Abstract: Appalachian studies scholars have long asked what unifying social, political, or cultural features and geographic boundaries make our region definable, often unearthing more questions than answers. This article offers a toolkit to help Appalachian studies scholars productively make peace with the region's un-definability: that of folklore studies. Folklorists recognize that some major concepts and real-world phenomena—history, tradition, community—are not universally definable. They conduct ethnography to understand lived experiences in their communities of study, probing nuanced and variable cultural responses to social and political issues. If done carefully, folkloristic research does not seek to represent all others who might be generalized as "like" the people with whom a study was conducted. When examining conventions of folkloristic genres, folklorists understand both the value of traditions' local specificity and the importance of recognizing how those practices relate to broader human themes. And, as with Appalachian studies, folklore studies values service-oriented partnerships between academically based and public-facing scholars. This article advocates for folklore studies, alongside frameworks such as critical regionalism and international mountain studies, as well-suited for considering Appalachia in all its conceptual slipperiness.
Olivia H. Phillips (Sun,) studied this question.