Practice of Folklore
Subtitle: Essays Toward a Theory of Tradition
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 382
ISBN-13: 9781496822635
Subjects: Folklore, classification; Folklore, theory, methods, etc.
Description: "Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive 'praxic' perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that "this is the way we do things around here." Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. 'The way we do things' invokes the social basis of 'doing' in practice as cultural and instrumental."--Provided by publisher.