The Social Entities of Folklore as Everyday Peace: A Participatory Playback Theater Research

Abstract

The present work explores the interweaving of folklore with two scenes from participatory playback theater research, conducted with individuals in migration at the La Roseraie integration center in Geneva, Switzerland. It assesses folklore’s prominence to create conditions for everyday peace. Notably, this research sought to explore how we collectively narrate and enact our unofficial knowledge about the world, whereby everyday peace emerges. Often unquestioned and taken for granted, everyday peace takes shape through performing, imagining and experimenting with social frames and meanings. These collective reflections offer alternative, yet fundamental ways of establishing and communicating personal and collective peace, whereby broadly developing creative conflict cultures. Therefore, this article demonstrates the social significance of creative processes which evoke a deeply rooted folklore capability to unite individual differences in social commonalities and relations.