The Stigmatized Vernacular: Where Reflexivity Meets Untellability (Encounters: Explorations in Folklore and Ethnomusicology)

As part of this multilayered conversation about stigma, this volume discusses the relationship between the stigmatized individual and our role as researchers. Here we address our own perspectives as researchers struggling with stigma issues and tellability, as well as scholarly reflexive concerns dealing with what can’t be said when working with stigmatized groups or topics. The disciplinary focus of folklore positions us well to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized, but it also propels us toward analysis of the performance of stigma, the process of stigmatization, and the political representation of stigmatized populations. These perspectives come to the fore in this book, as does the multilayered nature of stigma―its ability to reproduce, overlap, and spread, not just in terms of replication but also in terms of the ethnographer’s ability to apprehend it and her ability to research and write about it.

• Diagnosing Folklore: Perspectives on Disability, Health, and Trauma
• Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South
• Reflections on the Folklife Festival: An Ethnography of Participant Experience (Special Publications of the Folklore Institute, Indiana University)
• Yuchi Folklore: Cultural Expression in a Southeastern Native American Community (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)
• Fire in the Placa: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco
• The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
• Folklore Rules: A Fun, Quick, and Useful Introduction to the Field of Academic Folklore Studies