Shoemaker and Dundes on the Role of Technology and Industrialization in the Study of Folklife

I found Simon Bronner’s article, “Alfred Shoemaker and the Discovery of American Folklife” especially interesting in light of Alan Dundes’ “Who are the Folk?” for several reasons. (Also very interesting, though perhaps slightly off-topic, is the fact that Microsoft Word’s Spellcheck does not recognize Folklife as a word. Perhaps we can come back to this point when we discuss Bronner’s article and his argument that for much of its existence, folklife remained in the shadows by comparison to its sister term folklore.) Although both authors seek to define and set folklife in terms of tradition and adherence to communal persistence, I think the two articles offer keen insight into how the understanding of the word—and what is included within these sets of “tradition” and “communities”—has evolved over the years. Bronner frames his essay of Shoemaker and the discovery of American folklife around the bicentennial celebration of the nation’s independence and the Festival of American Folklife on the Mall in Washington, D.C. with the intention of rooting folklife precisely within the model of looking back and capturing an almost nostalgic view of our individual (and shared) traditions of heritage and cultural communities. He writes, “The use of folklife argued for the interrelation of tradition in its cultural totality with reference to patterns created by oral, social, and especially material expressions” (Bronner 268). With this definition comes the notion of plurality and diversity with the American framework; however, as Bronner argues—and here is a distinction between the two authors—this plurality and diversity is celebrated for its complex ability to avoid adopting to the material and mainstream markets of modernity.
Dundes, on the other hand, while also arguing within this framework of tradition and plurality, seeks to expand this definition to reflect a changing world; his plurality, I believe, is a bit more extreme, opening up and embracing the industrial and technological worlds shunned by the “discoverers” of folklife—Bronner’s Alfred Shoemaker as the main example—and instead claiming that “The term ‘folk’ can refer to any group of peopole whatsoever who share at least one common factor” (Dundes 7). By this open door, Dundes is able to avoid what he argues was a major hindrance to the folkloric movement up until the 1950s: mainly, that the temptation to glorify the “folk” in the definition set by Bronner’s Shoemaker allowed for a feeling and mindset of elitism to sweep aside many efforts to establish folklife as a legitimate area of study. The readers can perhaps see this in Bronner’s own description of the challenges and struggles Shoemaker faced early on in his career.
The definition and scheme, despite Shoemaker’s overwhelming efforts to “stick to tradition” and bring these old practices to like, I believe have neglected to connect with a world that was changing too quickly in its time. I do not blame Shoemaker for this desire to return or at least remember the past. In an era of constant strife and war—Shoemaker himself serving United States’ Intelligence during WWII—I think it justifiable that anyone might reconsider the effects and consequences of a rapidly developing—and forgetful—world. Instead, Shoemaker’s strategy focused on the “arts and crafts” that defined a community, claiming that both “were integral to the function of a community, and they resulted in products including houses and town plans that remained visibly fixed on the landscape with ethnic imprints long after their makers had passed away” (Bronner 269). This emphasis on the traditional items that defined a culture or community lent value to its preservation as a whole, its dire necessity to remain unchanged through the changing times. The state of Pennsylvania, Bronner argues, offered a perfect site for this “holy experiment” of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture.
Bronner does extend his definition of plurality to include and bring to the stage Pennsylvania’s industrial connection, stating that it harbored the production of a host of natural resources. However, this added plurality, in Bronner’s description of Shoemaker’s development of folklife, made it all the more urgent to preserve the older ways of life. He writes, “Artisans and small farm operations, a mainstay of the Philadelphia economy for more than a century, felt squeezed out by more mills and iron furnances” (274). It is within this framework that Bronner sets Shoemaker’s importance in establishing the marginalized communities striving to survive within the changing world. I think herein lies the primary point at which Dundes emerges (perhaps picks up?) from where Shoemaker left off.

--Julie Lauterbach-Colby