Folk Groups And Folklore Genres: An Introduction

Chapter 2. Ethnic Groups and Ethnic Folklore

.:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. Chapter 2 Ethnic Groups and Ethnic Folklore Elliott Gring .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. Ethnicity seems an omnipresent force in contemporary American society. When people are hungry, a host of restaurants offer "ethnic cuisines" which compete for their attention and capital. They read in the newspapers of numerous ethnic events, festivals, and other entertainments which vie for their attendance during leisurely weekend afternoons. They decorate their homes and offices with "ethnic" objects and enjoy exchanging ethnic jokes with neighbors and friends. When they apply for jobs, they may be requested to fill out ethnic identification forms which require that they locate themselves in one of several predefined ethnic categories. The pervasiveness of the ethnic idea might lead us to assume that both the term and the concept are ancient. This assumption, however, is only partially true. The term "ethnic" indeed derives from ancient Greek words - "ethnos" and "ethnikos" - the first meaning "nation" and the second having the sense of "heathen" or "Gentile." This latter notion of "heathen" or "pagan" (derived from the New Testament Greek usage) dominated the sense of the English term"ethnic" well into the nineteenth century. The term was generally applied to peoples who were neither Jewish nor Christian; in other words, not of God's chosen. In the mid~nineteenth century, the term came to characterize groupings conceptualized on the basis of race or nationality, and only in the twentieth century did it become common to characterize as "ethnic" 23 Elliott Dring groupings that were culturally distinguishable from a larger social system of which they formed some part.1 . This minor historical digression is not entirely without significance. First, it illustrates that "ethnic" derives from a term employed to designate groups other than one's own, and that this designation was to some degree pejorative. Second, it suggests that current notions of "ethnic group" and "ethnicity" address a different categorization of humankind than that which preoccupied western thinkers before the nineteenth century, when human groups were mainly conceptualized in terms of their ideological proximity to Christian doctrines. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sociocultural changes in western society precipitated changes in the categorization of human populations. In other words, although derived from an ancient root, "ethnic" is a term with relatively contemporary meaning. Any consideration of ethnic folklore must begin with some understanding of what is meant by an "ethnic group." As currently conceptualized, members of an ethnic group, it is claimed, share and identify with a historically deriyed cultural tradition or style, which may be composed ofboth explicit behavioral features as well as implicit ideas, values, and attitudes. Furthermore, membership in an ethnic group is acquired primarily by descent. Finally, an ethnic group is conceived as part of a larger social system rather than independent and selhufficient. "Ethnic identity," we might add, is the intellectual and emotional sense that an individual has of his relationship to the behaviors, ideas, and values of an ethnic group. And by "ethnicity," we simply mean any speech, thought, or action based upon this sense of identity.2 At first, these definitions may seem somewhat dense and may require careful rereading. Nevertheless, they can help to both distinguish ethnic groups from and relate ethnic groups to other kinds of folk groupings. First, let us examine the notion that ethnic groups are based upon the claim ofa shared common cultural tradition or style. This notion ofclaim is important. The perception or recognition ofgroupness is exactly that - a perception. Groups, indeed all categories, result from perceiving some similarity within a broader population of individual elements. Groups 24 FOLK GROUPS AND FOLKLORE GENRES exist only if they are recognized and some claim is made for their existence (if only by the members themselves). Some groups are merely statistical in nature.l That is, a population may be recognized as sharing some common characteristic, for example, wearing a size nine shoe or suffering from athlete's foot. Although we may agree there is some common characteristic that defines each group, we do not generally accord them much importance. Nevertheless, we can readily appreciate how important such groups might be to a shoe manufacturer or pharmaceutical salesman whose livelihood depends on the identification and description of just such statistical groupings. This example should also alert us to the fact that the perception of groups is usually motivated; that is, such perceptions stem from the particular interests of particular parties. Groups that seem "significant" in the unfolding of our...