Material is too often
collected
from a youth and ascribed to a
z65
?
z65
?
Childens - Folklore
The lore thus helps to alleviate fear or
give a sense of control lost by the unpredictable. The widespread gum-wrap-
per chain is an example of predicting a boyfriend's emotions. Another is a
fortune-telling device called by the Knapps a "wiggle-waggle," although I
have heard of it too as a type of "cootie catcher. " Paper is folded to allow
one to unveil predictions for the future. After a certain number or color is
259
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? read aloud to the beat of folding and unfolding movements, a flap is lifted
to reveal a crystal-gazing message. As a cootie catcher, the device can be used
to remove dreaded cooties-imaginary insects, disease, or ritual dirt mak-
ing some person or trait undesirable-from your body. Indeed, the obses-
sion of post-World War II children with cooties has spawned a host of ma-
terial folk preventatives and cures (Samuelson 1980).
The functional approach of the Knapps tends to lump together a va-
riety of settings under the rubric of "American. " Some critics have argued
that folk traditions respond more immediately to the physical environment
of the neighborhood, urban or rural. Further, they point out that many of
the traditions created in response to this environment are emergent and spon-
taneous, such as Bernard Mergen's fanciful "Gropper," which opened this
chapter. An enlightening survey of such response in New York City is found
in City Play by Amanda Dargan and Steven Zeitlin. "Play can happen on a
stoop, a box on the sidewalk, a small part of one block, on one street, in
one neighborhood, in one borough, in one city, at one point in history. Yet,
it is in this highly localized activity that our experience of the city is shaped,"
they write (Dargan and Zeitlin 1990, 2; see also Nasaw 1985). They explain
children's use of paper hats, go-carts, and makeshift clubhouses as a need
to create identities and skills for themselves from the resources in their en-
vironment. The results are varied and often individualized; the emergence
of tradition anew is emphasized rather than the lineage of texts.
In many past studies of material folk culture, a tendency existed to
celebrate the old in childlore. Items and informants need not be old to be
folk, but researchers often sought to find lore they could trace back in his-
tory, instead of noting the emergent culture. Much of today's material cul-
ture research calls for getting in there with children to see and illuminate
processes as well as grasp objects. Keen eyes and a quick hand are neces-
sary to note and preserve creative events. More so than the tape recorder
so precious to the scholar of oral traditions, the camera and notepad become
primary aids. Of course, the words and gestures must be recorded as well.
Research on the material folk culture of children lags behind work
done on children's language, belief, and narrative. This dearth of research
stems historically from the largely verbal orientation of folklorists and his-
torians in their studies of adults and children alike. In addition, things made
by children for their own use are commonly private and ephemeral; they are
regularly discarded, forgotten, or hidden. Further, adults are generally easier
for the adult researcher to talk to. Indeed, much of our knowledge of
childlore comes from the memories of the elderly. When children are ap-
proached, they are commonly "interviewed" rather than observed. The re-
260 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? searchers didn't know what to ask about material culture, because they typi-
cally were not aware of it.
Revisionist approaches to the material folk culture of childhood are
based on the uses and perceptions, rather than the mere appearances, of
objects. Objects are considered part of human thought and behavior. Newer
folkloristic approaches offer an interdisciplinary mix of cultural perspectives
drawn from anthropology, social psychological methods and ideas, and the
legacy of analyzing traditions informed by the history of folklore studies.
Whether the object is traditional is of less concern than whether the use is
informally shared by others. Although varied situations are observed, so that
a comparative method might be suggested, usually it is the differences, rather
than similarities, of style and behavior observed in natural contexts that are
stressed.
Let's begin with the developing child. As the child develops, he or she
can do more; on the other hand, adults often can't do what they could as
children. By looking at creative behavior with objects across the lifespan,
one can organize study developmentally. Such behavior can reveal cultural
beliefs about aging. Many may "analytically" assume that the organization
of development proceeds according to age, but Hilger, in her study of
Chippewa child life, found that "culturally" children's growth was not
counted in years. Childhood among the Chippewa began with birth and
ended with puberty, and it was divided into two periods. She writes, "Be-
fore it reached the dawn of reason, it might be described as having been 'just
old enough to remember,' or 'before it had any sense. ' Children between the
age of reason and puberty were designated as having been 'so high'-a ges-
ture of the hand indicating the height" (Hilger 1951, ix).
An "analytical" rather than "cultural" approach to organizing devel-
opment has often been borrowed from the observations of Jean Piaget, who
made the argument that at the outset of life, the child's awareness is of a
singular, central object-the child's own body. This argument moves away
from the common assumption of children's society as a unified culture and
suggests instead that childhood exists as part of a changing system of rela-
tions. A decentering process gradually occurs whereby the child becomes
aware of other objects and spatiotemporal relations. The development of that
awareness and a sense of tradition become related. In the early stage of life,
children's own actions dominate their perception. Within eighteen months,
children learn of actions outside their own, and of causal relations between
other actions, such as a bottle being brought and their own feeding. Touch
is important in the early going, as the child cognitively grasps the three di-
mensionality of the environment and seeks the comfort and meaning of
2. 61
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? physical and social contact (Bronner 1982, 1986b). Children's objects in-
vite movement and stress texture.
Two behavioral scientists, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene
Rochberg-Halton have pointed out that children's objects require some physi-
cal manipulation to release their meaning, whereas adult things like art and
books stress contemplation (1981, 96-97). They added, "The importance
of objects of action in the early years is a reminder of the powerful need
children have to internalize actions and to define the limits of their selves
through direct kinetic control" (p. 100). As cultural critics, they are con-
cerned with objects, because the "most basic information about ourselves
as human beings-the fact that we are human-has been traditionally con-
veyed to us by the use of artifacts" (page 92).
The infant learns to recognize people as a category separate from
things. The child indeed then notices differences in the form and feeling of
individuals and their surroundings. From this springboard comes the idea
that a personal environment can be shaped. You can have "your" things and
have the space be consequentially "yours. " You can even manipulate the
things to control the space, to form an identity. A couple with a one-year-
old recently reported to me that their baby would no longer just find a place
on the floor to play. The infant's sense of place and surroundings emerged-
in the crib. There he would experiment with different arrangements of ob-
jects in relation to his own position. When unhappy, he called for his own
space and things. The child made meanings take shape.
The shape of the space is in many ways a social aesthetic that the child
inherits. The early spaces in the Western child's experience are rectangular-
the crib, the room, the house. Straight lines and sharp angles become stan-
dards of balance, proportion, and order (Toelken 1979, 227-28). Indeed,
some argue, the plan of the child's surroundings largely mirrors the shape
of the body, with its paired and symmetrical design (Bronner 1983; Glassie
1972). Later the child develops an identity based on the space he or she
knows or alters. Play space, for example, can be formally defined by play-
grounds and parks, but is mentally drawn, too, in public streets, buildings,
parts of the house, and lots, according to the perception of what is appro-
priate and aesthetically pleasing to the play group (R. Hart 1979; Mergen
1982, 85-90).
Around the child's second year, Piaget claimed, the child shows be-
haviors that imply creativity-the formation of, or reference to, objects and
events not already present. Aware of a social aesthetic, the child nonethe-
less develops more personal designs by altering and rearranging physical
materials. The loss of control from decentering is being compensated for by
z6z MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? a technical control over operative things. The child takes something apart
to see what is inside or how it works, and the child rearranges the line and
color. Often, children create things for the thrill of creating itself (like the
sand mound on the beach); they delight in the power to change shapes and
to build anew. The achievement of a product offers its own reward. Moth-
ers like to tell me, for instance, of the amazing things children do with their
food-mashed potato mountains and string bean designs. This is not to say
that children's creations are not purposeful. With concept in mind, the child
rigs together an object for his personal world: the wooden boat, the stickball
bat, or the clover chain. Jonah is a boy I know, for example, who shaped a
boat out of clay. It didn't fit into any pattern his mother could recognize,
but Jonah worked and reworked the boat according to a blueprint he had
in his head. His sisters shared the excitement he felt over the creation, and
gave advice. Playing along the nearby river days later, they piled variously
shaped rocks to make elaborate sculptures jutting out of the shallow water.
Each child worked on an individual design, yet they carefully consulted one
another on the form and function of the sculptures and ultimately the sculp-
tures resembled one another. The children used the creations to express their
ideas in material form.
Beyond the interaction between the child's unique mind and his cre-
ation are the influences of region, ethnicity, and class. Differences also exist
between the experiences of rural, suburban, and urban children. How much,
for example, can be inferred from folklorist Henry Glassie's observation: "Of
the flotsam of the streets and back alleys, Philadelphia boys construct a va-
riety of traditional weapons: bows and arrows, 'top shooters,' bolas, sling-
shots with subtypes for bobby pins or rocks, spears, whips, slings, and-
when they are a little older-zip guns. A coat hanger after a little bending
becomes a 'key' with which simple locks can be jimmied" (Glassie 1968,
217-18). Befitting the intellectual image of cities as ugly, decadent places,
material culture research has overstated the importance of objects represent-
ing the seedier side of urban life. In contrast, Americans are accustomed to
romanticized accounts of harmless whittling and dollmaking among rural
children. An honest inventory of childhood's objects-both innocent and
unchaste, delicate and crude, sacred and profane, is warranted.
Although folk processes will continue to hold sway in children's lives
because of the basic needs and demands of human development, commercial
influences add a powerful variable in the modern world. Through various
media, companies specializing in children's toys try to persuade the parent and
child of what a particular age should have, rather than answering the ques-
tion of what they might need. To be sure, the borders between folk and com-
263
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? mercial culture are fuzzy at best, but some distinctions are possible.
Commericial or mass culture stresses consumption and novelty; folk culture
values construction and reuse. Mass culture's products tend toward unifor-
mity and faddism, folk culture toward variation and tradition. In the mass
culture you can be told what the fashion is. Companies therefore consciously
attempt to control the material culture of children and discourage the suppos-
edly jerry-built folk culture. Often, folk products like the stickball bat, go-cart,
and wooden puzzle are usurped and repackaged. Companies depend too on
the exploitation of media heroes and fads. The very persistence of creative self-
exploration and traditional play among children outside of commercial inter-
vention attests to the developmental entrenchment of folk practice.
One reaction to mass culture is to alter the factory-made product to
suit one's tastes. A deck of cards became to my childhood friends a marvel-
ous thing with which to show off the patience and prowess needed to build
a house or create a design. They took Erector sets and communally figured
out ways to use the steel rods and bolts from the sets in their homemade
carts and boats. Such experiences emphasized their control, their personal-
izing of things around them. By allowing them to conceive, control, create,
or alter things informally, their things helped them identify more with the
object, and ultimately externalize their identity better.
The relation of object and action underlies what Brian Sutton-Smith
called "a developmental psychology of play and the arts. " His idea was to
"ask not whether play and art are serious or nonserious, real or unreal, but
to ask rather what sort of cultural adaptation they are" (Sutton-Smith 1971b,
8). Folk arts emerge as communication systems for various segments of so-
ciety. Using dramaturgical terminology, Sutton-Smith describes the sequence
of structures in play and art. The props used in performance become sym-
bolic; the dramatic patterns become expressive structures. In some cases, like
puppetry, the theatrical metaphor directly reveals "an existing understand-
ing of being on stage, having imaginary characters, changing affects, antici-
pations and dramatic properties" (Sutton-Smith 1971, 13). But also, in other
expressive encounters of creative play, the child enacts roles, conceptualizes
form, overlays meanings to representation, and unfolds situations (M. Jones
1980; Sutton-Smith 1979a). At around two years old, objects become sym-
bols; at three, toys become properties; from four to seven, such properties
are used freely in dramatic play. Children's folk play and art are not trivial,
therefore, but the central spine of learning and development.
Beyond the questions posed about specific situations and the condi-
tions for creativity are queries about humanistic continuities of children's art.
The word "childlike," used to describe pictures, triggers among most adults
2. 64 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? similar ideas about relations of line, proportion, and color. Intuitively, at
least, a shared idea exists about the basic structures of children's expressions
of form. This problem has primarily sparked psychological discussion rather
than study of art history for most art historians generally see the artworld
as an adult concern. Yet the precedents in children's work demand atten-
tion for what they say about consistencies in artistic traditions. Rhoda
Kellogg ambitiously reduced the children's art of several societies to basic
pictorial motifs. She then suggested that distinct similarities of line and shape
found among children throughout the world lend support to the existence
of a limited number of designs. Compare all those children's drawings on
refrigerator doors, for instance, and you would come up with more of an
organized set of repeated forms than you think, she implied. Does the com-
bination of competence at a certain age and social contact thus produce
universal and culture-specific sets of folk forms upon which all art is based?
The debate over such a provocative question revolves around how
one conceives that structural concepts of folk forms are inherited. Do they
spring from a common response to growing up, or rather to the culturally
diverse situations of social interaction? Some Freudian advocates claim that
childlike forms emerge from anxiety-producing conflicts---especially sexual
ones (Kris 1962). Anton Ehrenzweig, for example, claimed that at age five,
"libidinous scribblings" surface just when Oedipal conflict typically occurs
in childhood (Ehrenzweig 1965, 169). Although tensions and conflicts com-
monly spark artistic expression, the production of children's art is more com-
monly explained as a development of creativity and identity through expres-
sion (Rank 1945, 276; Bronner 1981b, 65-83).
And what about children's consistent choice of bright or clashing
colors? The child generally feels less restricted by adult standards of con-
formity (which usually stress duller and darker shades) and is allowed more
freedom to combine clashing colors. As American children grow, for ex-
ample, so usually do their conformity to more conservative ideas of color
coordination and reliance on linear form. When I wear somethihg particu-
larly bright or outrageous, I am disparagingly accused of acting like a kid
(and couldn't that be another reason we often find ourselves denying or for-
getting the material culture of our childhood? ). Besides psychological de-
mands, then, persistent structural and aesthetic models present in the envi-
ronment and patterned socializing that takes place in childhood probably
lie at the foundation of children's consistent pictorial creations.
Yet with the rush to identify the collective child, we are in danger of
neglecting the individual who, in shape and vision, tells of a personal side
to creativity.
Material is too often collected from a youth and ascribed to a
z65
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? faceless category of "children," rather than to a real name and personality.
Why, after all, is the lore-that learning that includes technical skills and
creations-in the possession of that particular child? What happens to the
lore later in life? We are anxious to record Granddad before his memories
die with him, but we can also turn to the critical task of documenting our
children before early experiences fade from view.
The core of any approach is to arrive at meaning. Why do children
do what they do? Why does their world look the way it does? Why do they
become who they are, and will be? Objects provide tangible expressions of
ideas and feelings, and thus give a telling symbol of meaning dramatized in
three dimensions. In my work on chain carving, for instance, I observed eld-
erly men making chains out of a single block of wood (Bronner 1984). They
were men who grew up on farms but who now lived in Indiana factory
towns. As children they learned to use a pocketknife from a father, uncle,
or grandfather. To show their prowess and creativity, they made a chain-a
visual riddle-to impress other boys, even elders. They learned to use tools,
work with wood, and operate outside the home-all masculine values. They
adjusted to adulthood partly aided by the tension-relieving objects of folk
creativity. In adulthood they left the farm to work in nearby factories. Most
dropped their chain carving; yet upon retirement or a wife's death, they once
again took to carving. Carving once more helped them in a time of adjust-
ment. It enabled them to display their productivity and skill in a society that
celebrated youth. It reminded the men of their idyllic (in their minds, any-
way) boyhoods. The stroking and touching of wood alleviated tensions and
anxieties common to their situation. The objects they wanted to make anew
told of unspoken hopes, goals, experiences, and frustrations they shared.
Childhood can set patterns for later life, indeed for the society. Those
objects we made and used as children can carry great import for us later.
The skills we know, the aesthetics we develop, and the values we learn find
manifestation in the technics practiced as children and in the creations that
result. Turning to observations of children playing with wood, I found con-
tinuities over time. ' Despite changing societal attitudes toward proper
sexual roles, traditional masculine and feminine technical roles were still
being enacted in rural boys' play. Finding the meanings of such activity at
that moment of enactment and later in life for those particular boys and
girls requires the kind of folkloristic study still being awaited (Petersen
1972).
Analyzing creative processes and objects that represent the skills,
goals, tensions, values, and ideas of children and the society around them
leads to revelations about human expression. Indeed, children often cannot
z66 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? articulate their hidden feelings in speech or gesture, but they do express them-
selves through things. Psychologists have used this idea to help abused chil-
dren. Children who cannot talk about their experience create paintings and
sculpture to dramatize their feelings. Working within certain traditional con-
ventions of form, line, and color, the child can project conflicts onto an ex-
ternal, nonthreatening outlet. This situation allows for inventiveness while
it also maintains a conservative attitude toward tradition and experience. 2
Once the range of objects made by and for children has been better
identified, it should be possible to build classifications based on an aware-
ness of "process" that help organize collecting and suggest interpretations.
Such classifications may help researchers get beyond the simple division of
"toys and games" and help add the constructions often left out of surveys
of children's objects (see Bronner 1988). For instance, I have found that
children's folk objects commonly fall into categories I call transformational,
synthetic (and syndetic), imitative, and inventive or manipulative.
Transformational objects are commercial or adult things altered to
suit children's needs and images. Philadelphia's "half-ball," used for alley
stickball, is made by slicing a whole "pimple ball" bought from the corner
store. Openings cut into playground fences, according to children's prefer-
ences rather than the architect's design, are another example. In my child-
hood neighborhood, many transformational objects were made from
bottlecaps. Children weighted them down with a coin to make a Scully puck
or they used them for body decoration. Transformational objects usually take
away, relocate, or change the utility of factory-produced objects to arrive
at a new folk object, an object overlaid with one's handiwork and control.
Synthetic objects result from accretion. Things are combined or built
up from existing objects. At Halloween an effigy is commonly put on the
front porch by putting together stuffed sheets, pans, sticks, and old clothes
into the shape of a scary figure. Children enjoy piling rocks, dirt, or cans to
see larger shapes emerge from the small. Loose rubber bands are wrapped
together to form a ball that grows over time; the snowball packs a smaller
object from the larger environment. The most persistent example of children's
folk sculpture, the snowman, is a synthetic object that brings form from the
inviting blanket of snow. Children delight in feeling the figure grow, harden,
and take shape. Related to this feeling is what anthropologist Robert Plant
Armstrong calls "syndesis. " The object is put together, but not developed;
it grows from repetition of similar units. The ordinary spot in the woods
converted to a child's shrine and one's fingers used to make a steeple (whose
reverse is the people) take on a special, sometimes artistic or sacred quality
that is commonly attached to syndesis. The processes of synthesis and
z67
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? syndesis learned in childhood constitute basic "modes in which the human
consciousness apprehends and enacts the world and the self" (R. Armstrong
1981, 13).
Imitative objects resemble larger artifacts in real world. A model hy-
droplane, for instance, abstractly made from clip-type clothespins and in-
cluded in the Knapps' collection (1976, 225) signified some Seattle boys'
preoccupation with the excitement and power of modern boats. Jonah's
clay boat, which I mentioned earlier, is also imitative. Children have sev-
eral versions of jet planes and helicopters made by folding paper. The
treehouse made from boards in a natural environment could be the ulti-
mate imitative object. Although a new and apparently original form, the
knowledge of making these structures was passed among the youthful cre-
ators informally. It is a prime example of folk process causing emergent
designs. The process of imitation blends fantasy and reality to create a
personal world that belongs to the child. Objects in the imitative category
represent youth's aping of, and through that interpretation of, adult ma-
terialism and technology.
The inventive or manipulative object is made from natural resources
into a new, more technical shape (Boas 1938). Sand sculpture on the beach
stands out as an example, but think too of string figures, carved chains, and
paints made from rock and plants. Then there is Brian Sutton-Smith's ex-
ample of his daughters' fashioning leaves and grass into clothes for their doll
(Sutton-Smith 1979d). Much of the fascination for children of objects in this
category comes from their ability to handle and control substances and cre-
ate apparently original shapes and lines. Clay remains popular, for instance,
because it is so easily manipulated and it lends itself quickly to working out
inventive ideas within traditional forms and formulas. Manipulation height-
ens the senses and lifts the ego. Handling string figures delights the eye and
hand because line and form become manipulable and complex by learned
movements.
This classificatory scheme is a limited excursion into the types of ob-
jects encountered in childhood. These are to them what constitutes atten-
tion-keeping activities. The inventive or manipulative objects are related to
the child's curiosity about details of nature. Yet the imitative object speaks
loudly about the modern child's fascination with glittering machinery. More-
over, the imitative object has usually been favored by boys. I have seen boys
attach shirt buttons to clay in imitation of knobs, and create imaginary gad-
gets. Nonetheless, the imitative object that glorifies technology has not elimi-
nated the inventive or transformational object. Indeed, the transformational
object often mocks and abuses technological design. In the synthetic object
z68 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? is found a basic metaphor for the accumulation of experience and property,
for the child celebrates growth by increments. Children may prefer differ-
ent technical activities, but rarely to the exclusion of others. We often find
children delighting in miniaturizing some figures or exaggerating and enlarg-
ing others. As children who are developing concepts of self in relation to the
society, they are testing the limits of appropriateness socially and person-
ally by using design. They often gravitate toward the very big or the incred-
ibly small, or they experiment with the inner intricacy of realistic scale. They
are exploring the built and natural world by themselves, working at differ-
ent times with peers and parents, friends and neighbors. Play and creativ-
ity, commonly informal, are their frequent modes of discovery, release, and
testing of the many worlds they encounter.
Such classifications raise questions about the social implications of
the creative processes children learn in life. For example, with synthetic ob-
jects can researchers validate whether in a sample population, boys prefer
the hefty and rough textures of stones and boards and girls choose the softer
textures of fabric and vegetation? Variables which might suggest correspon-
dences could be activities stressing rhythm and repetition or strength and
cooperation. Whether correlated by style, age, sex, place, ethnicity, or class,
hypotheses based on statistical analysis need elaboration. Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, for example, asked children,
parents, and grandparents to identify objects with special meanings within
their homes (1981, 99). They created classes of meaning for the objects:
memories, associations, experiences, self, past, and present-future. Children
scored much higher on objects with meanings for self, for experiences, and
for present and future. Parents and grandparents rated higher than children
on objects with meanings for memories, for associations, and for the past.
Folk objects which are made, or objects used according to folk processes,
constitute another important body of data to evaluate. Folk objects are only
a slice of all children's objects, but they can be extremely useful because they
represent informal learning and communication. Researchers can, and
should, ask what folk objects and activities can tell of children's preferences.
In addition how do social changes affect the traditional toys, labors, and
environments of children? Indeed, how do changes in children's material folk
culture effect social change? What skills are especially prevalent in children's
material culture of different areas and backgrounds? Answering these ques-
tions involves far more than mere "child's play. "
Still lingering is the sticky problem of weighing the interplay between
folk and popular culture in children's creativity. Separating the two is often
difficult or misleading, since they commonly appear inexorably entwined.
269
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? Popular culture is more visible, but nonetheless suggests relations with the
private, often hidden realms of children. Children's magazines like Boy's Life,
for example, regularly suggest projects taken from folk crafts. Are they in-
vigorating the tradition or removing the craft from tradition? Popular cul-
ture can reinforce or standardize folk culture, but more often it intertwines
with folklife. When I interviewed chain carvers, many reported learning from
both popular mechanical magazines and other boys. Some had extra incen-
tive to try their hand at carving, since in the 1930s radio hero Jack Armstrong
offered pocketknives to children on every show! Recently, I had another
example of the interrelationship of popular and folk culture when a student
in my class convincingly argued that the Boy Scout manual had influenced
the formation of boys' material folk culture. Among other artifacts and en-
vironments, Boy Scouts prepare small cars made from wood to run in a min-
iature derby. Over the years the boys have developed informal rules and tastes
for building and decorating the cars. Especially aware of folkloristic ap-
proaches, Jay Mechling has extensively reported in several articles on ob-
jects and environments fabricated by and for the Boy Scouts (Mechling
1984b, 1987, 1989).
Look closely at those objects children like to make. They are often
related to prevalent folk ideas and practices, or can reveal much about the
making of tradition. Take note of the behaviors surrounding the conception
and completion of forms for the thoughts they express.
William Golding touched the hearts of readers when he wrote such
behaviors into his bitter allegory Lord of the Flies (19541. Children were
alone on an island after the adults had been killed in a plane crash. The chil-
dren created their own model of society with "littluns" and "biguns. " The
littluns "had built castles in the sand at the bar of the little river. These castles
were about one foot high and were decorated with shells, withered flowers,
and interesting stones. Round the castles was a complex of marks, tracks,
walls, railway lines, that were of significance only if inspected with the eye
at beach level. The littluns played here, if not happily, at least with absorbed
attention; and often as many as three of them would play the same game
together" (Golding 1954, 67). The biguns destroyed the castles, "kicking
them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones. " Yet they could
not discern or destroy "the particular marks" in which the littluns were ab-
sorbed. Our adult eyes need to be put at beach level, to discern the particu-
lar marks and their deep meanings for the children and for the society. Much
work in material folk culture still lies ahead, so that we can indeed know
the child's world, which is in fact our world.
270 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? NOTES TO CHAPTER TWELVE
1. These are covered in Bronner 1984. Since that study I also observed
children's play in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is discussed in Bronner 1988 and
1990. I give grateful acknowledgment to my students in American Folklore: Culture
and Aging, at Penn State Harrisburg for additional data and thought-provoking dis-
cussion. Students in American Folklore at the University of California at Davis, whom
I taught as visiting distinguished professor in 1990, also contributed to the data pre-
sented here. I appreciate comments provided to me by colleagues Jay Mechling, David
Wilson, Patricia Turner, and Sue Samuelson.
2. The feature of childlore most prevalent in the literature is that children's
expressions are somehow simultaneously liberal and conservative toward cultural
change in traditions. Gary Alan Fine has called this feature "Newell's Paradox" after
nineteenth-century folklorist William Wells Newell, who studied the feature in
children's games. In Fine's important essay "Children and Their Culture: Exploring
Newell's Paradox," he explains the existence of this apparent paradox between inven-
tiveness and stability in childlore by examining the features of inventiveness in the
components of folklore itself: text, context, and performance. Although concerned
mostly with oral and customary lore, Fine's postulation of a stable text, changing con-
text, and both imaginative and conservative performance also applies to material cul-
ture.
271
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl.
give a sense of control lost by the unpredictable. The widespread gum-wrap-
per chain is an example of predicting a boyfriend's emotions. Another is a
fortune-telling device called by the Knapps a "wiggle-waggle," although I
have heard of it too as a type of "cootie catcher. " Paper is folded to allow
one to unveil predictions for the future. After a certain number or color is
259
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? read aloud to the beat of folding and unfolding movements, a flap is lifted
to reveal a crystal-gazing message. As a cootie catcher, the device can be used
to remove dreaded cooties-imaginary insects, disease, or ritual dirt mak-
ing some person or trait undesirable-from your body. Indeed, the obses-
sion of post-World War II children with cooties has spawned a host of ma-
terial folk preventatives and cures (Samuelson 1980).
The functional approach of the Knapps tends to lump together a va-
riety of settings under the rubric of "American. " Some critics have argued
that folk traditions respond more immediately to the physical environment
of the neighborhood, urban or rural. Further, they point out that many of
the traditions created in response to this environment are emergent and spon-
taneous, such as Bernard Mergen's fanciful "Gropper," which opened this
chapter. An enlightening survey of such response in New York City is found
in City Play by Amanda Dargan and Steven Zeitlin. "Play can happen on a
stoop, a box on the sidewalk, a small part of one block, on one street, in
one neighborhood, in one borough, in one city, at one point in history. Yet,
it is in this highly localized activity that our experience of the city is shaped,"
they write (Dargan and Zeitlin 1990, 2; see also Nasaw 1985). They explain
children's use of paper hats, go-carts, and makeshift clubhouses as a need
to create identities and skills for themselves from the resources in their en-
vironment. The results are varied and often individualized; the emergence
of tradition anew is emphasized rather than the lineage of texts.
In many past studies of material folk culture, a tendency existed to
celebrate the old in childlore. Items and informants need not be old to be
folk, but researchers often sought to find lore they could trace back in his-
tory, instead of noting the emergent culture. Much of today's material cul-
ture research calls for getting in there with children to see and illuminate
processes as well as grasp objects. Keen eyes and a quick hand are neces-
sary to note and preserve creative events. More so than the tape recorder
so precious to the scholar of oral traditions, the camera and notepad become
primary aids. Of course, the words and gestures must be recorded as well.
Research on the material folk culture of children lags behind work
done on children's language, belief, and narrative. This dearth of research
stems historically from the largely verbal orientation of folklorists and his-
torians in their studies of adults and children alike. In addition, things made
by children for their own use are commonly private and ephemeral; they are
regularly discarded, forgotten, or hidden. Further, adults are generally easier
for the adult researcher to talk to. Indeed, much of our knowledge of
childlore comes from the memories of the elderly. When children are ap-
proached, they are commonly "interviewed" rather than observed. The re-
260 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? searchers didn't know what to ask about material culture, because they typi-
cally were not aware of it.
Revisionist approaches to the material folk culture of childhood are
based on the uses and perceptions, rather than the mere appearances, of
objects. Objects are considered part of human thought and behavior. Newer
folkloristic approaches offer an interdisciplinary mix of cultural perspectives
drawn from anthropology, social psychological methods and ideas, and the
legacy of analyzing traditions informed by the history of folklore studies.
Whether the object is traditional is of less concern than whether the use is
informally shared by others. Although varied situations are observed, so that
a comparative method might be suggested, usually it is the differences, rather
than similarities, of style and behavior observed in natural contexts that are
stressed.
Let's begin with the developing child. As the child develops, he or she
can do more; on the other hand, adults often can't do what they could as
children. By looking at creative behavior with objects across the lifespan,
one can organize study developmentally. Such behavior can reveal cultural
beliefs about aging. Many may "analytically" assume that the organization
of development proceeds according to age, but Hilger, in her study of
Chippewa child life, found that "culturally" children's growth was not
counted in years. Childhood among the Chippewa began with birth and
ended with puberty, and it was divided into two periods. She writes, "Be-
fore it reached the dawn of reason, it might be described as having been 'just
old enough to remember,' or 'before it had any sense. ' Children between the
age of reason and puberty were designated as having been 'so high'-a ges-
ture of the hand indicating the height" (Hilger 1951, ix).
An "analytical" rather than "cultural" approach to organizing devel-
opment has often been borrowed from the observations of Jean Piaget, who
made the argument that at the outset of life, the child's awareness is of a
singular, central object-the child's own body. This argument moves away
from the common assumption of children's society as a unified culture and
suggests instead that childhood exists as part of a changing system of rela-
tions. A decentering process gradually occurs whereby the child becomes
aware of other objects and spatiotemporal relations. The development of that
awareness and a sense of tradition become related. In the early stage of life,
children's own actions dominate their perception. Within eighteen months,
children learn of actions outside their own, and of causal relations between
other actions, such as a bottle being brought and their own feeding. Touch
is important in the early going, as the child cognitively grasps the three di-
mensionality of the environment and seeks the comfort and meaning of
2. 61
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? physical and social contact (Bronner 1982, 1986b). Children's objects in-
vite movement and stress texture.
Two behavioral scientists, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene
Rochberg-Halton have pointed out that children's objects require some physi-
cal manipulation to release their meaning, whereas adult things like art and
books stress contemplation (1981, 96-97). They added, "The importance
of objects of action in the early years is a reminder of the powerful need
children have to internalize actions and to define the limits of their selves
through direct kinetic control" (p. 100). As cultural critics, they are con-
cerned with objects, because the "most basic information about ourselves
as human beings-the fact that we are human-has been traditionally con-
veyed to us by the use of artifacts" (page 92).
The infant learns to recognize people as a category separate from
things. The child indeed then notices differences in the form and feeling of
individuals and their surroundings. From this springboard comes the idea
that a personal environment can be shaped. You can have "your" things and
have the space be consequentially "yours. " You can even manipulate the
things to control the space, to form an identity. A couple with a one-year-
old recently reported to me that their baby would no longer just find a place
on the floor to play. The infant's sense of place and surroundings emerged-
in the crib. There he would experiment with different arrangements of ob-
jects in relation to his own position. When unhappy, he called for his own
space and things. The child made meanings take shape.
The shape of the space is in many ways a social aesthetic that the child
inherits. The early spaces in the Western child's experience are rectangular-
the crib, the room, the house. Straight lines and sharp angles become stan-
dards of balance, proportion, and order (Toelken 1979, 227-28). Indeed,
some argue, the plan of the child's surroundings largely mirrors the shape
of the body, with its paired and symmetrical design (Bronner 1983; Glassie
1972). Later the child develops an identity based on the space he or she
knows or alters. Play space, for example, can be formally defined by play-
grounds and parks, but is mentally drawn, too, in public streets, buildings,
parts of the house, and lots, according to the perception of what is appro-
priate and aesthetically pleasing to the play group (R. Hart 1979; Mergen
1982, 85-90).
Around the child's second year, Piaget claimed, the child shows be-
haviors that imply creativity-the formation of, or reference to, objects and
events not already present. Aware of a social aesthetic, the child nonethe-
less develops more personal designs by altering and rearranging physical
materials. The loss of control from decentering is being compensated for by
z6z MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? a technical control over operative things. The child takes something apart
to see what is inside or how it works, and the child rearranges the line and
color. Often, children create things for the thrill of creating itself (like the
sand mound on the beach); they delight in the power to change shapes and
to build anew. The achievement of a product offers its own reward. Moth-
ers like to tell me, for instance, of the amazing things children do with their
food-mashed potato mountains and string bean designs. This is not to say
that children's creations are not purposeful. With concept in mind, the child
rigs together an object for his personal world: the wooden boat, the stickball
bat, or the clover chain. Jonah is a boy I know, for example, who shaped a
boat out of clay. It didn't fit into any pattern his mother could recognize,
but Jonah worked and reworked the boat according to a blueprint he had
in his head. His sisters shared the excitement he felt over the creation, and
gave advice. Playing along the nearby river days later, they piled variously
shaped rocks to make elaborate sculptures jutting out of the shallow water.
Each child worked on an individual design, yet they carefully consulted one
another on the form and function of the sculptures and ultimately the sculp-
tures resembled one another. The children used the creations to express their
ideas in material form.
Beyond the interaction between the child's unique mind and his cre-
ation are the influences of region, ethnicity, and class. Differences also exist
between the experiences of rural, suburban, and urban children. How much,
for example, can be inferred from folklorist Henry Glassie's observation: "Of
the flotsam of the streets and back alleys, Philadelphia boys construct a va-
riety of traditional weapons: bows and arrows, 'top shooters,' bolas, sling-
shots with subtypes for bobby pins or rocks, spears, whips, slings, and-
when they are a little older-zip guns. A coat hanger after a little bending
becomes a 'key' with which simple locks can be jimmied" (Glassie 1968,
217-18). Befitting the intellectual image of cities as ugly, decadent places,
material culture research has overstated the importance of objects represent-
ing the seedier side of urban life. In contrast, Americans are accustomed to
romanticized accounts of harmless whittling and dollmaking among rural
children. An honest inventory of childhood's objects-both innocent and
unchaste, delicate and crude, sacred and profane, is warranted.
Although folk processes will continue to hold sway in children's lives
because of the basic needs and demands of human development, commercial
influences add a powerful variable in the modern world. Through various
media, companies specializing in children's toys try to persuade the parent and
child of what a particular age should have, rather than answering the ques-
tion of what they might need. To be sure, the borders between folk and com-
263
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? mercial culture are fuzzy at best, but some distinctions are possible.
Commericial or mass culture stresses consumption and novelty; folk culture
values construction and reuse. Mass culture's products tend toward unifor-
mity and faddism, folk culture toward variation and tradition. In the mass
culture you can be told what the fashion is. Companies therefore consciously
attempt to control the material culture of children and discourage the suppos-
edly jerry-built folk culture. Often, folk products like the stickball bat, go-cart,
and wooden puzzle are usurped and repackaged. Companies depend too on
the exploitation of media heroes and fads. The very persistence of creative self-
exploration and traditional play among children outside of commercial inter-
vention attests to the developmental entrenchment of folk practice.
One reaction to mass culture is to alter the factory-made product to
suit one's tastes. A deck of cards became to my childhood friends a marvel-
ous thing with which to show off the patience and prowess needed to build
a house or create a design. They took Erector sets and communally figured
out ways to use the steel rods and bolts from the sets in their homemade
carts and boats. Such experiences emphasized their control, their personal-
izing of things around them. By allowing them to conceive, control, create,
or alter things informally, their things helped them identify more with the
object, and ultimately externalize their identity better.
The relation of object and action underlies what Brian Sutton-Smith
called "a developmental psychology of play and the arts. " His idea was to
"ask not whether play and art are serious or nonserious, real or unreal, but
to ask rather what sort of cultural adaptation they are" (Sutton-Smith 1971b,
8). Folk arts emerge as communication systems for various segments of so-
ciety. Using dramaturgical terminology, Sutton-Smith describes the sequence
of structures in play and art. The props used in performance become sym-
bolic; the dramatic patterns become expressive structures. In some cases, like
puppetry, the theatrical metaphor directly reveals "an existing understand-
ing of being on stage, having imaginary characters, changing affects, antici-
pations and dramatic properties" (Sutton-Smith 1971, 13). But also, in other
expressive encounters of creative play, the child enacts roles, conceptualizes
form, overlays meanings to representation, and unfolds situations (M. Jones
1980; Sutton-Smith 1979a). At around two years old, objects become sym-
bols; at three, toys become properties; from four to seven, such properties
are used freely in dramatic play. Children's folk play and art are not trivial,
therefore, but the central spine of learning and development.
Beyond the questions posed about specific situations and the condi-
tions for creativity are queries about humanistic continuities of children's art.
The word "childlike," used to describe pictures, triggers among most adults
2. 64 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? similar ideas about relations of line, proportion, and color. Intuitively, at
least, a shared idea exists about the basic structures of children's expressions
of form. This problem has primarily sparked psychological discussion rather
than study of art history for most art historians generally see the artworld
as an adult concern. Yet the precedents in children's work demand atten-
tion for what they say about consistencies in artistic traditions. Rhoda
Kellogg ambitiously reduced the children's art of several societies to basic
pictorial motifs. She then suggested that distinct similarities of line and shape
found among children throughout the world lend support to the existence
of a limited number of designs. Compare all those children's drawings on
refrigerator doors, for instance, and you would come up with more of an
organized set of repeated forms than you think, she implied. Does the com-
bination of competence at a certain age and social contact thus produce
universal and culture-specific sets of folk forms upon which all art is based?
The debate over such a provocative question revolves around how
one conceives that structural concepts of folk forms are inherited. Do they
spring from a common response to growing up, or rather to the culturally
diverse situations of social interaction? Some Freudian advocates claim that
childlike forms emerge from anxiety-producing conflicts---especially sexual
ones (Kris 1962). Anton Ehrenzweig, for example, claimed that at age five,
"libidinous scribblings" surface just when Oedipal conflict typically occurs
in childhood (Ehrenzweig 1965, 169). Although tensions and conflicts com-
monly spark artistic expression, the production of children's art is more com-
monly explained as a development of creativity and identity through expres-
sion (Rank 1945, 276; Bronner 1981b, 65-83).
And what about children's consistent choice of bright or clashing
colors? The child generally feels less restricted by adult standards of con-
formity (which usually stress duller and darker shades) and is allowed more
freedom to combine clashing colors. As American children grow, for ex-
ample, so usually do their conformity to more conservative ideas of color
coordination and reliance on linear form. When I wear somethihg particu-
larly bright or outrageous, I am disparagingly accused of acting like a kid
(and couldn't that be another reason we often find ourselves denying or for-
getting the material culture of our childhood? ). Besides psychological de-
mands, then, persistent structural and aesthetic models present in the envi-
ronment and patterned socializing that takes place in childhood probably
lie at the foundation of children's consistent pictorial creations.
Yet with the rush to identify the collective child, we are in danger of
neglecting the individual who, in shape and vision, tells of a personal side
to creativity.
Material is too often collected from a youth and ascribed to a
z65
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? faceless category of "children," rather than to a real name and personality.
Why, after all, is the lore-that learning that includes technical skills and
creations-in the possession of that particular child? What happens to the
lore later in life? We are anxious to record Granddad before his memories
die with him, but we can also turn to the critical task of documenting our
children before early experiences fade from view.
The core of any approach is to arrive at meaning. Why do children
do what they do? Why does their world look the way it does? Why do they
become who they are, and will be? Objects provide tangible expressions of
ideas and feelings, and thus give a telling symbol of meaning dramatized in
three dimensions. In my work on chain carving, for instance, I observed eld-
erly men making chains out of a single block of wood (Bronner 1984). They
were men who grew up on farms but who now lived in Indiana factory
towns. As children they learned to use a pocketknife from a father, uncle,
or grandfather. To show their prowess and creativity, they made a chain-a
visual riddle-to impress other boys, even elders. They learned to use tools,
work with wood, and operate outside the home-all masculine values. They
adjusted to adulthood partly aided by the tension-relieving objects of folk
creativity. In adulthood they left the farm to work in nearby factories. Most
dropped their chain carving; yet upon retirement or a wife's death, they once
again took to carving. Carving once more helped them in a time of adjust-
ment. It enabled them to display their productivity and skill in a society that
celebrated youth. It reminded the men of their idyllic (in their minds, any-
way) boyhoods. The stroking and touching of wood alleviated tensions and
anxieties common to their situation. The objects they wanted to make anew
told of unspoken hopes, goals, experiences, and frustrations they shared.
Childhood can set patterns for later life, indeed for the society. Those
objects we made and used as children can carry great import for us later.
The skills we know, the aesthetics we develop, and the values we learn find
manifestation in the technics practiced as children and in the creations that
result. Turning to observations of children playing with wood, I found con-
tinuities over time. ' Despite changing societal attitudes toward proper
sexual roles, traditional masculine and feminine technical roles were still
being enacted in rural boys' play. Finding the meanings of such activity at
that moment of enactment and later in life for those particular boys and
girls requires the kind of folkloristic study still being awaited (Petersen
1972).
Analyzing creative processes and objects that represent the skills,
goals, tensions, values, and ideas of children and the society around them
leads to revelations about human expression. Indeed, children often cannot
z66 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? articulate their hidden feelings in speech or gesture, but they do express them-
selves through things. Psychologists have used this idea to help abused chil-
dren. Children who cannot talk about their experience create paintings and
sculpture to dramatize their feelings. Working within certain traditional con-
ventions of form, line, and color, the child can project conflicts onto an ex-
ternal, nonthreatening outlet. This situation allows for inventiveness while
it also maintains a conservative attitude toward tradition and experience. 2
Once the range of objects made by and for children has been better
identified, it should be possible to build classifications based on an aware-
ness of "process" that help organize collecting and suggest interpretations.
Such classifications may help researchers get beyond the simple division of
"toys and games" and help add the constructions often left out of surveys
of children's objects (see Bronner 1988). For instance, I have found that
children's folk objects commonly fall into categories I call transformational,
synthetic (and syndetic), imitative, and inventive or manipulative.
Transformational objects are commercial or adult things altered to
suit children's needs and images. Philadelphia's "half-ball," used for alley
stickball, is made by slicing a whole "pimple ball" bought from the corner
store. Openings cut into playground fences, according to children's prefer-
ences rather than the architect's design, are another example. In my child-
hood neighborhood, many transformational objects were made from
bottlecaps. Children weighted them down with a coin to make a Scully puck
or they used them for body decoration. Transformational objects usually take
away, relocate, or change the utility of factory-produced objects to arrive
at a new folk object, an object overlaid with one's handiwork and control.
Synthetic objects result from accretion. Things are combined or built
up from existing objects. At Halloween an effigy is commonly put on the
front porch by putting together stuffed sheets, pans, sticks, and old clothes
into the shape of a scary figure. Children enjoy piling rocks, dirt, or cans to
see larger shapes emerge from the small. Loose rubber bands are wrapped
together to form a ball that grows over time; the snowball packs a smaller
object from the larger environment. The most persistent example of children's
folk sculpture, the snowman, is a synthetic object that brings form from the
inviting blanket of snow. Children delight in feeling the figure grow, harden,
and take shape. Related to this feeling is what anthropologist Robert Plant
Armstrong calls "syndesis. " The object is put together, but not developed;
it grows from repetition of similar units. The ordinary spot in the woods
converted to a child's shrine and one's fingers used to make a steeple (whose
reverse is the people) take on a special, sometimes artistic or sacred quality
that is commonly attached to syndesis. The processes of synthesis and
z67
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? syndesis learned in childhood constitute basic "modes in which the human
consciousness apprehends and enacts the world and the self" (R. Armstrong
1981, 13).
Imitative objects resemble larger artifacts in real world. A model hy-
droplane, for instance, abstractly made from clip-type clothespins and in-
cluded in the Knapps' collection (1976, 225) signified some Seattle boys'
preoccupation with the excitement and power of modern boats. Jonah's
clay boat, which I mentioned earlier, is also imitative. Children have sev-
eral versions of jet planes and helicopters made by folding paper. The
treehouse made from boards in a natural environment could be the ulti-
mate imitative object. Although a new and apparently original form, the
knowledge of making these structures was passed among the youthful cre-
ators informally. It is a prime example of folk process causing emergent
designs. The process of imitation blends fantasy and reality to create a
personal world that belongs to the child. Objects in the imitative category
represent youth's aping of, and through that interpretation of, adult ma-
terialism and technology.
The inventive or manipulative object is made from natural resources
into a new, more technical shape (Boas 1938). Sand sculpture on the beach
stands out as an example, but think too of string figures, carved chains, and
paints made from rock and plants. Then there is Brian Sutton-Smith's ex-
ample of his daughters' fashioning leaves and grass into clothes for their doll
(Sutton-Smith 1979d). Much of the fascination for children of objects in this
category comes from their ability to handle and control substances and cre-
ate apparently original shapes and lines. Clay remains popular, for instance,
because it is so easily manipulated and it lends itself quickly to working out
inventive ideas within traditional forms and formulas. Manipulation height-
ens the senses and lifts the ego. Handling string figures delights the eye and
hand because line and form become manipulable and complex by learned
movements.
This classificatory scheme is a limited excursion into the types of ob-
jects encountered in childhood. These are to them what constitutes atten-
tion-keeping activities. The inventive or manipulative objects are related to
the child's curiosity about details of nature. Yet the imitative object speaks
loudly about the modern child's fascination with glittering machinery. More-
over, the imitative object has usually been favored by boys. I have seen boys
attach shirt buttons to clay in imitation of knobs, and create imaginary gad-
gets. Nonetheless, the imitative object that glorifies technology has not elimi-
nated the inventive or transformational object. Indeed, the transformational
object often mocks and abuses technological design. In the synthetic object
z68 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? is found a basic metaphor for the accumulation of experience and property,
for the child celebrates growth by increments. Children may prefer differ-
ent technical activities, but rarely to the exclusion of others. We often find
children delighting in miniaturizing some figures or exaggerating and enlarg-
ing others. As children who are developing concepts of self in relation to the
society, they are testing the limits of appropriateness socially and person-
ally by using design. They often gravitate toward the very big or the incred-
ibly small, or they experiment with the inner intricacy of realistic scale. They
are exploring the built and natural world by themselves, working at differ-
ent times with peers and parents, friends and neighbors. Play and creativ-
ity, commonly informal, are their frequent modes of discovery, release, and
testing of the many worlds they encounter.
Such classifications raise questions about the social implications of
the creative processes children learn in life. For example, with synthetic ob-
jects can researchers validate whether in a sample population, boys prefer
the hefty and rough textures of stones and boards and girls choose the softer
textures of fabric and vegetation? Variables which might suggest correspon-
dences could be activities stressing rhythm and repetition or strength and
cooperation. Whether correlated by style, age, sex, place, ethnicity, or class,
hypotheses based on statistical analysis need elaboration. Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, for example, asked children,
parents, and grandparents to identify objects with special meanings within
their homes (1981, 99). They created classes of meaning for the objects:
memories, associations, experiences, self, past, and present-future. Children
scored much higher on objects with meanings for self, for experiences, and
for present and future. Parents and grandparents rated higher than children
on objects with meanings for memories, for associations, and for the past.
Folk objects which are made, or objects used according to folk processes,
constitute another important body of data to evaluate. Folk objects are only
a slice of all children's objects, but they can be extremely useful because they
represent informal learning and communication. Researchers can, and
should, ask what folk objects and activities can tell of children's preferences.
In addition how do social changes affect the traditional toys, labors, and
environments of children? Indeed, how do changes in children's material folk
culture effect social change? What skills are especially prevalent in children's
material culture of different areas and backgrounds? Answering these ques-
tions involves far more than mere "child's play. "
Still lingering is the sticky problem of weighing the interplay between
folk and popular culture in children's creativity. Separating the two is often
difficult or misleading, since they commonly appear inexorably entwined.
269
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? Popular culture is more visible, but nonetheless suggests relations with the
private, often hidden realms of children. Children's magazines like Boy's Life,
for example, regularly suggest projects taken from folk crafts. Are they in-
vigorating the tradition or removing the craft from tradition? Popular cul-
ture can reinforce or standardize folk culture, but more often it intertwines
with folklife. When I interviewed chain carvers, many reported learning from
both popular mechanical magazines and other boys. Some had extra incen-
tive to try their hand at carving, since in the 1930s radio hero Jack Armstrong
offered pocketknives to children on every show! Recently, I had another
example of the interrelationship of popular and folk culture when a student
in my class convincingly argued that the Boy Scout manual had influenced
the formation of boys' material folk culture. Among other artifacts and en-
vironments, Boy Scouts prepare small cars made from wood to run in a min-
iature derby. Over the years the boys have developed informal rules and tastes
for building and decorating the cars. Especially aware of folkloristic ap-
proaches, Jay Mechling has extensively reported in several articles on ob-
jects and environments fabricated by and for the Boy Scouts (Mechling
1984b, 1987, 1989).
Look closely at those objects children like to make. They are often
related to prevalent folk ideas and practices, or can reveal much about the
making of tradition. Take note of the behaviors surrounding the conception
and completion of forms for the thoughts they express.
William Golding touched the hearts of readers when he wrote such
behaviors into his bitter allegory Lord of the Flies (19541. Children were
alone on an island after the adults had been killed in a plane crash. The chil-
dren created their own model of society with "littluns" and "biguns. " The
littluns "had built castles in the sand at the bar of the little river. These castles
were about one foot high and were decorated with shells, withered flowers,
and interesting stones. Round the castles was a complex of marks, tracks,
walls, railway lines, that were of significance only if inspected with the eye
at beach level. The littluns played here, if not happily, at least with absorbed
attention; and often as many as three of them would play the same game
together" (Golding 1954, 67). The biguns destroyed the castles, "kicking
them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones. " Yet they could
not discern or destroy "the particular marks" in which the littluns were ab-
sorbed. Our adult eyes need to be put at beach level, to discern the particu-
lar marks and their deep meanings for the children and for the society. Much
work in material folk culture still lies ahead, so that we can indeed know
the child's world, which is in fact our world.
270 MATERIAL FOLK CULTURE OF CHILDREN
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/usu. 39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3. 0
? ? NOTES TO CHAPTER TWELVE
1. These are covered in Bronner 1984. Since that study I also observed
children's play in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is discussed in Bronner 1988 and
1990. I give grateful acknowledgment to my students in American Folklore: Culture
and Aging, at Penn State Harrisburg for additional data and thought-provoking dis-
cussion. Students in American Folklore at the University of California at Davis, whom
I taught as visiting distinguished professor in 1990, also contributed to the data pre-
sented here. I appreciate comments provided to me by colleagues Jay Mechling, David
Wilson, Patricia Turner, and Sue Samuelson.
2. The feature of childlore most prevalent in the literature is that children's
expressions are somehow simultaneously liberal and conservative toward cultural
change in traditions. Gary Alan Fine has called this feature "Newell's Paradox" after
nineteenth-century folklorist William Wells Newell, who studied the feature in
children's games. In Fine's important essay "Children and Their Culture: Exploring
Newell's Paradox," he explains the existence of this apparent paradox between inven-
tiveness and stability in childlore by examining the features of inventiveness in the
components of folklore itself: text, context, and performance. Although concerned
mostly with oral and customary lore, Fine's postulation of a stable text, changing con-
text, and both imaginative and conservative performance also applies to material cul-
ture.
271
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:03 GMT / http://hdl.
