Contents
for
Journal of Folklore Research
volume 45, number 1
(Grand Theory)
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Contents for Journal of Folklore Research volume 45, number 1
Lee Haring
America's Antitheoretical Folkloristics / 1
Abstract: Articles in this special issue, revised from an American Folklore Society "forum" in October 2005, seek to answer the question "Why is there no 'Grand Theory' in folkloristics?" The collective answer is that American folklorists don't care much for theory: having left behind the past orientation of their predecessors, they prefer to focus on the actualities of vernacular practice. The American conception of folklore moves its professionals away from the abstract towards the concrete--towards situated interaction among human beings. American folklorists are more likely to accept method than theory; their theoretical insights have turned into method. Their master Dell Hymes advocated starting "from community definitions of situation, activity, purpose, genre, and discover[ing] validly the ways in which communicative means are organized in terms of them." That program is method, not theory. Communities do indeed make their own definitions of situation and the rest; so do folklorists, with the result that i's easy to see the point at which "folklore" entered the vocabulary of their community. Attempts to frame an American Grand Theory now encounter the dissolution of folklore as a distinct field of study. Because folklore can't be separated from other human activities, except as a product of one moment in the thinking of a certain interpretive community, the term could well be turned over to traditional artists and those who "interpret their traditions before audiences outside of customary performance contexts."
Gary Alan Fine
The Sweep of Knowledge: The Politics of Grand and Local Theory in Folkloristics / 11
Abstract: Theory creates community in an academic discipline. The concern with generalizations ties scholars together in common projects, establishes networks, creates boundaries, and provides for a disciplinary status with other fields. Theory builds identity, both within and outside knowledge domains. The uncertainty of a self-conscious interest in folkloristic theory, both grand and local, poses political and intellectual challenges for the vitality of our discipline.
Margaret A. Mills
What('s) Theory? / 19
Abstract: Cultural theory is (a) interpretive, even metaphorical, (b) interdependent with method, and (c) developed in dialogue with a discursive community. Interpretive theory should thus be judged not for sovereignty�its power to exclude or preclude other theories�but for aptness: resonance with a knowable meaning system. High/low and local/ grand theorizing are discussed in relation to politics of knowledge.
Richard Bauman
The Philology of the Vernacular / 29
Abstract: I suggest in this essay that the prevailing theoretical orientation of American folklore study might best be identified as the philology of the vernacular. In the course of the essay, I outline the major tenets of this orientation, identify its principal scholarly inflections, and suggest some of its potential implications.
Dorothy Noyes
Humble Theory / 37
Abstract: Folklorists can resolve their theory anxieties by embracing not grand but humble theory. Humble theory informs and is informed by ethnography and practice. It addresses how- rather than why-questions: the middle ground between lived experience and putative transcendent laws. In this zone we can build on our disciplinary legacy.
John W. Roberts
Grand Theory, Nationalism, and American Folklore / 45
Abstract: A difficulty in producing grand theory in folklore study stems from the fact that it is a discipline with many origin narratives deeply influenced by nationalistic imperatives. The influence of nationalism makes it virtually impossible to have a coherent disciplinary project capable of producing grand theory. Although American folklorists have tended to deny nationalism as an influence on their conception of the field, I demonstrate that it has played an important role. This historical denial has led to an apolitical disciplinary project in the United States, one that has failed in its attempts to create theoretical models capable of responding to socio-political changes in the society and the academy.
James R. Dow
There Is No Grand Theory in Germany, and for Good Reason / 55
Abstract: German-speaking folklorists have no single "grand theory" of folklore; indeed a formal "farewell" was taken in 1970. This leave-taking was a result of abuses of Volkskunde during the years of National Socialism, as well as the "no experiments" approach of the postwar years. The rejection of a grand theory has led to a kind of dilettantism in the name of a broader understanding of culture. A recent suggestion would place empirical cultural studies within its historical folkloristic boundaries.
Newton Garver
What Theory Is / 63
Abstract: The word theory covers a multitude of virtues and vices, sometimes counting as knowledge and sometimes contrasting with knowledge. But theory is as important as observation in science. We all take force, gravity, electrons, mass, and continental drift as genuine aspects of reality even though they are theoretical rather than observational (empirical) features. We all also recognize that the concept of luminiferous ether that was generally accepted at the outset of the nineteenth century is a theoretical concept that was discarded because of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The paradigm for scientific theory is Newton's theory of force, which incorporates the two theoretical concepts of force and gravity. Huygens formulated the laws of centrifugal force, Galileo the laws of freely-falling bodies, and Kepler the laws of planetary motion. Newton showed that each was a special case of the general laws of motion. He thereby integrated three apparently disparate fields of mechanics, explained the empirical laws by subsuming them under the general laws of the theory of force, and provided a heuristic model for further explanations. The best theories are explanatory, integrative, and heuristic. Most scholars recognize this paradigm. Nonetheless, theories today are too varied to come under any single rubric. A particular danger in the humanities and social sciences is that explanations there invariably have a moral dimension, raising the specter of moralism hidden in any and every theory. This essay articulates the paradigm and the cautions without attempting to evaluate grand theory in folkloristics.
Kathleen Stewart
Weak Theory in an Unfinished World / 71
Abstract: This article suggests the value of a kind of cultural theory that attends to the cultural poesis of forms of living. Its objects are textures and rhythms, trajectories, and modes of attunement, attachment, and composition. The point is not to judge the value of these objects or to somehow get their representation "right" but to wonder where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already present in them.
Kirin Narayan
"Or in Other Words": Recasting Grand Theory / 83
Abstract: Revisiting C. Wright Mills' portrayal of grand theory in The Sociological Imagination, I extend his insights to reflect on theory more generally. Mills' critique of Talcott Parsons engages both the conceptual substance and rhetorical style of grand theory. I build on Mills to argue for the value of flexibly moving between (1) levels of generality and (2) registers of language, when using theory. Folklorists acquire theory from interactions in fieldwork as well as from disciplinary training and from larger interdisciplinary conversations. These different kinds of theory represent perspectives embedded in social worlds and associated power relations. Setting these different kinds of theory, with their associated viewpoints, into dialogue generates new formulations. Further, while theoretical concepts often form a specialized vocabulary that is a shorthand for the initiated but impenetrable to lay people, the ideas conveyed through this shorthand can usefully be translated, following Mills, into clear and intelligible language.
Charles L. Briggs
Disciplining Folkloristics / 91
Abstract: I explore two "ideological styles" associated with twentieth-century constructions of folkloristics, particularly in the United States. One consists of "boundary-work," in science-studies scholar Thomas Gieryn's terms; quintessentially embodied in the work of Richard Dorson, boundary-work constructs an autonomous discipline that must be defended against amateurs and scholars from other disciplines. A second style, associated with ethnography-of-speaking-folklore and performance approaches, stresses theory in linking folklorists with anthropologists, linguists, and literary scholars and developing new analytic frames. I suggest that theorizing should be construed not as a threat to disciplinary autonomy nor a locus of racial and academic authority but as a means of challenging the Eurocentric underpinnings of folkloristics and developing more creative alternatives through a radical democratic politics of theory that links theorizing the vernacular with vernacular theorizing.