Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores early 20th-century folklorists in French-speaking Switzerland who did not carry out their work in universities. We propose to look at the history of knowledge production 'from below' in order to examine whether they were able to overcome professional barriers and if they contributed to the discipline in alternative ways.

Paper Abstract:

During the first half of the 20th century, in French-speaking Switzerland, unlike in many other parts of Europe, folklore studies didn't find their place in the academic world. This may be the reason why there is as yet no study of the practice of the discipline in this part of the country. But folklore research has been produced outside the universities. Despite the lack of institutionalization, amateur production flourished between the end of the 19th century and 1950. Those amateurs wrote for periodicals and were active in local societies, such as the 'patoisants' (dialect speakers) associations that became increasingly common in the countryside in the early 20th. This paper examines who these amateurs were, how and where they carried out their activities. In particular, it looks at their relations with academic circles in German-speaking Switzerland, where folklore studies were conducted at universities. The latter, in fact, expressed the wish to cooperate with local relays in French-speaking Switzerland in order to obtain information from the "local population" itself. Did these interactions take the form of genuine scientific interaction? On the one hand, it will be shown whether these folklorists on the margins of the academic system sought professional recognition and to what extent they managed to overcome the barriers between different milieus. On the other hand, I will consider the question whether their non-academic and often non-written participation has contributed to the discipline in a different way or whether these local amateurs have also integrated stereotypical narratives around 'popular traditions'.