Roger D. Abrahams

Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory of Folklore

THE GULF BETWEEN the literary and anthropological folklorist is nowhere more clearly seen than in the ways in which the two view the form and performance of elements of traditional expressive culture. The literary folklorist, trained in the analysis of form and distribution, looks at the construction of the specific traditional item in order to discuss its constituent elements and the variations which

Negotiating Respect: Patterns of Presentation among Black Women

traditions of black women in particular. However, a fairly large body of information about such sex-specific expressive capacities can be found in the autobiographical writings of black women themselves and in social scientific descriptions, a literature that tells us something about the content, if not always the devices and techniques, of black female presentations. To get at this material from a folkloristic perspective, it is necessary to analyze more conversational traditions than folklorists are generally committed to studying. Presentational devices are not unique to black women or characteristic of them but are common to all segments of the black community and as such they need to be studied to gain a fuller knowledge of what is unique to the female repertoire of presentational strategies and styles. This essay will attempt to unite the concerns of role theory and commonsense social structure as pursued by symbolic interactionists with the more usual perspectives of a performance-centered theory of folkloristics.

The Shaping of Folklore Traditions in the British West Indies

Most of the countries in the New World were created by economically motivated European colonizers who invaded this hemisphere and defeated the resident populations. The dominant cultural life of these areas is based on the institutions, values and expressions carried by these seekers after empire, as modified by conditions and cultures encountered in the new lands. This is as true of the West Indies as it is of the various larger regions of the two Americas, but the modifying factors are more numerous in these small Caribbean islands. Rarely is there just one European tradition affecting the culture of each of these islands; as European possessions during this era of large-scale wars in Europe, most of them changed hands repeatedly. More important, the establishment of the plantation system and the resultant waves of imported field workers from alien, non-European societies created a cultural conglomerate of incredible variety.

Questions of Criolian Contagion

This essay explores the plantation system as it operated in the Greater Caribbean in the formation of creole communities. Special focus is given to the two kinds of markets found in such communities, and to the ways in which African approaches to work and play entered into the rich mix of cultural forms growing out of the plantation experiment.

Antick dispositions and the perilous politics of culture : Costume and culture in Jacobean England and America

This article explores political elaborations of local custom in both Old and New England in the 17th century, focusing on the role of the antiquarian virtuoso. In the Cotswold Olympicks, Robert Dover built on the Stuart use of the rural calendar to secure the countryside against Puritan opposition. Thomas Mortons notorious Maypole of Merrymount created a space of trade and cultural exchange with Native Americans that threatened Puritan authority in more ways than one.

Alan Lomax (1915-2002)

Let us mourn the death of Alan Lomax, on July 19, 2002, in Sarasota, Florida. He was eightyseven years old. Lomax was the person most responsible for the great explosion of interest in American folksong throughout the mid-twentieth century. His importance in the daily work of our profession cannot be adequately eulogized, so powerful and various were his efforts in bringing musicians to public notice. His work—first in partnership with his father, the great John Avery Lomax, and then by himself— brought the very idea of American diversity and creativity to phonograph recordings, to television, and to stage, screen, and radio. His work provided the model of how collections should be carried out and made publicly available. Lomax’s writings and recordings brought such figures as Leadbelly, Jelly Roll Morton, and Muddy Waters to national notice. His prodigious energy and enthusiasm carried over into his work at the many folk festivals that emerged during the folksong revival, which he guided as a conceptualizer, presenter, and more than occasional performer. Wherever he appeared, his eloquence on the stage was as powerful as his writings had been. With the cold war years of the 1940s and 1950s, during which all deeply held sentiment that ran against the stream was under suspicion by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Lomax retreated to England. As an expansive intellectual, he broadened and deepened his interests in expressive culture. Not only did he produce the great Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music series, but he also began to develop the cantometrics and choreometics project as a systematic means of understanding and analyzing the expressive diversity of musical styles around the world. His last productive years were spent producing teaching materials relating to this world-encompassing project and to the idea of the global jukebox by which this diversity of styles might be preserved. Perhaps the best way of memorializing Lomax would be to read again his works, from the American Folksong volumes, the Leadbelly book, and the Jelly Roll opus to the superb book, The Land Where the Blues Began (1993). Or one could listen once more to the recordings and shows he produced from the late thirties through the rest of the twentieth century. Happily, they are still emerging as all of his collectanea is being issued and newly edited, using the most up-to-date production techniques. Lomax’s long suit was to recognize the best of the old and to make it public by using the newest broadcast technology. Lomax lived to the fullness of his days. As he became increasingly infirm in his later years, his beloved daughter, Anna Chairatakis, took mighty good care of him.

Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts

Preface Part I. Initiations: 1. Introduction: the exaggeration of cultures 2. Shades of the history of ethnology Part II. Systematics Notwithstanding: 3. Social theories with a difference 4. Assorted semiotics and dialectics Part III. Essays in Exotic Texts: 5. Jacobean ethnology: An east-west intercourse 6. Balinese incest recaptured: a discourse 7. Structuralism/Romanticism, reciprocally 8. Conclusion: dead moons or eclipsed? Appendices A-C Notes Bibliography Index.