Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-1940

Western Folklore, Summer 2000 by Callahan, Richard J Jr

Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-1940. By Jane S. Becker. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 331. $55.00 cloth, $18.95 paper)

Selling Tradition adds to the critical examination of culture and folklore by asking "what is tradition?" in a way that directs the reader to the intertwining of "tradition" and "modernity," two categories often considered to be in opposition. From the outset it is clear that Jane Becker is not going to let such a dichotomy go unexamined. "The very nature of cultural forms defined as traditional and folk," she writes, "raises questions about the process by which those forms have evolved, the new meanings they embody in historical contexts so different from those of their inception, and the implications of their new status and interpretation for members of the cultures and communities they presumably represent" (3). Becker's book, as this passage indicates, can be situated among other recent studies of global cultures that are teaching us that it is no longer possible to consider "folk" or "traditional" as categories outside of "modern," or to think of "crafts" as having little relationship to a field of production defined by the commercial marketplace.

Becker's particular site of inquiry concerns what one could argue is the quintessential "folk" culture of the United States-central Appalachia and its handicrafts. In particular, she takes the period between 1930 and 1940, the heyday of the "handicraft revival," to examine the relation among the national marketplace for traditional goods, the definition of tradition, and the justifications for the creation of what amounted to an industry of craft production in the mountains. Along the way the reader is presented with a fascinating, grounded history of the emergence of romantic attraction to the idea of preindustrial life and culture, the relation of those views to arguments about national identity, and attempts to reform and revitalize the economically underdeveloped mountains without losing their particular "traditional" culture. What makes Selling Tradition most interesting, in my view, is that Becker refuses to treat this history as simply one of exploitation. Although the products of the craft industry were driven by the commercial market and therefore often had little relationship to "traditional" styles or modes of production, and conditions of labor were difficult, Becker shows the mountain producers of handicrafts-primarily women-participating in the marketplace as a way to earn money and support families that were having trouble surviving economically in depression-era Appalachia.

The book begins with a good discussion of the notion of "folk" in America, and its ties to ideas of tradition and authenticity in the larger context of national identity and industrial anxiety. Her critical overview of models for analyzing folk culture in a modern world is astute. Defining "tradition as a symbolic construction," Becker argues that "we must concentrate, therefore, on the contexts in which particular traditions and folk groups were constructed, unraveling their specific histories" (39). Besides setting up her own study, the chapter also makes for a useful introduction to the history of the emergence of the folk/modern dichotomy in the United States, essential to a critical folkloristic perspective.

True to her outlined method, then, Becker next recounts the post-Civil War invention of Appalachia as a folk region. But the heart of her study comes in her impressive rallying of sources related to the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The Guild was designed to educate mountain women and organize them to produce commercially viable crafts. It becomes clear that the "traditional crafts" that came to represent Appalachian tradition to the nation were shaped by market considerations and professional designers, and often produced in factory-like settings. We learn about conflicting views on machinery in craft production, competition between handicraft marketers, and the Federal Government's proposal to regulate mountain handicraft production as an industry. We also see how cultural representations in both advertising and museums drove the image of tradition that remains connected to the life and cultural productions of the southern mountains.

Most interesting, Becker takes a chapter to look at the producers of mountain handicrafts themselves. 'The mountaineers," she shows, "were deliberate actors in a specific historical time rather than vague and shadowy remnants of a distant past" (126). And these deliberate actors, finding themselves in a world that was not the "traditional" world imagined by the consumers of their products, were quite modern in their use of the craft industry to make money. Becker's analysis derives from a creative and critical reading of field notes by researchers from the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau recorded during 1933 and 1934. While on the one hand the Women's Bureau was concerned with the exploitation of women laborers, on the other hand their own cultural biases shaped their views of mountain conditions. Becker reads between the lines, seeing these reports as a negotiation between the Women's Bureau questioners and workers' responses. And in this negotiation, she reveals a highly diverse world of conditions and positions among mountain producers. Through Becker's reading of these reports, the context of the handicraft revival and mountain craft production shifts from one of "tradition" versus "modernity" to one of class relations, business decisions, and other familiar concerns that were as relevant in the big city as they were in the rural mountains.