Everything is folklore!

A few days ago, I was going through an anthropology book list (as a subject librarian, I have to go through lists and catalogs in my subject area so I can decide what to buy for the library), and I chanced upon this title: Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday. Immediately, I thought, oh this is a book about folklore. As a folklorist, I was curious about what it was about specifically. However, when I looked at the description, the first thing I saw was a review, which says that the book “is a groundbreaking intervention into the burgeoning field of everyday life studies.” The publisher’s description itself says that it “looks at the seemingly banal world of objects, work, daily media, and food, and finds there a scintillating array of passionate experience…[It] examines our relationship to familiar objects (a favourite chair), repetitive work (housework, typing), media (distracted television viewing and radio listening) and food (specifically the food of multicultural Britain).”

My first thought was: um, when did folklore become “everyday life studies”? From the title, I already knew that it was obviously on everyday things, everyday activities. And that’s exactly what folklore is. Say what?, you’re probably asking. Sure, folklore is about those things that people generally think about when they hear the word: folktales, old traditions,traditional costumes, old stuff. And some folklorist still study that stuff, especially since there are still many groups out there who have maintained their old ways.

But it’s also about lots of other things. If you think about it, folk = the common people and lore = knowledge, so folklore is the knowledge of everyday people. And that includes knowledge of/about objects (material culture), activities (customs, traditions), food, occupations, beliefs, stories, songs, crafts, and so on. People in modern societies have their own lore, and many folklorists study that, too.

Folklore is a dynamic discipline. As the folks and their ways change or evolve, then that gives folklorists new areas for study. Though, paraphrasing Rodney Dangerfield, folklore gets no respect, the field has been around a long time. Scholars may try to come up with new terms for it to make it seem more acceptable or academic, such as pop culture studies, cultural studies, or everyday life studies, but in the end, it’s really still folklore. Whether they or you or anyone else likes it or not, pretty much everything is folklore.