Selling Tradition

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by Jane S. Becker

University of North Carolina Press

Due/Published July 1998, 360 pages, paper

ISBN 0807847151

Jane Becker examines one of this century's most prominent "folk revivals"--the reemergence of Southern Appalachian handicraft traditions in the 1930s. Through her study of this craft revival, Becker explores the construction of the cultural categories "folk" and "tradition." She also addresses the consequences such labels have had on the people to whom they have been assigned. Becker finds that the new craft production of the 1930s owed less to tradition than to middle-class tastes and consumer culture--forces that obscured the techniques used by mountain laborers and the conditions in which they worked.