Practice Theory in Folklore and Folklife Studies

Since the 1960s, folkloristic approaches in North America and Europe have been thematised with the keywords of performance and practice, respectively. Although the orientations built around the keywords share a concern for conceptualising folklore as a type of expressive action, significant theoretical differences are apparent. Arising at a similar juncture in the twentieth century in response to social upheaval, they differ in the use of explanation or generalisation with performance often representing singularity (and emergence) of an event and practice signifying the aggregate (and precedence) of folk behaviour. An evaluation of their trajectories into the twenty-first century suggests the more expansive explanatory potential of practice theory in folklore and folklife studies, particularly if the mission of such studies is oriented toward a "mobile ethnography" of everyday life. Although sharing sociological and anthropological theories of practice advanced by Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, folkloristic ideas of practice focus on cognitive and cultural rationales underlying repeated, variable behaviour and framed activities. Acknowledgements This essay is a revision of a paper delivered at the American Folklore Society annual meeting, Boise, Idaho, October 2009, in a special panel on Practice Theory, the first such panel at an American Folklore Society meeting. My thanks to fellow panellists Jay Mechling, Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby, and Maribel Alvarez for their comments. I also appreciate the feedback of Daniel Wojcik at the University of Oregon and the intellectual stimulation of colleagues at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam, Linda-May Ballard and attendees at a memorable Society for Folklife Studies meeting in Melrose, Scotland, and Paul Oliver and Marcel Vellinga of the International Vernacular Architecture Unit at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, England.