The Written Suburb: An American Site, an Ethnographic Dilemma

This is a great example of how to do a modern ethnography. Many of the methods texts dealing with ethnographies fail to provide any useful advice on the topic. This book does not offer advice, but rather a very successful model of what to do. So, you could say that it informs by example. Aside from that particular benefit, the book is a great read and source of useful insights into how communities construct an image to maintain their viability.

Often when people think about folklore, they picture quaint villages populated by storytellers and quilters. John Dorst seeks to dispel those stereotypes with his postmodern analysis of the hidden ideology and power behind the serene façade of a middle-class elite suburb, in this case, Chadds Ford, PA, home of the Wyeth family of artists. In doing so, he pushes folklore studies into an intriguing new direction. The Written Suburb introduces 4 key concepts: 1.) post-ethnography-the reading of institutions, printed materials, and events such as museums, historical societies, arts and crafts festivals, diner menus, and AAA brochures as postmodern texts; 2.) postmodern vernacular-a particular "dialect" of postmodernity characterized by self-reference without the ironic sense of humor as found in MTV and comic books; 3.) auto-ethnography-the self-generated texts of a literate society capable of observing itself. The folklorist's job is to collect and read critically these texts; and 4.) Site-a suburb as an assemblage of texts and ideology. Dorst also questions the rhetoric behind museums (in this case the Brandywine River Museum) and the concept of tradition. The unique combination of the works of postmodernists and semiotics scholars such as Frederic Jameson and Dean MacCannel with American folklore scholarship is truly stimulating.Being so theoretical, The Written Suburb is not an easy book to read, nor can its concepts be easily grasped in one reading. But it is a valuable book for folklorists who are serious about the evolution of the discipline and who enjoy finding connections between folkloristics and postmodernism.