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Full Description
Why is there no "Grand Theory" in the study of folklore? Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) advocated "grand theory," which put the analysis of social phenomena on a new track in the broadest possible terms. Not all sociologists or folklorists accept those broad terms; some still adhere to the empirical level. Through a forum sponsored by the American Folklore Society, the diverse answers to the question of such a theory arrived at substantial agreement: American folklorists have produced little "grand theory." One speaker even found all the theory folklorists need in the history of philosophy. The two women in the forum (Noyes and Mills) spoke in defense of theory that is local, "apt," suited to the audience, and "humble"; the men (Bauman and Fine) reached for something Parsons might have recognized. The essays in this collection, developed from the forum presentations, defend diverse positions, but they largely accept the longstanding concentration in American folkloristics on the quotidian and local.
Contents
Foreword
Michael Dylan Foster and Ray Cashman
Folkloristics in the Twenty-First Century
Alan Dundes
Introduction
America's Antitheoretical Folkloristics
Lee Haring
The Sweep of Knowledge: The Politics of Grand and Local Theory in Folkloristics
Gary Alan Fine
What('s) Theory?
Margaret A. Mills
The Philology of the Vernacular
Richard Bauman
Humble Theory
Dorothy Noyes
Grand Theory, Nationalism, and American Folklore
John W. Roberts
There is No Grand Theory in Germany, and for Good Reason
James R. Dow
Responses
What Theory Is
Newton Garver
Weak Theory in an Unfinished World
Kathleen Stewart
"Or in Other Words": Recasting Grand Theory
Kirin Narayan
Disciplining Folkloristics
Charles L. Briggs
Afterwords
Reflections on Grand Theory, Graduate School, and Intellectual Ballast
Chad Edward Buterbaugh
Ten Years After
Lee Haring
