Policy Legends and Folklists

Traditional Beliefs in the Public Sphere

Bibliographic Data

ID2818892
AuthorsGary Alan Fine (0000-0002-2431-1562), Barry O''Neill, Barry O’neill (University of California, Los Angeles), Barry O'Neill
Year2010
Volume123
Issue488
Pages150-178
Publication date2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American Folklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jaf.0.0133
OpenAlexW1983143873
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited41

Although folklorists have seldom concentrated on politics, folklore thrives among decision-making elites and the politically aware citizenry. One genre is the "policy legend," a traditional text that describes institutions or social conditions, often in a historical frame, to call for governmental or collective action. Even though policy legends are typically transmitted in written form, they change continually, adapting to their political contexts and the concerns of their communicators and audiences. They frequently take the form of lists, which we call folklists, and survive through autopoiesis, the propensity of a system to repair and maintain its internal elements and boundaries. This article analyzes three policy legends: the list of historical statistics on the prevalence of war, then-and-now lists of the worst school discipline problems, and an alleged, wordy federal regulation on the price of cabbages

Action (physics) · Archaeology · Folklore · Frame (networking) · Legend · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Social and Cultural Dynamics