Abstract
Concentrating Folklore to the Smallest Social Unit: Family Folklore
Outbroke in the 19th century as a branch of cultural studies, folklore has shown a rapid development in the 20th century. Under the scope of this development, in which the Northern American folkloristics played a crucial role, the research fields, methods and techniques of folklore have become diversified. In this respect, family folklore, whose importance had been started to express in the context of the folkloric capacities of the social groups in the 1950s, became a gradually disseminating research field in the 1970s. In Turkish folkloric studies, even though some aspects of family folklore were examined in the in some certain research, the holistic studies which are making references to the definition, scope and method have not been conducted. There is no doubt that, when the dynamic characteristics of the family, which changes in respect to social and cultural conditions is taken into consideration, conducting research on the folklore capacity and repertoire of Turkish family unit will be beneficial for the field of folklore, as well as providing other fields of study concentrating on family with invaluable data.
In the present study, which is conducted by qualitative research method and approach based on scientific literature reviews, first. the dynamics of family folklore under the scope of the concept of group folklore is defined. Secondly, the evaluations as regards to the chronology, objective, scope and method of the family folklore studies are made by making use of the experiences of the branches of Northern American folkloristics, such as sociology, social anthropology and social psychology. Finally, remarks on method and scope made, with the purpose of establishing a scientific background for the future Turkish folkloric studies focusing on family folklore.
Keywords
Folklore, social group, group folklore, family folklore, Turkish family