The Boiled Down Juice

At the core of folklore and folklife, we find traditions that extend across generations, artistic expressions that speak to beauty and justice, and the patterns and rhythms of our daily lives—all elements that are instrumental parts of our community existence. As a folklorist, I believe deeply in the importance and potentially revolutionary nature of community dialog and shared human stories. I believe we both learn and problem solve through listening, speaking, and sharing. Telling stories and talking about the culture of our daily lives is an instrumental component in our quest for true human rights for all.

Conversely, we can not, and should not, ignore that cultural expression can also manifest deep-seated fears, racism, ignorance, and hate against others. Certainly not all stories or artistic expressions concerning daily life work toward human rights and dialog. Our cultural expressions contain our greatest potential and our most horrible realities.

However, the act of storytelling—expressing ourselves through our folklife and sharing these stories and cultural expressions within and across cultures— has the potential to bring us together to work toward justice and peace.

I believe stories and cultural expressions fundamentally possesses this potential because within the culture of our daily lives we engage with our past, our present community, and we envision our dreams and goals for the future. Stories and cultural expression have the power to both express our problems and our solutions to these problems and fundamentally connect our own life with others.

Through our cultural expressions we articulate what is beautiful and what is unjust; in our folklife we talk about what our life is like and what it can —if we work together to fight injustice and hate and dedicate ourselves to true human rights— become.

This blog is set up to encourage dialog about these subjects and to highlight work that is going on at the intersection of social justice, human rights based education and folklife studies. Although these topics are not always seen as natural partners, I think such partnerships hold immense potential. This blog highlights such partnerships and encourages dialog across topics, disciplines, theory and practice.

I greatly welcome any comments, suggestions, ideas, etc. If you would like to contribute an essay, post, etc to the blog (and I hope you would like to!) please email me at meredith.martin466 (at)wku.edu.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and please be sure and check out the links section of this blog to learn more about all the amazing organizations and people who are working toward social justice and a true culture of human rights.

–Meredith Martin