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Paper short abstract:

This case study asks why marginalized groups, such as non-white communities or deprived people are under-represented in questionnaire initiatives in Folklore Archives of SKS. Despite the idea of community engagement, questionnaires issued by SKS have often been planned top-down by academic scholars.

Paper long abstract:

Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS) has over a century long history of receiving and preserving folklore and speech genres of expressive culture. Whereas early manuscripts were collected with a pen and paper by educated elite, a more recent approach to collecting traditions is ethnographic questionnaires. Today most of the materials sent to the SKS are in written (electronic) form and from the communities of origin. Questionnaires enable to collecting large amounts of material on a particular subject. Until today, SKS has issued 385 questionnaires resulting tens of thousands of responses from a diversity of people with various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. With the questionnaires SKS has worked to increase instances of previously unrepresented and underrepresented people once hidden from grand national narratives. However, despite the idea of community engagement and cultural memory from below -approach, questionnaires issued by SKS have often been planned top-down by the academic researchers who initiate which topic questionnaires should deal with. Although questionnaires as the form of narrative encourage people telling of their own stories and understanding, communities of origin themselves rarely propose a questionnaire initiative. Marginalized groups, such as non-white communities or people with low socioeconomic position are under-represented in questionnaire initiatives. In my presentation, I discuss more on the power structures, derived from SKS Archives' history in which the educational elite decides about topics and genres worth to collect, and its challenges in conducting more participatory archiving.