Observing the Outports

"Jeff Webb's book is an innovative study of the scholars - historians, lexicographers, folklorists, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, and others - who saw Newfoundland as a laboratory in which to study the process of modernization." -- Raymond Blake, Department of History, University of Regina "Observing the Outports is an invaluable overview of the history of research on Newfoundland's outports at Memorial University of Newfoundland. A well-written comparative history of interdisciplinary research in Newfoundland, the book situates these developments in the context of national and international academic discourse." -- Robert Mellin, School of Architecture, McGill University

In Observing the Outports, Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations created the field of “Newfoundland studies.”

The years after Newfoundland’s confederation with Canada were ones of rapid social and economic change, as provincial resettlement and industrialization initiatives attempted to transform the lives of rural Newfoundlanders. At Memorial University in St. John’s, a new generation of faculty saw the province’s transformation as a critical moment. Some hoped to solve the challenges of modernization through their rural research. Others hoped to document the island’s “traditional” culture before it disappeared. Between them they created the field of “Newfoundland studies.”

In Observing the Outports, Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations among scholars of lexicography, history, folklore, anthropology, sociology, and geography laid the foundation of our understanding of Newfoundland society in an era of modernization. His extensive archival research and oral history interviews illuminate how scholars at Memorial University created an intellectual movement that paralleled the province’s cultural revival.