Studies of Folk Culture in Spain:

Positioning Folklore Studies in the History of Spanish Anthropology

Abstract

  Folklore studies have not been considered as an academic discipline in Spain since their appearance in the late 19th century; the work on so-called traditional or folk culture treated in the folkloric field has been included instead in the disciplines of cultural or social anthropology. However, there was an era in which folklore studies actively played a role among Spanish intelligentsia. This article examines folklore studies in the history of Spanish anthropology by reviewing studies about traditional or folk culture between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  The findings were:

  1) Folklore studies in Spain are ancestral to Spanish anthropology, which laid the foundation; nevertheless, they have never been ‘scientific’, but always regarded as ‘amateur’.

  2) Folklore matters (e.g. practices transmitted orally, local language, etc.) have been manipulated by regional administrations in order to construct local identities in relation to nationalism.

  3) While in the seventies we were speaking about folklore, in the eighties of popular culture, and in the nineties of patrimony, we were referring to the same reality, to the same object of study.