Tradition or culture? The Concept of Tradition in Cultural Anthropology

Result code in IS VaVaI

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Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Tradition or culture? The Concept of Tradition in Cultural Anthropology

Original language description

Tradition has never been a key term in cultural anthropology to deserve a precise theoretical definition, let alone to be developed in methodological discussions or applied and tested in field research practice. The main reason for the lack of interest in tradition is that as a key term in the very beginning of anthropology, the term ‘culture’ has taken hold. Thus, the term tradition in anthropology has been covered and replaced by the term culture, becoming a synonym, a mere part or a partial aspect. The notion of tradition remained ‘lying fallow’ in competition with the notion of culture. Cultural anthropology of the first half of the 20th century usually regards tradition as a static, inertial component of culture. The development of anthropological theory of culture did not remove the concept of tradition, but significantly simplified, narrowed and limited its meaning. Newer research topics of the mid-20th century, such as acculturation, cultural change and the technological-economic, political and social development of the Third World, have prompted a more precise use of the term tradition in anthropology. In this context, the term tradition has been used to denote conservative and static tendencies that prevent culture from responding adequately to changes in natural, economic, political and cultural-historical conditions, thus preventing its development and integration into the global processes of modernization. In the last decades of the 20th century, the concept of tradition as a passive and essentially conservative force has changed fundamentally. In anthropological theory and research there is a gradual tendency to perceive tradition as a creative and dynamic component of culture which, by its permanent reference to the past (whether real, imaginary or additionally constructed) and its heading towards an expected future sensitively responds to present, actual needs and challenges. Anthropologists begin to notice how tradition in every society is being created to justify, rationalize and sanctify these necessary processes of cultural change. Tradition ceases to be perceived in anthropology as a fixed and static component of culture that is only passed on, and on the contrary becomes a flexible pattern of understanding and interpretation that makes it easier to absorb, integrate and exploit new impulses. In the process of cultural change, tradition enables culture to keep, maintain or create certain continuity, and at the same time – with the help of this continuity – enables the processes of cultural change to be directed and targeted for the future. Tradition is a term that anthropologists use not when they speak of ‘the others’, but rather when they reflect how ‘these others’ speak of themselves. In fact, ‘tradition’ is an internal, native term for what anthropologists study and describe from the outside as ‘culture’. At the beginning of the 21st century, new perspectives for the study of tradition are emerging due to the knowledge and methods of cultural anthropology and evolutionary biology are frequently interconnecting. The study of tradition develops in the context of cultural evolution.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50404 - Anthropology, ethnology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Traditionstheorie im Gespräch der Wissenschaften

ISBN

978-3-643-91184-1

Number of pages of the result

12

Pages from-to

223-234

Number of pages of the book

276

Publisher name

LIT Verlag

Place of publication

Zürich

UT code for WoS chapter

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