Year: 1990
Type: article
Abstract: Folkloristics is a Janus-faced enterprise.It looks at the héritage of one's own country with an appréciation that tends to transform scholarly statements into nationalistic propaganda.On the other hand, it is widely comparativistic and able to create international contacts and dependencies that are likely to appall both historians and anthropologists.The question is to what extent the folklorists are themselves aware of the inhérent conflict in the fact that the same folklore materials may be used to glorify the creativity and unique intellectual achievement of a particular tradition community on one hand, and the deep, wide and ancient layers of global traditions on the other.It may be the task of methodological and theoretical work to décidé whether this conflict is real or only apparent, but the fact remains that folk lorists are always running the risk of being labelled either as "nationalists" or "internationalists."The labelling implies that some non-folkloristic overtones are creeping into the discussion: the terms "national" and "international" are never used merely to describe an opposition between different types of research, for example, to say that folklorists are interested in both micro and macro studies of folklore.The overtones and connotations I am referring to are mainly political, historical and culture-ecological.They are political in the sense that once folklore research has been recognised and accepted as a cultural activity and/or an academie discipline, it is given a locus and function in the wider framework of cultural policy defined and sponsored by some non-scholarly community or body.In most cases this has meant that folkloristics has become dépendent upon national cul tural policies.The pluses and minuses of this situation are fairly easy to grasp.Serving national policy may give purpose and économie and social security.Scholars may feel that they are doing real ideological
Source: Ethnologies
DOI: 10.7202/1081657ar
Author: Lauri Honko
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4300677448