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GUIDE FOR FIELD WORKERS IN FOLKLORE
Published by
Folklore Asociates - Herbert Jenkins, US, 1964
ISBN 10: 0810350009
ISBN 13: 9780810350007
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: SPHINX LIBRARY, CHONBURI, Thailand
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Book Condition, Very Good with some slight age related tanning to Page Edges, DJ is rubbed with sunned Spine and some small abrasions, a small tear (2mm) and age related yellowing (see photos). A Guide for Field Workers in Folklore. KENNETHS . GOLDSTEINP. Preface by HAMISH HENDERSON, Pennsylvania: Folklore Associates, Inc., 1964. xviii, 199 pp., bibliography, index. One of the great voids in the study of folklore has been filled. While folklorists, like other field workers, publish the results of their field work, they rarely deal with the mechanics of how the data was collected, except perhaps for a few human-interest incidental anecdotes. Each new generation of folklorists is sent out into the field where they make many of the same mistakes made by their predecessors, bolstered with the knowledge that experience is not only the best teacher but the only one. One consequence is that the quality of folklore collection has not improved materially in the last several decades. The author of this excellent field manual would be the last to say that there is any\nsubstitute for actual experience in the field. But this guide is designed to make that experience a much richer one. Chapters on problem formulation, pre-field preparations, the establishment of rapport with informants, observation collecting methods, interview collecting methods, and the techniques of motivating informants (including the sometimes ticklish devices of plying them with either small amounts of money or large amounts of liquor) spell out the nature of field workin terms which most professionals will find similar to their own experience but which they have never formally articulated for themselves or for their students. Although the guide is specifically intended for folklorists, it can be read with profit by any social scientist going into the field. Goldstein¿s delineation of three kinds of folklore data reveals his praiseworthy ethnographic bias. In addition to the usual materials of folklore, he indicates that folklore processes (e.g., context) and folklore ideas (e.g., the informant¿s attitudes and esthetic principles) must be collected by the expert folklorist. General methodological statements, however, are reinforced with many concrete suggestions often based upon the author¿s own field work in Scotland and the eastern United States. Itemized lists such as the one on ¿What to Observe¿ in the collecting context (pp. 91-93) or a checklist of data to be sought when eliciting an informant¿s personal life history (pp. 126- 127) should prove useful to professional and amateur alike. To those who may object that common sense cannot be codified, one might ask whether they have ever discussed the importance of the location of the field worker¿s living quarters, or the roles of the collector¿s wife and children, in any detail. The prospective field worker will find that a good many of the critical problems and issues involved in field work are raised and, in view of the importance of field work in the training of folklorists and anthropologists, this in itself is a great contribution. For would-be folklorists, perhaps the principal difficulty in using the guide is that Goldstein assumes the user knows what folklore is and what folklore theory is. The guide tells how to collect, not what to collect. The special techniques required by different genres (e.g., children¿s games, ballads, folk dances) are not treated. However, if this book is used in introductory folklore courses (or general anthropological fieldwork courses), it will have an enormous and beneficial effect upon the quality of folk lore collections of the future. This book, along with Jan Vansina¿s The Oral Tradition, should be required reading for anyone who is seriously interested in collecting folklore. Seller Inventory # 000448