George
Mason University
Foodways Paper
To
interview someone (or several people) to learn about one food dish that is in
some way special, meaningful to them. This may be a food that someone in the
group loves and continues to make while others in the group dont like
it at all.
Format of paper. Use conventional
essay format. Feel free to use subtitles in the essay to separate one section
from another if youd like. Since youll be writing about your fieldwork
experiences, you are welcome--and encouraged--to use "I" in this paper.
Youll be presenting fieldwork findings and analyzing them. You may want
to place your analysis in a separate section after you present your ethnographic
data. Or, you may choose to interweave your interpretation with your fieldwork.
Use whatever organizational pattern works best for you and your material.
Youll be quoting what people say; be sure to double-check in a writing
handbook the conventions for including quotations in a paper.
Current fieldwork practice, however, does experiment with alternatives to block
quotations. For example, some people dont like to put their informants
words single-spaced in a block quote; theyd like to have them in the body
of the text to make more equal the words of the writer and the words of the
informant. Youre welcome to experiment in this way. Comment on these experiments
when you write the section on your fieldwork.
You must include information about your fieldwork. Where you place it
is up to you. Folklorists often include fieldwork details either at the beginning
or the ending of a piece, sometimes in the first footnotes, and sometimes threaded
throughout the essay.
Questions to explore in the body of your essay:
*Informants source. When did your informant first hear about the food
and learn to make it? Where? From whom? Persons present? When has your informant
made the food since that first time?
*The recipe. How does your informant talk about the ingredients of the
food? Record your informant talking about how the food is made. Some people
tell the recipe out loud: "Well, you take a couple cups of flour, and you
. . . "
How will you arrange your informants
words on the page so they have the flavor of orally-delivered speech? Insert
words like [laughs] or [long pause]. See me for ideas.
*Present performance context.
What is the present performance context of the food; in other words, when is
the food made now, by whom, for whom?
*Process of making the food. How is the food made: place, people, equipment,
time of day and year. Changes in process, in ingredients, in tools. Why have
the changes come about? What things have stayed the same and why? Ways of doing
that are allowed, not allowed; proper and improper.
*Display. How is the food displayed, arranged on a serving dish? How
is it displayed on the table and then on peoples plates? What other foods
are put with it? Selection, arrangement, repetition: the art of this food dish.
*Serving. How is the food
brought to the people? Who does this; who may not.
*Eating the food. How is
the food eaten? What behavior isnt tolerated? Who sits where during the
food event?
*Clean up. How is the food
cleaned up, disposed of ? Can it be thrown away? Kept?
*Your appraisal of your informant's
folklore repertoire. What other traditional foods does your informant make?
What other items of folklore does your informant use: family stories, jokes,
songs? Other traditional material culture items? Any relationships between this
food he makes and his other traditional
*What stories are associated
with this food? Was there a particular time your informant made this food
and something happened? Record his/her version of the story or tell your version
of the story. Jokes associated with this food? Food fights? Has the food been
used to tease other people? Issues of in-group (esoteric) and out-group (exoteric)
behaviors?
*Your informants interpretation
of the foods meaning and function. If your informant talks about what
the food or its preparation means to him or her, record what he or she says.
If your informant doesn't offer,
ask what the story means to him or to her. Ask why he or she makes it. Ask if
it is one of his or her favorites, for example. Ask if the food reminds him
or her of anything from the past. (See how the squash pies brings back childhood
memories of the cellar storage areas for the women of Allens Neck in Kathy
Neustadts study Clambake.)
What does s/he think of its smell,
color, texture: remember the senses in your fieldwork.
*Your interpretation of the foods
meanings and functions. In your opinion, why does your informant make this
food the way s/he does? What does the food and its preparation mean to him or
her?
--Use some of the concepts weve
discussed to interpret your foodways. Although it sometimes feels uncomfortable
to us to analyze personal materials such as our familys foodways, I am
asking you to write such an analysis. Consider some of the following: twin laws
of variation, communal aesthetics, ritual and festival, communal eating, rites
of passage, folk group, esoteric/exoteric, mean and grand meal, conspicuous
display and consumption, symbolism, function, the senses, aesthetics of presentation,
invention of tradition, life cycle, ownership and deference, process, the performance
of identity, gender, class, race and ethnicity, negotiation, relationship of
the individual to the group, repetition, traditional and outsider art, feeling
responsibility for passing on tradition, "tradition."
*Your comments on the fieldwork process. When and where and with whom did
you do your fieldwork: day, time, place, circumstances. How did you do your
fieldwork? Describe your fieldwork process: did you use a tape-recorder? Did
you take notes, photographs? What challenges did you face doing this assignment?
What did you enjoy? What problems did you experience? What did you notice as
you tried to fasten into print information that was told orally? Other observations?
*Other ideas youd like
to include.
_______________________
Examples of Northern Virginia Folklife
Archive holdings on foodways:
96-1 Family Foodways: Biscuits; PA, NC --F. Edwards
96-4 Family Foodways: Cornbread; TN --S. Parmele
96-5 Family Foodways: Irish Soda Bread; Co. Cork, Ireland --L. Keller
96-6 Family Foodways: Polenta (Italian Am); PA, Auronzo, Italy --M. Shepard
96-8 Family Foodways: Pancit (Filipino Am); NJ, VA --K. Lopez
96-11 Family Foodways: Homemade Ice Cream; ND, VA --A Nepodal
97-53 Foodways: Sunday Soul Food Dinner; NY, DC --G. Brown
_____________________________
How I grade this paper:
Given your fieldwork situation, I look for ample contextual and performance
details that you have been able to observe and record. Those are important because
you need them for any analysis you might make. I especially look for the thoughtfulness
of your interpretations.
_____________________________
FORMS: Northern Virginia Folklife
Archive
Please deposit your research with the Northern Virginia Folklife Archive. Through
the Archives, you can help preserve and teach others about the folklore and
folklife of Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic states.
The Release
Form. Part of fieldwork collection is discussing with your informant
how you--and others--may use his or her oral materials. If you and your informant
are willing, I will house your collection of his or her materials in the Northern
Virginia Folklife Archive. Most universities with folklore courses have such
archives where students and researchers can come and learn about local and out-of
state traditions.
Here, at Mason, these archives are
in my office. The people who have used them the most are students looking for
paper ideas and guidance or students checking for versions of stories they've
heard. I've had a few requests from researchers outside the university. And
folklorists documenting the folklife of Northern Virginia for our state folklorist
have used our collection.
The form you fill out will be for
this paper only. Should you place other collected items in the archive, I'll
give you additional forms for those papers.
Please come visit the Northern Virginia
Folklife Archive (my office, Rob A439) during my office hours or check with
me for extra hours. Look at the foodways research your GMU colleagues have done;
these papers provide good models for you! See the partial list of Archive holdings
at my website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~myocom.
Volunteer in the Archive.
If youd like to volunteer or sign up for an internship (ENGL 498) in the
Archives and learn about folklore archiving, please come see me.
The
Accession Form: This form gives us information about you and your informant(s)
for our searchable data base. Its important to fill it out with great
care.
-- Yocom, February 2001
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