Charlie Groth
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496820365
- eISBN:
- 9781496820402
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496820365.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Chapter 9 seeks to apply what was learned at the Lewis Fishery and on Lewis Island to help solve social problems in this historic moment. It follows the trajectory Casey’s work starts, considering ...
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Chapter 9 seeks to apply what was learned at the Lewis Fishery and on Lewis Island to help solve social problems in this historic moment. It follows the trajectory Casey’s work starts, considering what place means in an era of large scale dis-placement through electronic technologies. The chapter argues that powerful forces in this rapidly changing digital age have brought on another era of anomie, including negative psychological symptoms similar to those that accompanied industrialism. In opposition to the myths of perpetual, technological, and material progress, a sustainability model is considered. Jonathan Hawke’s concepts of the “four pillars” of sustainability are applied to Lewis Island culture, using theory and community members’ interpretations, and focusing on cultural sustainability. Narrative stewardship is suggested as one strategy for staving off anomie, using of technologies while not losing the powers of community and place.Less
Chapter 9 seeks to apply what was learned at the Lewis Fishery and on Lewis Island to help solve social problems in this historic moment. It follows the trajectory Casey’s work starts, considering what place means in an era of large scale dis-placement through electronic technologies. The chapter argues that powerful forces in this rapidly changing digital age have brought on another era of anomie, including negative psychological symptoms similar to those that accompanied industrialism. In opposition to the myths of perpetual, technological, and material progress, a sustainability model is considered. Jonathan Hawke’s concepts of the “four pillars” of sustainability are applied to Lewis Island culture, using theory and community members’ interpretations, and focusing on cultural sustainability. Narrative stewardship is suggested as one strategy for staving off anomie, using of technologies while not losing the powers of community and place.
Timothy J. Cooley (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042362
- eISBN:
- 9780252051203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042362.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter suggests some methodological and pedagogical orientations to the project of cultural sustainability. The scholarship of Michael Jackson, Edie Turner, Henry Glassie, and Jeff Todd Titon ...
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This chapter suggests some methodological and pedagogical orientations to the project of cultural sustainability. The scholarship of Michael Jackson, Edie Turner, Henry Glassie, and Jeff Todd Titon explores how culture can be existentially sustaining, but often this quality of culture is lost in scholarship and practice. The chapter argues that participation, empathy, and communitas should be cultivated in pedagogy and research methodology. Such an approach recasts the relationship of experts to communities, ways of knowing and communicating, and the ethics of scholarship. Considering well-being and culture from this vantage point suggests factors that are relevant to broader issues in sustainability and have informed the curriculum and philosophy of the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability program at Goucher College.Less
This chapter suggests some methodological and pedagogical orientations to the project of cultural sustainability. The scholarship of Michael Jackson, Edie Turner, Henry Glassie, and Jeff Todd Titon explores how culture can be existentially sustaining, but often this quality of culture is lost in scholarship and practice. The chapter argues that participation, empathy, and communitas should be cultivated in pedagogy and research methodology. Such an approach recasts the relationship of experts to communities, ways of knowing and communicating, and the ethics of scholarship. Considering well-being and culture from this vantage point suggests factors that are relevant to broader issues in sustainability and have informed the curriculum and philosophy of the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability program at Goucher College.
Charlie Groth
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496820365
- eISBN:
- 9781496820402
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496820365.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
When people cross the footbridge to Lewis Island in the Delaware River at Lambertville, NJ, they’re in a “whole ‘nother world”: wild and civilized, stable atop changing water and earth. Here lies the ...
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When people cross the footbridge to Lewis Island in the Delaware River at Lambertville, NJ, they’re in a “whole ‘nother world”: wild and civilized, stable atop changing water and earth. Here lies the last commercial haul seine fishery on the non-tidal Delaware, where Lewis family members have netted since 1888 and have long monitored the fluctuating shad population. The island also serves as a spiritual, recreational, and community site for local and regional visitors, whom the Lewis family welcomes because of their forebear’s “mandate to share the island.” Visitors feel almost immediately that this place is special, but the why is elusive.
Folklorist Charlie Groth explains Lewis Island’s unassuming cultural magic by developing the concept of “narrative stewardship,” a practice by which people take care of communal resources (in this case, river, shad, tradition, and community itself) through sharing stories. Anchored in over two decades of field research, this accessible ethnography interweaves the author’s observations as a crew member, stories from various tellers, interviews, history, and cultural theory. Beginning with thick description, the work explores four broad story types—Big Stories, character anecdotes, microlegends, and everyday storying. Groth traces how narratives intertwine with each other and with the physical environment to create sense of place, while participants in various roles navigate belonging. Ultimately, she posits the idea that in an era when telectronics have changed material conditions profoundly and quickly, echoing the way the industrial revolution led to anomie, narrative stewardship embedded in everyday life helps sustain culture and community.Less
When people cross the footbridge to Lewis Island in the Delaware River at Lambertville, NJ, they’re in a “whole ‘nother world”: wild and civilized, stable atop changing water and earth. Here lies the last commercial haul seine fishery on the non-tidal Delaware, where Lewis family members have netted since 1888 and have long monitored the fluctuating shad population. The island also serves as a spiritual, recreational, and community site for local and regional visitors, whom the Lewis family welcomes because of their forebear’s “mandate to share the island.” Visitors feel almost immediately that this place is special, but the why is elusive.
Folklorist Charlie Groth explains Lewis Island’s unassuming cultural magic by developing the concept of “narrative stewardship,” a practice by which people take care of communal resources (in this case, river, shad, tradition, and community itself) through sharing stories. Anchored in over two decades of field research, this accessible ethnography interweaves the author’s observations as a crew member, stories from various tellers, interviews, history, and cultural theory. Beginning with thick description, the work explores four broad story types—Big Stories, character anecdotes, microlegends, and everyday storying. Groth traces how narratives intertwine with each other and with the physical environment to create sense of place, while participants in various roles navigate belonging. Ultimately, she posits the idea that in an era when telectronics have changed material conditions profoundly and quickly, echoing the way the industrial revolution led to anomie, narrative stewardship embedded in everyday life helps sustain culture and community.
Timothy J. Cooley (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042362
- eISBN:
- 9780252051203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042362.003.0015
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
What now might now be dubbed “cultural sustainability” has long been part and parcel of university life throughout Latin America where such institutions have been pivotal in preserving and shaping ...
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What now might now be dubbed “cultural sustainability” has long been part and parcel of university life throughout Latin America where such institutions have been pivotal in preserving and shaping peripheral or threatened musical traditions. This chapter describes the work of a Peruvian organization called the Centro de Capacitación Campesino (Center for Peasant Training), which was instrumental in the musical life of rural-indigenous communities around the Andean city of Ayacucho in two distinct moments: first in the 1980s when the CCC was founded at Ayacucho's national university amid the Shining Path's war against the Peruvian state; the second moment came after 2000 when community-based Radio Quispillaccta made old CCC recordings the centerpiece of its broadcasts and a symbol of indigenous ecological rationality.Less
What now might now be dubbed “cultural sustainability” has long been part and parcel of university life throughout Latin America where such institutions have been pivotal in preserving and shaping peripheral or threatened musical traditions. This chapter describes the work of a Peruvian organization called the Centro de Capacitación Campesino (Center for Peasant Training), which was instrumental in the musical life of rural-indigenous communities around the Andean city of Ayacucho in two distinct moments: first in the 1980s when the CCC was founded at Ayacucho's national university amid the Shining Path's war against the Peruvian state; the second moment came after 2000 when community-based Radio Quispillaccta made old CCC recordings the centerpiece of its broadcasts and a symbol of indigenous ecological rationality.
