ABSTRACT
Any cultural product needs to be set in its wider social and economic context for full understanding-including how it is produced, transmitted and supported. In a way this whole book is about such questions, for social processes underlie every stage of the creation and analysis of oral tradition and the verbal arts, and the possible lines of enquiry about them are endless. This chapter does not attempt to cover them all but merely draws attention, in the briefest possible terms, to some specifie questions. The aim is to indicate variants and problems in what might otherwise be assumed to be self-evident, rather than provide a comprehensive account of these subjects.
