Writing a book subtitled "Southern Folk Culture" is an ambitious undertaking. Fortunately, John Burrison recognized the wide scope of the topic and narrowed his focus to a study of specific folk traditions found throughout the South in general by providing a specific focus on his own research on Georgia’s traditional culture. Burrison’s book is an interesting presentation of variations on the theme that folklife is a vibrant resource that profoundly shapes and expresses southern culture. Roots of a Region is not an exhaustive treatment of these topics. It is an accessible introduction to the study of southern folklore, written in an accessible style that presents academic research to readers with a non-specialized interest in folk culture.
An engaging account of Burrison’s own development as a specialist on southern folklore serves as an effective introduction. The author recounts how he moved from Pennsylvania to Georgia in 1966. His account of his folklore studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s gives a good background for both his personal and intellectual interests in the field, and the book can also be read as an interesting treatment of ways in which a scholar’s initial academic interests inform his or her professional career. Those familiar with Burrison’s landmark research on folk pottery and other aspects of southern folk culture gain a fine understanding of his own personal experiences, thereby adding to the reflective dimensions of his previous research. This introduction not only succeeds in giving us context for Burrison’s academic interests but also effectively outlines salient aspects of folklore research for the non-specialist.
The clever title to the introduction is "A Pennsylvania Yankee in Governor Lester Maddox’s Court." The initial sense of Burrison being a stranger in a strange land is well established by period photographs, including the iconic image of Governor Lester Maddox riding a bicycle backwards in Georgia’s capitol building. The remaining six chapters build from this sense of exoticism and display the fascinating intellectual development of this transplanted denizen of Philadelphia. His first chapter provides an overview of ways in which folk traditions constitute wider elements of regional culture. The second chapter provides an overview of various elements of folklore and ways in which they serve as markers of regional identity. The following chapter is one of the finest sections of the book. Burrison provides excellent and fascinating historical contexts for a wide variety of expressive forms, framing his discussion with an excellent treatment of ideological shifts from an assimilationist ideology into the more prevalent ideal of contemporary cultural pluralism. This chapter is especially well researched, and the extensive bibliography is an excellent resource for readers interested in more in-depth treatments of the variety of folklore genres that he examines.
The fourth chapter could stand on its own as a model for completing a case study of an artifact. Burrison brings together his discussion of previous themes and methods in an excellent discussion of folk pottery. He traces out antecedents for pottery traditions in Georgia and North Carolina, focusing primarily on the historical development of the popular face jug tradition that continues to thrive in family-owned businesses. This is an excellent discussion of the artistic tradition, and Burrison’s writing effectively blends prime fieldwork techniques with insightful analysis. This chapter is followed by another case study, in which a focus on the artifact is replaced by a more generalized interest in place. The chapter succeeds as an overview of research projects in Georgia, and the discussion of Lillie West’s ballad singing provides an overview of her core repertory of traditional songs. The overall scope of this chapter, however, is a bit too broad. As Burrison explains, Georgia has not received the extensive research provided to other southern states. As a result, this chapter feels too sketchy for a book written as a more generalized study of southern folklore.
This same thinness is also a problem for the final chapter on southern folk culture today. Burrison’s focus on research on contemporary folklore in Georgia is too narrow to provide more than an adumbration of interesting research topics, especially for a volume on southern folk culture. His examples include urban legends, graffiti art, creolized foodways, and other interesting topics, but the overall sense of a dearth of contemporary folklore in the South weakens an otherwise strong discussion of regional folklife. Studies of folklore in nearby states show the resilience of older forms, such as the vibrancy of old-time music traditions in North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida. This type of revival of traditional music in Georgia is sketched out too thinly in Roots of a Region. Moreover, there are fascinating studies of additional newly emergent forms that are flourishing throughout the South. Burrison rightly critiques the devolutionary premise in much of folklore scholarship, but there is an implicit sense to his own book that contemporary southern folklore is not nearly as vital as it was in the halcyon days of yore.
Despite these shortcomings, Burrison’s book is an excellent contribution to studies of southern folk culture. Scholars may quibble about some of the themes in the book. The concept of "roots culture," for example, is highly problematic, and Burrison’s treatment of the distinction between "regional and ethnic" traditions is a bit too sketchy. The footnotes and bibliography, however, show that the author is well grounded in the scholarly literature, and critical readers need to keep in mind that he is writing for a general audience. In this respect, the book succeeds as a fine introduction to contemporary themes in the scholarship on southern folk culture. It would be especially effective as an introductory reading for a class on southern culture.
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[Review length: 937 words • Review posted on November 12, 2008]