My Folk Groups

The definition of folk group is “any group of two or more people who share a common factor”, as described by Sims and Stephens (2005, p. 35). By this definition, I have been a part of many such folk groups in my life. The following highlights three of them.

A Family Group – The McCrea/Scanlon Family
I grew up in the McCrea family, with my mom and dad, brother, grandparents, and extended family. I was twenty seven when my father died. My mother married John Scanlon, a wonderful man, who had five children from his first marriage. I became part of the new McCrea/Scanlon family, adding a step-father, step-sister and four brothers, step-aunts and uncles, step-cousins, and step-nieces and nephews. This newly formed folk group was created out of circumstance. All the siblings were adults with their own families (folk groups), separated by geography, and ensconced in their own traditions. This made it hard as a joint family, a new identity, to develop many shared family experiences, habitual practices, values and beliefs. My most precious memories, and I daresay my step-siblings as well, remain those that existed from our first families before the second marriage. Perhaps the lack of regular interaction and lack of proximity play a role. We do have a shared interest, our parents, which we collectively love, protect and share in their care. That is what bonds us.

A School Group – My Harvard Business School Living Group
In 2001, I attended Harvard Business School to obtain a MBA as part of a special International Executive program. There were 138 people in the class, representing 53 countries around the world. This was a very intense program. Everyone lived on-campus in a dorm as part of 8-member living groups, determined by Harvard. My living group of two women and six men was culturally diverse, originating from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the Netherlands, Thailand, and the United States. We studied, learned and lived together. We grew to know each other outside the academic arena. Each Saturday night we went to dinner together in Cambridge or into Boston. Though our ethnic backgrounds were different, we became family. We learned each others’ customs, experienced each others’ cuisines, and became each others’ best supporters, keeping confidences and helping overcome the loneliness of missing home and our loved ones. Our living group was a manifestation of the school’s formal program. We came together because we had similar management skills and interest in furthering our education and careers. In the process we became close friends for life, a folk group. We stay in touch through the Internet, the Harvard five year class reunions and we meet each other whenever business or pleasure trips take us to each others’ countries. We have two personas. One identity is as part of the Harvard Business School graduating class of 2001, but as or more importantly we identify as a close knit pseudo-family, bonded through our Harvard experiences and our ongoing communication.

An Occupational Group – The Ladies Champagne Brunch Group
This was an informal social group (folk group) who met once a month on a Sunday for brunch and camaraderie. We were five women in middle management positions (identity), who felt thwarted by the glass ceiling. It was an event that brought us together (circumstance). A man at work had been promoted to a position we felt should have gone to one of us women, which was our impetus to get together to commiserate (shared interest). We found our time together to be cathartic. The champagne helped the process along. We strategized about how to be more successful in the future (job skills and hierarchy), and decided to keep meeting (informally) monthly to gossip, to share strategies and to have a release for our frustrations (esoteric factor). Ultimately two of us were promoted. Other women were invited to join us as our new group identity solidified. The reputation of the Ladies Champagne Brunch became notorious - a legend to women who desired to be included and feared by men who believed it was a sinister plot against them (exoteric factors).

This blog entry is my response to the Chapter Two Reflection Question.

References

Sims, M. C., & Stephens, M. (2005). Living folklore an introduction to the study of people and their traditions. Utah: Utah State University Press.