It Makes Sense to Us: Cultural Identity in Local Legends of Place

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the role of narrative in constructing culture, deriving from scholarship in anthropology, geography, folklore, and communication studies. In this article, the author uses popular folk legends, collected in one state, to bring together some of this interdisciplinary scholarship on the central role of narrative in everyday life. In particular, the author focuses on how these shared narratives serve culturally to construct a sense of place and, with that, a sense of cultural identity that includes some people while excluding others.