Flash Folklore in the Internet Era: Column by Rosalie Stafford in Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

Folklorist. Mystery novelist. Detective. Investigative journalist. What do these workers have in common?

We will come back to this interesting question ...

The academic discipline of Folklore has been described as "the bastard offspring of Literature and Anthropology." I have always imagined Literature as a fine lady, pouring tea in an ivory tower, and Anthropology as a dashing Indiana Jones gent who simply sweeps her off her feet. Folklore is the happy, sqawling result.

Folklorists record and analyze artistic communication within small groups. In the early years of the discipline, small groups were comprised of peasants, American Indians, aborigines, illiterates, and such like. Nowadays (partly because folklorists have pretty much run out of small groups which have not swilled large drafts of popular culture via the mass media), small groups studied tend to be occupational groups or people who share some characteristic such as a hobby or neighborhood.

As recently as the 1950's, folklorists hotly debated the question: "Are there folk in the city?" The question is now considered quaintly moot. Every person, even the most sophisticated cosmopolite, is a member of one or more folkgroups. A millionaires' club constitutes a folkgroup.

Artistic communication includes (but certainly isn't limited to) stories, songs, music, rituals, customs, festivals, and various material artistic genres. Prison tattoos constitute one genre of material culture, likewise foodways, and those flower-decked crosses planted where unfortunates have died in car crashes.

Literary types call these elements of artistic communication and material culture local color.

Recently I read a fascinating book – The Widows of Broome – by Arthur Oldfield, set in a village on the west coast of Australia circa 1950. In the course of the novel, the reader learns about the local pearling industry, the pearl warehouses, the pearlers, the changes wrought by the war in the pearling industry and the economy of Broome. Mr. Oldfield talks about the dispossesseds' dangerous indulgence in sniffing gasoline and drinking dilute battery acid. He talks about the floor plans of the townspeople's bungaloes – screened porches on three or four sides of the square houses functioning as living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens opening directly onto the encompassing verandas. He talks about the life of the aborigines and the white townspeople, including details such as washday routines and the type of clothes-lines in use.

Mr. Oldfield's book is rich in local color. A folklorist would say that the book is a good secondary source, full of data regarding material culture and folkways.

Folklorists study, analyze, and record the big picture – folkways – the way of life of various folkgroups. These rigorously documented studies are called enthnographies. Any folkgroup is arguably an appropriate subject for ethnographic analysis: soccer moms, gang-members, traveling carnival workers, Highway Patrol officers, Legal Aid lawyers, checkers at the local supermarket. In graduate school, my first ethnography treated a video arcade. My master's thesis examined occupational humor in a several psychic hotlines in San Diego. Since then I have studied folkgroups are disparate as US Navy sailors on deployment, call-girls, tow-truck drivers, and street people.

One way that folklorists go about collecting data for their ethnographies is through participant-observation. That means joining a folkgroup, merging in and becoming a member of the folkgroup under study, while maintaining strict objectivity. So, if a folklorist wanted to write an ethnography about cab-drivers, he would probably opt to engage in the technique of participatory-observation: get a job as a cabbie, learn the lingo, digest the jokes, become one of his subjects, while always striving to maintain intellectual objectivity.

Another method of collecting data for an ethnography is to cultivate one or more informants who will fully and truthfully answer questions about the folkgroup. (Lot of luck! People love to talk; everything they say has to be taken with a grain of salt.) Also, secondary sources such as published and unpublished writing by other folklorists as well as by various other people who have written about the folkgroup, and primary sources such as public records documents (everything from court records to census records), newspaper articles, historic photographs, diaries, blogs: all these are sources which the folklorist will want to explore in collecting data for his ethnography.

Besides learning the right way to conduct a tape-recorded interview and how to index the resulting tapes, young folklorists are taught that establishing rapport is absolutely essential to success in the field. Of course, it's well-nigh impossible to teach someone how to establish rapport – that's a personal quality you either have or you don't – but it's drilled into folklore students that they won't get very far in collecting the real-life material they seek if they don't click with their informants.

I myself love learning about people's way of life; establishing rapport is usually easy for me. I walk right up and start asking questions, usually starting with something like, "Hey, buddy, how ya doing?" Just a few days ago, I conversated with a man at the local recycling center. He was tall, very thin; his arms were marked with fresh cuts and old home-made tattoos; his hair was red, curly, and gathered at his nape in a grizzled pony-tail. He was sorting his recyclables into half-a-dozen barrels – he even had a barrel for #2 plastic (milk cartons). He told me that he made the rounds of his route twice a day and each round garnered him $35 to $40. He told me details regarding scavenging laws in San Diego. He told me of the police sweeps in which recyclers lost their illegal shopping carts. (My red-headed informant was using a deluxe cart lent to him by the owner of the recycling center, who apparantly respected his work ethic.)

I wanted to know more: how did he happen to enter his line of work?; did he use drugs?; where did he get the tattoos?; what about the big cuts on his arms?; what stories could he tell me about other recyclers, about the police, about the homeless people in the area?; and where did he live? (He looked like he slept under a overpass, but it sounded like he made enough to pay rent). I had lots of questions. Next time I run into him, I will ask a few.

Let us return to the question: what do folklorists, mystery novelists, detectives, and investigative journalists have in common?

I would not dare insult your intelligence by spelling out the answer! Instead, I will remind you of a few points: local color ... rapport ... participatory-observation ... informant ... primary and secondary sources.

There is a certain type of person who wants to delve deeply into things hidden, who wants to collect and organize data in order to make sense of a situation

We call this person a detective.

We call this person an investigative journalist.

We call this person a mystery novelist.

We call this person a folklorist.