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FOLK SOCIETY
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011
Folk society is a society of primary communal relationships
with little complexity, minimal division of labor and largely insulated from contact with
other societies.
The term folk society is an ideal type associated with
American anthropologist/sociologist Robert Redfield (1897-1958).
Folk society is closely related to F. Tonnies' (1855-1936)
concept of Gemeinschaft.
Gemeinschaft is a form of social integration based on
personal ties; community.
The Folk Society and Culture
Robert Redfield
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 45, No. 5 (Mar., 1940), pp. 731-742
Abstract: Differences in concept, problem, and field procedure between anthropology and
sociology are in part functions of differences in their usual subject matters: the
primitive societies as contrasted with the urbanized societies. Awareness of this fact has
been developed by studies made of peasant societies and of primitive peoples changing
under urban influence. There results a conception of an ideal primitive or folk society.
The urbanized, peasant, and tribal society may be compared in part in terms provided by
Maine, Durkheim, and Tonnies. The concept of "culture," developed by
anthropologists, reflects the integrated body of conventional understandings corresponding
to a self-sufficient community, as observed in folk life. Other characteristics of
anthropological analysis of society, as contrasted with sociological, similarly expressive
of the nature of folk society, are the disposition to represent the society and culture in
terms of "pattern" or "structure"; the relatively small development of
problems of sampling, the emphasis on formalized kinship institutions, and certain
emphasis of meaning in such words as "status" and "class." These
considerations lead toward a recognition of opposing or complementary processes: that by
which the ultimate values of a society develop an organization and consistency wich gives
a group moral solidarity; and the expansion of the technical and economic system with
consequent impairment of the moral organization.
The Natural History of the Folk Society
Robert Redfield, Social Forces, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Mar., 1953), pp. 224-228
doi:10.2307/2574218 - jstor.org
The Study of Rural Communities in Quebec: From the
"folk society" Monographic Approach to the Recent Revival of Community as
Place-based Rural Development
Bruno Jean, Université de Québec à Rimouski
Abstract: The intellectual history of social sciences in Quebec reflects an in-depth
community-focused monographic approach. This research model created a conception of rural
Quebec as a collection of communities best described as folk societies. It also reinforced
a social and scientific representation of rural Quebec as traditional, backwards and
conservative. This intellectual history culminated in the work of Horace Miner, a student
of the well known American anthropologist Robert Redfield. In Miner’s 1939 thesis
Saint-Denis : A French-Canadian Parish, the community of Saint-Denis is presented as a
prime example of a folk society. A few years later, Everett C. Hugues, also from the
Chicago school of thought, came to Quebec to study French Canada in transition. He
completed an influential community study of the small booming town of Drummondville in the
Eastern Townships. In the 1950s, an indigenous social science took the lead in community
studies, and created a conceptual model that portrayed rural communities as an expression
of tradition. Since the Chicago school’s evolutionary paradigm conceived each society
as moving from a traditional to a modern stage, rural societies would have no place within
modern societies.
"Suki System and Ritual Kinship System in the Philippine Folk Society," read at
the 27th Conference of Ethnology and Anthropology, Kyoto. - 1973d
Redfield, Robert. (1947). The Folk Society. The American Journal of Sociology
52(4):293-308.
Odum, Howard Washington, Folk society in Social Forces (1953).
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