In his 1971 book American Folklore and the Historian, noted Americanist and folklorist Richard Dorson challenged this stratified view of American society. In contrasting diagrams he represented the accepted view of folk culture at the bottom of American civilization, with popular, mass, and elite cultures resting above on successive levels and compared that view with his own suggested alternative model in which folk culture connects through lines of influence with each of popular, mass, and elite culture. In other words, Dorson argued that folk culture is present, though perhaps hidden, within every level of American culture. Folk culture is not the unfamiliar traditions of a separate American "folk"; it is instead a foundation for all of American culture. Most contemporary folklorists agree with both Dorson and his student Alan Dundes, who closed his article "Who Are the Folk?" (in Interpreting Folklore, 1980) with the line "Who are the folk? Among others, we are!"
This subtle difference between how the two disciplines view "the folk" explains in part why the term folk culture is used more often by scholars who are primarily Americanists rather than folklorists. Nevertheless, the term and the concept of folk culture is still quite viable and has some important attributes that set it apart. What is folk culture, then, if it is not simply the opposite of elite culture? Folk culture is customary; it is conservative; and it is communal.
The first attribute, customary, suggests that folk culture is passed along by informal means, by word of mouth or by example and informal apprenticeship, by observing those who already practice the tradition. Folk culture in this sense is holistic; it includes all aspects of life that can be and are passed along through face-to-face interactions and observations. Among American folklorists, the term folklife is often used for this more inclusive realm of all customary genres and behaviors. At the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Folklore and Folklife, under the tutelage of such scholars as Don Yoder and MacEdward Leach, a number of American folk-culture specialists emerged and produced a substantial body of work that quietly celebrates the variety of American folklife. In a still useful Guide for Collectors of Oral Traditions and Folk Cultural Material in Pennsylvania (1968), Leach and Henry Glassie suggested the following categories of regional folklife: tales, songs, dances and games, riddles, proverbs and speech, beliefs, customs, and material culture. Among this last group they included everything from foodways to Finnish saunas, from baskets and pottery to houses and barns. The adjective folk-cultural nearly always suggests this comprehensive list of material, customary, and oral traditions, along with the study of how these all play a role in the daily life of the people who create and use them.
A shining example of a folk-cultural study is Glassie's 1982 book Passing the Time in Ballymenone. It is an interpretive work that ties together history, folklore, cultural geography, politics, linguistics, architecture, and philosophy�all supported by the author's substantial ethnographic work. We hear legends and tales; we see folk houses and dishware displays�all the kinds of things Leach and Glassie suggested should be the focus of field research. Such a work would clearly represent the kind of interdisciplinary study associated with American studies if it were in fact dealing with American culture, but its subject is a county in Northern Ireland. Is there a reason why such in-depth studies of folk culture are less likely to be written in America?
We can see a hint of a reason in the second attribute associated with folk culture: conservation. To say that folk culture is conservative is not so much a statement on the political leanings of "the folk" as a statement on the folklore process as it is found among self-identified folk groups. In the American context the clearest example of a conservative culture steadfastly maintaining its traditions can be seen in the many Amish settlements throughout rural America. As Donald Kraybill points out in The Riddle of Amish Culture (1989), the Amish make every effort to keep themselves separate from the rest of American culture, and they purposefully adhere to practices and beliefs that the more progressive culture around them has long since replaced with increasingly innovative behaviors. In effect, they have as a group decided to embrace folklore's conservative side and reject the other face of folklore that encourages innovation within tradition.
In general, one thinks of folklore as more conservative than innovative, and there is a reason for this. In 1954 in a classic article in the Journal of American Folklore, William Bascom claimed, on the basis of years of research, that the overarching function of all folklore is to maintain the stability of culture. In other words, folklore serves to make sure that what is already a part of a culture stays a part of the culture. One can see this even in the very contemporary genre of the "urban legend." For example, there was a story circulating of a man who meets a woman at a bar, goes to a hotel room with her, and wakes to find himself in a bathtub of ice with a note nearby telling him to call the emergency number 911. The twist at the end is that he has been drugged and has had a kidney removed. The kidney, we assume, is intended for the illegal organ transplant market. But the story, along with commenting on this contemporary concern with the need for human organs, also reinforces the conservative moral message that people should not engage in casual sex with strangers.
Wherever folklore is found, it will have some conservative dimension to it, but the individuals who use the folklore in their own expressive performances (whether in telling a legend, singing a song, creating a quilt, or building a barn) will decide whether to introduce any changes, and their audience or consumers will decide whether or not to accept those changes. When the pressure to maintain the tradition with little change is paramount, one has an instance of communal reinforcement often found among self-identified folk groups. Folk culture is thus not only customary and conservative but also communal.
Perhaps the most obvious question for Americanists studying folk culture is: Is there an American folk culture? If one part of the definition of folk culture is its communal nature, can we assert that there is a folk culture shared by all Americans? Again, this was an issue of great concern to Dorson, founding chair of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University (in 1957) and one of the first Ph.D.'s to graduate (in 1943) from Harvard's program in the "History of American Civilization," so instrumental in launching the American studies movement. Dorson argued that a sense of "the American experience" was essential in what could rightfully be called American folklore. In a 1978 article in the Journal of the Folklore Institute, titled "Folklore in America vs. American Folklore," Dorson expressed concern over the disregard for history in purely communal or group-based definitions of folklore. It was not a concern most folklorists shared, but it did raise again the question of whether simply being a group in America was sufficient for identifying the folklore of the group as "American."
Since the days when those controversies occupied at least some folklorists and Americanists, there has been an increasing acceptance of any subgroup in America (in other words, any folk group) as a representative of "American" folk culture. Current use of the term folk culture among Americanists recognizes the variety of folk groups that are a part of the larger American culture and excludes no group on the basis of either its recent emergence as a group (for example, AIDS [acquired immune deficiency syndrome] patients and caregivers) or its urban or elite trappings. Nevertheless, there remains the requirement that folk culture be shared by an identifiable group and that it exhibit the features of customary or informal learning and conservatism.
What this means is that, while there is little talk of a single homogeneous American folk culture, there are many studies of American folk cultures tied to specific regions, occupations, religious beliefs, and ethnicities. Vance Randolph, for example, was an indefatigable collector of folklore in the Ozarks. His many books of tales and legends document not only the kinds of stories found there but also a clear understanding on the part of the residents of that region about how they are viewed by outsiders. This "esoteric-exoteric factor," as it was called by folklorist William Hugh Jansen, is a significant aspect of all intercultural exchanges. It is an internal recognition within a group that the cultural differences between "us and them" are an important part of their own folklore and their own sense of identity. Like the Amish, most folk cultures in the United States define themselves in opposition to the larger mass-American culture.
Besides the folk culture of the Ozarks, other regional folk cultures include such groups as the often-studied "hillbillies" of Appalachia, the Maine down-easters, the Louisiana Cajuns, the Pennsylvania Dutch, and the Hispanics of the American Southwest. As Dorson found in his classic collection Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States (1964), other factors besides simply location often influence the notion of region. For the Maine down-easters, for example, much of the folk culture of the region reflects the maritime occupations of its inhabitants. Dorson's title story, "Buying the Wind," is about a sea captain who throws a quarter into the ocean and is immediately blown four days off course. The captain comments that if he had known it was so cheap, he would have bought only half as much. While the story is tied to the region, it is also specifically tied to the occupation of sailing and an earlier time period when boats and ships would not have had motors to save them from a becalmed sea.
Along with a longstanding interest in regionalism, the field of American studies has expanded its attention to include a more general "sense of place." In his book Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place (1993), Kent Ryden addresses directly this connection between a local sense of place and the kind of folk culture found, in this case, in a mining community in northern Idaho. Others have extended this interest in place into the urban setting as well. One of Dorson's last works was a study of the folk culture of Gary, Indiana, which he titled Land of the Millrats: Urban Folklore in Indiana's Calumet Region (1981). As Dorson was delighted to note, the residents of the area refer to their urban landscape as "de region," and they see themselves as sharing an identifiable culture. The "millrats"�those who worked at the steel mills�were a central part of their identity and their folk culture.
Other examples of American folk culture include ethnic groups: the many tribes of Native Americans, the many Asian populations, African Americans, Chicanos, Swedes, and so on; borderland cultures such as those found along the Arizona and Mexico border; religious groups such as the Mormons of Utah, Pentecostals, and urban Catholics; occupational groups such as loggers, teachers, taxi drivers, students, firefighters, or train porters. The traditions they share are consciously maintained. Their folk culture is customary; it is conservative; and it is communal.
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
American Fokllife Center (Library of Congress)
Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts
Trail Tribes: Traditional and Contemporary Native Culture
Encyclopedia of American Studies, ed. Simon J. Bronner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), s.v. "Folk Culture" (by Sandra K. Dolby), http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/view?aid=156 (accessed August 23, 2018).
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