Disciplining Folkloristics

I explore two "ideological styles" associated with twentieth-century constructions of folkloristics, particularly in the United States. One consists of "boundary-work," in science-studies scholar Thomas Gieryn's terms; quintessentially embodied in the work of Richard Dorson, boundary-work constructs an autonomous discipline that must be defended against amateurs and scholars from other disciplines. A second style, associated with ethnography-of-speaking-folklore and performance approaches, stresses theory in linking folklorists with anthropologists, linguists, and literary scholars and developing new analytic frames. I suggest that theorizing should be construed not as a threat to disciplinary autonomy nor a locus of racial and academic authority but as a means of challenging the Eurocentric underpinnings of folkloristics and developing more creative alternatives through a radical democratic politics of theory that links theorizing the vernacular with vernacular theorizing.