William Westerman - Paradigms of Folk Resistance: Climate Change, Tradition, and the Imagination

Klipi teostus: Pille Kannimäe 08.10.2015 5767 vaatamist Kultuur Folkloristika


William Westerman (PhD in Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania) is Assistant Professor at New Jersey City University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

Westerman asks whether traditional culture is more sustainable, and thus a force for ‘progressive’ social change, and whether the union of residual and emergent bring meaning and wisdom to the shape of protest in ways that form a third force in counterhegemony.

The 5th International Conference of Young Folklorists Folklore of Connections, Folklore of Conflict 

University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy October 7–9, 2015 

Organised by the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore (University of Tartu), Estonian Native Crafts Department (University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy), and Tartu Nefa Group, in partnership with the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (Vilnius)

The 2015 conference “Folklore of Connections, Folklore of Conflict” focuses on the role of folklore in the formation of relationships and attitudes, as well as confrontations. Folklore bridges and connects individuals and groups, providing them with means to construct, reinforce, display, or question identities and cultural patterns. As numerous examples from history show, however, folklore serves also as an instrument for exclusion and othering. The same stories, gestures, patterns and objects can be invested with different meanings in varying contexts.