Roots of a Region: Southern Folk Culture. By John A. Burrison. 2008.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 224 pages. ISBN:
978-1-934110-20-1 (hard cover), 978-1-934110-21-8 (soft cover).

Reviewed by Gregory Hansen, Arkansas State University

[Word count: 937 words]

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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http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=642