Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Folk?

0429194 - FLÚ 2015 RIV SK eng J - Journal Article
Feinberg, Joseph Grim
Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Folk?
Slovenský národopis. Roč. 61, č. 5 (2013), s. 548-560. ISSN 1335-1303. E-ISSN 1339-9357
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : tradition * folklore * folklore studies * reconceptualization * authenticity * the politics of folklore
Subject RIV: AJ - Letters, Mass-media, Audiovision
http://www.uet.sav.sk/files/etno5-2013-text-web.pdf

The idea of 'folklore' has been intensely criticized in recent years. This essay takes these criticisms as its point of departure, offering its own proposal for critically reexamining and reconceptualizing - but not abandoning - the idea of folklore. The author argues that a serious engagement with the idea of 'the folk' can serve as an entry point for understanding the symbolic ambiguity as well as the social significance and political power of what scholars call (or used to call) folklore. Scholars should neither uncritically accept the ideology of the folk, nor hastily banish the idea to the safe realm of the 'emic' as if it had no bearing on the way we as scholars think. If the study of folklore has relevance in today's world, it is above all because of the unusual notion that some kinds of expression are conditioned by some kind of social entity that can be called a folk, which continues to provide the most productive basis for a scholarly discipline studying folklore.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0234352