The book is organized in Folklore Units. Each Folklore Unit has Context and may have one or more Metacontexts with citations of works of great philosophers or writers; hence, the title of the book is Metafolklore. The book covers the life of immigrants from the USSR in the U.S., remembers life in Russia, and gradually concentrates on the modus operandi of the KGB, FBI, CIA, NYPD, NSA, ECHELON, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Al, and ISI. It covers frontiers of legal theory of surveillance. What distinguishes this book is the intensely personal account of the events and issues.
First published in 1996. For most of the time since the Grimm brothers first contrasted the fairy tale (Märchen) and the legend (Sage), the former has enjoyed the greater reputation among folklorists. Only in recent years, and with the work of such scholars as Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith, has it been recognized that—both as art and as news—the legend is now central to contemporary culture in a way that the Märchen no longer is. The present book is the first collection of essays on legend to appear in English since 1971. Nevertheless, its publication consolidates a gradual shift which has taken place over the last two decades, in which English-language scholarship has taken the lead in the study of certain kinds of legends—variously dubbed modern horror legends, urban legends, urban myths or, here, contemporary legends.
By defining folklore as artistic communication in small groups, Dan Ben-Amos led the discipline of Folklore in new directions. In Folklore Concepts, Henry Glassie and Elliott Oring have curated a selection of Ben-Amos's groundbreaking essays that explore folklore as a category in cultural communication and as a subject of scholarly research. Ben-Amos's work is well-known for sparking lively debate that often centers on why his definition intrinsically acknowledges tradition rather than expresses its connection forthright. Without tradition among people, there would be no art or communication, and tradition cannot accomplish anything on its own—only people can. Ben-Amos's focus on creative communication in communities is woven into the themes of the theoretical essays in this volume, through which he advocates for a better future for folklore scholarship. Folklore Concepts traces Ben-Amos's consistent efforts over the span of his career to review and critique the definitions, concepts, and practices of Folklore in order to build the field's intellectual history. In examining this history, Folklore Concepts answers foundational questions about what folklorists are doing, how they are doing it, and why.
"This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the “folkloresque.” With “folkloresque,” Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline.Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling and comedy, and even popular science writing all commonly incorporate elements from tradition or draw on basic folklore genres to inform their structure. Through three primary modes—integration, portrayal, and parody—the collection offers a set of heuristic tools for analysis of how folklore is increasingly used in these commercial and mass-market contexts.The Folkloresque challenges disciplinary and genre boundaries; suggests productive new approaches for interpreting folklore, popular culture, literature, film, and contemporary media; and encourages a rethinking of traditional works and older interpretive paradigms."
It's no secret that fun is important to American college students, but it is unusual for scholars to pay attention to how undergraduates represent and reflect on their partying. Linguist and anthropologist Chaise LaDousa explores the visual manifestations of collegiate fun in a Midwestern college town where house signs on off-campus student residences are a focal point of college culture. With names like Boot 'N Rally, The Plantation, and Crib of the Rib, house signs reproduce consequential categories of gender, sexuality, race, and faith in a medium students say is benign. Through his analysis of house signs and what students say about them, LaDousa introduces the reader to key concepts and approaches in cultural analysis.
The cross-disciplinary and integrative nature of sociolinguistics is clearly evidenced in this highly regarded, insightful volume. Baumans holistic study brings together the separate fields of folklore, anthropology, linguistics, and literary criticism as they focus on verbal art. The work represented here is a clear assembly of perspectives and methodology of these disciplines from the viewpoint of performanceartistic action and artistic event. The basic principles underlying sociolinguistics (patterned variability and context as revealed through language) provide the coherence. In addition to Baumans useful conceptual framework, four lively, informative essays by leading scholars are included that clarify, illustrate, and amplify in an effort to treat verbal art as performance.
Möbius Media explores the interplay of popular and traditional cultures, reminding readers that expressive cultural forms are never mutually exclusive but exist in a state of creative tension and interconnection, merging and (re)defining one another. With this insightful volume, editors Jeffrey Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster build on their earlier work, The Folkloresque, by considering how folklore is understood and mobilized within a variety of popular discourses and commercial marketplaces. The collection challenges readers to consider the stakes of labeling something as folklore or folk. It demonstrates the rhetorical and political potency of ideas such as traditionality, heritage, and community in storytelling venues (including films, games, and even podcasts), in the construction and policing of genres, and in the selling of commodities. By interrogating popular media and expressions that make use of ideas such as folklore, tradition, authenticity, and heritage, Möbius Media further develops the theoretical applicability of the folkloresque concept and encourages productive interdisciplinary dialogue. Through the lens of the folkloresque, scholars can better see the hidden ideologies that inform the marketplace and influence contemporary modes of communication. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to scholars and students of cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literature, anthropology, and related areas.
Contains over 500 articles Ranging over foodways and folksongs, quiltmaking and computer lore, Pecos Bill, Butch Cassidy, and Elvis sightings, more than 500 articles spotlight folk literature, music, and crafts; sports and holidays; tall tales and legendary figures; genres and forms; scholarly approaches and theories; regions and ethnic groups; performers and collectors; writers and scholars; religious beliefs and practices. The alphabetically arranged entries vary from concise definitions to detailed surveys, each accompanied by a brief, up-to-date bibliography. Special features *More than 2000 contributors *Over 500 articles spotlight folk literature, music, crafts, and more *Alphabetically arranged *Entries accompanied by up-to-date bibliographies *Edited by America's best-known folklore authority
Performance and Ethnography: Dance, Drama, Music revisits the territory of the performance orientation, touching on anthropology, dance, folklore, music and theatre to look for present trends in both the ethnography of performance and performance ethnography. One of the main concerns of this volume is with an embodied, affective and sensory ethnography that privileges encounters between ethnographer, participants and practices as key to understanding and knowledge. Another is the extent to which individuals are shaped by their engagement with ethnographic practice in the midst of migration, diffusion, revival, appropriation and commodification of performance. A third is the interface of academic disciplines with the idea of performance, and the way in which academics and practitioners are drawn to ethnography to better understand, negotiate, perform and profess their diverse fields. Individual chapters include a refreshed interface for performance studies and anthropology through new approaches to ritual; a consideration of performance studies through an ethnography of PSi; the emplaced body as a tool for ethnographic research; somatic practice in dance as a mode of ethnography; artisanal musical instrument making as performance; the commodification of traditional performance; and an introductory overview that reflects shifting ethnographic perspectives on traditional performances.
