Invented tradition
Invented traditions are cultural practices that are presented or perceived as traditional, arising from the people starting in the distant past, but which in fact are relatively recent and often even consciously invented by identifiable historical actors. The concept was highlighted in the 1983 book The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger.[1] Hobsbawm's introduction argues that many "traditions" which "appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented."[2] This "invention" is distinguished from "starting" or "initiating" a tradition that does not then claim to be old. The phenomenon is particularly clear in the modern development of the nation and of nationalism, creating a national identity promoting national unity, and legitimising certain institutions or cultural practices.[3]
Application of the term and paradox
The concept has been applied to cultural phenomena such as the "
Indeed, the sharp distinction between "tradition" and "modernity" is often itself invented. The concept is "highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the 'nation', with its associated phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories, and the rest." Hobsbawm and Ranger remark on the "curious but understandable paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so 'natural' as to require no definition other than self-assertion."[11] The concept of authenticity is also often questionable.
Pseudo-folklore
Pseudo-folklore or fakelore is inauthentic, manufactured folklore presented as if it were genuinely traditional. The term can refer to new stories or songs made up, or to folklore that is reworked and modified for modern tastes. The element of misrepresentation is central; artists who draw on traditional stories in their work are not producing fakelore unless they claim that their creations are real folklore.[12] Over the last decades the term has generally fallen out of favor in folklore studies because it places an emphasis on origin instead of practice to determine authenticity.
The term fakelore was coined in 1950 by American folklorist
Connection to folklore
The term fakelore is often used by those who seek to expose or debunk modern reworkings of folklore, including Dorson himself, who spoke of a "battle against fakelore".[16] Dorson complained that popularizers had sentimentalized folklore, stereotyping the people who created it as quaint and whimsical[12] – whereas the real thing was often "repetitive, clumsy, meaningless and obscene".[17] He contrasted the genuine Paul Bunyan tales, which had been so full of technical logging terms that outsiders would find parts of them difficult to understand, with the commercialized versions, which sounded more like children's books. The original Paul Bunyan had been shrewd and sometimes ignoble; one story told how he cheated his men out of their pay. Mass culture provided a sanitized Bunyan with a "spirit of gargantuan whimsy [that] reflects no actual mood of lumberjacks".[13] Daniel G. Hoffman said that Bunyan, a folk hero, had been turned into a mouthpiece for capitalists: "This is an example of the way in which a traditional symbol has been used to manipulate the minds of people who had nothing to do with its creation."[18]
Others have argued that professionally created art and folklore are constantly influencing each other and that this mutual influence should be studied rather than condemned.[19] For example, Jon Olson, a professor of anthropology, reported that while growing up he heard Paul Bunyan stories that had originated as lumber company advertising.[20] Dorson had seen the effect of print sources on orally transmitted Paul Bunyan stories as a form of cross-contamination that "hopelessly muddied the lore".[13] For Olson, however, "the point is that I personally was exposed to Paul Bunyan in the genre of a living oral tradition, not of lumberjacks (of which there are precious few remaining), but of the present people of the area."[20] What was fakelore had become folklore again.
Responding to his opponents' argument that the writers have the same claim as the original folk storytellers, Dorson writes that the difference amounts to the difference between traditional culture and
Criticism
One reviewer (Peter Burke) noted that the "'invention of tradition' is a splendidly subversive phrase", but it "hides serious ambiguities". Hobsbawm "contrasts invented traditions with what he calls 'the strength and adaptability of genuine traditions'. But where does his 'adaptability', or his colleague Ranger's 'flexibility' end, and invention begin? Given that all traditions change, is it possible or useful to attempt to discriminate the 'genuine' antiques from the fakes?"[21] Another also praised the high quality of the articles but had qualifications. "Such distinctions" (between invented and authentic traditions) "resolve themselves ultimately into one between the genuine and the spurious, a distinction that may be untenable because all traditions (like all symbolic phenomena) are humanly created ('spurious') rather than naturally given ('genuine')."[22] Pointing out that "invention entails assemblage, supplementation, and rearrangement of cultural practices so that in effect traditions can be preserved, invented, and reconstructed", Guy Beiner proposed that a more accurate term would be "reinvention of tradition", signifying "a creative process involving renewal, reinterpretation and revision".[23]
Examples of American fakelore
In addition to Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, Dorson identified the American folk hero
Other American folk heroes that have been called fakelore include
See also
- False etymology
- Folklorismus
- Hoax
- Imagined community
- Mythopoeia
- Old wives' tale
- Pseudo-mythology
- Snopes.com
- Urban legend
References
- ISBN 978-0521246453.
- ^ Hobsbawm & Ranger (1983), p. 1.
- ^ The articles in the volume include Hugh Trevor-Roper's "The invention of tradition: the Highland tradition of Scotland," Prys Morgan's "From a death to a view: the hunt for the Welsh past in the romantic period," David Cannadine's "The context, performance, and meaning of ritual: the British monarchy and the 'invention of tradition', c. 1820-1977," Bernard S. Cohen's "Representing authority in Victorian India," Terence Ranger's "The invention of tradition in colonial Africa," and Eric Hobsbawm's "Mass-producing traditions: Europe, 1870-1914."
- ISBN 978-3-638-81651-9.
- S2CID 145003549.
- ISBN 978-0-226-50989-1.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 978-1-84277-761-9.
- S2CID 193690675.
- ^ Inoue Shun, "The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kanō Jigorō and Kōdōkan Judo", pp. 163-173 in Stephen Vlastos (ed.). Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
- ^ Anderson, Benedict. "The origins of national consciousness". Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political Science 1 (2000): 316, p. 37.
- ^ Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (1983), p. 13-14.
- ^ ISBN 0-226-15859-4.
- ^ a b c d e Dorson (1977), 214–226.
- JSTOR 1259975.
- JSTOR 1178561.
- JSTOR 1259723.
- S2CID 143464386.
- JSTOR 538134.
- JSTOR 1498351. According to Newall, 133, the German folklorist Hermann Bausinger expressed a similar view.
- ^ a b Olson, 235.
- JSTOR 571469.
- JSTOR 679222.
- ISBN 978-0-299-21824-9.
- JSTOR 541047.
- ^ American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand, Taylor & Francis, 1996, p. 1105
- JSTOR 1497745.
- ISBN 0-87049-988-2
External links
- Cornelius Holtorf (University of Toronto), "The Invention of Tradition"