Simon J. Bronner

American folklore studies : an intellectual history

Folklore. Washington Irving and Mark Twain used it in their fiction; Sigmund Freud and William James incorporated it into their work; Henry Ford and Franklin Roosevelt promoted it. Their efforts were set against the background of folklorists who brought collections of traditional tales, songs, and crafts to the attention of a modernizing society. The ideas of these folklorists influenced how Americans thought about the character of their society and the directions it was taking. Here for the first time is a history of American folkloristic ideas and the figures who shaped them. Simon Bronner puts these ideas in cultural context, showing the interconnection of folklore studies with historical events, social changes, and intellectual movements. He follows the beginnings of American folklore studies in the antiquarian literature of the 1830s through the rise of folklore societies in the 1880s to the emergence of an independent discipline in the 1950s. In this progression, Bronner identifies several major themes tying folklore studies to intellectual history: first, the unearthing of a hidden, usable past; second, the charting of time and space; and third, the structuring of communication. More than a chronological or biographical history, this book is an interpretation of folkloristic ideas and their relationship to American society.

Modern Anthropological Trends and Their Folkloristic Relationships

Abstract An increased diversity of concerns and methods has marked the modern growth of anthropological studies. Examples are the shift by some researchers from primitive to peasant andurban societies, the proliferation of symbolic and structural modes of analysis, and the development of the ethnography of communication. Folklorists have shared many of anthropologys modern trends, especially evident in the ethnography of communication; and anthropologists have continued to utilize folkloric data such as myths, games, riddles, and beliefs for their studies. In the following sections I identify some modern trends of anthropology and discuss their relationships with folklife research, particularly froman American disciplinary perspective.

Questioning the Future: Polling Americans at the Turn of the New Millennium

Elected in 1996 to serve as President into a new century, Bill Clinton announced a national mood of expectation in his second inaugural address: “It is our great good fortune that time and chance have put us not only at the edge of a new century, in a new millennium, but on the edge of a bright new prospect in human affairs — a moment that will define our course, and our character, for decades to come.” It was a moment, in short, when Americans, used to thinking ahead, were asked intensely about the future. Known for his close attention to polling data in policy making, Clinton responded to a frequently reported categorization of Americans during the 1990s as self-absorbed. Clintons homespun message in his second inaugural address called on Americans planning their individual destinies to think collectively when he said simply, “[T]he future is up to us.” As the year 2000 approached, American polls repeatedly measured the national “mood” in light of individual beliefs about the future. Gallup, Torrance, Zogby, CNN (Cable News Network), USA Today , ABC News, and the Pew Research Center, among others, polled Americans about their feelings for the impending millennium “event” and their hopes and fears for the next year, generation, and century. Based on the experience of the last turn of the century, many publishers, educators, and politicians encouraged reflections on the century just past as much as the era ahead, but it was a rare poll that actually asked Americans about their view of the past. To be sure, authorities were queried for the greatest events, presidents, books, films, and television shows of the last century, but it was as much a sign of the difference in their historical perspective from the man or woman on the street as it was some national reflective urge.

From landsmanshaften to vinkln: Mediating community among Yiddish speakers in America

Vinkln (“corners”) in America have spread since the 1970s as an organizational strategy by Yiddish-speaking, non-pietistic, East European Jewish immigrants, many of whom have a Holocaust experience. The vinkln provide a privatized, immersive experience for Yiddish language and culture as a way to offer community identity to Yiddish speakers within the wider Jewish community. They arose out of landsmanschaften, or “hometown associations,” in the early twentieth century, but the vinkln function to ritually reproduce culture rather than offer mutual aid based on old-country affiliation. Although secularized, the organized social structure and performed communication of the vinkln invoke rituals and roles of Jewish religious services from traditional community experience. They displace old-country affiliations with pronounced loyalties to Israel and America, although the location of Yiddish in performance is often centered in Poland. The vinkln mediate community by suggesting cultural reproduction even as the bonds of language and society among Yiddish speakers are weakening. Its symbols and associations are restricted to an elderly age cohort, and therefore not likely to perpetuate the very culture that its organizers purport to preserve. It is differentiated from other structures of Yiddish conservation and appreciation such as Internet networks and community center conversation groups.

Hare Coursing and the Ethics of Tradition

Abstract The ‘Hunting Act 2004’, known colloquially as ‘the ban’, signalled a monumental legal change, and social divide, in Great Britain. The contentious effect of the bill was to outlaw hunting with dogs in England and Wales after 18 February 2005. Parliament spent over 700 hours debating the ban in 2004, and one index of its political as well as social significance is that the debate consumed more time than military, environmental, social welfare, and economic legislation - although reporters noted that the rhetoric swirling about the Hunting Act involved all of these matters. Especially conspicuous in the battle over the ban were divisive cultural issues raised by the moral and modernist claims of animal rights activists in protest of hunting and the appeals to the preservation of national heritage and rural folk life by hunting supporters. Either venerable traditions or ‘acts of depravity’, depending on the side taken in the acrimonious debate, fox hunting and hare coursing gatherings drew large crowds in the days before the law went into effect.

The Processual Principle in Folk Art, Based on a Study of Wooden Chain Carving

AbstractFolk. Art. Craft. By themselves these brief, piquant words can generate argument and confusion over meaning wherever thinkers meet. In combinations like ‘folk art’ and ‘folk craft’ a noticeable din may arise, particularly, many have claimed, if the thinkers include unreserved art historians and folklorists. To be sure, the 1960s and 1970S witnessed several publications defending (or attacking) the honour and virtue of one or the other discipline. As a teacher of material culture, however, I naturally question strictly exclusive disciplinary camps. True, I am a folklorist by training and temperament; but I am also part of an American Studies Program in a Humanities Division, yet my office and research colleagues sit entrenched in the Behavioral Sciences Wing.