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The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences

Lawrence W. Levine

in The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History

The chapter focuses on popular culture and how it is an effective mechanism for understanding Depression America. This chapter aims to get get away from rigid adjective labels as much as possible and ... More

The chapter focuses on popular culture and how it is an effective mechanism for understanding Depression America. This chapter aims to get get away from rigid adjective labels as much as possible and recognize that while culture may not be seamless, it is connected. It recommends a rethink of a series of attitudes and images that prevent the serious study of popular culture: image of the purely passive mass audience, all forms of culture only popular culture is so thoroughly formulaic, the notion that popular culture was and is invariably “escapist” and the notion that popular culture may not be generally be on the cutting edge of knowledge or style it is therefore not truly an art form. In black folk culture, there is no single overarching thematic matrix. Black folk in and out of slavery used different parts of their expressive culture for different purposes.Less

The Passing Away of the Old-Time Negro: Folk Culture, Civil War Memory, and Black Authority in the 1930s

Catherine A. Stewart

in Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers' Project

This chapter places the Federal Writers’ Project’s mission to collect and document African American history and culture within the larger context of the 1930s. National interest in black folk culture ... More

This chapter places the Federal Writers’ Project’s mission to collect and document African American history and culture within the larger context of the 1930s. National interest in black folk culture and the “Negro question” along with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Civil War and competing forms of remembrance through film, Ex-Slave associations, and Old Slave Days, helped fuel debates over black citizenship. By hiring African American writers, such as Sterling Brown as the editor of Negro Affairs, to oversee projects related to black history, the FWP seemed to herald a new era in African Americans’ struggle for authority over cultural representations of black identity. But the increasing commodification of black folk culture through the recording industry, radio, and film, along with folklorists and southern whites’ emphasis on the “old-time Negro,” presented significant challenges to black authority despite invocations of authenticity, the social sciences, and the image of the New Negro.Less

Introduction

Ka-ming Wu

in Reinventing Chinese Tradition: The Cultural Politics of Late Socialism

This book explores the role of folk cultural discourse and practices in the cultural politics of post-Mao China by focusing on Yan'an, headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1937 to ... More

This book explores the role of folk cultural discourse and practices in the cultural politics of post-Mao China by focusing on Yan'an, headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1937 to 1947. It examines the relation between the government and local communities for heritage preservation and cultural tourism in the age of runaway urbanization by focusing on the moments of mobilizing and representing folk traditions in both socialist and late socialist Yan'an. It articulates the cultural logic of the late socialist Chinese society that corresponds to a new form of political economy through an analysis of three rural cultural practices in Yan'an and their entanglement with political, capital, and local forces: folk storytelling, folk paper-cuts, and spirit cult practices. This introduction discusses historical events and narratives that contribute to the development and modern meanings of folk culture and Yan'an. It also provides an overview of the author's fieldwork and research methodology as well as the chapters that follow.Less

Celebrating and Consuming Bodies: Economic and Symbolic Production

Ruth Hellier-Tinoco

in Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism & Performance

This chapter appraises the ninety-year processes and contexts of performism surrounding The Old Men and Night of the Dead, reflecting on consequences of the trajectory in terms of essentialization, ... More

This chapter appraises the ninety-year processes and contexts of performism surrounding The Old Men and Night of the Dead, reflecting on consequences of the trajectory in terms of essentialization, symbolic and economic production, relationships of power, and the construct of folklore, particularly engaging Néstor García Canclini's work on folk culture and popular culture. Analyzing the legacy of postrevolutionary policies and strategies, this chapter draws attention to implicit and explicit contexts of hierarchies, and inequities, discussing otherness, difference, and traditionalization; Ballet Folklórico ensembles; processes of self-designation and legitimization; and economic production, exchange value, commoditization, and tourism. Concluding with an account of a 2009 performance of The Old Men in the USA with a direct link to the island of Jarácuaro and the first appropriated event draws the focus to back to connections between the micro and the macro.Less

Conjure Queen: Zora Neale Hurston and Black Folk Culture

Catherine A. Stewart

in Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers' Project

This chapter provides a comparative look at Zora Neale Hurston’s brief career as a trained anthropologist and her experiences with the Federal Writers’ Project as a member of Florida’s segregated ... More

This chapter provides a comparative look at Zora Neale Hurston’s brief career as a trained anthropologist and her experiences with the Federal Writers’ Project as a member of Florida’s segregated Negro Writers’ Unit. Using Hurston’s ethnography of black folk culture, Mules and Men, the chapter examines Hurston’s many roles: ethnographer, protégé of white patrons, and native informant for her white colleagues. Correspondence with Langston Hughes and Franz Boas while she was conducting field work reveals her methods for getting inside black folk communities, and how her approach to her informants and material significantly diverged from academic conventions. Hurston’s emphasis on black folk traditions and vernacular also placed her at odds with fellow employees of Florida’s Negro Writers’ Unit who wished to emphasize assimilation into the bourgeoisie. The marginalization of Hurston’s contributions exposes the fissures that developed within the African American intelligentsia over how to represent black identity and culture.Less

The Troubled Personalities of the South

Anne C. Rose

in Psychology and Selfhood in the Segregated South

This chapter considers the academic interest in southern psychology. Intellectuals examined the South in terms borrowed from three areas of interest in contemporary social science: mob behavior; ... More

This chapter considers the academic interest in southern psychology. Intellectuals examined the South in terms borrowed from three areas of interest in contemporary social science: mob behavior; personality formation; and folk culture. These varied inquiries also gave rise to scholarly habits that limited investigation of the region. Some scholars preferred generalization while others were inclined to understatement because it was dangerous, troubling, or both—depending on who you were—to dwell on segregation. In the midst of much discussion of the South, there were crucial omissions.Less

Conclusion

Ka-ming Wu

in Reinventing Chinese Tradition: The Cultural Politics of Late Socialism

This book has explored how the meanings of folk cultural revivals in contemporary Yan'an are woven together by multiple actors and various political, economic, and social forces and initiatives. It ... More

This book has explored how the meanings of folk cultural revivals in contemporary Yan'an are woven together by multiple actors and various political, economic, and social forces and initiatives. It has used the term “hyper-folk” to refer to the production and consumption of folk revival discourses and cultural practices in post-2000 Yan'an in order to highlight the distance between what is celebrated today as “Chinese folk tradition” and what was understood as exclusively peasant culture in the past. It has demonstrated how the cultural logic of late socialism converges political, social, economic, and communal forces and relations and, at the same time, makes their meanings and practices flexible and malleable to fit in various purposes and occasions. Finally, it has used “Yan'an and folk culture” to connote a historical model of the Chinese Communist Party appropriating folk traditions to promote rural reform and national state campaigns.Less

The Flytings

Corey Gibson

in The Voice of the People: Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics

This chapter explores Henderson’s ‘flytings’, or public debates, with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), in which they contested Scotland’s literary culture and the value of traditional folk-song ... More

This chapter explores Henderson’s ‘flytings’, or public debates, with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), in which they contested Scotland’s literary culture and the value of traditional folk-song in the modern world, in the most ferocious and vituperative terms. The form and content of this discourse is described as a kind of dialectic enactment of the tensions within Scotland’s literary elite during the 1950s and 60s. Thereafter, the core issues of the ‘flytings’ are examined – namely, the prescription of literary ‘value’; the problem of the ‘popular’; the disputed dichotomy of ‘high’ and ‘low’ arts; the guiding principles of the ‘individual’ and the ‘communal’ in the pursuit of a progressive literature. In these exchanges, all of the aspects of Henderson’s thought that are examined throughout the book are displayed in a condensed and embattled form. In this sense the first chapter provides the reader with a dramatic climax for the ideas that are developed gradually throughout the remainder of the volume.Less

Professional Female Singers and the Gendering of Folk

Stefan Fiol

in Recasting Folk in the Himalayas: Indian Music, Media, and Social Mobility

In much scholarly discourse there is an assumption that women are the natural repositories of folk culture. Although this assumption is often rooted in an important feminist motivation to challenge ... More

In much scholarly discourse there is an assumption that women are the natural repositories of folk culture. Although this assumption is often rooted in an important feminist motivation to challenge oppressive ideologies within patriarchal societies, this chapter argues that it is ultimately unhelpful to think about folk culture as an inherently male or female domain of cultural production. Chapter five critiques the gendering of the folk concept by comparing and contrasting the experiences of two professional female artists in Uttarakhand, Meena Rana and Bachan Dei. Both women have established their professional identities through interpretations of village-based repertories of song and dance, but each performer has experienced a different degree of acceptance and inclusion within the vernacular music industry as a result of her social position and caste background.Less

Religion and Popular Culture

Philip Goff

in The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History

This chapter explores the relationship between religion and popular culture in America. More specifically, it considers how various schools of thought direct their inquiries at popular culture and ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between religion and popular culture in America. More specifically, it considers how various schools of thought direct their inquiries at popular culture and how, in recent years, those who study religion in America have seized on those models to help us better understand the nature of American religious life. For much of the twentieth century, popular culture was understood to be anything between high culture and folk culture. While nearly all the terms are debatable, specialists generally regarded high culture as unique, difficult to create, and highly individual. The creations of elite culture aspire to break the boundaries of tradition, challenge common beliefs, and validate the experience of the individual. Its formation is an aesthetic act; that is, it seeks truth and beauty. Generally, there are three ways scholars approach the study of popular culture: textual analysis, audience analysis, and production analysis. This chapter also discusses typologies of religion and popular culture and concludes by assessing popular religion and religious culture in American history.Less

Sunday

in On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth

This chapter presents the first-day experience of Jay Mechling, while camping with Boy Scout Troop 49. Mechling began his journey began in the broad, flat floodplain of California's great Central ... More

This chapter presents the first-day experience of Jay Mechling, while camping with Boy Scout Troop 49. Mechling began his journey began in the broad, flat floodplain of California's great Central Valley. The trip from the Pacific Coast east to the Nevada line carried him through a variety of ecological systems. The Camp Usonia site is very rocky, with large granite ridges probably ten or fifteen feet high in places and running in parallel lines through the site. Between the ridges are relatively sandy areas where most of the camp activities take place. The folk culture of Camp Usonia exists on several levels. There is the folk culture of the individual patrols—a folk culture determined to some extent by the dynamics of the folk culture of early–adolescent white, middle-class males.Less

‘Mask in Motion’: Dialect Spaces and Class Representation

in Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World

This chapter turns to the performative techniques adopted and developed by Frederick Douglass during the early stages of his public career. A consideration of his use and manipulation of popular and ... More

This chapter turns to the performative techniques adopted and developed by Frederick Douglass during the early stages of his public career. A consideration of his use and manipulation of popular and populist forms during his early career is reported, highlighting the subversive effect of the carnivalesque on the parameters of élite national identity. Additionally, the chapter investigates the degree to which Douglass appropriated the tropes of minstrelsy, its stock characters, and use of dialect spaces. The degree of overdetermination with regard to class, race, culture, and authenticity was clear in Douglass's own remarks addressing minstrelsy, and he often engaged with the image and mask of the trickster and minstrel. Moreover, his oratory offers a point through which the rhetorical possibility of folk culture, the carnival audience, and the play between non-modern and Enlightenment invocations of politico-cultural space may be studied.Less

“Bawn in a Brier-patch” and Frontier Bred: Joel Chandler Harris’s Debt to the Humor of the Old South

Gretchen Martin

in Southern Frontier Humor: New Approaches

This chapter examines the “intertextualization of southern folk culture, black and white,” the latter that of southern frontier humor, in some of Joel Chandler Harris’s lesser-known stories. It ... More

This chapter examines the “intertextualization of southern folk culture, black and white,” the latter that of southern frontier humor, in some of Joel Chandler Harris’s lesser-known stories. It considers how Harris discernibly draws on the antebellum southern humor genre in a variety of ways in such works as “Teague Poteet: A Sketch of the Hog Mountain Range,” “A Conscript’s Christmas,” “Blue Dave,” “Balaam and his Master,” and “Where’s Duncan?” In “Where’s Duncan?” Harris employs the frame device to successfully fuse traits of southern frontier with those of the African American trickster. He also uses signifying, together with different literary traditions, to debunk nostalgic fantasies of the Old South, especially stereotypes of African Americans and non-elite whites, in order to defuse white America’s growing hostility toward blacks.Less

Richard Seaman’s Presence within Florida’s Soundscape

Gregory Hansen

in The Florida Folklife Reader

In 2001, the Florida Department of State honored fiddler Richard Seaman with a Folk Heritage Award. The award was in recognition of Seaman’s old-time fiddling and of his gifts as a storyteller, as ... More

In 2001, the Florida Department of State honored fiddler Richard Seaman with a Folk Heritage Award. The award was in recognition of Seaman’s old-time fiddling and of his gifts as a storyteller, as well as his contributions to Florida’s next generation of fiddlers. This chapter explores Seaman’s life and art, and his contributions as a fiddler and storyteller in shaping Florida’s soundscape. It looks at Seaman’s “old-time fiddling” style and old-time music, as well as the role of fiddling in Florida’s folk culture.Less

Introduction: The Most Documented Region

Scott L. Matthews

in Capturing the South: Imagining America's Most Documented Region

The introduction explores why the South became known as America’s “most documented” region beginning in the 1940s and into the twenty-first century. It argues that documentarians saw the region as a ... More

The introduction explores why the South became known as America’s “most documented” region beginning in the 1940s and into the twenty-first century. It argues that documentarians saw the region as a fertile place to do fieldwork for two main reasons. First, the region possessed unique and seemingly fragile folk cultures in need of preservation before modern influences erased them. Second, the region possessed seemingly endemic problems associated with its racial caste system and agricultural economies that needed documentation, study, and reform. The introduction also provides an overview of how historians and theorists defined “documentary” throughout the twentieth century and how and why some black and white southerners resisted the intrusion of documentarians into their lives. Additionally, it traces the history of documentary fieldwork in the South from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century and demonstrates how the tradition’s dominant themes developed during this time, particularly in the travel writings and sketches of Basil Hall, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jonathan Baxter Harrison and others. Finally, it highlights the distinguishing features of twentieth-century documentary by emphasizing the role of Progressive and New Deal reform impulses, the Folk Revival and Civil Rights Movement, and the development of portable recording technologies.Less

African American and West Indian Folklife in South Florida

Joyce M. Jackson

in The Florida Folklife Reader

Miami, which encompasses most of Dade County, is an evolving metropolis where diverse populations have historically exchanged cultural ideas. This diversity is evident in the city’s black population, ... More

Miami, which encompasses most of Dade County, is an evolving metropolis where diverse populations have historically exchanged cultural ideas. This diversity is evident in the city’s black population, who came not only from the United States, but also from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. This chapter examines some aspects of the folklife of two groups of African Diasporas in Miami: African Americans and West Indians. It looks at African American folk culture, which includes the songs and music, religion, arts and crafts, and occupational skills that African Americans brought from both rural agricultural areas and other urban centers. The chapter also discusses West Indian music and song, narrative traditions such as storytelling, foodways, and celebrations like the Carnival.Less