Sociologists study the organization of society on both the level of social interaction and
the level of the nation state (and the world system). Nations use folklore to justify their
legitimacy (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Within folkloristics, perhaps the most
compelling study of the uses of national tradition is William A.Wilson’s Folklore and
Nationalism in Modern Finland (1976), which examines the use of the Kalevala, the
Finnish national epic, by Finnish nationalists to provide legitimacy for their nation. In
sociology there has been considerable interest in the process of commemoration of events
and political leaders. Barry Schwartz demonstrates in George Washington: The Making
of an American Symbol (1987) that Americans constructed the image of George
Washington as a heroic and moral leader to capture some of the virtues that they believed
were important for the creation of a new nation; the legends that surround Washington
reflect these virtues. What we remember and how we remember explains something
critical about the nature of the social order.
Sociologists and folklorists also agree that folklore is responsive to social and
technological change. As the structure of a social system changes, so, too, do its
traditions. Without this recognition, we would be left with a static model of culture,
instead of the recognition that culture is dynamic. Culture changes with other alterations
in the social structure: occasionally ahead of structural change and sometimes as part of a
cultural lag (Ogburn 1937).
The disciplines of folklore and sociology have numerous points of fruitful contact. It is
a shame that these similarities have not previously been better articulated. We should
avoid the mistake of claiming that folklore is only a branch of the larger discipline of
sociology—that is self-evidently not true. Still, one cannot help think that many of the
most central issues of folklore are the ones that find their mirror in the concerns of
sociologists. For the two disciplines to recognize their common concerns would enrich
each.
Gary Alan Fine
References
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Calhoun, Craig. 1982. The Quest of Class Struggle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carroll, Michael P. 1987. “The Castrated Boy”: Another Contribution to the Psychoanalytic Study
of Urban Legends. Folklore 98:216–225.
Davies, Christie. 1990. Ethnic Humor around the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fine, Gary Alan. 1982. The Manson Family: The Folklore Traditions of a Small Group. Journal of
the Folklore Institute 19:47–60.
Hobsbawn, Eric, and Terrence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge:
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Martin, Joanne. 1992. Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives. New York: Oxford
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Odum, Howard. 1953. Folk Sociology as a Subject Field for the Historical Study of Total Human
Society and the Empirical Study of Group Behavior. Social Forces 31:193–223.
Ogburn, William F. 1937. Culture and Sociology. Social Forces 16:161–169.
Thompson, Kenneth. 1980. Folklore and Sociology. Sociological Review 28:249–275.