The Concept of Ethnic Genre as a Paradigm Shift

The development of folkloristics into a "normal" science at the turn of the 20th century determined its Eurocentric paradigms. The idea of "ethnic genre" proposed by Dan Ben Amos in the 1960s was a direct challenge to its methods of categorization, but also to the definition and analysis of folklore. This article argues that this represented a paradigm shift in folkloristics. It also suggests the related idea of folkloric identity as a new ideological direction.