifling grooves. Cruse used the find spots of identified weaponry to identify firing positions across the landscape and unravel the sequence of events. While the U.S. Army fought with standard-issue weapons such as the 1 873 Springfield carbine, the firearm analysis demonstrated that the Indians used a large assortment of weapons, most of them outdated, inferior arms including muzzle loaders and bows and arrows. The archeological data suggest that claims of large numbers ofwell-armed Indian combatants by army officers were often exaggerated: no more than 50 percent of the Indians had firearms and significandy fewer Indians took part in many of the batdes. One ofthe major contributions ofthe study is the archival research by historian Martha Freeman, who delved deeply into the National Archives and unearthed many new war-related documents including eyewitness accounts, maps, and correspondence . Collectively, these records detail military and Indian tactics and show that the war unfolded in unexpected ways, as the army struggled to react to highly mobile and unconventional adversaries. The study effectively couples archeological investigation with documentary research to significantly improve our understanding of the Red River War. It also highlights the potential of this multidisciplinary approach to reveal many more details of a pivotal episode in American history. It will appeal to historians, archeologists , and Panhandle residents alike. The archeological findings and interpretations are well-organized, clearly presented, and lavishly illustrated with many color images including dozens of large- and small-scale maps and excellent artifact photographs. Appendices provide lists of Indian prisoners, military ordnance inventories, sketches of the war's Medal of Honor recipients, and detailed artifact analyses of five batdes. Texas State UniversityStephen L. Black Death Lore: Texas Rituals, Superstitions, and Legends oftL·Hereafter. Edited by Kenneth L. Untiedt. Publications ofthe Texas Folklore Society LXV. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2008. Illustrations, notes, index. ISBN 9781574412567, $36.95 cloth.) According to its website, the Texas Folklore Society is "dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the folklore ofTexas and the Southwest." In keeping with its goals, it prefers to celebrate the past rather than merely record or interpret it. As one of its presidents once explained, "I do not believe that our purpose is to proliferate esotérica and pedantry among a small, specially educated clique" (from www.texasfolkloresociety.org/AboutTFS.htm) . 400Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary Death Lore cannot and should not be judged as a work of history. The book's study of the formal and informal rituals surrounding death is neither an examination of the nineteenth-century "art of dying" nor a catalogued explication of these rituals. It can only be critiqued for what it purports to be: a description of the subjective impact of death on the living, as told in personal stories. The essays in Death Lore touch on several ethnic groups in Texas, but the vast majority are stories about the authors' own friends and relatives, primarily Anglo, told in first person with occasional accompanying poetry or folksongs, many written by the authors themselves. One memorable essay, for instance, describes life at a Lubbock funeral parlor belonging to the author's family. Another deals with the struggle to bury a beloved pet cat. The final essay, apparendy the author's reflections on consciousness and the supernatural, is at the far end of the spectrum. There arc notable exceptions to this pattern, however; two árdeles regarding the celebratíon ?? Día de hs Muertos (Day of the Dead) among Hispanic Texans focus more on the anthropological and historical underpinnings to the ritual. Due to die nature of the essays included, the resultant book is highly anecdotal but largely uninformative. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a family reunion, where old friends share their stories and their sympathies with others oflike mind. Although the...

Preface: Latin American Dance in Transnational Contexts

The idea for this special issue emerged from a panel at the 2006 American Folklore Society meeting entitled “Diasporic Moves in Latin American Dance,” which was sponsored by the Chicano and Chicana Section and the Folklore Latino, Latinoamericano, y Caribeno Section of the AFS. For that panel, three of the authors in this issue explored Latin American dance practices that crisscross national borders. I was a participant in this panel, and reading each others’ work, we each came to an increased appreciation for the importance that dance, as an embodied form of expressive culture, has in identity formation, group maintenance, and pleasure. In our presentations, we were interested in examining how dances associated with one community or group are affected by the ongoing movement of people and goods to new social and cultural locations. The papers investigated relations of power that facilitate, hinder, or impinge upon the transfer/transformation of cultural practices of dancing. We began to develop our work into a larger project, and with the addition of a fourth participant, we noted that all of the dances we document have thrived over the past fifty years. However, the patterns of adaptation to a globalizing environment were as different as the dances and dance scenes themselves. For example, the Dance of the Curpites, a ritual courtship dance examined by Joyce M. Bishop, powerfully ties individuals to their local Mexican community, despite massive and continuing out-migration from a relocated indigenous homeland. Participants in Aztec dance, the Mexican spiritual movement discussed by Sandra Garner, are only partially successful in developing relations of reciprocity through shared ritual with indigenous groups outside the country. Argentines, Ana C. Cara found, market a version of tango for external consumption precisely to safeguard their very different homegrown tradition. And in my work on the salsa scene of multicultural New Jersey, I observed dance instructors self-consciously constructing socially and racially diverse spaces of interaction within North American popular culture, inviting everyone to learn the dance. In the ensuing months of research and writing, each author developed her argument in productive new directions, considerably broadening the themes of this issue. Moreover, I was delighted to welcome Latin American dance scholar and ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson as co-editor of the issue. Her introduction provides a welcome and overdue assessment of the history and current promise of dance ethnography within the fields of folklore and ethnomusicology.

W. R. S. Ralston and the Russian Folktale

Without wishing to discourage my successor I have to say that one of my concerns as President of this Society at its Annual General Meeting has been to find, if at all possible, a topic for an addr...

Folklore and the Search for Home (American Folklore Society Presidential Invited Plenary Address, October 2008)

Abstract Folklore in many ways is the search for an understanding of what home means. Folklore makes us feel at home in our identities. But what can the search for home mean in an age when the soul is global, in an age when the circle of the "we" must expand to create ever more inclusive communities? Should we cling to the folklore of all our little tribes, when building a commonwealth seems more urgent? I will address these questions both in general terms and in light of my own Cuban fieldwork experiences, where my search for home has led me to become an uneasy folklorist.

Folklore and the Search for Home (American Folklore Society Presidential Invited Plenary Address, October 2008)

Folklore in many ways is the search for an understanding of what home means. Folklore makes us feel at home in our identities. But what can the search for home mean in an age when the soul is global, in an age when the circle of the "we" must expand to create ever more inclusive communities? Should we cling to the folklore of all our little tribes, when building a commonwealth seems more urgent? I will address these questions both in general terms and in light of my own Cuban fieldwork experiences, where my search for home has led me to become an uneasy folklorist.

The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Nation’s Customs and Festivals from May Day to Mischief Night (review)

Over the last few years Steve Roud has published a series of readable but authoritative reference works, starting with A Dictionary of English Folklore (with Jacqueline Simpson, 2001), continuing with the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland (2003), and now the present work. They display an increasing level of magisterial authority which nevertheless serves to enlighten rather than intimidate the reader, and combines with a very common-sense and matter-of-fact approach to the subject matter, in a field that invites imagination and fancy to run riot. It is often tempting to skip the introduction to any book and plunge straight into the main text. I would advise against this here, however, as Rouds introduction not only sets the tone for the book, but is a model exposition of the reasons why an evidence based approach to customs is desirable, and a demonstration of the inadequacies of the aetiological legends that surround many of our customs. 'The vast majority, Roud writes (p. xiv), 'are simply fictitious tales that have been repeated often enough to take on the veneer of accredited fact. They are believed because they function well as stories, they are neat and plausible, and people like them Not only does Rouds introduction set the ground rules for an appreciation of the nature of custom that illumines the contents of the book, but he also includes a helpful note on 'The Calendar' which reminds us that even the mere counting of days is fraught with difficulty and complication. The book is arranged, naturally, in the order of the days of the year, and at the start of each month a useful 'month-to-view' calendar is supplied, highlighting the main festivals and customs described for the month. There is also an attempt at a geographical presentation, in a series of indexed maps, but this is not comprehensive: there are no map entries for Herefordshire, for example, whereas a check of the full index will reveal plenty of material that might have been mapped. The body of the text flows freely, with references and footnotes by and large relegated to a 'Sources' section at the end of the book, giving minimal but sufficient information for those who want to go back to the roots. Inevitably, a work such as this relies very heavily on its predecessors, from William Hone's Every-day Book of 1827, through the Folklore Society's compilations of an earlier age, Wright and Lones's three-volume British Calendar Customs: England of 1936-40, to more recent works such as Brian Shuel's 1985 book, The National Trust Guide to the Traditional Customs of Britain. A surprising omission is Blackburn and Holford-Strevens's Oxford Companion to the Year (1999). Authoritative as it is, Roud's book is largely a compilation from printed sources. This gives the inevitable feeling that what gets written about is what has already been written about. References to standard local works such those of Ella Leather for Herefordshire (1912) and Ethel Rudkin for Lincolnshire (1936) abound, and one wonders about the fate of customs in counties that have not had the benefit of their own folklorist.

Recent Documentaries about the Iraq War

Recent Documentaries about the Iraq War Jacqueline L. McGrath In October 2006, I helped organize several panels at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society (AFS) as part of my work for a task force focused on documenting how the Iraq war had affected traditional culture in the region. The task force sought to showcase the work and views of Iraqi artists and activists, including the world-renowned oud performer Rahim Al-Haj and Iraqi novelist Mahmoud Saeed. We also screened an independent film produced by the Iraq Eye Group called The Dreams of Sparrows (2005). While these programs served to make the voices and ideas of these artists central to the conference itself, it was the documentary screening that produced the greatest dialogue and most passionate responses, and the audience responses to The Dreams of Sparrows lead me to investigate several other films that have been directed or produced by Iraqi people. The Dreams of Sparrows is a short, haunting pastiche of interviews, images, and events before and after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the course of filming, one of the members of the production crew was killed by U.S. soldiers because he failed to stop at a checkpoint. The film includes unedited images of stark violence and the raw emotional aftermath of these dreadful, mortal events. The movie ends on a devastating note, and at the AFS showing people in the room wept and stared. Saeed, who watched from a chair in the middle of the room, stood and launched into a harangue about the U.S. occupation and the actions of those present in the room, asking us in attendance, “Why? Why? Why? Why are you doing this to us? Why are you in Iraq? Why can’t you stop it?” We stared at him, a roomful of cultural experts and highly educated citizens, unable to answer, confronted by this writer as though we were directly complicit in the war itself. A few tried, seeking to explain not their personal views (to a person, those in the room were antiwar) but their theories for why the occupation was so dreadfully inept and fatal for so many people. As everyone spoke, the repeated apologia these culture workers provided was, “I didn’t really know. I have not seen this stuff in the news. We don’t get to see this.” Saeed found no comfort in these responses. His voice rose, and I quelled my impulse to stifle him or intervene. He had survived torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard for publishing his novels in Turkey. He could handle a room full of guilty and defensive academics. I was one of those guilty and defensive academics, of course, and despite my half-hearted efforts on this task force and some faint efforts to participate in teach-ins and antiwar protests over the years, I have managed to do little to mitigate my personal responsibility as a citizen of the United States for the impact of this war on individuals in Iraq and their culture. But I do what I can. We all do. One task that I have set for myself since the day I screened that documentary to such surprising response is to analyze and publicize the few but, by and large, smart and affecting documentaries about the Iraq War. They number in the dozens now and range in points of view. They strive to document history as it is happening: documentaries are, as they say, an attempt at a first draft of history. Without question, documentary film has gained extraordinary power in recent years. With the rise of video-sharing Web sites like [End Page 218] YouTube and independent distributors and production companies, such films have become more democratic, and this has vastly increased the extent to which they preserve and shape historical narratives about war. In particular, many recent documentaries about the Iraq war are shaped by filmmakers with complex identities and relationships to the events: Iraqi citizens and artists of various ethnic backgrounds, American soldiers, international activists, and so-called guerrilla journalists involved in the war itself to various degrees. These films illustrate from within complex and...

On the Life and Work of Academician Arvo Krikmann on His 70th Birthday

The 70th birthday of Arvo Krikmann, Estonian academician, folklorist, paremiologist and scholar of humour, is a fine moment to offer the readers of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore a bit more thorough overview of his life and activities. For me, personally, Krikmann has been the most important teacher in folklore studies and during university studies and later the supervisor of my master’s and doctor’s theses. Krikmann’s lectures have been the most systematic and condensed ones I have ever attended, his methods and way of thinking have been appealing, and his work Sissevaateid folkloori luhivormidesse. Pohimoisteid, žanrisuhteid, uldprobleeme (‘Introspections into Minor Forms of Folklore (IMFF), Vol. 1. Basic Concepts, Genre Relations, General Issues’) has been an important reference source for discovering the original truths hidden in the folklore archive collections. In the following I have presented a rather eclectic combination of his academic career and memoirs, composed of different sources starting from Krikmann’s patient replies to my questions (Krikmann’s words are featured in italics throughout the text) about the beginning of things all the way to the previous reports of birthdays and Krikmann’s curriculum vitae on the Estonian digital research portal. Arvo Krikmann was born on 21 July, 1939, in Pudivere village (or, more precisely, in Liinemoisa), Simuna parish, Viru County, Northeast Estonia. In the manor times there had been a typical long farm-hand house to the west of our apple-tree and berry orchard. My paternal grandfather Mihkel had lived there with his family, but when I lived there only small heaps were discernible through the turf at the place where a stove or oven and the foundation had once been. When the lands of Pudivere manor were allotted and my parents got married, my father had some local craftsmen construct new buildings – a barn, stables and byres, and the house. This was where Krikmann spent most of his

On Hymes: introduction

Dell Hymes became a scholar in the aftermath of the Second World War, as an e¤ect of the GI Bill that o¤ered access to higher education to veterans. His career spans the whole of the second half of the twentieth century, and his impact has been monumental. He was involved, usually in a leading capacity, in almost all the post-war developments in the study of language in society. Most importantly, and in close interaction with a generation comprising the likes of Gumperz, Garfinkel, Cicourel, and Go¤man, he was instrumental in carving out a space for a study of language that escaped the dominance of the Chomskyan paradigm. While he himself would insist that this space was an ethnographic space, the labels under which he also sought accommodation included sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, folklore, and applied linguistics. Hymes was president of professional bodies in all of these fields: of the Linguistic Association of America, the American Anthropological Association, the American Folklore Society, and the American Association for Applied Linguistics. He founded and edited journals as well: Language in Society still stands as one of the world’s leading journals in the field he helped carve out. He saw this study of language in society as an ever-expanding field and, consequently, he let his influence be felt in many new or reformed disciplines of social-scientific study in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a scholar in power (in many senses of the term), someone whose scholarship always accompanied his politics of advocacy, programmatic (and relevance-focused) research and research programming. Almost all of the papers in this volume identify this close connection and comment on it: it is an aspect of Hymes’s work which is often overlooked and which, if paid attention to, can point researchers now toward wellformulated questions of relevance in sociolinguistic work. In formulating such questions, Hymes had his two feet firmly planted in an older American anthropological tradition—which he documented and discussed in numerous publications—but complemented with an exceptionally broad theoretical and empirical outlook (the theoretical range of which he often

The Arts and Cultural Sector, Research, and Art Education

Bill Ivey, as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from 1998 2001, eloquently conceptualized the complexities and intersections of the arts and culture in the United States (US). As a folklorist, Ivey's broadbased view of the arts and culture was unique in the history of the NEA. In his remarks the American Folklore Society (AFS) on October 22, 1999, Ivey firmly positioned his conception of the arts and culture in in relation and living cultural (Ivey, 1999). He used creativity and cultural heritage emphasize the importance of investing time and funding in America's cultural life. Ivey affirmed that creative expression is fundamental all people, that aesthetic traditions are a prerequisite social life, and that traditions thrive on creative interpretation and effort.While chair of the NEA, Ivey advocated for a more vigorous and broad based commitment art and art making in America (Ivey, 2000). Art and artmaking would move the center of society from the margins (Ivey, 2000). Quality of life for individuals and communities would be enhanced and the interconnectedness necessary a healthy democracy would be encouraged.Ivey's systemic orientation arts and culture was not unique. A little over a quarter of a century earlier Kavolis (1973) described America's arts and cultural heritage as an extensive network through which children, youth, and adults could engage with art. This network included educational institutions as well as community arts centers, museums, churches, and health care facilities among many others. Becker's (1984) Art Worlds amplified Kavolis' overview by describing in detail the cooperative networks required for the production and appreciation of fine art, multimedia, folk art, and craft among other forms. In 1997 The American Assembly (2007) produced a report on the arts in American life. Reiterating the findings of Kavolis (1973) and Becker (1984), the Assembly described an extensive and inclusive arts and cultural sector existing across, and within, not-for-profits, for-profits, and volunteer or informal organizations. The Assembly affirmed the interdependence of these sectors and resisted conventional categories of high and low, fine and folk, professional and amateur, pop and classic (p. 1). Integral the public purpose of the arts, according the Assembly, was education.Deborah B. Reeve's (2007) From the column in the December 2007 edition of the NAEA News reinforces a view of art education consistent with the systemic and proactive orientation the arts and culture exemplified by the sources cited here. Also significant Reeves December 2007 column was its emphasis on the importance of research. I anticipate that there will be some debate by scholars in the field about Reeves emphasis on an evidence based (EBP) orientation and its philosophical approach knowledge, method for generating knowledge, and the socio- cultural-political complexities in which any practice occurs. Such debate is integral the learning community that Reeve believes the NAEA be. However, there is no doubt that Reeve, in her position as Executive Director of the NAEA, understands not only the importance of research the field, but also that research can drive the change that will foster even greater strides in ensuring a quality education for all of our nation's young people (p. 3). She challenges the membership of the NAEA to expand, enhance and leverage our organizational research and knowledge- transfer capabilities (p. 3). Reeve specifically mentions superintendents' offices, state departments of education, and other professional associations. She is forceful in articulating that it is only by recognizing and working within a larger system that change can occur. In my view, this larger system must be as broad based as that described by the American Assembly (2007).Scholars associated with the NAEA have a history of exploring and embracing a systemic orientation the plethora of cultural forms available for study. …

Archival data on wild food plants used in Poland in 1948

BackgroundIn 1948, Professor Józef Gajek initiated a detailed census of the wild edible plants used in Poland. The questionnaires were collected by correspondents of the Polish Folklore Society in 95 localities throughout Poland. A major part of these archival materials, including a substantial collection of herbarium specimens, had not undergone thorough analysis prior to this study, which presents a quantitative analysis of this archival set of data.MethodsHerbarium specimens were identified and a database was created.ResultsNinety-eight taxa identified to genus or species level, including 71 botanical species, identified using herbarium specimens, were found. On average only 11 edible plant species per locality were listed, the longest list included 39 species. No correlation between latitude and the number of edible species was found, whereas there was small but significant correlation with the longitude. Fruits were the most frequently collected part of plants. Most plants were primarily collected by women and children. Children both helped parents to collect wild fruits and also ate many species raw, which were not consumed by adults, but had often been eaten in the past. Eighteen of the taxa had not been reported in a recent comprehensive review of edible plants of Poland. Stratiotes aloides, used as a famine vegetable in the Łódź region, has never been reported as edible in any ethnobotanical literature.ConclusionThe results undermine the conclusions of a recent comprehensive review of edible plants of Poland, which stated that many more wild edible plants have been collected in the Carpathians than in lowland Poland. However such results were shown to be caused by the substantially larger number of ethnographic studies undertaken in the Carpathians. In fact, large numbers of edible plant species were collected in the mid-20th century in a few regions, particularly along the eastern border, in the Carpathians and in communities originating from the expanded Soviet Union, which had been resettled to the north-west of Poland in 1945.

America's Antitheoretical Folkloristics

Articles in this special issue, revised from an American Folklore Society "forum" in October 2005, seek to answer the question "Why is there no 'Grand Theory' in folkloristics?" The collective answer is that American folklorists don't care much for theory: having left behind the past orientation of their predecessors, they prefer to focus on the actualities of vernacular practice. The American conception of folklore moves its professionals away from the abstract towards the concrete—towards situated interaction among human beings. American folklorists are more likely to accept method than theory; their theoretical insights have turned into method. Their master Dell Hymes advocated starting "from community definitions of situation, activity, purpose, genre, and discover[ing] validly the ways in which communicative means are organized in terms of them." That program is method, not theory. Communities do indeed make their own definitions of situation and the rest; so do folklorists, with the result that it's easy to see the point at which "folklore" entered the vocabulary of their community. Attempts to frame an American Grand Theory now encounter the dissolution of folklore as a distinct field of study. Because folklore can't be separated from other human activities, except as a product of one moment in the thinking of a certain interpretive community, the term could well be turned over to traditional artists and those who "interpret their traditions before audiences outside of customary performance contexts."

In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (review)

In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (review)

Space, Place, Emergence

The idea for this special issue emerged during a conversation at a meeting of the Western States Folklore Society. Space and had taken such a central position in general social theory, we wondered, was there anything left to say about it? Could folklorists contribute to that conversation? Were folklorists even interested in anymore, or had they moved on to other place-less topics? To judge from over thirty-five responses to our call for papers on the broad subject of unbounding place, including a number from outside the US, the topic is alive and well. We sincerely regret having to decline many interesting proposals in the interest of space (no pun intended), but are impressed that the subject remains of active interest to our colleagues in folklore and related fields. In the end, we accepted these six papers. Our goal is modest: to present an array of papers on the subject, each of which contributes something to the overall idea of space and as being more than simply location. From this range, we extracted a few tropes or themes that focus on space and in an unbounded world. We hope that others might find them a useful starting point for conversation. Anyone interested in space and soon discovers a vast body of scholarship so broad in scope it easily becomes unmoored. If we have learned anything, it is that spaces and places essentially are conflicted: they are sites of struggle, not the least among academics over proper theoretical and methodological models for studying such subjects. For example, so many websites, and websites of websites are devoted to the study of space and that one could spend days merely looking at online materials before cracking a single book.1 The subject interests much of the humanities and social sciences-folklore as well as such disciplines as history, creative non-fiction, literary studies, American Studies, anthropology, architecture, geography, philosophy, and sociology. The fact that the words space and are useful metaphors (Smith and Katz 1993) compounds the problem. We can talk of actual locations, but spatial metaphors expand these basic concepts in apparently unlimited as well as useful ways, making them seem applicable to everything and tempting us to mistake metaphor for reality. Literature reviews are impossible, therefore; the following provides only a sketch of some basic issues as they pertain to the history of folklore studies. In folklore, our academic home, studies of space and are grounded in regional studies that were the focus of the early- and mid-twentieth century. These regional studies typically focused on defining particular geographic regions, on collecting within already-loosely-defined-or-subjectively-felt regions, or on relationships between culture and landscape, perspectives that were critiqued at the same time they were developed (e.g., Halpert 1947), a fact not always acknowledged (see also Green 1978; Nicolaisen 1976). Well-known early figures include such notables as Benjamin Botkin, Vance Randolph, and Richard Dorson. Many were influenced by, or trained in, classical scholarship in humanist and cultural geography, as revealed particularly in the early work of Henry Classic ([1968]197l),Joan Miller (1968) and others. Useful overviews of this scholarship can be found in Alien 1990 and Ryden 1993; see also Hufford 2002 for new takes on regionalism. Later approaches emphasized regional consciousness as collective identity (Jones 1976; Dorson 1964; Clements 1979; Stewart, Siporin, Sullivan and Jones 2000, Lightfoot 1983, Hufford 1986) as well as experiential and locallyconstructed meanings of drawn from the early work of Yi-Fu Tuan (1974, 1977), loosely organized under labels such as place-attachment studies, topophilia, phenomenological approaches, and sense of place studies2 (Classic 1982; Alien and Schlereth 1990; Ryden 1993; Feld and Basso 1996; Altman and Low 1992, Sanders 1993, Lopez 2000, Hiss 1990, Wilson 2000). …

“Earnest Spade Work”: The New Zealand Folklore Society, 1966–1975

The New Zealand Folklore Society was a small organisation that emerged from the folk revival scene in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1966. Members aimed to collect folklore (mainly songs), publish studies, and generally promote the recognition of folk culture in New Zealand. This article outlines the organisation's history and aims, discusses its achievements in collecting, revivalism, and publications, and examines the possible reasons why it declined and eventually disbanded in 1975. In the New Zealand context, where folkloristic work has occurred only on a small scale, the society's experiences have a number of implications for the future of such research.

Food Choice, Symbolism, and Identity: Bread-and-Butter Issues for Folkloristics and Nutrition Studies (American Folklore Society Presidential Address, October 2005)

Abstract Research on food abounds, from the history of differing types of fare to the relationship between provisioning and culture, gender roles, and eating disorders. In disciplines concerned with health and nutrition, few studies focus on the metaphorical aspects of alimentation; while many ethnographic works do deal with the symbolic nature of gastronomy, they tend to emphasize eating as commensality and food as an expression of identity in ethnic, regional, and religious groups. Symbolic discourse involving cuisine is pervasive and complex, however, manifesting itself in a wide variety of contexts and exhibiting multiple meanings that may be ambiguous, conflicting, or pernicious. Understanding how messages are conveyed through culinary behavior requires an examination not only of victuals but also of the preparation, service, and consumption of food-for all are grist for the mill of symbolization. Here, I bring together a number of ideas about the iconic nature of cooking and eating: what is fodder for symbol creation, how and why meanings are generated, and what some of the effects of food-related representations are. I also problematize identity as it relates to food. My goal is to suggest directions for future research on foodways as well as applications in fields concerned with nutrition education, counseling, and dietary change.

Food Choice, Symbolism, and Identity: Bread and Butter Issues for Folkloristics and Nutrition Studies (American Folklore Society Presidential Address, October 2005)

Research on food abounds, from the history of differing types of fare to the relationship between provisioning and culture, gender roles, and eating disorders. In disciplines concerned with health and nutrition, few studies focus on the metaphorical aspects of alimentation; while many ethnographic works do deal with the symbolic nature of gastronomy, they tend to emphasize eating as commensality and food as an expression of identity in ethnic, regional, and religious groups. Symbolic discourse involving cuisine is pervasive and complex, however, manifesting itself in a wide variety of contexts and exhibiting multiple meanings that may be ambiguous, conflicting, or pernicious. Understanding how messages are conveyed through culinary behavior requires an examination not only of victuals but also of the preparation, service, and consumption of food—for all are grist for the mill of symbolization. Here, I bring together a number of ideas about the iconic nature of cooking and eating: what is fodder for symbol creation, how and why meanings are generated, and what some of the effects of food-related representations are. I also problematize identity as it relates to food. My goal is to suggest directions for future research on foodways as well as applications in fields concerned with nutrition education, counseling, and dietary change.