ETHNOLOGY'S HOT NOTION? A Discussion Forum on How to Return to "Tradition" Today (original) (raw)
Related papers
Testa A. & Isnart C., (2020) “Ethnology’s Hot Notion? A Discussion Forum on How to Return to "Tradition" Today”, Ethnologia Europaea 50(1) After the publication of Hobsbawm and Ranger's groundbreaking The Invention of Tradition and ten years after Noyes' essay, Tradition: Three Traditions, what do we, as specialists of European cultures, have to say about "tradition"? This forum invites a selection of scholars coming from various thematic fields and countries to think about the concept of tradition, considered as one of our first conceptual tools and ethnographic objects of investigation. The authors reflexively discuss in which ways their research experiences challenge their own perceptions, understanding, and reframing of tradition. More than mapping new and allegedly new - or better "recycled" - ways in which social, ethnic, religious, or political groups use and manipulate traditions, the authors also address their perplexities with the notion of tradition. They thus add a specific layer of reflection, touching on temporality, methodology, and theoretical frames, to their practices of folklore and ethnology today.
Ethnologia Europaea, 2020
After the publication of Hobsbawm and Ranger's groundbreaking The Invention of Tradition and ten years after Noyes' essay, Tradition: Three Traditions, what do we, as specialists of European cultures, have to say about "tradition"? This forum invites a selection of scholars coming from various thematic fields and countries to think about the concept of tradition, considered as one of our first conceptual tools and ethnographic objects of investigation. The authors reflexively discuss in which ways their research experiences challenge their own perceptions, understanding, and reframing of tradition. More than mapping new and allegedly new-or better "recycled"-ways in which social, ethnic, religious, or political groups use and manipulate traditions, the authors also address their perplexities with the notion of tradition. They thus add a specific layer of reflection, touching on temporality, methodology, and theoretical frames, to their practices of folklore and ethnology today.
Ethnologia Europaea, 2020
"Tradition" has been a key concept and object of European ethnology from the foundation of the discipline all the way to intangible cultural heritage policies today. A focus has been given to the cultural and social circulations and permutations affecting traditional facts and has shown the plasticity of "traditions" to (ever-)changing social conditions. Understood as "uses of the past", these mainly political and sociological understandings of what "tradition" means today need to be complemented with a view on the emotional aspects of this peculiarly human way of imagining and experiencing the world. This text introduces three notions which highlight the experiential dimension of tradition: re-enchantment, ritualization, and heritage-making. We hope to forge new paths towards the exploration of all things "traditional" and their cultural dynamics.
Aspects of tradition. Traditiones, 2012, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 77-89, doi: 10.3986/Traditio2012410206.
In ethnology and anthropology, the term tradition usually denotes transmission over time and continuity of phenomena, while recent views also highlight other aspects. Because of disappearance of “typical” cultural phenomena it became a value. Since it has connected people on many levels, it can be perceived as a means of identity politics. At the same time it becomes a strategy to strengthen a sense of belonging and achieve diverse goals. These aspects are presented with some empirical examples.
Introduction: Reconfiguring Tradition(s) and the Traditional in Europe (with Cyril Isnart)
Testa A. & Isnart C., (2020) “Reconfiguring Tradition(s) in Europe: An Introduction to the Special Issue”, Ethnologia Europaea 50(1) “Tradition” has been a key concept and object of European ethnology from the foundation of the discipline all the way to intangible cultural heritage policies today. A focus has been given to the cultural and social circulations and permutations affecting traditional facts and has shown the plasticity of “traditions” to (ever-)changing social conditions. Understood as “uses of the past”, these mainly political and sociological understandings of what “tradition” means today need to be complemented with a view on the emotional aspects of this peculiarly human way of imagining and experiencing the world. This text introduces three notions which highlight the experiential dimension of tradition: re-enchantment, ritualization, and heritage-making. We hope to forge new paths towards the exploration of all things “traditional” and their cultural dynamics.
Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, 2024
The Nordic Institute of Folklore, internationally well known by its abbreviation NIF, left a lasting imprint on the history of Nordic and international folkloristics despite its relatively short operation period of less than four decades. The present article, first in a series of forthcoming articles on NIF, examines Lauri Honko’s directorship in the 1970s and 1980s and focuses on the changing of the institute’s field of operation from folkloristics to ‘tradition science’. The term ‘tradition sci- ence’ (traditionsvetenskap in Swedish, perinnetiede in Finnish) was never clearly defined in NIF, but was used – and it has continued to be used in folkloristics and ethnology in Finland – in three meanings: an approximate synonym for folkloris- tics, a joint term for folkloristics and ethnology, and (in plural) an umbrella term for an unspecified number of fields in the study of history, vernacular religion, and culture. The possible earlier history of the term is beyond the scope of this research, but there are indications that the term came into use in both Finnish-lan- guage and Swedish-language folklore research in the early 1970s, while the similar term ‘tradition research’ (traditionsforskning in Swedish, perinteentutkimus in Finn- ish) has a longer history. The term ‘tradition science’ was adopted into NIF’s stat- utes around the same time as the Nordic Council of Ministers – through which the inter-governmental funding of NIF was administered – initiated the expansion of NIF’s profile to cover folk culture “in its entirety”, suggesting specifically the extension of NIF’s field of operation to include ethnology. Whether NIF imple- mented this expansion or not, and to what extent, is a matter of debate, and the topic of this article.
Highlighting the important, but in research often neglected, experiential dimension of European traditions, this issue of Ethnologia Europaea contains a themed section edited by Cyril Isnart and Alessandro Testa, entitled Re-enchantment, Ritualization, Heritage-making: Processes Reconfiguring Tradition in Europe. It begins with an introduction by the guest editors outlining how these three concepts can open new vistas on research. They are exemplified in four research articles: Testa describes three ethnographic cases of ritualization from different parts of Europe, Isnart contemplates the dynamics of cultural heritage and religion in southern Europe, Eva Löfgren studies the reconstruction of churches in a secular society such as Sweden, and Pedro Antunes takes part in nocturnal rituals, singing for the souls in Portugal. The special section is concluded with a forum on the “hot topic” of tradition. In nine statements, prominent researchers from all over Europe reflect on how the perception and reframing of tradition specific to each of their intellectual cultures and professional networks are continuously challenged by their ethnographic experiences.