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Material culture and folklife is the subfield of folklore studies concerned with the tangible things people make, use, exchange, and preserve as part of their everyday lives, and with the customary knowledge, skills, and social relationships embedded in those things. Where other branches of folklore focus on stories, songs, or beliefs, this subfield attends to the physical world: quilts, gravestones, barns, foodways, tools, vernacular architecture, clothing, and the countless other objects and built environments through which communities express identity, transmit knowledge, and maintain continuity across generations.
The subfield’s defining questions center on the relationship between people and their material surroundings. Scholars ask how objects come to carry meaning, how those meanings change as objects move through different hands and contexts, and how the making and using of things encode forms of knowledge that are often unspoken and untaught. A central concern is the distinction between the object itself and the practice of making or using it: a quilt, for example, is not simply a textile but a record of social relationships, a repository of technical skill, and a vehicle for aesthetic judgment. Folklife scholars also ask how material practices are learned and transmitted, how they vary across communities and regions, and how they respond to economic, technological, and environmental change. The scope of the subfield is broad, encompassing both the tangible artifacts of everyday life and the intangible knowledge systems that produce them, including the ways people classify, repair, reuse, and discard objects.
The historical development of material culture and folklife is closely tied to the broader history of folklore studies, but it has its own distinct trajectory. In the nineteenth century, folklore scholars in Europe and North America were primarily concerned with collecting and classifying the verbal traditions of rural people—songs, tales, and proverbs—and material culture was often treated as a secondary, illustrative source of evidence for the survival of ancient customs. The study of folk objects, such as tools, costumes, and household goods, was frequently framed through the lens of cultural evolution, with scholars seeking to identify the origins and diffusion of particular forms. This early approach, often called the historical-geographic method, was concerned with tracing the distribution of artifact types across time and space, and it tended to treat objects as static, classifiable specimens rather than as dynamic elements of living communities.
A significant transformation occurred in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the United States, where the study of material culture became more closely aligned with the emerging field of folklife studies. The term "folklife" itself, borrowed from Scandinavian scholarship, signaled a broader interest in the whole of everyday life, not just the verbal and musical expressions that had dominated earlier folklore research. Scholars such as Don Yoder and Henry Glassie, among others, argued that the study of folk culture should include the material world, and they drew on methods from anthropology, history, and geography to understand how objects were made, used, and valued. This period also saw the rise of public folklore, with institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife helping to bring material culture and folklife into the public eye through festivals, exhibitions, and documentation projects.
The late twentieth century brought a more critical and reflexive turn to the subfield, as scholars began to question the assumptions underlying earlier approaches. The idea of a stable, bounded "folk" community was challenged, and attention shifted to the ways in which material culture is entangled with power, identity, and social change. Scholars began to examine how objects are used to mark social boundaries, to assert or contest identities, and to negotiate the effects of modernization and globalization. The study of material culture also became more interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from archaeology, art history, and cultural geography, and the focus moved from the object itself to the social and cultural processes in which it is embedded. This has led to a greater emphasis on the biography of objects—how things are made, exchanged, used, and eventually discarded or preserved—and on the ways in which material practices are shaped by and shape the communities that engage in them.
The present landscape of material culture and folklife is characterized by a diversity of approaches and a global scope. Scholars work on a wide range of topics, from the traditional crafts of rural communities to the material culture of urban and diasporic groups, and from the study of historical artifacts to the analysis of contemporary consumer goods. The field has also been influenced by the digital turn, with scholars examining how material culture is represented, circulated, and transformed in online environments, and how digital technologies are themselves becoming part of the material world. At the same time, there is a strong emphasis on the ethical and political dimensions of the field, with scholars and practitioners concerned with issues of cultural heritage, intellectual property, and the rights of communities to control the representation and use of their material traditions. The subfield remains committed to the idea that the study of everyday objects is not a marginal concern but a central way of understanding how people make their lives and their worlds.