The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. By Barre Toelken. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 204, acknowledgments, prologue, photographs, notes, index. $39.96 cloth, $22.95 paper) In 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAI) required Smithsonian museums to repatriate sensitive Indian objects. In the process, curators were to examine not just archaeological, geographical, biological and anthropological records in determining the cultural affiliation of objects, but also linguistic, folkloric and oral-traditional evidence provided to museums by tribal people. While laws such as NMAI and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 require that federally funded organizations examine their collections in light of Native American testimony, no law demands that scholars approach Native studies with the same level of collaborative engagement. Barre Toelken, in developing his book's title metaphor, observes that because scholars have, in the name of objectivity, distanced themselves from Native cultures, they have focused on (for example) the chemical composition of the "snails" they are studying. In such distancing, scholars have missed "the anguish of snails"-relevant cultural experience with which to inform their research. Toelken argues that subjective involvement is not only valid but necessary for authentic research and for sensitivity to research as it impinges upon Native peoples. After nearly fifty years of successful collaborations with Native people in the West, Toelken's career alone attests to the value of subjective involvement in the analytical discussion of cultures; yet if one had any doubts regarding the merits of this approach, The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West should seal the deal. Toelken uses ordinary, everyday American Indian texts as tools to explore Native worldview and values and in turn demonstrates how Native cultural constructs lead to discoveries about the world. With an emphasis on innovative thinking and using a variety of divergent texts, The Anguish of Snails demonstrates wonderfully that one can learn a tremendous amount about American Indian culture without having to apprentice oneself to a New Age shaman. (Who knew?) Toelken avoids esoteric materials and suggests that to study tribal people one need "simply listen to their voices and watch their performances, their expressions-their freely shared folklore-in the routine of their normal lives" (6). By focusing on texts readily available to outsiders (for example, baskets, moccasins, powwows, carvings, stories, and jokes), Toelken illustrates the validity of a subjective approach and reveals the cultural value of these texts to Native people. Toelken opens his story with a discussion of American Indian material art, demonstrating the significance of Native oral traditions through examination of a specific Tlingit totem pole known as the "Seward shame pole."
{"title":"The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West","authors":"G. M. Hamilton","doi":"10.5860/choice.41-3200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.41-3200","url":null,"abstract":"The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. By Barre Toelken. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 204, acknowledgments, prologue, photographs, notes, index. $39.96 cloth, $22.95 paper) In 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAI) required Smithsonian museums to repatriate sensitive Indian objects. In the process, curators were to examine not just archaeological, geographical, biological and anthropological records in determining the cultural affiliation of objects, but also linguistic, folkloric and oral-traditional evidence provided to museums by tribal people. While laws such as NMAI and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 require that federally funded organizations examine their collections in light of Native American testimony, no law demands that scholars approach Native studies with the same level of collaborative engagement. Barre Toelken, in developing his book's title metaphor, observes that because scholars have, in the name of objectivity, distanced themselves from Native cultures, they have focused on (for example) the chemical composition of the \"snails\" they are studying. In such distancing, scholars have missed \"the anguish of snails\"-relevant cultural experience with which to inform their research. Toelken argues that subjective involvement is not only valid but necessary for authentic research and for sensitivity to research as it impinges upon Native peoples. After nearly fifty years of successful collaborations with Native people in the West, Toelken's career alone attests to the value of subjective involvement in the analytical discussion of cultures; yet if one had any doubts regarding the merits of this approach, The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West should seal the deal. Toelken uses ordinary, everyday American Indian texts as tools to explore Native worldview and values and in turn demonstrates how Native cultural constructs lead to discoveries about the world. With an emphasis on innovative thinking and using a variety of divergent texts, The Anguish of Snails demonstrates wonderfully that one can learn a tremendous amount about American Indian culture without having to apprentice oneself to a New Age shaman. (Who knew?) Toelken avoids esoteric materials and suggests that to study tribal people one need \"simply listen to their voices and watch their performances, their expressions-their freely shared folklore-in the routine of their normal lives\" (6). By focusing on texts readily available to outsiders (for example, baskets, moccasins, powwows, carvings, stories, and jokes), Toelken illustrates the validity of a subjective approach and reveals the cultural value of these texts to Native people. Toelken opens his story with a discussion of American Indian material art, demonstrating the significance of Native oral traditions through examination of a specific Tlingit totem pole known as the \"Seward shame pole.\" ","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2006-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71099193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942. By Tony Russell, with editorial research by Bob Pinson, assisted by the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 1183, acknowledgments, introduction, discography, bibliography, indices. $95.00 cloth) Why would a thousand-page alphabetical list of commercial music recordings from the first half of the twentieth century assembled by a Briton capture the interest of students of American folk music? The answer is that in those early days, the commercial recording companies were doing our fieldwork for us. Not that they knew what they were doing. Still clueless, at this early stage, about their emerging market, they took chances and offered commercial releases of all kinds, thus preserving much music that would today be called folk music or community music. Recordings by white Southern artists came to be known as old-time music, and those by African American artists, race records. There was a multi-ethnic recording enterprise as well. All such commercial music products played a role in the dispersal of tunes and styles throughout the world, flying upon the wings of a new and exciting technology. Though the mode of transmission was still aural/oral, the unseen potential audience was huge. Performance styles and musical repertoires could now be heard worldwide and could therefore be extremely influential, as shown in the present tome's alphabetical entries for Gene Autry, Vernon Dalhart, and Jimmie Rodgers. I have known author Tony Russell since he was editor of the now-defunct British journal Old Time Music (founded in 1971, foundered in year unknown), and have observed the present work's gestation over decades. I remember talk of its promised publication over the years-that it would be "soon." Well, soon has finally happened, and Tony Russell has given birth to a toe-breaker of a tome. We are all relieved and pleased and we hope that the father is doing as well as his offspring appears to be, with no postpartum depression. It was worth the wait: the first three decades of old-time music, a.k.a. hillbilly music and old favorite tunes, both secular and sacred, will be found here in exhaustive but user-friendly detail. Russell begins with capsule histories of the many labels extant during the three decades covered by the discography. He then offers his main text, beautifully laid out and cross-referenced six ways to Sunday-listings of artists, songs, side musicians, release numbers, recording dates. The layout is clean and workable, the indices chockablock: it's a true "compleat" work of love. (Though admittedly a work of this kind can never be called complete, I predict that any additions or adjustments to Russell's work will be minor.) There are many discographic reference works with roughly the same cutoff date (somewhat arbitrary, but any such cutoff point is), because during and after World War II the record business and its technologies ch
乡村音乐唱片:1921-1942年的唱片集。托尼·拉塞尔，鲍勃·平森编辑研究，乡村音乐名人堂和博物馆工作人员协助。纽约:牛津大学出版社，2004。第xi + 1183页，致谢，介绍，目录，参考书目，索引。为什么一份由英国人按字母顺序整理的、长达一千页的二十世纪上半叶商业音乐唱片清单会引起研究美国民间音乐的学生的兴趣呢?答案是，在早期，商业唱片公司为我们做田野调查。他们并不知道自己在做什么。在这个早期阶段，他们仍然对新兴市场一无所知，他们抓住机会，提供各种商业发行，从而保留了许多今天被称为民间音乐或社区音乐的音乐。南方白人艺术家的唱片被称为老式音乐，非裔美国艺术家的唱片被称为种族唱片。还有一个多民族的唱片公司。所有这些商业音乐产品都在音乐和风格在世界各地的传播中发挥了作用，乘着一种令人兴奋的新技术的翅膀飞翔。虽然传播方式仍然是听觉/口头，但看不见的潜在受众是巨大的。演奏风格和音乐曲目现在可以在世界范围内听到，因此可能具有极大的影响力，正如本大书中按字母顺序排列的吉恩·奥特里、弗农·达尔哈特和吉米·罗杰斯所示。我认识作家托尼•拉塞尔(Tony Russell)时，他还是现已停刊的英国杂志《旧时光音乐》(Old Time Music，创办于1971年，创办年份不详)的编辑。我观察了这部作品几十年的酝酿过程。我记得多年来人们谈论它承诺的出版——它将“很快”出版。好吧，很快就发生了，托尼·拉塞尔(Tony Russell)写出了一部令人震惊的巨著。我们都松了一口气，也很高兴，我们希望这位父亲和他的孩子一样好，没有产后抑郁症。这是值得等待的:前三十年的旧时代音乐，又名乡巴佬音乐和老喜欢的曲调，无论是世俗的还是神圣的，将在这里找到详尽但友好的细节。罗素开始与许多标签的胶囊历史中存在的三十年覆盖的唱片。然后，他提供了他的主要文本，精美的布局和交叉引用六种方式到周日的艺术家，歌曲，兼职音乐家，发行号码，录制日期的列表。布局干净，可行，索引阻塞:这是一个真正的“完整”的爱的工作。(虽然不可否认，这样的作品永远不能被称为完整，但我预测，对罗素作品的任何补充或调整都将是微不足道的。)有许多唱片参考作品的截止日期大致相同(有些武断，但任何这样的截止日期都是)，因为在第二次世界大战期间和之后，唱片行业及其技术发生了巨大变化。．..
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Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. By Nan Alamilla Boyd. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 321, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, maps, appendices, notes, index. $27.50 cloth, $16.95 paper); Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging. By Gary L. Atkins. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 451, acknowledgments, prologue, photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $28.95 cloth); The Courage to Connect: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Community in Provincetown. By Sandra L. Faiman-Silva. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Pp. x + 279, preface, introduction, photographs, illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, bibliography, index. $35.00 cloth) These three histories, in chronicling three different GLBT (gay lesbian bisexual transgender) communities rather than one overarching national storyline, allow us to see the development of GLBT identities according to local, not national, conditions. Because we cannot know the nation if we don't know our communities, and we cannot know our communities if we don't listen to individuals within them, I recommend all three of these. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 chronicles the manner in which unofficial city-sanctioned sex tourism, countered by official efforts to clean up vice, affected queer identity formation before Stonewall (1969). Author Nan Alamilla Boyd shows that San Francisco's lucrative reputation as a wide-open town in the years following the second World War contributed to its development as a safe haven for GLBT communities situated within a municipal geography of same-sex spaces in bars and districts (a map is provided). Boyd illuminates the interplay among sex tourism, drag shows, and civil rights activism that fostered GLBT community development in the city. Each chapter opens with material from interviews with key figures, for example the iconic Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Though this strategy disrupts the narrative flow slightly, it does allow Boyd to strike a balance between her own voice as critical historian and the voices of her collaborators. Following the rules of etiquette, she lets them speak first, removing her own questions and comments from the interview portions-Boyd is a historian, not a folklorist-and creating eloquent and accessible monologues from those whose lived experience informs her scholarship in the upcoming chapter. Of particular interest are accounts of early civil resistance, as against a police raid on the 1965 New Year's Day Ball sponsored by The Council on Religion and the Homosexual. In the aftermath of this raid, police harassment of arrested attendees led to a press conference of seven Protestant ministers the next day, all berating the police for "intimidation, broken promises, and hostility." When San Francisco citizens at large voiced their displeasure, the arrests were thrown out of court. There are more than a few such pre-Stonewa
《开放小镇:1965年前旧金山同性恋史》Nan Alamilla Boyd著。伯克利:加州大学出版社，2003。第xii + 321页，致谢、引言、照片、地图、附录、注释、索引。布$27.50，纸$16.95);西雅图同性恋:流亡与归属的故事。加里·阿特金斯著。(西雅图:华盛顿大学出版社，2003。第ix + 451页，致谢，序言，照片，插图，注释，参考书目，索引。布28.95美元);联系的勇气:普罗温斯敦的性、公民身份和社区。桑德拉·费曼-席尔瓦著。(香槟:伊利诺伊大学出版社，2004。第x + 279页，序言、引言、照片、插图、地图、表格、附录、参考书目、索引。这三本历史记录了三个不同的GLBT(男同性恋女同性恋双性恋变性人)群体，而不是一个全国性的故事情节，让我们看到了GLBT身份在当地而非全国的发展情况。因为如果我们不了解我们的社区，我们就无法了解这个国家;如果我们不倾听社区里的人的声音，我们就无法了解我们的社区，所以我推荐这三种方法。《开放小镇:旧金山酷儿史》记述了在1969年石墙事件之前，非官方的城市认可的性旅游，与官方清理恶习的努力相对抗，对酷儿身份形成的影响。作者南·阿拉米拉·博伊德(Nan Alamilla Boyd)指出，在二战后的几年里，旧金山作为一个开放的城市而获得了丰厚的声誉，这有助于它发展成为同性恋社区的避风港，这些社区位于城市地理上的酒吧和地区的同性恋空间(提供地图)。博伊德阐明了性旅游、变装表演和民权活动之间的相互作用，这些活动促进了城市中lgbt社区的发展。每一章的开头都是对关键人物的采访，比如标志性的德尔·马丁和菲利斯·里昂。尽管这种策略稍微扰乱了叙述流程，但它确实使博伊德能够在自己作为批判历史学家的声音和合作者的声音之间取得平衡。按照礼仪规则，她让他们先发言，从采访部分删除自己的问题和评论——博伊德是历史学家，不是民俗学家——并从那些亲身经历的人身上创造出雄辩而易懂的独白，这些经历将为她在下一章的学术研究提供信息。特别令人感兴趣的是早期公民抵抗的记录，比如1965年由宗教和同性恋理事会主办的新年舞会上，警察对舞会的袭击。在这次突袭之后，警察对被捕的与会者进行骚扰，导致7名新教牧师第二天召开新闻发布会，他们都斥责警察“恐吓、背弃承诺和敌意”。当旧金山市民普遍表达他们的不满时，逮捕行动被驳回。在博伊德的作品中，有很多这样的“前石墙”时刻。加里·l·阿特金斯(Gary L. Atkins)的《西雅图同性恋:流亡与归属的故事》(Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging)着眼于另一个城市的酒吧、警察和酷儿之间类似的关系。(顺便提一句:因为阿特金斯强调了西雅图不同地区的地理相关性，比如泥滩(Mudflat)和山丘(Hill)，所以读者最好有一张地图来定位作者如此丰富多彩编织的故事。)西雅图同性恋者的历史比旧金山的历史更引人注目，也更不孤立。阿特金斯研究的一个焦点是早期lgbt群体与城市改革者的法律、医疗和宗教标准之间的冲突，包括从最早记录的鸡奸逮捕到将额叶切除术作为治疗女同性恋的做法。另一点是避免冲突:几十年来，同性恋酒吧老板向警察行贿，作为保护西雅图同性恋社区免受警察骚扰的一种手段。．．．
{"title":"Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965/gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging/The Courage to Connect: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Community in Provincetown","authors":"M. Weems","doi":"10.5860/choice.41-2981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.41-2981","url":null,"abstract":"Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. By Nan Alamilla Boyd. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 321, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, maps, appendices, notes, index. $27.50 cloth, $16.95 paper); Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging. By Gary L. Atkins. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 451, acknowledgments, prologue, photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $28.95 cloth); The Courage to Connect: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Community in Provincetown. By Sandra L. Faiman-Silva. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Pp. x + 279, preface, introduction, photographs, illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, bibliography, index. $35.00 cloth) These three histories, in chronicling three different GLBT (gay lesbian bisexual transgender) communities rather than one overarching national storyline, allow us to see the development of GLBT identities according to local, not national, conditions. Because we cannot know the nation if we don't know our communities, and we cannot know our communities if we don't listen to individuals within them, I recommend all three of these. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 chronicles the manner in which unofficial city-sanctioned sex tourism, countered by official efforts to clean up vice, affected queer identity formation before Stonewall (1969). Author Nan Alamilla Boyd shows that San Francisco's lucrative reputation as a wide-open town in the years following the second World War contributed to its development as a safe haven for GLBT communities situated within a municipal geography of same-sex spaces in bars and districts (a map is provided). Boyd illuminates the interplay among sex tourism, drag shows, and civil rights activism that fostered GLBT community development in the city. Each chapter opens with material from interviews with key figures, for example the iconic Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Though this strategy disrupts the narrative flow slightly, it does allow Boyd to strike a balance between her own voice as critical historian and the voices of her collaborators. Following the rules of etiquette, she lets them speak first, removing her own questions and comments from the interview portions-Boyd is a historian, not a folklorist-and creating eloquent and accessible monologues from those whose lived experience informs her scholarship in the upcoming chapter. Of particular interest are accounts of early civil resistance, as against a police raid on the 1965 New Year's Day Ball sponsored by The Council on Religion and the Homosexual. In the aftermath of this raid, police harassment of arrested attendees led to a press conference of seven Protestant ministers the next day, all berating the police for \"intimidation, broken promises, and hostility.\" When San Francisco citizens at large voiced their displeasure, the arrests were thrown out of court. There are more than a few such pre-Stonewa","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2006-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71099045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader. Edited by Jane Chance. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pp. xx + 340, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 cloth) While it seems that many professional folklorists have had their interest in the field initially sparked by the work of Joseph Campbell, W. B. Yeats, and J.R.R. Tolkien, most tend to deny their initial attraction to these writers, stigmatizing them as popularizers. Recognizing the scholarly problems associated with these writers, I nonetheless unabashedly proclaim my engagement with the works of all three, most especially that of J.R.R. Tolkien, a great source of inspiration to me and, I am sure, to many other young scholars. Of course the personal and emotional impact of Tolkien's work says nothing about its worth as a subject of academic study, and so the question is often posed whether Tolkien's work even deserves to be studied. This question has for years plagued scholars seeking to affirm the merits of the work. There have been fruitless and dull attempts to categorize Tolkien as a writer of children's literature or a producer of anomalously best-selling dime novels. Such attempts, tinged with embarrassment at the overwhelming popular success of Tolkien's fiction, are often accompanied by dismissive remarks made apparently in the hope that wishing will make it so. As recently as 2000, Harold Bloom pronounced The Lord of the Rings "fated to become only an intricate Period Piece, while The Hobbit may well survive as Children's Literature" (Bloom 1-2). When Bloom dispatched this thunderbolt, The Lord of the Rings had been robustly in print for forty-five years, The Hobbit for sixty-two. Despite the disapproval, over the past three decades scholars such as T. A. (Tom) Shippey, Verlyn Flieger, and Jane Chance have produced and inspired a growing body of scholarly Tolkien criticism. These three scholars, along with others, have begun to wade through voluminous Tolkien correspondence and scholarly research and writing and to unfold the major goals of Tolkien's work and the sources of his inspiration. In Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, the most recent addition to this body of scholarship, Jane Chance compiles eighteen essays that offer analysis of relations between Tolkien's writing and folklore, religion, and a wide range of historical literature. Inasmuch as the contributors are mostly approaching the work from the perspective of literary criticism (though of course most of the sources referred to, such as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or the Kalevala, are literary renderings of what may well have been oral tradition), folklorists can anticipate that the volume contains little actual folklore or reference to folklore scholarship and that the contributors often make imprecise use of the technical terms "myth" and "legend. …
{"title":"Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader","authors":"A. Buccitelli","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-1432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-1432","url":null,"abstract":"Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader. Edited by Jane Chance. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pp. xx + 340, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 cloth) While it seems that many professional folklorists have had their interest in the field initially sparked by the work of Joseph Campbell, W. B. Yeats, and J.R.R. Tolkien, most tend to deny their initial attraction to these writers, stigmatizing them as popularizers. Recognizing the scholarly problems associated with these writers, I nonetheless unabashedly proclaim my engagement with the works of all three, most especially that of J.R.R. Tolkien, a great source of inspiration to me and, I am sure, to many other young scholars. Of course the personal and emotional impact of Tolkien's work says nothing about its worth as a subject of academic study, and so the question is often posed whether Tolkien's work even deserves to be studied. This question has for years plagued scholars seeking to affirm the merits of the work. There have been fruitless and dull attempts to categorize Tolkien as a writer of children's literature or a producer of anomalously best-selling dime novels. Such attempts, tinged with embarrassment at the overwhelming popular success of Tolkien's fiction, are often accompanied by dismissive remarks made apparently in the hope that wishing will make it so. As recently as 2000, Harold Bloom pronounced The Lord of the Rings \"fated to become only an intricate Period Piece, while The Hobbit may well survive as Children's Literature\" (Bloom 1-2). When Bloom dispatched this thunderbolt, The Lord of the Rings had been robustly in print for forty-five years, The Hobbit for sixty-two. Despite the disapproval, over the past three decades scholars such as T. A. (Tom) Shippey, Verlyn Flieger, and Jane Chance have produced and inspired a growing body of scholarly Tolkien criticism. These three scholars, along with others, have begun to wade through voluminous Tolkien correspondence and scholarly research and writing and to unfold the major goals of Tolkien's work and the sources of his inspiration. In Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, the most recent addition to this body of scholarship, Jane Chance compiles eighteen essays that offer analysis of relations between Tolkien's writing and folklore, religion, and a wide range of historical literature. Inasmuch as the contributors are mostly approaching the work from the perspective of literary criticism (though of course most of the sources referred to, such as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or the Kalevala, are literary renderings of what may well have been oral tradition), folklorists can anticipate that the volume contains little actual folklore or reference to folklore scholarship and that the contributors often make imprecise use of the technical terms \"myth\" and \"legend. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2006-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71103295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gender and Story in South India. Edited by Leela Prasad, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, and Lalita Handoo. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 152, acknowledgments, map, chapter notes, chapter bibliographies. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper) This slim but useful volume is a re-edited and updated version of an earlier book edited by Lalita Handoo and Ruth Bottigheimer that was published in India in 1999 under the title Folklore and Gender. Four of the papers (those by Kanaka Durga, Narasamamba, Handoo, and Venugopal) were originally presented at the XIth Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research, which was held in Mysore. These same papers, in reworked form, have been sandwiched between a new introduction by Leela Prasad and a very brief afterword by Ruth Bottigheimer. In her introduction, Prasad essentially sets the theoretical agenda of the volume: namely, to look at gender as one factor, albeit an essential one, of identity construction. She points out that the stories analyzed herein are by, about, and for women, but not to the exclusion of men (5). Virtually all of the examples included in the essays, she states, deal with kinship, anguish, and patriarchal norms, as well as tensions between the natal home and the conjugal one (8). The stories in the various essays also suggest the strong but complex relationship between brother and sister, in which the brother often has a strong moral obligation to the sister, even though sometimes this obligation can become dangerous, as when incest enters into the picture. Prasad also points out reflexively that one factor weaving together these diverse essays is the intersection between the narratives told and the lived experiences of the narrators. Lalita Handoo's comparative essay focuses on stupid-son-in-law stories, which she correctly identifies as a subgenre of numskull tales (35). Her data comes from her own fieldwork in Kashmir, but also from published collections, providing ten examples from ten places in India. Hence she is able to make the claim that the genre is pan-regional in nature. Handoo's main point is that the tales use humor to subvert male dominance (37) , a reminder to us that Indian women often do not fit the stereotype of the silent, suffering daughter, wife, or mother. While Handoo's approach is mainly morphological and thematic in nature, Saraswati Venugopal's contribution emphasizes "contextual meaning" (55) by comparing audience responses in rural and urban settings in and around the city of Madurai, located in the state of Tamil Nadu. …
{"title":"Gender and Story in South India","authors":"F. Korom","doi":"10.5860/choice.44-4308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.44-4308","url":null,"abstract":"Gender and Story in South India. Edited by Leela Prasad, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, and Lalita Handoo. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 152, acknowledgments, map, chapter notes, chapter bibliographies. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper) This slim but useful volume is a re-edited and updated version of an earlier book edited by Lalita Handoo and Ruth Bottigheimer that was published in India in 1999 under the title Folklore and Gender. Four of the papers (those by Kanaka Durga, Narasamamba, Handoo, and Venugopal) were originally presented at the XIth Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research, which was held in Mysore. These same papers, in reworked form, have been sandwiched between a new introduction by Leela Prasad and a very brief afterword by Ruth Bottigheimer. In her introduction, Prasad essentially sets the theoretical agenda of the volume: namely, to look at gender as one factor, albeit an essential one, of identity construction. She points out that the stories analyzed herein are by, about, and for women, but not to the exclusion of men (5). Virtually all of the examples included in the essays, she states, deal with kinship, anguish, and patriarchal norms, as well as tensions between the natal home and the conjugal one (8). The stories in the various essays also suggest the strong but complex relationship between brother and sister, in which the brother often has a strong moral obligation to the sister, even though sometimes this obligation can become dangerous, as when incest enters into the picture. Prasad also points out reflexively that one factor weaving together these diverse essays is the intersection between the narratives told and the lived experiences of the narrators. Lalita Handoo's comparative essay focuses on stupid-son-in-law stories, which she correctly identifies as a subgenre of numskull tales (35). Her data comes from her own fieldwork in Kashmir, but also from published collections, providing ten examples from ten places in India. Hence she is able to make the claim that the genre is pan-regional in nature. Handoo's main point is that the tales use humor to subvert male dominance (37) , a reminder to us that Indian women often do not fit the stereotype of the silent, suffering daughter, wife, or mother. While Handoo's approach is mainly morphological and thematic in nature, Saraswati Venugopal's contribution emphasizes \"contextual meaning\" (55) by comparing audience responses in rural and urban settings in and around the city of Madurai, located in the state of Tamil Nadu. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71115397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. By Hasan M. El-Shamy. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. xxviii + 1255, acknowledgments, introduction, bibliographies, indices, addendum. $75.00 cloth) Hasan El-Shamy, Professor of Folklore, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and African Studies at Indiana University, is the foremost authority on Arab folktale in the western hemisphere. He has previously authored important studies on this subject (1995, 1999), but his newest book, Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Onented Tale-Type Index (DOTTI-A), is surely his crowning achievement. In an era when typological and indexing studies often take a back seat to idiosyncratic musings that pass for theorizing, this meaty work-1255 pages in small type-is an important and rare achievement. Both the author and the publisher deserve high praise for undertaking the project. As interest in Islam and the Arab world grows in the west, not only students of Middle Eastern folklore, but also comparative folklorists and students of cross-cultural studies, will greatly benefit from this contribution. Although Professor El-Shamy has adopted the Aarne-Thompson classification system (A-T), he goes beyond the work of his predecessors in providing a great deal of data following each of his entries. He does not simply list the occurrence of various tale types in some undifferentiated entity called "the Arab world," but breaks down this category into its ethnic, geographical, and national components, telling the reader in exactly which parts of the Arab world a certain tale-type occurs. In addition to its valuable demographic data, the Index provides information about certain tale-types presumed to have been absent among the Arabs (xii-xiii). Many archives and sources that were either never consulted for a book in English before, or were inadequately utilized, have been put to good use here. Every tale type is presented according to a scheme that provides reference to the tale's literary sources, its type number, and information about its narrator and collector (xx-xxiv). Not only does DOTTI-A present a preliminary analysis of folktales of the Arab world and of the various ethnic groups that flourish among the Arabs, it also provides parallels from the cultural areas that border on Arab lands (Turkish, Persian, Israeli, sub-Saharan African). The author lists cross-references to related typologies (Arewa 1980, Eberhard and Boratav 1953, Jason 1965 and 1988, Klipple 1992, Marzolph 1984 and 1992, Nowak 1969), placing his text in a broad regional context while making the task of comparative study of Arab folktale easier (xiv-xv, xvii). One of his most important improvements upon other tale-type indices is the copious data he provides about narrators. The reader can find out in one glance if the narrator was male or female, educated or illiterate, young or old, religious or secular, married or single, w
{"title":"Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index","authors":"M. Omidsalar","doi":"10.5860/choice.42-4361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.42-4361","url":null,"abstract":"Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. By Hasan M. El-Shamy. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. xxviii + 1255, acknowledgments, introduction, bibliographies, indices, addendum. $75.00 cloth) Hasan El-Shamy, Professor of Folklore, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and African Studies at Indiana University, is the foremost authority on Arab folktale in the western hemisphere. He has previously authored important studies on this subject (1995, 1999), but his newest book, Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Onented Tale-Type Index (DOTTI-A), is surely his crowning achievement. In an era when typological and indexing studies often take a back seat to idiosyncratic musings that pass for theorizing, this meaty work-1255 pages in small type-is an important and rare achievement. Both the author and the publisher deserve high praise for undertaking the project. As interest in Islam and the Arab world grows in the west, not only students of Middle Eastern folklore, but also comparative folklorists and students of cross-cultural studies, will greatly benefit from this contribution. Although Professor El-Shamy has adopted the Aarne-Thompson classification system (A-T), he goes beyond the work of his predecessors in providing a great deal of data following each of his entries. He does not simply list the occurrence of various tale types in some undifferentiated entity called \"the Arab world,\" but breaks down this category into its ethnic, geographical, and national components, telling the reader in exactly which parts of the Arab world a certain tale-type occurs. In addition to its valuable demographic data, the Index provides information about certain tale-types presumed to have been absent among the Arabs (xii-xiii). Many archives and sources that were either never consulted for a book in English before, or were inadequately utilized, have been put to good use here. Every tale type is presented according to a scheme that provides reference to the tale's literary sources, its type number, and information about its narrator and collector (xx-xxiv). Not only does DOTTI-A present a preliminary analysis of folktales of the Arab world and of the various ethnic groups that flourish among the Arabs, it also provides parallels from the cultural areas that border on Arab lands (Turkish, Persian, Israeli, sub-Saharan African). The author lists cross-references to related typologies (Arewa 1980, Eberhard and Boratav 1953, Jason 1965 and 1988, Klipple 1992, Marzolph 1984 and 1992, Nowak 1969), placing his text in a broad regional context while making the task of comparative study of Arab folktale easier (xiv-xv, xvii). One of his most important improvements upon other tale-type indices is the copious data he provides about narrators. The reader can find out in one glance if the narrator was male or female, educated or illiterate, young or old, religious or secular, married or single, w","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2005-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71105827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Myth and History in the Creation of Yellowstone National Park. By Paul Schullery and Lee Whittlesey. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 125, acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, photographs, appendix, notes, index. $22.00 cloth) Everyone who grew up visiting the Yellowstone-Grand Teton National Parks area, as I did, is familiar with the story about the expeditionary party that, in 1870, pitched its tents where the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers come together to form the Madison. (This was an era when the railroad industry was plowing its greed-driven way dirough the American West.) As told to me many times by my parents and around campfires, these men, known historically as the Washburn-Doan Party, saw something special in the place and wanted to make it special for everyone. In their campfire musings, so the story goes, the men of the Washburn-Doan Party were the first to speak aloud the idea that a beautiful spot of terrain ought to be conserved and set aside for the nation. Thus was born the idea of the National Park, heralding-as antidote to the Age of Greed-the dawn of the Age of Conservation. As with other secular creation stories, questions arise about who had this originary thought. The authors of the present volume set themselves the task of finding the "true" story of Yellowstone's creation. Who, really, had been most instrumental in its conception and birth? The Park itself had adopted the Washburn-Doan Party line-though Aubrey L. Haines, Yellowstone's historian of the 1960's and 1970's, does acknowledge that a vision of Yellowstone preserved as a public park could be attested long before the Washburn-Doan Party set foot in the region. "The important questions raised by Haines . . . are whether the Washburn party members actually did talk about the idea of setting Yellowstone aside, and, if so, what effect the conversations had on the subsequent events that led to the creation of the park. What did the participants in the campfire conversation have to say about the night in question?" (5) This largely rhetorical question serves as the starting point for debunking the Campfire Story and for establishing that the federal government played the most significant role in events leading to the formal establishment of Yellowstone, the first of our national parks, in 1872. No rabbits are pulled out of hats-Schullery and Whittlesey use standard documentary sources along with Haines's historical works for their investigation. …
{"title":"Myth and History in the Creation of Yellowstone National Park","authors":"Robin Parent","doi":"10.2307/25443119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/25443119","url":null,"abstract":"Myth and History in the Creation of Yellowstone National Park. By Paul Schullery and Lee Whittlesey. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 125, acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, photographs, appendix, notes, index. $22.00 cloth) Everyone who grew up visiting the Yellowstone-Grand Teton National Parks area, as I did, is familiar with the story about the expeditionary party that, in 1870, pitched its tents where the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers come together to form the Madison. (This was an era when the railroad industry was plowing its greed-driven way dirough the American West.) As told to me many times by my parents and around campfires, these men, known historically as the Washburn-Doan Party, saw something special in the place and wanted to make it special for everyone. In their campfire musings, so the story goes, the men of the Washburn-Doan Party were the first to speak aloud the idea that a beautiful spot of terrain ought to be conserved and set aside for the nation. Thus was born the idea of the National Park, heralding-as antidote to the Age of Greed-the dawn of the Age of Conservation. As with other secular creation stories, questions arise about who had this originary thought. The authors of the present volume set themselves the task of finding the \"true\" story of Yellowstone's creation. Who, really, had been most instrumental in its conception and birth? The Park itself had adopted the Washburn-Doan Party line-though Aubrey L. Haines, Yellowstone's historian of the 1960's and 1970's, does acknowledge that a vision of Yellowstone preserved as a public park could be attested long before the Washburn-Doan Party set foot in the region. \"The important questions raised by Haines . . . are whether the Washburn party members actually did talk about the idea of setting Yellowstone aside, and, if so, what effect the conversations had on the subsequent events that led to the creation of the park. What did the participants in the campfire conversation have to say about the night in question?\" (5) This largely rhetorical question serves as the starting point for debunking the Campfire Story and for establishing that the federal government played the most significant role in events leading to the formal establishment of Yellowstone, the first of our national parks, in 1872. No rabbits are pulled out of hats-Schullery and Whittlesey use standard documentary sources along with Haines's historical works for their investigation. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2005-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/25443119","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69156472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A History of Cooks and Cooking. By Michael Symons. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, [1998] 2004. Pp. xii + 388, preface, introduction, illustrations, acknowledgments, bibliography, index. $30.00 cloth, $25.00 paper) Most folklorists would appreciate the basic premise of Michael Symons' book-cooking is an artistic, social, and intellectual skill that has been overlooked and undervalued, both by scholars and by the world at large. Symons argues that contemporary western society tends to regard cooking and the wide range of activities connected to it as insignificant, trivial, and simply a means to an end that is bodily pleasure rather than spiritual edification, and therefore, unworthy of intellectual scrutiny. Similarly, individuals who cook are rarely accorded respect for the skills required to master their duties or for their role in society. This book is meant to remedy the situation by offering an apologetics for cooks and cooking. In the process, Symons attempts a theory of the world according to cooks. It is a colorful and intriguing theory, and, using Australia as his primary example, he regales the reader with anecdotes, quotations, and examples from literary, popular media, ethnographic, and historical sources. The book offers a selected compendium of famous thinkers on food and cooking. In that, it is very useful, and it is fascinating to read quotes and paraphrases from throughout history and across cultures on the subject of cooking. As would be expected with a work of this magnitude, however, it has a number of problems, namely, interpretations of theory and data, use of sources, and organization. To my mind, Symons' discussions of theories relevant to cooking tend to be superficial. He gives rather summary dismissals of major thinkers, rarely placing them in cultural context or giving complete analyses of their theories. Plato, Barthes, Marx, Geertz, Douglas, Levi-Strauss, Bourdieu and others are all evaluated in reference to their appreciation of cooking, which is probably as good a criterion as any, but his readings of these theorists are too biased against them to be accurate or useful. It is also unclear whether these writers are being used as data, as proof of the validity of Symons' arguments, or as interpretive frameworks. To his credit, he clearly and honestly states his own opinions. After discussing Mary Douglas's structuralist approach to the grammar of a meal, he states: " [T] his kind of pattern is certainly intriguing, but fails to speak to me as the deep-seated cultural logic that is claimed" (103). …
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Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose. By James Bau Graves. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Pp. xii + 256, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, charts, table, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth, $20.00 paper); Federalizing the Muse: United States Arts Policy and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1965-1980. By Donna M. Binkiewicz. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 295, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, table, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper) Both of these titles should be added to the folk-arts administrator's reading list, and both should be included in syllabi for public-sector folklore courses. We advise the same for arts administrators and arts-administration curricula. These two volumes provide historical context and useful insight into funding mechanisms and program development. In the first volume, Cultural Democracy (the term is defined here as "social agenda"), James Bau Graves provides a view of the evolution of this movement in the United States, its relationship to corporate America-and its potential global impact. He offers strong arguments for the economic benefits of cultural democracy and the sustainability of traditional culture. He explores the conflicts and blessings of corporate and foundation funding in addition to addressing the impact of America's political agenda and private sector sphere on the rest of the world. An ethnomusicologist and the director of the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, Maine, Graves draws extensively from his own experience working with immigrant communities over twenty years. Because he readily admits his own foibles in establishing relationships and developing projects within ethnic communities, Graves presents the reader with honest assessments of his own work as a self-described "cultural mediator." Most of his examples are reflective of his work with new immigrant communities, with less attention paid to tradition bearers from African American and Anglo American communities. In fact, he usually writes of cultural democracy as it relates exclusively to minority communities. Graves weaves chapters addressing subjects as broad as education, economics and globalization into thought-provoking discussions about the conflict between an implied greater good and corporate power. Chapter one, "Communion," is essential reading for arts administrators who truly strive to involve local communities in arts planning. The most useful portion of the book is chapter seven, "Mediation"; here Graves introduces ten specific, insightful examples for cultural mediators to employ when working in collaboration with communities. Throughout, he offers suggestions for implementation often with projected, sometimes lofty, outcomes. Although he cites impressive and extensive research from a number of sources, Graves relies too heavily on the theories of economic-development specialist Richard Flor
文化民主:艺术、社区和公共目的。詹姆斯·鲍·格雷夫斯著。(香槟:伊利诺伊大学出版社，2005。第xii + 256页，致谢、引言、照片、图表、表格、注释、参考书目、索引。布$45.00，纸$20.00);《缪斯的联邦化:美国艺术政策与国家艺术基金会，1965-1980》。唐娜·m·宾凯维奇著。教堂山:北卡罗来纳大学出版社，2004年。第xii + 295页，致谢、引言、照片、表格、注释、参考书目、索引。布59.95美元，纸24.95美元)这两本书都应该被列入民间艺术管理员的阅读清单，而且都应该被列入公共部门民俗学课程的教学大纲。我们对艺术管理人员和艺术管理课程也提出同样的建议。这两卷书提供了历史背景和对资助机制和项目发展的有用见解。在第一卷《文化民主》(此处定义为“社会议程”)中，詹姆斯·鲍·格雷夫斯阐述了这一运动在美国的演变、它与美国企业的关系以及它潜在的全球影响。他为文化民主的经济效益和传统文化的可持续性提供了强有力的论据。除了探讨美国政治议程和私营领域对世界其他地区的影响外，他还探讨了企业和基金会资金的冲突和好处。格雷夫斯是一名民族音乐学家，也是缅因州波特兰市文化交流中心的主任，他从自己20多年来在移民社区工作的经历中汲取了大量的经验。因为格雷夫斯乐于承认自己在建立关系和发展种族社区项目方面的缺点，他以一个自称“文化调解人”的身份向读者展示了他对自己作品的诚实评价。他的大多数例子都反映了他与新移民社区的合作，而对非裔美国人和盎格鲁美国人社区的传统承担者关注较少。事实上，他通常写文化民主，因为它只与少数群体有关。格雷夫斯将涉及教育、经济和全球化等广泛主题的章节编织成发人深省的讨论，探讨隐含的更大利益与企业权力之间的冲突。第一章“交流”是那些真正努力让当地社区参与艺术规划的艺术管理人员的必读读物。这本书最有用的部分是第七章“调解”;在这里，格雷夫斯介绍了十个具体的、有见地的例子，供文化调解员在与社区合作时使用。自始至终，他都提出了一些实施建议，这些建议通常带有预期的、有时是崇高的结果。尽管格雷夫斯引用了许多来源的令人印象深刻的广泛研究，但他过于依赖经济发展专家理查德·佛罗里达的理论。然而，格雷夫斯自己的研究是彻底的，他使用了各种角度的信息，包括艺术教育家，学术和公共部门民俗学家，以及记者。其他资源包括来自联邦政府(国家艺术基金会)和各种资助组织的出版物。在第二卷《缪斯的联邦化》中，唐娜·m·宾凯维奇(Donna M. Binkiewicz)追溯了美国国家艺术基金会(National Endowment for the Arts，简称NEA)从其前身到现在的历史，尽管她的重点主要放在该基金会的前15年。…
{"title":"Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose","authors":"Lisa L. Higgins, Teresa K. Hollingsworth","doi":"10.5860/choice.43-1645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.43-1645","url":null,"abstract":"Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose. By James Bau Graves. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Pp. xii + 256, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, charts, table, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth, $20.00 paper); Federalizing the Muse: United States Arts Policy and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1965-1980. By Donna M. Binkiewicz. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 295, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, table, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper) Both of these titles should be added to the folk-arts administrator's reading list, and both should be included in syllabi for public-sector folklore courses. We advise the same for arts administrators and arts-administration curricula. These two volumes provide historical context and useful insight into funding mechanisms and program development. In the first volume, Cultural Democracy (the term is defined here as \"social agenda\"), James Bau Graves provides a view of the evolution of this movement in the United States, its relationship to corporate America-and its potential global impact. He offers strong arguments for the economic benefits of cultural democracy and the sustainability of traditional culture. He explores the conflicts and blessings of corporate and foundation funding in addition to addressing the impact of America's political agenda and private sector sphere on the rest of the world. An ethnomusicologist and the director of the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, Maine, Graves draws extensively from his own experience working with immigrant communities over twenty years. Because he readily admits his own foibles in establishing relationships and developing projects within ethnic communities, Graves presents the reader with honest assessments of his own work as a self-described \"cultural mediator.\" Most of his examples are reflective of his work with new immigrant communities, with less attention paid to tradition bearers from African American and Anglo American communities. In fact, he usually writes of cultural democracy as it relates exclusively to minority communities. Graves weaves chapters addressing subjects as broad as education, economics and globalization into thought-provoking discussions about the conflict between an implied greater good and corporate power. Chapter one, \"Communion,\" is essential reading for arts administrators who truly strive to involve local communities in arts planning. The most useful portion of the book is chapter seven, \"Mediation\"; here Graves introduces ten specific, insightful examples for cultural mediators to employ when working in collaboration with communities. Throughout, he offers suggestions for implementation often with projected, sometimes lofty, outcomes. Although he cites impressive and extensive research from a number of sources, Graves relies too heavily on the theories of economic-development specialist Richard Flor","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2005-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71109060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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