ABSTRACT
FOLK SOCIETY The concept of folk society usually refers to homogeneous tradition-centered groups dependent
on or on the edge of urban and mass culture. The term owes its popularity to Robert Redfield’s essay “The Folk Society,” published in 1947 in the American Journal of Sociology. Folk societies, Redfield proposed, have certain features in common that enable scholars to define them as a type, in contrast to the society of the modern city. The characteristics of the folk society are that it is small, isolated, homogeneous, and nonliterate, with a strong sense of group solidarity. Underscoring the stability of the society and the faceto-face interaction of folk with one another, Redfield postulated that members of the folk society have lived in long and intimate association with one another in a single location. The folk society as tradition-centered is often contrasted with the future, individualistic, and technological orientation of urban society. Another way to express this contrast is of the folk society as a “little community” existing in the shadow of the larger, usually dominant culture, or “great tradition.” Custom rather than law is important for fixing the rights and duties of individuals in the little community; the sacred prevails over the secular.
