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Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner’s work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.
What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors - prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics - approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chimpanzees, from Taiwan to New Guinea, from cannibalism to marriage patterns, this volume directly addresses the challenges of explaining culture scientifically. The evolutionary paradigm lends itself particularly well to the question of culture; in these essays, different modes of inheritance - genetic, cultural, ecological, and structural - illustrate evolutionary patterns in a variety of settings. Explaining Culture Scientifically is divided into parts that address how to think about culture, modeling approaches to cultural influences on behavior, ethnographic case studies addressing the question of culture's influence on behavior, and challenges to the possibility of a scientific approach to culture. It is necessary reading for scholars and students in anthropology and related disciplines.
This book is about our appreciation for order and meaningfulness. It offers a new theory of that feeling inspired by Durkheim and Marx, then derives other theories to answer a range of questions: why we like to make ourselves orderly (in Chapter Three's theory of identity and commitment), why create shared orders of meaning (in Chapter Four's theory of culture); how we create those orders collaboratively through conversation (Chapter Five), and also through narrative, symbolic, and ritualistic formats (Chapter Six), and how orders of meaning are created in response to social structural position (Chapter Seven). In the end, this book shows how our sense of order both integrates and segregates us into productive associations with one another. And so, Explaining Culture is able to explain two patterns common to all growth: expansion and centralization. We see how our desire for novelty disperses us for resources, and that for familiarity draws us together to create meaningful order from them. Indeed, this book may offer a new approach to answering one of the most basic questions in both social and natural science: the question of how organic systems like society are created and maintained. Explaining Culture is an important new step in answering our most basic questions about culture, social interaction, and the emergence of order. The unique contribution of this work is in identifying the determinants of meaningfulness, and the ways we make the world meaningful by ordering it. Our valuing of order is rarely mentioned in sociology, but this book shows how it is the key influence in how we order ourselves and each other.
This provocative book offers a new theory of culture with a unique focus on our aesthetic response to order and meaningfulness.
What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors - prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics - approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chimpanzees, from Taiwan to New Guinea, from cannibalism to marriage patterns, this volume directly addresses the challenges of explaining culture scientifically. The evolutionary paradigm lends itself particularly well to the question of culture; in these essays, different modes of inheritance - genetic, cultural, ecological, and structural - illustrate evolutionary patterns in a variety of settings. Explaining Culture Scientifically is divided into parts that address how to think about culture, modeling approaches to cultural influences on behavior, ethnographic case studies addressing the question of culture's influence on behavior, and challenges to the possibility of a scientific approach to culture. It is necessary reading for scholars and students in anthropology and related disciplines.
Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner's work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.
From the famed author of international bestseller Drinking with the Saints, every Christmas tradition explained and celebrated, as well as a glimpse into all the sometimes macabre and always fascinating nooks and crannies of the holiday. Deepen your knowledge of and love for Christmas! The definitive guide to every question you’ve had about the Christmas holiday—and many more you’ve never thought to ask! In Why We Kiss Under the Mistletoe, bestselling author Michael Foley dives deep into the history of Christmas and the customs that surround this beloved holiday. Learn about the fascinating origins of your favorite Christmas food, drink, observances, and songs. Discover how Saint Nicolas, a fourth-century Catholic bishop, became Santa Clause and who Santa’s global competitors are (some of them will shock you). And dig into the forbidden history of the Yuletide season’s dark and ghoulish side. Witty, imaginative, and wholly unique, Why We Kiss Under the Mistletoe is the stocking stuffer that will be revisited every year.
In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century, eight diverse contributors explore the role of tradition in contemporary folkloristics. For more than a century, folklorists have been interested in locating sources of tradition and accounting for the conceptual boundaries of tradition, but in the modern era, expanded means of communication, research, and travel, along with globalized cultural and economic interdependence, have complicated these pursuits. Tradition is thoroughly embedded in both modern life and at the center of folklore studies, and a modern understanding of tradition cannot be fully realized without a thoughtful consideration of the past’s role in shaping the present. Emphasizing how tradition adapts, survives, thrives, and either mutates or remains stable in today’s modern world, the contributors pay specific attention to how traditions now resist or expedite dissemination and adoption by individuals and communities. This complex and intimate portrayal of tradition in the twenty-first century offers a comprehensive overview of the folkloristic and popular conceptualizations of tradition from the past to present and presents a thoughtful assessment and projection of how “tradition” will fare in years to come. The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in folklore and will contribute significantly to the scholarly literature on tradition within the folklore discipline. Additional Contributors: Simon Bronner, Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, Merrill Kaplan, Lynne S. McNeill, Elliott Oring, Casey R. Schmitt, and Tok Thompson
This book explores examples of this process of invention and addresses the complex interaction of past and present in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism.
The strict traditions of piano teaching have remained entrenched for generations. The dominant influence of Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), the first composer-pedagogue of the instrument, brought about an explosion of autocratic instruction and bizarre teaching systems, exemplified in the mind-numbing drills of Hanon's "The Virtuoso Pianist." These practices--considered absurd or abusive by many--persist today at all levels of piano education. This book critically examines two centuries of teaching methods and encourages instructors to do away with traditions that disconnect mental and creative skills.