Theorizing Folklore from the Margins

Critical and Ethical Approaches

Solimar Otero editor Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Indiana University Press

Published:15th Jun '21

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Theorizing Folklore from the Margins cover

The study of folklore has historically focused on the daily life and culture of regular people, such as artisans, storytellers, and craftspeople. But what can folklore reveal about strategies of belonging, survival, and reinvention in moments of crisis?

The experience of living in hostile conditions for cultural, social, political, or economic reasons has redefined communities in crisis. The curated works in Theorizing Folklore from the Margins offer clear and feasible suggestions for how to ethically engage in the study of folklore with marginalized populations. By focusing on issues of critical race and ethnic studies, decolonial and antioppressive methodologies, and gender and sexuality studies, contributors employ a wide variety of disciplines and theoretical approaches. In doing so, they reflect the transdisciplinary possibilities of Folklore studies.

By bridging the gap between theory and practice, Theorizing Folklore from the Margins confirms that engaging with oppressed communities is not only relevant, but necessary.

This powerful collection of 16 critical essays takes aim at the myriad forms in whichhate, violence, othering, disenfranchisement, etc., manifest in social life as the resultof dominant power structures supported by the "legacies of white supremacy,homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and other injustices and forms ofdiscrimination" (19). It is these power structures, among others, that have keptcertain individuals and communities at the margins. The "margins," as presented in thebook, vary by author and range from the physical (such as prisons) to the symbolic (asin the intersections between methodologies and ideas). . . . The result is an illuminating, moving, and reflexivity-inducing work that takes us into and through very different marginal worlds "among, and with, Mexican, Wolof, Native American, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Martinican, Andean, North American, African Diaspora, and LGBTQI folk cultures and communities"(13).

-- Julián Antonio Carrillo * Journal of Folklore and Educati

ISBN: 9780253056078

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 544g

352 pages