folkism

Noun

folkism (countable and uncountable, plural folkisms)

1. (uncountable) An ideology that emphasizes racial or ethnic identity, especially when combined with nationalism.
   • For example, I hear a "forward" reference to the quartets of Bartok and Shostakovitch (and perhaps more generally to a kind of imprecise "Central European nationalism/folkism”) in the bare and unharmonized motif in the viola and cello, imitated by the first and second violins, at bars 92–94 of the...2005, Eric Clarke, Ways of Listening, page 172
   • While Marilyn Booth notes how the Negm-Imam duo drew on 'popular oral performance and collective life', she adds that 'these songs, performed, countered the "naïve folkism” that Nasserist rhetoric – including publications for the populace in the form of poems, songs and studies of “folk life” –...2020, Caroline Rooney, Creative Radicalism in the Middle East, page 24
   1. An ideology, articulated by historian Simon Dubnow, that declared Jewish people to be a diaspora nation without a territory.
      • Folkism viewed itself as a present-oriented phenomenon called into existence not by individuals or ideals, but by the exigencies of daily life in the Diaspora.2011, Kalman Weiser, Keith Ian Weiser, Jewish People, Yiddish Nation, page 153
      • Subsequently, this vision led him to an embrace of a populist folkism that attempted to forge a Jewish nationally autonomous space by creating an independent Jewish economics and politics.2013, Joshua M. Karlip, The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe
   2. Völkisch nationalism; the desire for a homogeneous population that excludes foreigners and the belief that different racial or ethnic groups have different rights.
      • For folkism, human value and human rights were associated with cultural identity just as they are for contemporary postmodernism.1999, Timothy J. Demy, Gary P. Stewart, Genetic Engineering: A Christian Response, page 134
      • It was, in essence a romantic folkism synthesized with scientific evolutionism. It included the standard Darwinian ideas of struggle (Kampf) and competition as the foundation for natural law, and therefore social law, with a curious "religion" of nature which implied a small place for rationalism...2013, Richard M. Lerner, Concepts and Theories of Human Development
   3. A Japanese ideology that emphasized a common identify among East Asian peoples, associated with the fascist movement during the WWII era.
      • But folkism, he urged, should not be understood as imperial expansion but rather as the necessity of the group to transcend "certain limits." "The formation of Manchukuo," he wrote, "had nothing to do with capitalism but resulted from the [needs] of Japanese folkism."1988, Harry D. Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen
      • Harootunian calls this "an ideological/cultural order calling for authenticity, folkism, and communitarism” in pointing out fascism's “ideological appeal to culture and community.”2004, E. Reynolds, Japan in the Fascist Era, page 50
   4. A movement within the Heathen or neo-pagan community that states one cannot convert to Heathenry unless one has the appropriate ancestry.
      • Further, the 'slope' from mild 'folkism' to more major nationalism, including the use of symbols associated with the far right and the appropriation and use of heathen or Asatru symbolism by such groups, is documented for the USA by Gardell (2003); we have commenced some discussion of such...2006, Ian Russell, Images, Representations and Heritage, page 100
      • Notwithstanding, the idea of Folkism is largely rejected by more than a hundred kindreds, including the Raven Kindreds and those affiliated with the Ring of Troth, the Irminsul Ættir, or the American Vinland Association.2011, Gundula E. Rommel, Asgard in America, page 19
2. (uncountable) Synonym of populism.
   • These movements were intensely nationalist, highly moral and, although middle class, discovered folkism 'as a reaction against bourgeois society' (Joll, 1983: 154).1999, Christopher Warhurst, Between Market, State, and Kibbutz, page 59
   • The communal body, wrapped with the social fabric of folkism, naturalized social relations, thus erasing any differences of class, gender, or region.2001, Thomas Lahusen, Harbin and Manchuria: Place, Space and Identity, page 200

   Synonyms:

   populism

3. (uncountable) An artistic aesthetic that is based on traditional practices that are passed on from individual to individual, such as folk tales, folk music, common cultural practices, etc.
   • The emergence of folkism in Bangladeshi cinema had much to do with what in the romantic tradition is called escapism.1996, Bāṃlāra itihāsa o saṃskr̥tite nagara, page 219
   • And so, in a sense, folklore was, in the rhetoric of the thirties, a makeshift, used more as an enabling language, a medium, than anything else. In the postwar forties, this veneer of folkism rubbed off as easily as, in the thirties, it had been laid on.2000, Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel, page 151
4. (uncountable, more specifically) A movement within Nigerian theater started by Sam Ukala that focuses on folk tales as a reaction against colonialism.
   • Apart from the African folktale's capacity for clear communication and its popularity among the folk, there are other reasons why it should provide a matrix for folkism.1996, Sam Ukala, “'Folkism': Towards a National Aesthetic Principle for Nigerian Dramaturgy”, in New Theatre Quarterly, volume 12, number 47, page 285
   • Folkism permits the audience to feel but sacrifices the luxury of sustained empathy, in contrast to epic drama, which exhorts the audience to reason (p. 286).2023, Tekena Mark, Directing the Play, page 49
5. (countable) A folksy saying, expression, or practice.
   • Quaint folkisms, rejected by the folk, did exert some influence – a selective influence, surely – on upper-class and noble writers, such as the great poet Aleksandr Pushkin.1998, James Von Geldern, Louise McReynolds, Entertaining Tsarist Russia, page 47
   • Step-parenting is proverbially the hardest of relatiohships to build successfully. For many o fhte millions who start over again with children in the equation, that folkism proves woefully true.2007, Beth Roy, Parents' Lives, Children's Needs, page 211
6. (uncountable) A philosophical stance that meaning is based on common usage by ordinary people rather than an abstract principle.
   • Once one accepts the concept of folkism in man's thought, this leads to a consideration of folkism in religion.1982, Cha-yong Cho, Guardians of Happiness: Shamanistic Tradition in Korean Folk Painting, page 20
   • This compromises the note of purportedness in reference that it seems to me folkism means to sound. Either the intentionality of reference is accepted as a datum or it has to be explained. Folkism short-stops the question, both ways.2003, R.J. Nelson, Naming and Reference: The Link of Word to Object