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The Meaning of Tradition: An Introduction

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The Meaning of Tradition: An Introduction
Author(s): Simon J. Bronner
Source: Western Folklore , Spring, 2000, Vol. 59, No. 2, The Meaning of Tradition
(Spring, 2000), pp. 87-104
Published by: Western States Folklore Society

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 The Meanings of
Tradition: An
Introduction
SIMON J. BRONNER

Call it tradition or not, end-times bring on reflection, new-

forecast. Folklorists who might study tradition, and themselve
with tradition," according to Alan Jabbour who introduc
anniversary of the American Folklore Society in 1988, em
occasion of a centennial to "reflect on the ancestral missions that have

shaped us, the inherited values that we reflect and must radiate into
future" (Jabbour 1988: vii). Leaving behind the twentieth century
2000 predictably ushered in another wave of reflection on folklore's
damental principles.
Even before the calendar turned to that magical number ballyhooed b
the popular press, folklorists anticipated change with several anniver
celebrations that inspired them to look back to the forces that gave birt
to their subject and ahead to challenges as scholarship matures and
ety changes. Eight years after the American Folklore Society's cente
celebration, the 150th anniversary in 1996 of the coining of the Eng
word "folklore" presaged a round of symposia on folklore's fate as the c
tury ended (Brown 1996). Special issues of folklore journals appear
heralding renewed efforts to locate folklore's study in scholarship and i
tify its core values (Feintuch 1995; Harlow 1998). All kinds of "revisiting
were apparent. The ground broken by Toward New Perspectives in Folkl
(Paredes and Bauman 1972) rated a twenty-year retrospective with
philosophical title "theorizing folklore" in the journal Western Folk
(Briggs and Shuman 1993). The "new perspectives" hailed by organiz
of an applied folklore meeting at Point Park, Pennsylvania, was the subj
of Point Park Revisited (1998), a special issue of the Journal of Folk
Research. The Folklore Historian in 1996 took up "On (Not) Defining
lore" with bows to Stith Thompson's stock-taking essay "Folklore at
Western Folklore 59 (Spring 2000):87-104
87

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 88 WESTERN FOLKLORE

century" (Baker 1996). M

a reason for revisiting, b
millennium brought the
shenblatt-Gimblett 199
beliefs, some scholars c
"end of folklore" (Toel
Bendix 1998).
The twentieth century h
is reason in some quarte
a widening circle of field
ies, gender studies, wh
More presses than ever b
the Internet has become a hotbed of folklore transmission. Federal

endowments have folklorists at their helm; news of academic appoin

and public programs resounds through the folklore fraternity. Whe
views folklore as half empty or half full, serious questions remain. W
a time of reflection or crisis, it is avowedly a period of restruc
One place for restructuring is in communication, as the Internet and
less broadcasting have led to rethinking of folklore performance as
to-face or localized encounter. Even as some observers bemoan the loss of

intimacy in community and group, others note the reclustering of network

by shared, and often overlapping, interests that engender folklore. Anoth
source of restructuring is increased mobility which has on the one han
informed ideas of transnationalism and globalism, and on the other
encouraged reunions, festive occasions, and temporary communities wo
thy of folkloristic attention. Yet another is an academic restructuring as dis
ciplines once devoted to an uplifting intellectual mission ally themselve
fragment, and reconfigure in response to populist, post-modern, post-sen-
timental pressures by which a dizzying array of popular expressive forms
from advertisements to zoos become symbolic cultural texts. The old
thumbnail designations of history with the study of the past, sociology of
society, and psychology of mind break down as all purport to grasp "cu
ture."

Where does that leave folklore? As history dealt with change, so folklore
answered to continuity; as sociology dealt with group, folklore addressed
community; as psychology probed reason, folklore queried belief. Over
time, folklore study's strongest settlement has been in the area of tradition.
Not long after folklore was coined as a term in Britain, Edwin Sidney Hart-
land clarified, indeed encouraged, the professional pursuit of folklore as
first the "study of tradition" and then the "science of tradition" (Hartland
1894-1896, [1899] 1968). Even as methods and theories changed drastically

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 89

from the Victorians to modern-day A

tinued to be waved over the territory
Indeed an argument exists that the a
gained ground in America. Surveyin
Elliott Oring reflected that the refor
United States was probably inevita
class or native ancestral population (In
tors), and a desire to identify a gen
Oring pointed out, the conceptual shi
sized by Europeans to "oral tradi
American folklorists (Oring 1986:
1970s, American updates of "folkloris
entific in the study of human traditi
Jones 1995). Surveying folklore's study
century, Stith Thompson proclaime
stone for everything that is to be inc
son 1951: 11). Surveys of folklore stud
than they did during the 1950s a co
lorists on tradition. Dan Ben-Amos in 1984 declared 'Tradition has survived
criticism and remained a symbol of and for folklore" (124). Michael
Owen Jones concluded that "what appeals to folklorists is the study of tra-
ditions-something in which all people of every time and place engage"
(1989: 263). Richard Bauman observed a few years later that "there is no
single idea more central to conceptions of folklore than tradition"
(1992:30).
So what's the problem? The bounded ground of tradition for folklore
is now arguably the common ground in an analysis of culture eagerly
embraced by a host of disciplines. In 1991, historian Michael Kammen had
a scholarly bestseller with his tome Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transfor-
mation of Tradition in American Culture (1991), succeeding by one year David
Glassberg's American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early
Twentieth Century (1990). From sociology came Tradition (1981) by Edward
Shils. Michael Walzer meanwhile called on political scientists to "recover"
the concept of tradition from philosophy (2000). One indication of the
shifting sands of study is that academic programs in folklore have gone
through more redefinition in the last five years than in the twenty years pre-
viously. At Indiana, folklorists are at the forefront of a new program in
"communication and culture"; at New York University, a folklorist takes
charge of "performance studies"; and at UCLA, the folklore and mythol-
ogy program joins "world arts and cultures." Previously, reference to tra-
dition was a hallmark of these programs. Indiana University's Folklore

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 90 WESTERN FOLKLORE

Institute called its newsle

of folklore as "focusing
brochure for graduate
advertised, "Students st
enrich and express the
world." UCLA's graduate
"the ways in which hum
tinuity and consistency i
gram "takes up the world
There is yet to be conc
tionology. But there ma
efforts to engage contin
dition sciences" and "tra
social research were used
nology and Folkloristic
ings were published two y
(Honko and Laaksonen 1
not a label for a universit
organizers used it as a key
folkloristics, primarily
tive religion (see Honko
that folklore avoided beco
history did not reconst
such disciplines retained
the form of descriptive
embracing a philosophical
the names are a matter of tradition.

The imaginative call for "a good Saxon compound, Folklore" by W. J

Thoms in 1846 only indirectly referred to tradition. He announced folk
lore as a replacement for "popular antiquities" or "popular literature," and
in his conclusion located folklore "into that interesting branch of literary
antiquities" (Thorns 1965 [1846]: 6). His reference to tradition was as a
genre steeped in the past rather than a concept of process or transmission.
He asked the editor of The Athenaeum, "How many readers would be
glad to show their gratitude for the novelties which you, from week to
week, communicate to them, by forwarding to you some record of old
Time-some recollection of a now neglected custom-some fading leg-
end, local tradition, or fragmentary ballad!" (Thoms 1965 [1846]: 5). Folk
lore was, he thought, "a mass of minute facts, many of which, when
separately considered, appear trifling and insignificant, but, when taken in
connection with the system into which his master-mind has woven them,

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 91

assume a value that he who first recorded them never dreamed of attribut-

ing to them" (Thoms 1965 [1846]: 5). That value, he implied, was in chart-
ing a national tradition, if we read his desire to extrapolate from English
folklore a spiritual core similar to what the Grimm brothers had suggested
for Germany.
As British folklorists transplanted Thoms's literary folklore into the loca-
tion of science, Edwin Sidney Hartland articulated for them the empirical
foundation of tradition. He wrote, "Every people has its own body of Tra-
dition, its own Folk-Lore, which comprises a slowly diminishing part, or the
whole, of its mental furniture, according as the art of writing is, or is not,
known" (Hartland 1891: 34). With reference to tradition, Hartland altered
Thoms's emphasis in folklore on literary antiquity to a social application
of natural history that followed a hierarchy of progress in civilization. Tra-
dition, as he later publicized it for his fellow folklorists in various guides,
was a process of transmission characteristic of the level of "savagery"
among unlettered, isolated groups which survives into civilization. In his
words, "It is now well established that the most civilized races have all
fought their way slowly upwards from a condition of savagery. Now, savages
can neither read nor write; yet they manage to collect and store up a con-
siderable amount of knowledge of a certain kind, and to hand on from one
generation to another a definite social organization and certain invariable
rules thus gathered and formulated are preserved in the memory, and
communicated by word of mouth and by actions of various kinds. To this
mode of preservation and communication, as well as to the things thus pre-
served and communicated, the name of Tradition is given; and Folklore is
the science of Tradition" (Hartland 1899: 11; emphasis added).
Although Hartland was influential in organizing the professionalization
of folklore around the tradition as the knowledge of surviving lore, the
modern conception of tradition in folklore as it developed in the twenti-
eth century owes more to another British folklorist's social-psychological
emphasis on the "folk" (Jacobs 1893; see also Fine 1987). In an oft-cited
essay simply titled 'The Folk,"Jacobs blasted the natural history model, and
asserted several principles that added the individual to group, and space
to time, as crucial factors in analyzing the significance of folklore. He
viewed the diffusion of folklore, and its suggestion of a multiplicity of cul-
tures, as negating the assumptions of a singular hierarchy of civilization. His
points: (1) folklore is continuously being updated and invented; therefore
folklore involves innovation, and consequently individual initiative; (2) folk
is not a level of society, but a group sharing tradition that could be of any
stratum; (3) tradition is not a body of knowledge, but a process understood
by following spatial and psychological patterns. In a declarative tone, he

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 92 WESTERN FOLKLORE

wrote, "We shall have to

dition if this conception
Just at present, we are
from John-o'-Groat's to L
implicitly, that it arose
owing to the similarity
standpoint we shall want
rise, since from that stan
spot.
And when we lear
know how it spreads fr
Folklore in his perspectiv
such as telephones and bo
vidual needs and social c
the survivalists. Tradition
created anew as well as i
lore of the present, he p
to the spread of folk-lore
In America, similar deb
erenced the dramatic ch
In the study of folklore
traditions, our values, in the midst of social and material structural
changes?" Folklore was not the only location for this question. As abstract
art took hold in the early twentieth century in response to modernization,
art critics raised the issue of a tradition of art. As new forms of writing-real-
istic and popular-spread, literary circles took up the matter of tradition in
literary production. But arguably tradition was most discernible in the per-
sistent quality of folklore and the groups it represented. In the first issue
of the publication of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, Phillips
Barry and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm were among the few folklorists to
directly face the matter in their title "What Is Tradition?" They were well
aware of changes in popular musical tastes and the rise of the recording
industry. They well understood the preservation instinct in saving the songs
of tradition they called folksongs, even as they recognized "that ballad mak-
ing is still going on."
Following Jacobs, Barry and Eckstorm distinguished two kinds of tra-
dition: "tradition in time and tradition in space." They explained, "A
song may have come down through the ages, like 'Hind Horn' or 'Johnny
Scot', traditional in the sense that many generations of singers have sung
it. Or, it may be, like 'Willie the Weeper,' or 'Fair Florella,' merely widely
distributed, so that one who sings it may expect to find an indefinite num-
ber of persons, over a large territory who know it. Such is tradition in

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 93

space. Both types of songs are equally

song. For, despite all that has been ar
is tradition that makes the folk-song
music" (1930: 2). Still, there was the n
into technological or mass culture
ditions in modernity needed the qu
Leach critically observed, "America
stratum-alas for folk story and son
society ordered and regimented by
media, such as radio, television an
minded by hucksters selling goods
and soft commodities. Perhaps the
homogeneity of a folk society; if so,
(Leach 1966: 395).
Leach foretold the rethinking of tr
the midst of the dramatic rise of ma
munication emphasizing novelty an
came under suspicion. The classic s
"Toward a Definition of Folklore i
and published in 1972. With the g
process, Ben-Amos offered a post-ind
tic communication in small groups
identified that is not "traditional," if
indeed the standard of tradition. Ref
"tradition of time" as a "burden" on
folklore defined by tradition prev
expanding to emergent performances
lore as a discipline focuses on traditio
d'Atre.' If the initial assumption of
appearance of its subject matter, t
from following the same road. If the
ion remains the only function of the
antiquarian from which he tried so h
interest of folklore scholarship that
to allow broader and more dynamic r
14).
Although Ben-Amos's definition with the conspicuous absence of tra-
dition made many rounds, the eventual result was that the concept of tra-
dition was revised rather than swept aside. A contribution of folklore
studies to the philosophy of tradition, in fact, is the integration of creativity
and emergence into the idea of tradition. In the literature of American

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94 WESTERN FOLKLORE

folklore studies, especial

followed (see Dundes 1
indeed invented and indiv
formed for the purpose o
this reformulation, trad
than objectified as a cul
separation of an objectiv
tic,"and a fabricated "f
since both could be rev
production (See Dorson
Tides of essay collections
Ranger 1983), Creativity
Transforming Tradition: F
Marketing of Tradition
Group Expressions in Nor
also Becker 1998; Peters
Ben-Amos ironically mad
posed a definition withou
may break away from som
point to possible new di
in making this break, as
establishment "Young Tu
adigm shift, Dorson ch
their "rejection of the old
implied that they defied
alistic interests. Althou
emphasis on the "text"
blow of their departure b
"What distinguishes this
that the folklore concep
which a tradition is pe
emphasis added).
Worth considering in
1960s and 1970s is the in
ing "tradition" in public
forces blocking progressi
Americans, labor causes,
While folklorists hailed f
advantaged groups-inclu
an imposing power str
related words such as "he

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 95

apparent (see Denisoff 1971). To t

generation, tradition could repre
social status quo, and indeed contro
eration. G. K Chesterton anticipated
dition means giving votes to the m
All democrats object to men being d
dition objects to their being disqual
2000). The question for many folklo
was how to renew traditions to
Green 1983). Guy and Candie Cara
Movement," recalled, "Folklorists
ticular-met freedom fighters at
sions took place about the valu
contemporary struggles" (Caraw
Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit Peo
terpretation of tradition that th
based on old forms represented. Wh
their findings "as a quaintly phrase
escape from life," he offered th
songs can be considered songs of co
nomic and social problems that hav
people as they struggled for a liv
erary scholars" to task for neglec
problems of everyday life" (Lom
Richard Dorson, from his leadersh
tor of Indiana University's Folklo
folklorists for embracing social s
ological grounds (Dorson 1972: 45
a non-ideological discipline and pr
and popularizers for knocking o
1971, 1976; see also Bronner 1998:
literary antiques, had a sanctity t
1971, 1978a). Several analyses fro
fession took note of the rancorou
fessionals regarding the authenticit
of folklore to political causes. They
ical undertones of a conflict betw
forces" or "rationalism and radic
1975). In line with this political
"tradition" as a loaded keyword
meaning from the Latin for handin

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 96 WESTERN FOLKLORE

ity being handed "down"

modernization, he refle
for the establishment and
it stands in the way of
20).
Through the professionalism debates and counterculture movements of
the 1960s and 1970s, tradition, once considered a given of folklore's
existence, was put on display for critical viewing. Whereas most folklore dic-
tionaries and encyclopedias prior to the 1970s did not deem it necessary
to have an entry for tradition because it was presumably too fundamental,
some journals and reference works since have given it closer scrutiny
(see Ben-Amos 1984; Allison 1997; Johnson 1998; Bronner 1998). One rea-
son for this re-examination is that while tradition had a popular, senti-
mental meaning, dating back at least to the Victorians, in post-industrial,
post-sentimental society it appeared elastic, even protean, and individu-
alized (see Pleck 2000). Tradition as part of modernity appears more con-
temporaneous, more spread spatially, more strategically applied and
manipulated, rather than being the surrounding state of being. In modern,
or post-modern, conceptions characterized by acceptance of a present
accelerating into the future, the standard of persistence through genera-
tions no longer held fast. The spread of jokes in short-lasting "cycles," car-
ried through loosely connected "networks," "conduits," and "communities"
was one oft-cited example of a "new" or "emergent" tradition (Dundes
1987).
If tradition as the basis of folklore is indeed both invented and inherited,
individual and social, stable and changing, oral and written, of past and
present, of time and space, about both authority and freedom, then what
does it exclude? Is it shorthand for a feeling of connection rather than a
process of transmission? Is it possible to make it empirical if it depends so
much on judgment and perception? Or is that its strength-to point to the
ways that spiritual and social connection can be subjectively invoked? As
"traditions," the term references discrete texts that are therefore empiri-
cally documentable; as "tradition," it sounds like a overarching force,
pattern, or authority--often outside of awareness.'
For anthropologist William Bascom, folklore's significance is the con-
tribution it makes to culture and it can be objectively analyzed "in the same
way as other customs and traditions, in terms of form and function, or of
interrelations with other aspects of culture" (Bascom 1965 [1953]: 28). As
part of culture, folklore comprises traditions meant for expressive and social
purposes; hence the repeated anthropological reference to folklore as '"ver-
bal art" or "literary art of a culture" in twenty-one definitions of folklore

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 97

included in The Standard Dictionary of

1949: 398-403). In this line of thinking
an item or pattern that represents a
either an item going through a folk pr
(culture). Yet other statements can b
ularly in complex societies, with tradit
and folk culture with "American tra
tion," or "urban tradition" (see Yoder 1
Amos 1984: 119-21). Anthropologist
proclaimed, "one synonym for cultu
Judging by Herskovits's definition of
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, tra
meaning than folklore. He wrote, "Ori
ties, and held to be the survivals of an
ilized' literate peoples, folklore has c
study of the unwritten literature of a
being without it" (Herskovits 1949:
major thrust in folklore studies as esse
reformulation of Hartland's "scienc
Amos, for Hartland, "folklore is 'the science of tradition'; for them
[anthropological folklorists in America], it can be only the science of part
of tradition-anthropology bites off the larger slice" (Ben-Amos 1984:
120). The categorization of tradition therefore had a bearing on the dis-
ciplinary claim to study. If folklore was to represent a discipline, it studied
tradition as culture; in anthropology or literature, it was a body of material
signifying a portion of culture.
For some, references to social and political unities of tradition raised
scary ghosts of romantic nationalism (brought out by accusations of jin-
goism, chauvinism, and even racism) much as expressive genres persisting
through time suggested the dusty, removed cabinets of antiquarianism (see
Oinas 1978; Dorson 1978b; Abrahams 1993). Prompted by a public
embrace of electronic communication and the arrival of a new millennium,
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett perhaps most openly expressed this unease
when she addressed fellow folklorists, "Our preoccupation to this day
with tradition, community, and identity are firmly rooted in the period of
our consolidation in the American academy. These preoccupations are his-
torically connected to the history of the field in Europe in the context of
romantic nationalism" (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1996: 251). Calling for a
move away from finding a disciplinary location, away from an emphasis on
orality, and therefore on tradition of time, she pointedly charged, "As prac-
titioners of the 'science of tradition,' folklorists seem to have a harder time

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 98 WESTERN FOLKLORE

than others (or maybe

with our own tradition, i
252). The challenge of c
nium and its suggestion o
cerned, was to find a "tru
present, but truly of the
In the same year that t
took a stand reasserting
appeared in a special issue
claiming to set down "k
Aware of the re-evaluation
tor Burt Feintuch wrote
contemplate departure
arrived in "other scholar
statement of tradition as
the study of folklore a
challenge of "artistic com
ten by Gerald Pocius, ca
genre, and context. Tradi
ing for the field the goal
tion, Glassie affirmed,
human actor meet" (Gla
action," he offered, con
nificance as the creation
Analysis of bibliograph
marked increase in references to tradition occurred at the millennium
moment. In addition to the expectation of trajectory brought by calen-
drical change, concern for tradition as an analytical construct and as a sym-
bol for culture exists in the midst of another communication revolution we
can call digital, electronic, or computer. The implications of global inter-
actions giving rise to border-crossing traditions, and placing into question
the viability of a nation-state held together by traditions, are not far from
the surface of this discussion. I have written, for example, about the dif-
fering meanings of tradition in the United States, England, andJapan, and
the challenges to these core values from mass cultural forces (Bronner
1998). Other borders, those around "disciplines," also have the potential
for disintegrating in the swirl of new forms of scholarly communication in
and out of academe. Tradition, if it was once the centerpiece of folkloristic
endeavor, now shows up increasingly in various disciplinary uses-in art, lit-
erature, history, sociology, political science, and anthropology. It also has
a usage in popular consciousness and its determination in performances

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 99

such as Fiddler on the Roofor the N

interdisciplinary analysis (Wolit
Bronner 1998: 22-41). Arguably, as
folklore studies, for signified in th
value, indeed a struggle for the s
In that discussion, a complicating
processual lore folklorists attemp
folk it represents, and the schola
discussion of tradition as a keywo
uncomfortably broaches the limi
Indeed, how do folklore studies "fo
dition, and what does that say abo
A glance at major introductory
read that the concept of tradition a
the empirical pursuit of express
persistent introductory text sin
Study of American Folklore opens w
traditions of a people" (1998: 3). T
persisting in time framed by gro
action, Barre Toelken's Dynamics of
'variation within a tradition, wheth
here simply as a central fact of exi
senting it in opposed terms of co
fulness, I accept it as a defining
performance, attitude, cultural tast
latest textbook entry from Robert
loristics underscores "traditional" a
tors of folklore. With a slight rhet
discussion the social-psychological i
By stating that folklore denotes "
iors... that we judge to be tradition
subjective experience of folklore as
emphasis added). Forms, proces
traditional, they observed, in time
in time or space, traditions have
"become pervasive and commonp
scholarly goals of explaining hum
indeed of understanding the hum
with reference to tradition, it is "an
(Georges andJones 1995: 1).
The aforementioned definers sh

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 100 WESTERN FOLKLORE

called the Folklore Fellows

organization for significan
promote programs that e
lore studies. The Fellows
Folklore Society meetings
In 1998, Lynwood Montell
such an event for the last
Memphis, Tennessee. Ack
Tradition (1998), he sugg
forum led by the Fellow
ception) of tradition. It wa
posed examining three es
tradition-literature, art, a
they relate to folklore an
He revisits a seminal essay
ent" in thinking about app
sideration of individuali
Jones's work on traditio
identity, and individual vo
in the world of politics
variance between a public
tinuing an inquiry into
national settings, Barbro
Sweden in her study of th
intellectual and political cl
historical museums and o
European nations. All four
been aligned with other
Baker in English and histo
ies; Klein in ethnology; an
history.
We offer our essays in the spirit of bringing reflection at this "crossroads"
or "crisis" for our subject and discipline. We hope the appearance of
these essays will inspire commentaries and further discussion from readers.
One conclusion from the forum that all could agree on was that "tradition"
in folklore, and other culture studies, can no longer be taken for granted.
Our entrance into the third century of folklore scholarship will undoubt-
edly call out tradition from its many locations.

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THE MEANINGS OF TRADITION 101

Notes

1 Compare this designation of tradition as an overarching force with A. L.

Kroeber's idea of culture as "superorganic"; see Kroeber 1917.

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