Folk life & architecture

Folklore is the umbrella term under which falls the study of folk life, or the study of traditional material culture. For example, studying the folk architecture of the Appalachians is part of the study of folk life and folklore, while studying Appalachian folk tales does not qualify as folk life, but is considered folklore.

The books says that folk architecture consists of "all traditional nonacademic building types". This seems to me to be an extremely wide category, but I suppose it makes sense, because most buildings clearly represent the values and the aesthetics of the culture which built them. In this way, even the ugly new apartment buildings that seem to spring up everywhere in Northern Virginia are examples of folk architecture, despite their newness, because they are produced to fulfill the needs of our culture and where they are placed and what they look like speaks volumes about our culture.