 | Grasping Things: Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America Subjects: Material culture -- United States; United States -- Social life and customs; Dwellings -- United States; Folk art -- United States; Food habits -- United States; Material culture -- Pennsylvania; Material culture -- Indiana; Pennsylvania -- Social life an; America stocks its shelves with mass-produced goods but fills its imagination with handmade folk objects. In Pennsylvania, the "back to the city" housing movement causes a conflict of cultures. In Indiana, an old tradition of butchering turtles for church picnics evokes both pride and loathing among residents. In New York, folk-art exhibits raise choruses of adoration and protest. These are a few of the examples Simon Bronner uses to illustrate the ways Americans physically and mentally grasp things. Bronner moves beyond the usual discussions of form and variety in America's folk material culture to explain historical influences on, and the social consequences of, channeling folk culture into a mass society. Simon J. Bronner is Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences and Dean of the College of General Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of American Folklife, Manly Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities, Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920 , and other volumes, and the author of several books, including Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition , Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies, Following Tradition: Folklore in the Discourse of American Culture , and The Carver's Art: Crafting Meaning from Wood . |
